VERY annoying NAD T752 problem (1 Viewer)

[MikeVM]

I just purchased a new NAD T752 to replace my aging Denon receiver. The main reason for this upgrade was to be able to enjoy the digital surround features of this receiver, and of course the NAD is a much more "musical" amp.

My DVD player is a Denon DVD 3000. Not progressive scan, but good enough for now. So I hooked up the coaxial digital output to the receiver, and all was good. I popped in a DVD and the sound was stunning.

Now the bad news. I popped in a regular CD (Stevie Ray Vaughan if you must know) and noticed that during playback the first 1/2 second of every track is cut off if you just let the CD play. To rule out the DVD player, I tried three other players, using both optical and coax, and they all do it. Other CDs are affected too. Then I tried setting up the input for the CD setting on the receiver, and it still does this.

I would guess that the receiver tries to acquire the type of encoding every time the CD switches tracks, and it takes a little time to acquire the signal type.

So I called my dealer, and they said "use analog connections". This is unacceptable. Not only does that negate the built-in crossover for my LFE sub, but the DACs in the DVD player sound like crap compared to the ones in the receiver.

For a 900 dollar receiver that is supposedly built around the "sound first" principle, I find it rather offensive that something as simple as playing CDs through a digital interconnect doesn't work correctly.

Has anyone run across this? What is the fix?

-Mike

 

[Chris Quinn]

Have you contacted NAD directly? If there is no fix get them to refund you.

Is it in an auto detect mode that you can set to stereo for playing CDs?

 

[MikeVM]

I just contacted NAD about this. They don't respond to their e-mail form at all, and the phone number I found on a fluke, but the guy seemed willing to help me.

Yes, setting the surround mode to a fixed mode would solve this. Unfortunately that option doesn't exist on the T752. Maybe newer revisions of the firmware support this.

We'll see. If it does come down to using analog connections, I'm going to have to buy a better DVD player than I'm using now, or buy a dedicated CD player. I guess that I'm not above that, but I just hate spending money just because something that should work does not.

-Mike

 

[NickSP]

Mike, there are many receivers and prepros out there that exhibit the same characteristic described by you. I think the reason it does that it hunts for a signal and this results in a slight lag. I experienced that on a few receivers and my Proton prepro also does that. Changing your DVD/CD player will not help in this case also.

 

[John Garcia]

As noted above, this is a common problem that is not specific to NAD. Unfortunately, using analog is the simplest fix for this.

Changing your source may fix the problem, as not all players handle the signal in the same way. I had a Marantz SR-6200 with the same problem with all of my players via digital except my Marantz CC4000. The 4000 died, so I went with a Sony ES and connected it via analog only.

My new receiver, a Marantz SR8300, does not have this problem with any digital source.

 

[Rich Wenzel]

its not uncommon among receivers...

i bet if you play the dvd player, hit it, let it start playing and then repeat the track 5 seconds into it, it doesn't skip the beginning of the song...

i wouldnt give up on the nad for that

V

 

[JohnSer]

My HK520 and other HKs do the same thing. Some CDs are worse than others. I see the problem with CDs that show a negative time on the Sony CD Player (using optical out), between the end of one track and the start of another. Some CDs you can not detect any problem. I have tried playing CDs in a Sony and H/K DVD player, and the problem was the same. Answer from HK was to use analog outs. Tried that, but the Sony DACs were terrible, so went back to optical.

Here is an earlier thread I had with my issue: http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=113994

JohnS

 

[MikeVM]

Sorry for the misunderstanding. By switching to a different CD player I meant using the analog outs from that CD player instead of the DVD player I'm using now. Reason for the new player is to get some better DACs. The DVD player I'm using now has unacceptable (to me) sound coming out of it.

-Mike

 

[Brian L]

I guess the crux of the matter is that this will happen with a receiver or pre/pro that has auto-detect capability to determine what the incoming bit stream represents (DD, DTS, PCM, etc.). The delay is what happens while it figures out what to do.

Seems the solution is simply to allow a fixed input mode, but of course, then someone would get careless and send a DD bit stream to an input that is set to only decode PCM. O dB digital hash coming from your speakers would be rather unpleasant, not to mention potentially damaging.

Having said that, my Pioneer CD Recorder has no such problems locking onto a CD, and also advising that I can't record if I send it anything but 44.1 PCM.

Surely the NADs and HKs of the world could come up with a better solution. I would have to assume that this was noted at some point during the design stage. Making the conscious decision to NOT fix it is pretty mind boggling.

BGL

 

[Chris Quinn]

Mike, How about buying a used DAC off audiogon.com instead of a CD player? I don't know if you'd have to take it out of the loop to play DVDs.

 

[TedS]

Mike,

There is a thread at the AVS Forum on this very topic (actually regarding issues with the NAD 762, but the 752 is discussed as well). John Ashman was able to get great responses from NAD regarding the causes of this problem. There are also firmware upgrades that may or may not help (I can't remember). Check it out, the thread title was "NAD 762 Experience" or something like that.

Ted

 

[John Garcia]

I guess the crux of the matter is that this will happen with a receiver or pre/pro that has auto-detect capability to determine what the incoming bit stream represents (DD, DTS, PCM, etc.). The delay is what happens while it figures out what to do.

The issue is not exactly that the processor has to figure out what the signal is, but rather it is related to the player turning the stream off briefly during transitions (track to track on the disc, etc...) and the receiver has to reacquire the signal.

I don't believe this is an "auto detect" issue. My 6200 did it regardless of mode.