NAD Electronics
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| Type | Private company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Electronics |
| Founded | 1972 |
| Founder(s) | Dr. Martin L. Borish |
| Headquarters | Pickering, Ontario, Canada |
| Products | Hi-fi equipment |
| Parent | Lenbrook Group |
| Website | http://www.nadelectronics.com/ |
NAD Electronics is a brand name of an electronics firm whose products include home audiophile amplifiers and related components. NAD was an acronym for New Acoustic Dimension.
The company was founded in London, England in 1972 by Dr. Martin L. Borish, an electrical engineer with a Ph.D. in Physics.[1][2][3]
Its most famous product is the late-1970s NAD 3020 amplifier, designed by Bjørn Erik Edvardsen, which was highly promoted by various magazines in Britain.[4][5]
NAD's philosophy is to include only genuinely useful features for aesthetically understated designs when compared to other competitors product. NAD used leading-edge designers but to contract in most cases lower-cost manufacturers on a product-by-product basis, typically in Asia, before the practice became more commonplace.
NAD was acquired by the Danish firm AudioNord in 1991 and subsequently sold in 1999 to the Lenbrook Group of Pickering, Ontario, Canada.[2][6]
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[edit] Power-supply design
NAD focuses on the concept of “effective power” and its amplifiers have been known for delivering generous headroom, meaning that they can deliver dynamic power bursts far in excess of their rated RMS power. The key to this feature is to use a flexible power supply which stores significant reserve current for quick release at moments of high musical load. The various incarnations of this design have been associated with different names over the years including Power Envelope and recently PowerDrive. Additional benefits of this approach include the fact that amplifiers using this technology can handle complex, real-life, lower-impedance loudspeaker loads as compared with the simple 8-ohm resistor typically used to calculate advertised power ratings and the fact that the circuitry in this approach requires less cooling, while maintaining ability to handle complex impedance loads as low as 2 ohms.
[edit] Clipping protection
An amplifier that is overdriven, or pushed beyond its designed power capabilities, produces audible distortion known as clipping by cutting off extremes of the music waveform, resulting in harshly unpleasant sound and threatening damage to speakers, particularly tweeters. NAD amplifiers incorporate a user-defeatable "Soft-Clipping" circuit to address this issue. It gently transforms the music waveform as the point of clipping approaches, the goal being clearer reproduction and simultaneous protection of speakers.
[edit] References
- ^ Tellig, Sam, "Stereophile Reviews C375BEE C565BEE", Stereophile, January 3, 2010
- ^ a b Lyons, Daniel, "Digital Dislocation", Forbes, May 10, 2004
- ^ Cf. NAD company website
- ^ "Hi-Fi That Rocked: NAD 3020 Integrated Amplifier", Hi-Fi Choice, May 2006
- ^ Fremer, Michael, "Stereophile M3 Review", Sterophile, January 2007. "Like the 3020, the M3 is the product of NAD's director of advanced development, Bjørn Erik Edvardsen, and Asian manufacturing expertise, this time in the People's Republic of China."
- ^ "Lenbrook Group adds NAD to Roster", Stereophile, April 25, 1999
