I took delivery of a new NAD M66 preamp last week. I’m curious if anyone else has one yet? One reason I was interested in it was the all-analogue pathway having a resister ladder relay volume control. The early videos posted by NAD demonstrated the volume control clicking (as resistor ladders will do…). Mine does not, even when in analogue bypass mode using an external source. I’m wondering if they changed the design or if mine is not working properly.
Initial impressions are mixed, but it’s too early to make determinations. The other reason I wanted to try it out is for the DIRAC live and bass control capability. After playing around with the DIRAC, I can say it definitely makes a big difference in my asymmetrical room. I finally get non-boomy bass and hear all the low notes consistently. It does seem to take a bit out of the transparency of the overall sound, but again, too early to make final judgments.
Overall, it works well and sounds pretty good, but they still have some bugs to work out, which were expected I think, given the delayed release. For example, if you are using a source with the all digital processing (like the internal DAC), and have subwoofers connected as I do, then switch to an external source with analogue bypass, the subwoofers still seem to be stuck in digital processIng and lag behind the main speakers. Also, playing around with the various settings in analogue bypass and in the digital domain have left me with an error message, and the unit reboots itself.
Used as a simple analogue preamp, it sounds pretty good but not up to the standard of a stand alone $5k preamp. One might expect that, given all of its features for the price, and again, it is early. It is very smooth though and nothing sounds unpleasant through it. It definitely shows promise, we’ll see how further use goes…
