First Listen: NAD T775 A/V Receiver

Posted by: Chris Martens at 6:06 pm, February 17th, 2010

The T775 is conservatively rated to produce 7 x 100 Wpc at 8 ohms with all channels driven, and sells for $2999—making this one of the most expensive AVRs The Perfect Vision has reviewed in recent times.

First Impressions

My very first impression of the T775 was to think, “Ohmigosh is this thing ever heavy!!!” The T775 tips the scales at a none-too-dainty 56.66 pounds in its shipping carton—a figure driven, at least in part, by the gimongous power supply visible through the unit’s too vents. On the bottom there is an entire row of cooling fans (that’s right, fans, plural), meaning that the NAD will stick right with you, even if you like to drive relatively insensitive speakers to high volume levels.

Rear panel layout is very straightforward, so I had basic wiring connections completed in no time. Basic setup, however, took a bit longer than I expected, in part because NAD’s remote control employs the Enter button in a counterintuitive way that seems almost the reverse of standard practice. The basic gist of things is that, with the NAD, you typically use the Enter button to toggle through basic menu categories (whereas most manufacturers would have you do that via the Up/Down cursor buttons), and then select options or values you wish to set by clicking either the Up/Down or Left/Right cursor buttons (again, the reverse of standard practice). After a fair bit of practice you eventually get used to the NAD control conventions, but they feel, well, backward at first.

My one other minor gripe is that the remote (or perhaps the T775’s remote sensor) has a very narrow viewing angle, meaning that you have to aim the remote straight at the receiver to have any hope of your commands getting through. I also found that the range of the remote seemed pretty limited, too (about 10 feet at best). I’m planning to contact the NAD folks to see if these kinds of issues are common, or perhaps unique to my review sample.

Once I got set-up procedures sorted out and ran a basic Audyssey calibration on the speaker system currently in The Perfect Vision lab, I made another interesting discovery. Unlike many implementers of the Audyssey MultEQ system, NAD not only offers the standard Audyssey EQ setting (labeled Audyssey, Flat, and Off), but also provides a unique NAD EQ curve. While differences between the standard Audyssey target curve and the NAD target curve are subtle, my listening tests lead me to think I will wind up with a long-term preference for the NAD curve overall.

I don’t want to jump the gun and make premature pronouncements on the sound of this receiver, but thus far it has created strong positive impressions. The NAD’s overall sound and “feel” remind me of results that, in the past, I’ve only been able to achieve with very costly, separate, high-end A/V controllers and multichannel amps. As I’ve listened through the NAD thus far, I’ve found myself evaluating it in much the same way I might listen to very fine high-end stereo components. The NAD is so refined, so subtle, and yet so muscular and unflappable that it invites extremely serious, no-holds-barred critical listening—acid tests that not all competing AVRs could pass (at least not with flying colors, as the NAD appears to do).

I’m looking forward to spending more time with the NAD and to presenting my findings in an upcoming full-length review in The Perfect Vision. In the meantime, I encourage you to give NAD’s Modular Design Concept some thought; it seems to me to be a good way to preserve (and in some sense to “future proof”) your investment in fine A/V components.