thoughts on NAD M3

My personal experience with NAD is, stay away from products made in China, unless you want to visit your dealer often

Vinylmeister, I assume you had troubles with a piece ? My take, and I think it is somewhat factual is that there is nothing wrong with China built, it just depends on who is building. I have a Mac amp and pre, made obviously in the US, yet the 201 CD/SACD player they have is / was a wonderful sounding unit but prone to failure for some. Some of the highest rated audio equipment out right now is made in China. Now I personally do not like the China built products that are also designed in China, just a personal thought no real experience. But NAD and I'm assuming many other well known North American and European brands have factories they own or manage in China building their products, which I assume means better QC. I talked with and read quite a bit about my M5 CD/SACD player before I bought it, and while there were a few early troublesome units, overall most work just fine. My M5 is just working fine, it is to bad you had a bad experience with your M55. I chose the M5 for the CD/SACD/HDCD capabilities, but thought the DVD side of things are better in a separate box. So I also bought the NAD T515 for the few videos I watch, but also for the 2 channel DVD-A capability. I only have about 10 DVD-A, and this T515 does a nice job with DVD-A.

I also chose the mf a5 over the m3. It just sounded more relaxed. Also the top end was more extended. I thought the nad was better than most I tested in this price range but was easily edged out by the a5. I think maybe the nad suffered in sound quality because of all the unnecicary gadgetry. Id look at the a5 If were you.

I had an M3 for a year. The best way I can describe it is this: It sounds very good, will play very loudly without strain, and has many setup options(input level matching, sub out jacks, etc.).

But... It just lags a split second behind in its timing. Things that were exciting with other equipment lost something. I did not experience the lack of top-end sparkle that others bring up, but a dullness in pace unrelated to frequency extremes.
I actually felt the frequency balance was excellent, but kept wanting to lean in and speed things up just a hair.