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NAD Reliability

There seems to be a global pressure to push out new electronics at ever increasing rate with most of the production being done in low cost Asian countries specially China. NAD always has been a high value company making musical components at a fraction of most of the competition. I was on the band wagon in 1979 to purchase their musical integrated classic. It seemed to last forever till giving up the ghost in this century as part of 3rd system. However, I have heard rumors that their most modern offerings are suffering less quality control and/or lower reliability. Specifically has anyone had reliability problems with their flagship M3 Integrated and if so were you satisfied with service quality and cost?
nanderson
hieule5
115 posts
 
I guess it's very much the luck of the draw. My experience with NAD so far has been neutral. I purchased a cheap NAD amp that did not have any problems during 5 years of ownership and it still sounds great at my Mom's.

I purchased a more expensive NAD unit last year and had problem with the power switch from day one, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

I purchased from David at DMC Electronics in Calif. before and I would buy from him again. Just google his store name and you will find him.

Decent price, decent service, and a nice guy to deal with.
loomisjohnson
1,943 posts
 
Anecdotally, and from my own experiences, NAD's digital players are quite unreliable--I believe I've owned three seperate NAD players and each one had problems (laser, drawer mechanism). Their integrated amps, on the other hand, have been trouble-free, perhaps (as suggested above) because they have fewer moving parts. I've come to regard NAD components like most European cars--they're beautifully engineered and fine performers, but high maintenance and repair-prone.
trackernc
8 posts
 
I've got a NAD M3 and I love it... However the volume control is doing that thing where it doesn't really lower and occasionally goes up depending on how fast I turn it down via the front knob. It's kind of a stutter. I have seen other cheap stereo systems whose front volume knob eventually stops working. It seems to be the digitally controlled type knob, as opposed to a potentiometer or something like that. I hope that my issue doesn't get any worse. I can always use the remote I suppose, but who wants their nice heavy integrated amp to have issues like that?

Also the words above the volume knob have rubbed off.
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