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ronwills

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  1. WOW the title of this thread just threw me for a loop. You can imagine how I felt reading the title just after just purchasing a M51. The last thing I needed was to read that a cheaper model (NAD C510) has come out within a week or two of my purchase and may be the replacement for the M51. Thanks goes to PewterTA for sharing with us his impressions of the C510. You have relieved my suffering! I will say that the M51 is a very interesting DAC. It is at the center of my all-digital system fed by a very inexpensive DUNE HD 3D music (and Video) server via HDMI, COAX and OPTICAL. This is the first DAC that I have ever heard were the differences between HDMI, COAX and OPTICAL are as small as they are. My guess is that it has excellent jitter rejection in the way it processes the digital signal. I previously had the Wyred 4 Sound DAC 1 and, later, DAC 2 and I actually liked the OPTICAL input the best compared to COAX. I then had a Nuforce AVP-18 and the HDMI sounded bleached out, no life with the OPTICAL being the second best and COAX sounding the best. The NAD M51 makes the distinctions between the inputs so minor, I am not sure I could tell in a blind listening. In fact, the M51 has had another unusual property in that it needed no burn in to sound good. It started sounding very good within a day and surprises me every day with its naturalness, dynamics and clarity. I have a pair of Magnepan 1.7s and Odyssey Khartago/Kismet mono blocks all connected by WireWorld Series 7 interconnects, coax and speaker cables. As much as I liked the Nuforce AVP-18 which still may match or exceed the M51 in bass clarity and depth, the M51 is a significant leap ahead in all other ways. I have read every article on the unit I could find and there is a consistency in the way the unit is described: non-fatiguing, detailed (I will address this shortly), natural, fast and musical. I think a better word for the M51 than detailed is clarity. Detail to me is getting down to the microscopic changes in sound. Like a photograph that was taken with a high resolution camera. As you get ever further down to the detail you begin to see the parts of the picture instead of the picture. Go further you end up seeing pixels that make up the picture. Clarity is different but similar. The M51 has clarity in abundance. I was listening to Sophie Mutter playing the Sarasate Carmen Fantasy. The M51 provides all the amazingly fast movements of the bow on the violin and never loses composure. You always see in the mind’s eye the instrument and rapid movement of the bow on the strings. The M51 has amazing clarity which I feel most people would equate with detail but to me clarity is always seeing the whole object (musical instrument, singer, etc.) with great precision and not losing sight of the music as a whole. My final issue with the M51 is one that I am not sure to put blame on it or other parts of my system. The issue is that while I hear each instrument or singer with amazing clarity, I am not hearing the ambiance around the instrument. With the Nuforce AVP-18 I could distinguish between someone who recorded in a small sound booth from one that was in a more open environment. With the M51 so far, I do not hear the “space” around the instruments or singer and get no sense of the recording environment. Part of the problem could be the enormous break-in required by the Odyssey mono blocks. I had them unplugged for at least a month while arguing with Nuforce to replace or refund my dead AVP-18. Klaus Bunge is adamant that the Odyssey amps need 400+ hours of break-in if they are new or have been turned off for a long period of time. I am at best at 100 hours and this may be the issue. I would like to hear from other M51 owners. Are you getting the air and space around instruments? What I hear and visualize in my mind’s eye while listing to music is this terrific clarity of the instruments and/or signer(s) with pinpoint accuracy as to location. At times it feels like each instrument has the microphone attached right on the body of the instrument – you hear the bow on the strings in a way I have never experienced previously.
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