OH MY GOD...what the hell happened to my 340s???
sheesh, all this time I thought going from an Onkyo 601 to a Marantz 5400 was a big improvement in music performance...but going from the 5400 to NAD stereo separates (albeit +15 year old vintage ones) has been more like going from a biplane to an F-14!
This thing is just SCARY...rated at a *very* conservative 100wpc, at just barely 1/4 volume (9 o'clock position) it effortlessly and powerfully fills up my 600 square foot listening space with incredibly rich, detailed and vibrant sound that just makes me want to bounce up and down and off the walls! I shudder to think what this beast would do to the Ascends if I or my wife walked by and accidently bumped the knob up past 12 o'clock.
Ah, now I'm finally living that famous old Maxell commercial---you know, the one with the guy sitting in his armchair in front of his stereo and everything is flying past him...!
The Marantz, even in Source Direct mode with an optical input and cranked up to -5 db, couldn't hold a candle to this. Very hard to describe, except that there's like this unbelievable RAW ENERGY flooding out of my L/R speakers, the sheer power and force coupled with its detail and clarity, was just jaw-dropping. I can only compare it to the dynamics of a live performance.
The old cliche about "hearing things you never heard before on old CDs" is definitely true---I already experienced that somewhat when I upgraded to Ascend speakers but the NAD gear just extends and magnifies it TEN-fold!
Only drawback is that since the Ascends really do reveal poor recordings mercilessly, this becomes even more pronounced with a good amp behind them. A lot of classic rock that contains strong accoustic guitar leads ends up sounding thin and bright (John Lennon), in contrast to better quality recent recordings with the same type of guitar (Nirvana Unplugged).
On some recordings I did notice a fair amount of sibilance, strangely even individual songs on the same CD had very different levels of it. For instance Norah Jones' "Come Away With Me" was almost unlistenable due to excessive hiss yet the rest of her songs on the same CD were just fine even though they were tonally similar. (WTF?) First I thought this was the fault of the NAD since some of their receivers have had complaints about hiss, but when I plugged the speakers directly into the Marantz in Source Direct, it was still there, just slightly lower volume. I also realized that I probably never noticed this before because with the Marantz I never *wanted* to turn it up as loud because it just didn't sound anywhere as good at -10db as the NAD does at +10db.
(Just curious, anybody else hear excessive hiss on "Come Away With Me" and not on any other songs on that CD?)
Overall what especially shines is midrange and, most surprisingly, bass. Classical piano and classical guitar are just mind-blowing, jazz and vocals in close second place. I first hooked up my Ascends without the sub, and did a double take---I have NEVER heard so much bass coming out of these speakers which are rated to go down to only 50Hz!
When I did hook up my lowly JBL e150 sub directly to the pre-amp, I found that using the sub's onboard filter produced a much cleaner bass than when I was using the Marantz's filter with the 340s set to "small" and certainly cleaner than the Marantz with the 340s set to "large." The darn thing actually doesn't sound that terrible anymore, maybe I'll keep it after all...at least until Christmas time, heh heh.
Was listening to some Dinah Washington tonight, and at one point I looked up because I could've SWORN that her voice was coming directly from the center speaker! Except that my Marantz receiver was completely off the whole time, of course. Just unf*cking-believable soundstage, I could precisely locate where different instruments were playing to the front, left and right of me! LOL now I *finally* know what "soundstage" really means, after reading about it a million times on these audio forums...
BTW, I tried using the Marantz as a pre-amp...night and day difference. Without the NAD pre/pro, it's barely any different than the Marantz alone.
Now I'm almost tempted to sell off the Marantz, center speaker and rears so I can get a really good sub; with 2-channel this good, who needs surround sound?