NAD M33 Initial Thoughts

thanks for this great writeup.
Have new to me Harbeth 30.1s and actually have the separates version  of the M33 home for demo this weekend - C298 amp and C658 dac and preamp.
Pretty impressed with this combo here.  Nice clean sound, lots of power for Harbeths, good bass management to my subs out of the amp.
Love the Bluos technology but also running roon and gives me all the MQA and high rez goodies.
This combo is a little cheaper than the M33 with no touch screen, balanced inputs or phono stage - all of which I can do without.
Haven't played with dirac as these are just a 2 day demo but think this could be a deal maker for me and my challenging room.  None of the funky stuff with the C658 I have read about - very smooth and easy to use.

I have an NAD M12 and M22 - predecessors to the M33 - in one of my systems.  It is pretty good gear and it’s my expectation that your M33 is superior.  it’s also well known that it takes about 400 hours of break in to achieve the designed performance with this gear.  While the topology of your M33 is different, I have no reason to expect it needs less break in time. Of course, it may be that you prefer that presentation of your tube pre and Ampzilla even after the M33 breaks in.  But, it’s supposed to be quite good, so please do let us know how it goes as you have more run in time with the piece..

Good sound is like soup:  so many tasty kinds!   It’s hard to settle on just one. 

With only three days on a Class D amp of any type you've still got a very long way to go for it to break in plus it needs to be left on all the time.  If you have the standard 30 day return window you really need to have it playing whenever you can even when gone but like others have said in the end you may still prefer the tube preamp/SS amp combo with the Harbeths. 

Thanks for the feedback, especially about break-in time. I will run it constantly and see what happens. And to be clear, it does sound really good but rather, just a different presentation at this point to what I am used to.

I am considering changing to the M33 to simplify my system. Also, very interested in streaming from Tidal or Quboz, which I have never done. Is the M33 pretty simple to set up for streaming and does it perform well?

I have had my NAD M33 paired with my B&W 802D2 speakers now for 2 months and love the simplicity and great clear, detailed, dynamic sound I am getting from this match.

Tidal Connect and Spotify Connect are both fantastic and very easy to use with the NAD M33. All you do is start either of these 2 apps on your phone or Ipad and then tap the bottom left corner to choose playing from your phone, NAD M33, or whatever connected devices you have.

I have an ethernet connection to my NAD M33 with my google nest router but you can also connect through wifi by entering in your wifi password on the NAD M33. I was having some re-boot problems and connection problems when Tidal Connect was first released for the NAD M33 about 6 weeks ago but the stability has improved a lot with the most recent operating system update a few weeks ago.

The new Tidal Connect app is great and has a great looking user interface. I like the feature where whenever you are playing a song you can click the icon at the top right of the screen to preview a list of pre selected songs that are similar in genre and music style to the song you are playing. This is a great way to find new music! I have never used Qobuz so can’t comment on that.....

Hi itball

I just saw this posting. Few notes:

1 - All ARC systems benefit greatly from having good room acoustics. Bass traps help it work better, and even help correct deep nulls.

2 - If you are using a sub, be sure to plug and high pass your mains.

3 - I find the biggest music/tone is where you have your hump. My personal house curve goes from 16 Hz down about 1.5 db/ocatve to 100 hz. Others prefer to have this up higher, around 80-100 Hz, but maybe because I use it for music and movies.

@sockiojimbo @spacemanrick  Tidal, Qobuz and Spotify (as well as another 20 streaming services) can be run directly from the BluOS app. So no need to use Tidal Connect or similar functionality. I have used the Bluesound Node 2i for a long time, streaming from both Tidal and Qobuz over wifi with zero issues as I am now doing with the M33. Super easy to set up via the Music Services tab in the BluOS app. I do have very fast wifi with good coverage.

Sorry, if you are noticing your main speakers more, like suddenly you can tell they are there, look for opportunities to add damping around them, include the floor between and behind them as possible areas for improvement.  Blankets/pillows are good materials to experiment with.

I ended up returning the M33. I could certainly live with it and think it's a real advancement in one-box systems. I did like certain things about the M33 sound as described above, but in the end, I couldn't part with the additional immediacy and sense of live music that my current set up provides, and how my speakers disappear more. For me, it would do well in a second system where simplicity and form factor are key and it might pair better with other speakers.