Info

30 years ago, NAD (originally an acronym for New Acoustic Dimension) set out to create a new kind of audio company. We were a group of audio-industry veterans: manufacturers, retailers, distributors, and - above all - listeners. We were driven by passion for great sound and by the desire to cut through the marketing hype and over-elaboration that had become pervasive in the audio industry. We wanted to provide what people really wanted instead of what they were being sold. The audio industry we entered in 1972 had been created by its own customers back in the 1950's. People who wanted something better than mass-market radios and phonographs had searched out public-address equipment and put the cumbersome pieces of it together as best they could. And some of them went into business to make what they were not finding. By the time the "Rock Revolution" of the 1960's occurred, the interest in good equipment had become so obvious that the major players in the electronics industry had moved in to harvest the business that the audio pioneers had created. They brought a lot of expense, complexity, and hyperbole with them. The marketing of audio equipment took on so much "sizzle" that the steak became increasingly hard to find and enjoy. We wanted to get back to the point - to the reality behind the knobs and the increasingly expensive faceplates. And we are still doing that today with every piece of equipment we design. The real point of all audio equipment for the home is obviously enjoyment - of lifelike, involving sound from music and movies. Some of the fun in buying audio components is deciding (and swapping views on) just how lifelike their sound really is. We take as much pleasure in that as anybody else, but we never lose sight of the central aim of enjoyment. And the three qualities we feel are central to creating it are performance, value, and simplicity. Here is a quick look at what those qualities mean to us, and what we think they mean to our customers: Performance In audio electronics, the bottom line is that the waveforms that go to a loudspeaker should be in every possible respect as identical as possible to the ones that were originally produced by the microphones used for recordings or broadcasts. They should look exactly like the original ones, and they should have the same time-relationships and dynamics they did at the outset. Keeping those factors straight - without adding any overlay of any kind - is what every NAD component is designed to do. The process involved can get tremendously complex. And as you go up the scale from lifelike to super-lifelike to "being there," more and more subtle and demanding things have to be done right. It takes an enormous amount of attention. And we supply that attention at every stage, from the conception of a design onward to the delivery of the finished products that arrive in customers' living rooms - and their durability thereafter. We want to make clear that every NAD component at every level is designed and manufactured for satisfying performance - for realistic, detailed, convincing reproduction of the original sound.