Anyopinions or feedback on the NAD T-752? (1 Viewer)

based on the quality i heard with the 761, i ordered a 752 and should have it by next week.
i was really surprised that i would have heard the difference between supposedly equally good recievers (i tested out the NAD at the same time i had an Onkyo 600 and HK 520 in my house), but i had to admit, every time there was an improvement in so many areas.
mostly it came down to the NAD sounding just so much cleaner.

im a little nervous now, that with all the DSP modes and surround formats they added to the 752, that its going to muddy up the works. i guess i'l never know for sure unless i can get my hands on the 761 to directly compare them, but was wondering if anyone else had any thoughts-

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the only DSP modes added were the matrix modes from Dolby and DTS? As far as I know, the only so-called DSP mode that is not a Dolby or DTS mode is the EARS mode which was on the 761.

I'd find it very hard to believe that the sound quality will be effected by the addition of these modes - it basically comes down to an upgraded DSP chip. I'm sure that the DAC section and analogue sections of the preamp will not have been altered significantly - If only I could afford the T752 here in New Zealand! (It's retailing here for NZ$2200 - over US$1000)

The T762 is shaping up to be good too, but again, rather pricy :frowning:

I have had my T752 for about two weeks and I seem to like it more than any other receiver I've owned. It replaced an HK 520, which was a great receiver (note: I am extremely obsessive about getting the perfect setup/sound out of my modest HT, I get a new receiver about every 8 months, it's ridiculous what HT marketing has done to me). I had just listened to a friends NAD T751 and was very impressed with the musicality and it's home theater performance so I thought I might try NAD. I was a little reluctant at first when I ordered it because I thought I might be giving up home theater performance for more a more musical receiver, my use is about 70% HT and 30% music. But I have found in this case that it's HT performance far surpassed my expectations and music is warm and not overly harsh or to detailed. It does require a lot of break in though, I've used it a couple of hours a night for a couple of weeks and it keeps sounding better and better. I have PSB's all around in 5.1 and it provides seemless surround (DTS is awesome), I can't wait until I get another amp so I can try 6.1/7.1. Of all the receivers I've owned (HK 520, HK 220, Sony STR-V333ES, Yamaha 5460, lower end Sony stuff) this one truly does it all (for me), I used to avoid NAD, and I never really considered them as a home theater contender, but I took a plunge and am very pleased with my decision, I will definately keep this one longer than all the others. Also, I love that simple design, I don't miss the light shows that those other receivers put on one bit. Hopefully it will last me a few years until I'm ready to go to separates. One more thing, my favorite feature is the adjustable bass management, its sub crossover is adjustable from 40 to 140HZ which is feature I have not found on many receivers inthis price range.

Shane

there seems to be an enhanced stereo mode 1 & 2, that i don't remember seeing on the 761, but the matrix modes are what i was refering to.

good to hear your enjoying yours, Shane.
Mine came in yesterday, several days sooner than i was expecting, and was able to get it up and running fairly quickly. i'd hesitate to voice any definitive opinion on it at this point, since i still have to sit down a finely calibrate it with Avia, especially the sub, which is much different from what i have been used to.
so far though, i'm cautiously very happy and satisfied i made the right decision.
although i can't compare it directly to any other reciever, it does seem to retain the same clean clear sound.
one thing i do feel pretty certain about is its DPL II. this is the most natural sounding i have ever heard that mode preform...i don't remember it on the 520 being nearly this good. on that reciever i still prefered to listen to 2 channel music in stereo, now its sometimes a toss-up.
in this case, i'm now very glad i ponyed up the extra $300 to get a newer '52 over a refurbed '61.
i agree with you about the simple design and the 'light shows' of most of these things.
at this point all i really know is, the sound i hear from it is absolutely wonderful. if i walked into a store and heard this and the salesman said it was a system costing 33-50% more than i paid, i would believe him, and feel it was worth that much.

i should be getting over to home depot to get some harder wood to brace the shelf its on (homemade rack).
this puppy is pretty damn heavy.


about the only thing that gives me pause at this point, is some reading up i did on the 761 the night before they delivered the '52.
it has a pretty lousy rating on Audioreview.com (by their standards) with many of the more recent reviews commenting on channels going out.
this also happend to me with the last '61 i had demoed, and i didn't have a front right channel the whole time i had it.
i sure hope they've gotten their act together in regards to the quality control.
they have a superior product, as long as its working properly.

My NAD T752 is setup with PSB 5T fronts, 9C center, 2B surrounds and the PSB subsonic 6 (Room 14 X 20). I have yet to calibrate it properly with AVIA disc/SPL meter, but right now it sounds awesome. The bang for the buck is off the charts. The NAD remote is much more attractive and user friendly than those nightmares that came with the T751. It's a learning remote, and I think it does macros as well, I have'nt spent much time with it yet. They have added a few more DSP's to the mix, which are all right, I'll probably only use DPLII and EARS, but they are kind of fun to play with. I like to stick to 2 channel music listening, which the NAD is pretty darn good at. The NAD manual looks impressive enough (8 languages) but it does not go into all that much detail about specifics, I don't have it with right now to take a look, I've more or less stumbled onto some of more of the advanced functions.

Shane

Sounds good (I'll bet it really does sound good). I was just curious about the crossover settings more or less.

Paul,

Thanks for opening this thread in such a timely matter.

Up until yesterday, I had pretty much resigned myself to getting a Denon 3803, paying $1100 (more than I intended)for a ton of features I will probably not use, but, still getting a good quality, state of art, high quality device ("state-of-the-art"for the next 15 minutes, anyway).

I didn't reallly want to spend that much, so I have continued to research alternatives. I stopped in at another dealer yesterday pm and was VERY impressed with the T752 and an NHT setup. The sound quality was comparable to my 12 year old BK Sonata Pro 10 pre-amp that I am very attached to.

I will be driving a fine Canadian combo of PSB Stratus Gold i's and big Mirage center channel, and some DefTech bipolar surrounds. The PSB's are run by two Aragon amps, so the NAD will be doing pre amp duty only for the front mains. This is relevant only because of the numerous "humming while in pre-pro setup" comments I've read on other websites.

Other problems: the question of the fan noise. I'm also uncomfortable with the inconsistent reviews I read on audioreview - and some of the comments on quality and returns for repair, etc I've read on other threads here.

Life's too short to live with humming speakers and multiple trips to the dealer for an $800 item. So ordinarily I'd pony up the $1100 for the Denon without a second thought.

So the dilemmma - THE NAD SOUNDS GREAT.

Would really like to hear your comments, and others', as you set up your system.


Again, thanks

DanS

have you checked out the h&k525, should be cheaper than the denon and serve well as a pre/pro...

Rich

It seems the fan noise issue was due to a quality control problem with the early batches of T-752s. On AVS, I read a reply from NAD on the subject where they acknowledged this and stated that in normal use the fan should never come on.

i must have gotten one from the earliest batches then, because i have heard the fan.
it's not a huge deal to me, because i've only noticed it maybe 10 times in the last 40 hours of use.
it comes on, stays on for a minute or so, and then oes back to dead silent.
guess i'll have to contact NAD or Yawa about this.
but its not really a big priority at the moment.

DanS,
yeah, thats the big problem. none of these issues would make the NAD worth serious consideration if the damn thing didn't sound so good.
i've talked to several dealers about the NAD vs all the usual suspects (denon, HK, onk, yamaha, etc) as well as talking to the manufacturer of the speakers i bought and love, and everyone concurred- you want bells and whistles go with the others, you want the best sound (for an a/v reciever in this general price range), go with NAD or Rotel.
i wasn't able to demo any Rotels and the prices i've seen for some of the units were out of my budget anyway.
it was a case of go with the NAD and sweat a little, or go with something else and always know in the back of my mind the sound isn't as good as it could be.
in the end i just had to trust my ears.

no problems...yet. and the sound is excellant.
did i mention i love the remote?
i will be a very satisfied customer and will definitely investigate more NAD gear, including some amps, for future upgrades as long this unit continues to perform as expected.
if problems due crop up, this will most likely be my one and only experience with NAD.

i had hoped to eventually use the 752 as a pre/pro also. i hadn't heard about the humming. i really hope its not the case.

I can also testify to the 752 sounding better than the equivalent from denon,onkyo,hk.

Question though. Does the Nad have DTS-ES Matrix decoding?
I had it for a weekend and I was running a 7.1 system but the Nad would not extract rear channels from DTS 5.1 discs.
It did DTS-ES Discrete when you had a 6.1 DTS disc.

All other receivers (onkyo,denon,hk) have the option to extract 7.1 content from 5.1 sources in DTS. The Nad extracts 7.1 from 5.1 in Dolby Digital using the EX processing but I couldn't get it to do the same in DTS.

Acording to the dts spec, a dicrete capable decoder should be able to decode matrix as well so...what's up?

Anyone else notice this or have found a solution?

Thanks

Let me chime in by adding my experiences with the NAD T752. First I'll address the bad; The Fan in 2 units I tried made a huge noise and would stay on for more than a minute or even upto 5 minutes. The Surround Right channel would just stop working in one unit. The units would get hot as hell and I was only using them as a prepro. I forget a couple of other reasons I gave them back to my dealer.
Now the Good; I was absolutely impressed with the musical sound of this receiver. It even sounded better on music than a dedicated prepro (which I tried) as the Outlaw 950. Music sounded very detailed and rich not something found easily in receivers. It has a set of 5 presets which is an awesome deal on the 752 I thought. You could choose any 5 input sources such as DVD, CD, etc. and customize anything from the speaker settings to Tone settings to speaker distances, etc. This is a truly phenominal feature and it takes the Personal memory feature used by a Denon a couple of steps ahead. Denon doesn't give you the choice of speaker settings, distances, etc.
Now if NAD says they are going to or already have fixed the glitches then even I will gladly return my 4ES for a 752 to be used as a prepro.
On movies I took an immediate lking to the 4ES as DD-EX and DTS-ES sounded much crisper on the Sony than on the NAD. However, I did not play much with movies on the NAD as much as I'd have liked to. I still have 2 weeks with my 4ES and if I hear good things about the NAD then who knows I might still get the NAD .

Paul et al:
(I know,it rhymes, I'm sorry)
A quick aside re: the HK 525 phenomenon on this site.
I dragged myself over to the local Circuit City to hear one of the HK AVR525 units. Oh boy. If HK wants to be taken seriously, they might want to pick a different venue. There is no way the HK could show its strength through pair of $700 Polks, or similar level Infinity's. I had to show the salesbaby how to select two channel stereo mode. Ordinarily I wouldn't give it a second listen.
Harman's web site and product info is terrible. Site is slow, pdf's don't load, couldn't download the manual - I had to e-mail them to request the manual - no response yet. So if this is their idea of quality, I can just imagine what's inside the box - oh, and that remote - that's one crowded remote!
I can hear the HK fans say I didn't "give it a chance", but I am not really tempted to do so just from my initial experience. However, since Costco does have it for $699, I may look one more time.
Back to the NAD - I'm still remembering that sound, the great remote, easy set up and, did I mention, that sound. I may have to hold the dealer's dog hostage if I pick this up.
After reading all of the NAD and Denon 3803 owner manual
repeatedly, the clear "ease of use" winner is NAD. I have an old Adcom 3 channel Dolby processor/amp whose remote allows me to change rear and center volume on the fly, with no interruption to the program: the NAD does this exact thing - Denon is a little more arcane (in everything).
I still have 'til the end of the month before I make the purchase so I'll keep reading here.
For all the folks that might be wondering why I don't just A-B-C test these receivers at home - I just can't get to it right now with an 18 month and 3 year old running around underfoot - so I'm not lazy, just chicken.
Again thanks for all of your input, and especially to the site itself - fantastic quality, response time and service.
DanS
:star:

i didn't think the HK was a bad reciever at all (in this case the 520).
if anything was turning me off, it was its asthetics- but this isn't a big deal.
Frankly, i thought the NAD was ever uglier ( just like the speakers i ended up with, somehow basic and utilitarian has become asscociated with unattractive in my mind).
but for sound and features it certainly seemed decent enough.

at around $500, its kind of a hard choice- it's almost double the price to get a 752.
is the 752 really worth $400 more than the hk.
at that price difference, i would have to say no.
did the 761 sound noticeably better than the HK?
absolutely.
i made sure it wasn't some weird placebo effect or unconcious bias.
the NAD clearly sounded better.
every single time, with every media/situation.

in my case, even though i think the $400 differential is extreme and not worth it for most people, i knew i would have always regretted not going with what i thought was the best available component, that i had personally heard.
it would have eaten at me everytime i used it.
that little voice would have said " oh man...it sounds good now...but just think how much better this would have sounded on the NAD..."
there were other reasons too ( 4 ohm speakers, and the NAD delivers a solid high current and is spec'd for 4 ohm speakers), plus the speakers i settled on came in under my initial budget (way under) so i decided to allocate the rest of the budget to to the reciever.
it ended up being an almost 50/50 split (most people seem to rec. throwing a much larger proportion of the budget at the speakers).

i have 2 years on my warranty.
i don't have the money or time to do it now, but next summer i'll try to test some amps out with it to make sure there are no problems with any of the channels.
this is my #1 fear about this units quality.