NAD C658

[john_1983]

Anyone any experience with an NAD C658 streamer/pre-amp?

My current system is an NAD C340 as a pre-amp with a C272 power amp, with a C542 CD player and a Yamaha WXAD-10 for streaming Tidal.

I like it, it suits me and does pretty much all I need; but I find the Tidal app for the Yamaha a bit clunky and not as good as the standalone Tidal app when using headphones etc. I therefore got looking at alternatives, and the NAD C658 looks decent in that it has bluetooth, DAC etc all inbuilt. Not cheap, but seems fairly future-proof. This would replace the C340 in my system.

Would I see a difference in sound quality using the optical out from my CD player so I was using the DAC in the C658 instead of the one in the CD player? And would it be any better in sound than the Yamaha I currently use?

[Crackie]

john_1983 said:

Anyone any experience with an NAD C658 streamer/pre-amp?

My current system is an NAD C340 as a pre-amp with a C272 power amp, with a C542 CD player and a Yamaha WXAD-10 for streaming Tidal.

I like it, it suits me and does pretty much all I need; but I find the Tidal app for the Yamaha a bit clunky and not as good as the standalone Tidal app when using headphones etc. I therefore got looking at alternatives, and the NAD C658 looks decent in that it has bluetooth, DAC etc all inbuilt. Not cheap, but seems fairly future-proof. This would replace the C340 in my system.

Would I see a difference in sound quality using the optical out from my CD player so I was using the DAC in the C658 instead of the one in the CD player? And would it be any better in sound than the Yamaha I currently use?

Your C542 has decent Burr Brown DACs...........but the newer ESS Sabre converter used in the 658 is likely to offer a decent improvement. The 658 is also MQA compatible but I think by far the biggest improvement you'll hear will come courtesy of the DIRAC room correction which the 658 has built in Plenty of DIRAC reviews online..............here's one from Stereophile https://www.stereophile.com/content/music-round-66...

[john_1983]

Thanks - hadn't really looked into the DIRAC thing, very interesting

[conkerman]

I bought a NAD T778 the other day.

Dirac is pretty cool, but will only do Bass correction as shipped, The license to do the full frequency range is $99.

It has pretty much killed the Bass bloom in my Lounge, but has removed some of the airiness in the upper mids/treble.

I find BluOS to be pretty good.

[OldSkoolRS]

conkerman said:

I bought a NAD T778 the other day.

Dirac is pretty cool, but will only do Bass correction as shipped, The license to do the full frequency range is $99.

It has pretty much killed the Bass bloom in my Lounge, but has removed some of the airiness in the upper mids/treble.

I find BluOS to be pretty good.

If you prefer, you can limit the frequency that Dirac works up to, or at least I can with Dirac on my Arcam AVR. That way you can limit room correction to below Schroeder frequency (room depending on exactly what that frequency is, but 400Hz might not be a bad place to start). That gives you the positives of Dirac on the lower frequencies but leaves the higher end intact.

Having said that, when I finally got round to using the later version of Dirac software (version 3.0 I think) to do a calibration last summer I found that full frequency range sounded much better than the Version 1.x I'd used previously. I also take time afterwards to fine tune sub delay using REW, but I'm not sure if NAD allows you to change that after running Dirac like Arcam does (makes a big audible difference in my set up, but that's a 4 sub AV system).

[mgv8]

conkerman said:

I bought a NAD T778 the other day.

Dirac is pretty cool, but will only do Bass correction as shipped, The license to do the full frequency range is $99.

It has pretty much killed the Bass bloom in my Lounge, but has removed some of the airiness in the upper mids/treble.

I find BluOS to be pretty good.

Also worth doing a few time and with a better mic also helps. It took some work to pin down the correct mic volume settings and add both the mic and NAD profile. Did add the $99 upgrade as well.

[Parabola]

I love my NAD C658. Brilliant bit of kit.

My beloved NAD C370 amp died so was looking to update my system.

The C658 does everything I need.

It streams Tidal Connect perfectly, Tidal MQA high res sounds great. Has Spotify Connect too.
I use it as a DAC for my old NAD C541i CD player, does sound better.
I use it as a DAC for my SKY Q / TV
All my CDs are now lossless files on a little USB hard drive plugged in behind the streamer, will eventually go onto a NAS.

It has a headphone amp and a phono pre amp. Don't use these as prefer the ones on my REGA io, good to have though.

The Blue OS app is decent to control it all. Everything is pretty intuitive in the Tidal section.
You can use the standalone Tidal app if you prefer with Tidal Connect linking to the streamer.

Sevenoaks Hifi shop cocked up the repair of the C370 amp, so did a deal on the C658 for me. £999 instead of £1499!
Give their mail order team a call if you're considering one, they offered me a couple of hundred quid off another NAD product, so there's definitely deals to be done!

I run the C658 into a REGA io integrated amp. It's small room so never listen to it loudly.

I tried setting up the Dirac Live, but it didn't sound as good. Absolutely my error somewhere, will have another go at it one day.

Give me a shout if you have any questions.

Edited by Parabola on Sunday 8th August 12:40

[conkerman]

I found Dirac sounded crap at first. Lack of bass and just a bit odd.

I made some slight tweaks to the target curve and added a little bit of bass, I also stopped the Dirac filter at 220Hz, and it was a huge improvement.

My living room is a bit of a pain acoustically ( I started a thread about room treatment) With around a 14Hz spike at around 50Hz, bass can get muddy. Dirac really cleans things up whilst keeping bass taut (Well as taut as my cheap speakers can produce). I took lots of measurements.