kjmagnusson

A bit of OS X Mountain Lion seems to have eliminated the dropouts. Haven't heard any since I upgraded my Mini. I also used the NAD DAC-1 with two other Macs—an Air and a Pro—and no dropouts with those platforms either. Must just have been some odd bug in Lion that caused the dropouts. Whatever works is fine with me.

Thanks for the reply. For logistical reasons, I can't disconnect the sub, but I certainly can check to see if I experience dropouts through a set of cans. I'm leaning toward Mac hardware problems myself--yes, it is under warranty, and the local Apple Store probably ought to run their hardware diagnostics on the machine regardless. Good thinking. Thanks again. Kris

Hi there. I built a system based on lossless digital media that I've ripped from CD or converted from FLAC and stored on a 2 TB USB 3.0 WD MyBook connected to a current generation 4 GB Mac mini with a Core i5 processor. Fidelia Advanced does a wee bit of audio processing, then sends the bits to the NAD DAC 1 transmitter/receiver, which moves the bits from the Mac and feeds an NAD C375BEE amp an analog signal. And my Magneplanar 1.7s and recently acquired Vandie 2Wq sub do the rest. But the day I installed my 2Wq, my Mac started giving me grief. It wouldn't allow remote clients to connect, either via AFP or VNC, and when I connected it to my external monitor, there was a lot of evidence that the OS had become corrupted and the system disk needed to be formatted and Lion reinstalled. So I did all that stuff, got iTunes and Fidelia talking to the digital media on the WD MyBook, and made sure the NAD DAC 1 was working again. Well, so everything works fine EXCEPT about every 3-4 mins, I hear garbled music for a few seconds. Then it plays fine again for another 3-4 mins, and lather, rinse, repeat. I contacted NAD, who gave this incident a trouble ticket and assigned it to an engineer, who isn't available for a couple days according to his voicemail. So I thought I would ask the question here of what do I need to do to correct these dropouts? I'm interested in hearing any reasonable steps I can take. Thanks! Kris

I have a 15" MBP non-Retina with the hi-res display that is a lot cheaper than the Retina equivalent, and allows me to change out the RAM, disk, etc., when the Retina components are non-user-serviceable. Further, the effective resolution of the hi-res non-Retina MBP is higher than the Retina. You lose a lot to get that Retina display that IMHO isn't worth it. And you're going to use this as a music server? It's a Cadillac solution to a Chevrolet problem. I feed bits to my NAD using a Mac mini with 4 GBs and a 2 TB ext USB 3.0 disk in conjunction with an NAD DAC-1 connected to the mini, and it works flawlessly. I remote into the Mac mini from any Mac on my net (I'm logged in via my 11" MacBook Air right now) and control Fidelia. The file system question is a good one. HFS+ is a great file system. I would format your MyBook in HFS+ and load an OS extension on your Windows machine called MacDrive that enables it to create/read/update/delete files on HFS+ disks natively. I used one of its ancestors in a production environment for years--I beat the crap out of it with Subversion and it worked flawlessly with nary a hiccup. Another one that is known to work well is Paragon HFS+ for Windows. Anyway, either of those will meet your needs.

Hi there. I paired my 1.7s with an NAD C375BEE putting out 150 wpc, with spikes up to 365 wpc. That amp enables the 1.7s to really shine. Complete presence, detail, "punch," lifelike reproduction, wide soundstage and excellent imaging. In my last system I ran MG 12s with a Rotel 140 wpc amp. The 1.2s were underpowered. I didn't get even close to the level of performance I'm getting with my current system. Also, the 1.7s are bass-poor no matter what amp you use, so I just wired in a Vandersteen 2Wq, which is working exceedingly well. I just finished building this system. I'm going to enjoy the crap out of my current system for about 10 years, then move up to the 3.7s and mono blocks or whatever for tons of juice.

I would characterize the C390DD as sounding dead. Maybe dead-accurate, but also dead musically and dead emotionally. I listened to it reproduce some Norah Jones at the NAD dealer. It sounded pretty dead there, but I thought that it might have been the B&W speakers. So I took it home, connected it to my Magneplanar 1.7s, and if it sounded dead in the shop, it sounded like a zombie at home. I played around with speaker placement, etc., but I just couldn't get any music out of it. I took it back and was going to jet over to another shop to check out a Vincent hybrid in my price range, but the sales guy convinced me to take home a C375BEE + NAD DAC 1. I wrestled that heavy sucker into my living room, connected up the speaker cables to the amp and the DAC transmitter to my Mac, and had the best listening experience I've had in years. Pure music. Airy, open, transparent, detailed, broad and deep sound stage--actually quite electrifying at reproducing all kinds of music, including the said Norah Jones. So I bought it. The Maggies keep opening up more and more, revealing clues about what they will eventually sound like, but even half-broken in, the combo of the C375BEE and the Maggies is wonderful. I'm very happy with my choice. Kris

Hi. I posted here a couple months ago, asking for amp suggestions to pair with my Magneplanar 1.7s. Well, my Maggies arrived, I've auditioned a couple amps already, and I think I've found one that works really well with my Maggies + ALAC media served up by my Mac Mini. It's the NAD C375BEE, surprisingly. I'm feeding it media through my Mac Mini + a wireless NAD DAC, and even though the MG 1.7s are not at all broken in, I'm getting extremely good results, and expect the sound and musicality of the system to only improve as the 1.7s log more hours. I had high hopes for the NAD C390DD, but I had one plugged into the Maggies last night, and it sounded like crap (as in: sh*t). Like listening to Missing Persons/Delerium/Norah Jones through cotton balls. Absolute garbage. The best thing I can say about it is that it just didn't work with the Maggies the way I would have expected. But with the NAD C375BEE, I'm hearing details I haven't heard before in many of my ALAC tracks, there is a lot of color and presence in vocals, I can hear transients and dynamics clearly (not to mention when Diana Krall gives it more diaphragm) and the soundstage is surprisingly broad and deep. And the bonus is, with the DAC, this amp is a cool $1K less money than the C390DD (which includes a DAC of course). So I'm going to listen to them through tomorrow, and if my opinion holds up after 10 hours or so of auditioning, I'm just going to call up the audio shop and give them my credit card number and be done with it. There might be some amp out there even more optimal, but to be honest, I'm happy enough with this amp that it may not be worth my time looking for something in this price range that sounds only marginally better. I was thinking tube amp for a while, but I don't know that I need the characteristics of tubes to taint the raw digital bliss of my Orbital/William Orbit/BT tracks, even though they might add something to my Mozart collection. So this Maggie owner casts one vote in favor of the NAD C375BEE and against the NAD C390DD. Kris

I have a bead on the C 390DD and the Rogue 90 tube amp. If the Rogue dealer will finance I will just pick up the Rogue Zeus, a DAC, and cables, and call it good. But I'm going to go into San Francisco a few times to check on other amp brands--I'll look for Parasound and plug it into my Mac and give it a whirl. I did solve the problem of how to break in the Maggies as well as how to audition the C 390DD at home with one fell swoop: the Mill Valley NAD dealer just up and offered to loan me a C 390DD with merely a credit card imprint for deposit. I figure if I play the 1.7s all week, even at a low volume, I can get them mostly broken in and have one full day to listen to them in their full glory. I certainly have enough media to make that happen.... What a nice place that is! Might be worth buying from him just on that basis alone, especially since the Rogue/tube dealer won't even return my mail now since I asked him about NADs.

Rendition? That was a cut-and-paste from the email he sent me this morning. He's not totally biased against Class D—he sells them—but he definitely REALLY doesn't like NAD, so much so as to tell me to stay away from him if I pick up one of their product. Ouch. But it's kind of irrelevant. I live close to an NAD dealer (Sonoma -> Mill Valley) and to San Francisco, so I can pick up whatever little bits and pieces I need in a radius of about 40 miles max. I can just hop on the motorbike and jet to the city and have custom cables made, etc., or put a malfunctioning amp in the trunk of the car and rotor my way to Mill Valley if I have to. I'm taking a long lunch and auditioning the NAD unit. I'll let everyone know what I think of that device. Kris

I asked my local dealer of many gears what he thought of the NAD C390DD: "I wanted to ask you a question about Class D amps, specifically the NAD C390DD. I know you're a tube amp guy, but as a computer guy the notion of a very efficient amp with a USB input + DAC + HDMI + DSP + Dynamic Power bursts of up to 350W at 4 ohms seems pretty attractive to me. What do you think of the Class D concept, and do you have an opinion about the NAD I mentioned? And can you get it for me if that's what I decided on?" His response: "I have sold several NAD products. Two caviats. First when it fails, please don't call me for help. Class D amps are great for subwoofers, because you don't truely listen to them. The best of the Class D amps are the Nuforce amps. I sell them as well, but if you don't get a tube amp I urge you to buy a class A of Class AB. Class D amps are in my opinion the least musical amp design I have ever heard. Lots of power for cheap.... Think about it a while." Well, I'm thinking about it, and as a guy who deals with bits all day long, every day, I can't think of anything innately bad or wrong about an all-digital design. So I'm still off to the NAD dealer to audition this amp this morning, before the afternoon meetings start. To be fair to my local dealer, some people I know who have had all kinds of amps over the years tell me that NADs are in the shop a little bit more than, say, Rotels or McIntoshes. I feel kind of bad that I evoked some string negative feelings in him—he's a nice guy and I didn't mean to push his buttons. Oh well. On the plus side, my local dealer has a 90 days SAC option. I might be willing to purchase a much more expensive amp and DAC if I had more time to pay it off. The McIntosh I demoed ALAC media on that started this thread might be an option with 90 days to pay it off. Kris

That one looks like it might be a good amp for the 1.7s IFF if the power cranks up at 4 ohms. I can't find any pricing on it, though, so I have no idea if it fits with my budget. But the Class A/AB is attractive. The Class D amp doesn't have any USB inputs, and I didn't that it has a built-in DAC (which seems to be the obvious next step in the data chain of an amp) so it's not any more effective for me than any other non-USB+DAC amps. Unfortunately. But thanks for passing that along. If the dealer I'm going to this afternoon has this manufacturer of amps, I will definitely plug my Mac into it and give it a listen. Thanks! Kris

I'm very interested in your experience. Can you provide a URL to the discussion(s)? I searched and did not find. I'm interested in your experience with both the 1.7s and the MMGs. Thanks, Kris

I really don't want to transcode 200 GBs of ALACs, since I already just transcoded 140 GBs worth. OTOH, that hassle + an external FAT32 drive would give me that much more money to spend on audio gear. Something to think about if I end up going with the NAD unit. BTW, I checked the site for the keywords "1.7 break in," "Magneplanar 1.7 break in," and "Magnepan break in." I found a number of pages, but nothing that indicated the break in process is much different from MMGs or MG12s. Let me know if you find something I didn't turn up. Maybe I've got it backward. Let's be creative here. I will loan the audio shop my 1.7s for 200 hrs for break-in.

I'd love to hear different amps with my 1.7s, so I plan to do whatever it takes to bring them the amps and give them a whirl. I'm going to have to do it with non-broken-in 1.7s, though, since I don't currently have anything to drive them, and I doubt someone is going to loan me a demo amp for 200 hours. I've had MMGs and MG12s before, and know what you mean about "fussy." I played with positioning for weeks before I hit on something that provided a decent soundstage and was transparent and musical. Every time I moved I had to do it all over again. It sucked. Placement was the worst thing about them. I prefer Macs. Aside from the Android phone, I am highly invested in the Apple ecosystem, so I'll just stick with a Mac. However, the NAD amp in question can connect directly to a 2 TB FAT32 disk if I want to transcode my ALACs into FLACs, thereby avoiding the need for any computer. Kind of nice feature. Kris

Found a shop about 10 mins away that has the NAD C 390DD in-stock and ready to audition. They know about digital media and their first question to me when I told them what I was trying to do was, "Are you using a Mac?" Their sales rep who knows the Magneplanar line well is in tomorrow, so I'm going after work with my Mac then to hear how the C 390DD and the M3+DAC sound live. I wish the speakers were here already. I would just haul them down there in a truck and put everything together. Maybe they will let me take one amp home at a time to try out. That would be a kindness. If anyone is interested, I will report on what I found out tomorrow. Kris