General Asylum

Posted by phenderson on July 17, 2000 at 15:45:40:

In Reply to: Cheapest integrated or receiver that makes music? posted by mer on July 17, 2000 at 06:20:41:

I used one of these temporarily to drive Celestion 700s!! -which are about as inefficient as anything out there (82dbw.) I kept the volume to reasonable apartment-dweller levels and had no trouble. I tried some Nordost biwire cables that I didn't care for, then went back to lampcord. What struck me was -- get ready -- the dynamics! I was playing some Debussy piano music (Pascal Roge on EMI) which had quite sharp contrasts between the loud and soft notes, for example in the selection called Golliwog's Cakewalk which is part of "The Children's Corner", a suite of tunes. When I played the same music later through a more powerful amp the contrasts were not as evident. That really impressed me. Within its power envelope, the NAD 310 is very dynamic, and had no obvious flaws elsewhere. Watt for watt, it may sound better than the bigger NADs, which is quite common. If this is for a spare bedroom, I don't see how you could go wrong. The NAD's 20wpc is only 10db below the monster amps, after all. The NAD also has a headphone jack and an input for a portable CD player on the front panel, if I'm not mistaken. Say, do they still make this thing?!