NAD T778 Audio/Video Receiver (AVR) Review

[amirm]

I believe the airflow must be from the back where the filter is to the front and leave the box from the top grills.
What do you say?

Now you are having me doubt this. I just put my hand behind and it was blowing hard there. And on top, there was a small amount. My conclusion without thinking was that it was blowing out. Maybe the owner can verify.

 

[Deleted member 19195]

Has the reviewer shared his results with Lenbrook? The Denon avr recently reviewed also had poor results, and Sound United was able to send an improved model for retesting. Would this same courtesy be extended to Lenbrook?

I have to admit, I am not crazy about review units being sent from the manufacturer. It does raise questions. I much prefer random off the shelf units be measured. I realise this is not economically feasible for most reviewers.

 

[Dj7675]

Has the reviewer shared his results with Lenbrook? The Denon avr recently reviewed also had poor results, and Sound United was able to send an improved model for retesting. Would this same courtesy be extended to Lenbrook?

I have to admit, I am not crazy about review units being sent from the manufacturer. It does raise questions. I much prefer random off the shelf units be measured. I realise this is not economically feasible for most reviewers.

I don’t think there is any reason to believe anything is broken. Most results are ok relative to other AVR’s. Also, if you refer to the NAD T758 thread there were several attempts to reach out to NAD and I don’t believe @amirm ever received a response. I sent in the T758 for Amir to review, and sent in a question asking if the unit was broken or if they had any comments and the response wa “We don’t ever comment on 3rd party reviews”. So unless their view has changed suddenly I wouldn’t expect a response of any kind (I hope to be proven wrong).

 

[Deleted member 19195]

thanks for that information. I haven't read t758 review thread.

 

[Dj7675]

thanks for that information. I haven't read t758 review thread.

Brace yourself

 

[Billy Budapest]

I get that this unit has good qualities—beautiful casework, neat gui, good feature set (including Dirac and Roon), and future-proofing through MDC upgrades. I just expected much better performance. I’ve personally been a fan (and owner) of NAD products for decades, and I find their slip into “meh” performing products all while increasing their prices disturbing. I don’t know if this is a consequence of their change in ownership.

 

[jomark911]

Now you are having me doubt this. I just put my hand behind and it was blowing hard there. And on top, there was a small amount. My conclusion without thinking was that it was blowing out. Maybe the owner can verify.

Well if they've reversed the flow ,by mistake positioning the fan backwards then the filter does nothing.
Logic would be to suck air from the back after the filter and put it out from the top , hence help the natural air circulation.

 

[Chromatischism]

For $3k in 2020 you OUGHT to get HDMI 2.1- it's not excusable for NAD to fail to offer HDMI 2.1

Dude. This AVR is nearly a year old. We just saw the first HDMI 2.1 AVRs recently from Denon.

 

[Daniel0]

Dude. This AVR is nearly a year old. We just saw the first HDMI 2.1 AVRs recently from Denon.

I just checked that and no, this AVR came out this year. It's available since May in europe and maybe 1 or 2 months earlier elsewhere.
Seems like bad timing regarding HDMI 2.1 chip availability or they just don't care and want to cash in on those MDC modules if HDMI 2.1 is planned.

 

[carlob]

I just checked that and no, this AVR came out this year. It's available since May in europe and maybe 1 or 2 months earlier elsewhere.
Seems like bad timing regarding HDMI 2.1 chip availability or they just don't care and want to cash in on those MDC modules if HDMI 2.1 is planned.

Started shipping in February in the US but was presented in September 2019 at Cedia: https://www.whathifi.com/news/nad-previews-its-flagship-t-778-av-receiver-at-cedia-expo

It's obviously a product designed last year. They have a HDMI 2.1 in the pipeline as all the other brands.

 

[Daniel0]

It's obviously a product designed last year. They have a HDMI 2.1 in the pipeline as all the other brands.

Thanks for the info. Seems like NAD devices take longer until they arrive in the market compared to others like Sound United or Yamaha AVRs.
They said it launches November that was before Covid. Maybe they took some time to fix critical firmware issues, even if some of them still remain.

 

[Dj7675]

A reasonable, balanced perspective to which I will add a few more.
- Expectation bias also applies to those who compare based on measurements. Equipment can surely measure better and thus create an expectation that it will sound better, regardless of whether those differences are audible, but other factors may also mean it will not actually be so in practice.
- Other factors include - Speakers, surely Amir has demonstrated the issues with many that would mangle the output of even a perfect AVR. Room contributions overwhelming speaker response, let alone AVR characteristics. Listener "performance"; with 60+ year old ears I doubt I'm hearing anything much above 15kHz.
- And then there is how the equipment is used in the context of its performance, its feature set, and its usability, or lack thereof. Great performance counts for ought if operational issues make one want to throw the equipment out the window. For example the T758 V3 measured badly at 0dB but had a SINAD of 88-89dB at -6db output, certainly not great but much better than at 0dB. I purchased my T758 after Amir's review because my use conditions - primarily video playback, so not super critical listening - plus my speaker efficiency and location, suggested it would be an affordable entry point for Atmos, the evaluation of the value of Dirac for me in my room and I wouldn't have to push the output into poor performance. Indeed I rarely have the volume above -15db and never above -10dB. However, I also obtained it at a significantly discounted price so its worked out OK for me, and my use conditions haven't presented the problems others seem to experience. Had I focused only on measurements, I would have had to wait for Amir's tests of 16-channel Dirac pre-pros, balanced that with the maturity of the designs, early and ongoing operational issues and paid a great deal more, rather than have the option to push back such decisions.

None of this takes away from the fact that clearly it is possible and practical for affordable AVRs such as Denon to perform well when measured, so there are no excuses for NAD or most other AVR brands, and the goal to improve AVR industry performance through Amir's tests clearly has merit. But I'd suggest when evaluating what to buy that measurements are not the only parameter to consider to the exclusion of all else.

Good post. Great thing about Amir’s measurements is you get to make informed decisions about objective performance. Bench tests are just one part of a purchase decision along with features, reliability and usability.

 

[MarkyM]

Hi Amir, thanks for the review. Also thanks to whichever kind member sent it in

If you still have the T778, would you mind testing for an issue which is plaguing NAD receiver owners? As known in the NAD receiver threads over on AVS, this is known as the "Rhye distortion" issue. The same problem has been documented on the T778, T777, and T758. Additionally I personally have experienced this same issue on both an Arcam AVR550 and a Denon X3600 in addition to my T778.

In short, when the T778 is being fed a stereo PCM stream and the high pass crossover is engaged (i.e front speakers set to "small"), it results in severe digital clipping when playing signals close to -0 dBFS. The song commonly used to test for this is"Feel your weight" (album version) by Rhye. At 2:50, there is extremely bad crackling, but the issue goes away when either the front speakers are set to "large", or if the same content is played through a multichannel stream. This is independent of sample rate. There are obviously differences in the signal processing pathway depending on whether the content is recognised as stereo or multichannel. With stereo streams, activation of the high pass crossover seems to push the signal hard into clipping territory.

If you'd like to hear what this sounds like to the end user, here are a couple of recordings of my speakers I took a while ago:

Soundcloud Link

On the version without distortion, this is being played via a Windows PC via HDMI with output set to 7.1. The version with distortion is playing the same content but with output set to stereo.

Would you be able to run a few quick tests with the signal generator output set to two channel so that the receiver recognises the incoming signal as 2.0 PCM, and with the speakers set to "small"?

Hi,

Thank you! This really is the perfect test track for the issue. The issue being today's unnecessary over-mastering of pop music.

Here are screenshots from my audio editor of the end section of the track which is mastered at a peak level of -0.03dB. Yep, three-hundredths of a dB below zero. Nothing like leaving a little headroom for codecs/AVR processing right?

I have seen examples of more dynamic tracks that hit even 0dB on brief peaks (which would mostly be inaudible) but here we can see that the end section of the song has also been "pushed" into the mastering limiter heavily to make it "loud" with average level (loudness) in the -7 range:

This combination is what creates the audible distortion whenever processing of some sort (including the conversion to .mp3 and .aac or processing in AVRs.) follows this sustained continuous "clipping" at -.03dB.

Mastering engineers are supposed to keep at least a few tenths of a dB of headroom to prevent this kind of thing from happening. The boneheaded idiot that mastered this should have reduced the peak output level of his mastering limiter, at the very least for this end section of the song, but alas he did not.

This is what happens now a days where virtually anybody can be a recording & mastering "engineer".

I tried playing this on my Denon x3400h in Stereo mode with speakers set to "small" via Roon/Tidal and verified the distortion you are reporting is indeed present.

However, using the DSP in Roon, I was able to mitigate it completely by turning on Roon's "Headroom Management" feature. I will be leaving this on from now on!

 

[GigaChunk]

Hi,

Thank you! This really is the perfect test track for the issue. The issue being today's unnecessary over-mastering of pop music.

Here are screenshots from my audio editor of the end section of the track which is mastered at a peak level of -0.03dB. Yep, three-hundredths of a dB below zero. Nothing like leaving a little headroom for codecs/AVR processing right?

View attachment 80581

View attachment 80582

I have seen examples of more dynamic tracks that hit even 0dB on brief peaks (which would mostly be inaudible) but here we can see that the end section of the song has also been "pushed" into the mastering limiter heavily to make it "loud" with average level (loudness) in the -7 range:

This combination is what creates the audible distortion whenever processing of some sort (including the conversion to .mp3 and .aac or processing in AVRs.) follows this sustained continuous "clipping" at -.03dB.

Mastering engineers are supposed to keep at least a few tenths of a dB of headroom to prevent this kind of thing from happening. The boneheaded idiot that mastered this should have reduced the peak output level of his mastering limiter, at the very least for this end section of the song, but alas he did not.

This is what happens now a days where virtually anybody can be a recording & mastering "engineer".

I tried playing this on my Denon x3400h in Stereo mode with speakers set to "small" via Roon/Tidal and verified the distortion you are reporting is indeed present.

However, using the DSP in Roon, I was able to mitigate it completely by turning on Roon's "Headroom Management" feature. I will be leaving this on from now on!

View attachment 80585

Thanks for confirming the same issue is present on the Denons as well. I raised the issue over in the AVS owners thread and was met with some heavy skepticism...

That Roon Headroom Adjustment setting looks useful, but I'm guessing this is the same thing as permanently lowering the volume level digitally. Yes you would lose a little resolution from the digital file, but this is necessary to avoid the clipping issues when crossovers are applied. I do think that manufacturers should be automatically applying this small decrease in level when before crossover filters are applied to avoid the end user running into issues with hot-mastered tracks. There seems to be an omission of this step when handling stereo PCM as opposed to multichannel PCM, as playing the same track through a 7.1 output doesn't result in distortion.

I believe @markus has a beta DSP firmware from NAD that fixes the distortion issue on the T758, so they obviously know how to fix it. No idea what is taking them so long to release the firmware publicly, as it's been months and months since it was first brought to their attention when they promised a fix was in the works.

If it was only the Rhye track that produced audible issues, I wouldn't be so worried. However I first noticed distortion when listening to James Blake - Limit to Your Love, which isn't exactly a badly mastered track. The issue manifested as a subtle "pop" sound on one of the piano chords in the intro, which I could reliably A/B test by switching back and forth between applying the crossovers.

I'm beginning to lose patience with NAD. The distortion issue is the main problem as it prevents me from streaming directly to the T778 as I'd like to. Instead, the only way to get around the distortion problem is to use a PC via HDMI for music streaming, with the PC set to 7.1 output. The internal BluOS streaming of the T778 always outputs 2.0 PCM which means there's no way around the distortion, other than choosing to run speakers full-range or by using something like Roon with the Headroom Adjustment feature.

Other than that, there are a myriad of other issues with performance or reliability which NAD haven't addressed. I'm happy to post a little summary of my experience with the T778 after a few months of ownership if anybody is interested.

The depressing thing is, I don't see a reasonable alternative at the moment. I have tried an Arcam AVR550, Denon X3600, and the T778, and they all have the same distortion issue. The Denon was an attempt to get something with reasonable audio performance, but I found Audyssey woefully inadequate compared to Dirac on the NAD. At the end of the day, Dirac is likely to make a far bigger impact than any of the sub-par measurements do.

I don't think that a receiver that simply functions properly is too much to ask for, especially at £2500. Very appreciative of both Amir's work and to this community for pushing manufacturers to strive for better and stop misleading customers.

 

[Newman]

....It looks to me this NAD still cannot beat a lower mid range Denon for use as either a standalone AVR or with an external power amp. Even if I must have Dirac (and I don't), I could get the AVR-X3700H and use the left over money to try and get some sort of separate add-on option to implement Dirac, assuming it is possible, I think minidsp might has something.

That last bit rolls off your keyboard quite easily. But I have not been able to find a reasonably elegant way to do it. Unless one is happy to put an analog miniDSP Dirac unit in line with the AVRs analog out. A/D=>Dirac=>D/A then off to the amps. Hmm.

 

[MarkyM]

That last bit rolls off your keyboard quite easily. But I have not been able to find a reasonably elegant way to do it. Unless one is happy to put an analog miniDSP Dirac unit in line with the AVRs analog out. A/D=>Dirac=>D/A then off to the amps. Hmm.

I'm using the pre-out/main-in loop of my vintage Marantz 2275 for this on my desktop system.

I have a MiniDSP DDRC-24 in there for Dirac. Using the MiniDSP app, I am able to choose the USB input to use the MiniDSP's DAC (only) or the analog in (ADC & DAC) to use the preamp section of the Marantz which is fed by my Schiit Modi 3 DAC.

I know that the ADC & DAC in the MiniDSP doesn't measure top shelf, but it sounds just fine to my ear and the advantage of Dirac (and xovers for my sub) outweighs that IMHO.

This is a 2.1 system so of course things would be much more complicated and pricey for a 5+ channel system.

 

[MarkyM]

Thanks for confirming the same issue is present on the Denons as well. I raised the issue over in the AVS owners thread and was met with some heavy skepticism...

That Roon Headroom Adjustment setting looks useful, but I'm guessing this is the same thing as permanently lowering the volume level digitally. Yes you would lose a little resolution from the digital file, but this is necessary to avoid the clipping issues when crossovers are applied. I do think that manufacturers should be automatically applying this small decrease in level when before crossover filters are applied to avoid the end user running into issues with hot-mastered tracks. There seems to be an omission of this step when handling stereo PCM as opposed to multichannel PCM, as playing the same track through a 7.1 output doesn't result in distortion.

I believe @markus has a beta DSP firmware from NAD that fixes the distortion issue on the T758, so they obviously know how to fix it. No idea what is taking them so long to release the firmware publicly, as it's been months and months since it was first brought to their attention when they promised a fix was in the works.

If it was only the Rhye track that produced audible issues, I wouldn't be so worried. However I first noticed distortion when listening to James Blake - Limit to Your Love, which isn't exactly a badly mastered track. The issue manifested as a subtle "pop" sound on one of the piano chords in the intro, which I could reliably A/B test by switching back and forth between applying the crossovers.

I'm beginning to lose patience with NAD. The distortion issue is the main problem as it prevents me from streaming directly to the T778 as I'd like to. Instead, the only way to get around the distortion problem is to use a PC via HDMI for music streaming, with the PC set to 7.1 output. The internal BluOS streaming of the T778 always outputs 2.0 PCM which means there's no way around the distortion, other than choosing to run speakers full-range or by using something like Roon with the Headroom Adjustment feature.

Other than that, there are a myriad of other issues with performance or reliability which NAD haven't addressed. I'm happy to post a little summary of my experience with the T778 after a few months of ownership if anybody is interested.

The depressing thing is, I don't see a reasonable alternative at the moment. I have tried an Arcam AVR550, Denon X3600, and the T778, and they all have the same distortion issue. The Denon was an attempt to get something with reasonable audio performance, but I found Audyssey woefully inadequate compared to Dirac on the NAD. At the end of the day, Dirac is likely to make a far bigger impact than any of the sub-par measurements do.

I don't think that a receiver that simply functions properly is too much to ask for, especially at £2500. Very appreciative of both Amir's work and to this community for pushing manufacturers to strive for better and stop misleading customers.

You're welcome.

Roon actually converts internally to 64-Bit float when performing it's DSP functions so any resolution loss is inconsequential.

I'm not sure it's fair to blame the AVR manufacturers for the recording industry's over-mastering habits. That said, at this point, considering how widespread this practice is becoming, they probably should consider at least a 1dB digital gain reduction before they hit their DSP processing. Most DSP in AVR's is running at 48kHz anyway so just doing a small volume reduction before the processing shouldn't really compromise the resolution.

 

[Martin]

I love that NAD is pushing forward with class D. I hate that Yamaha, onkyo, Sound united aren't pushing forward in class D. I want this AVR to be a success, but this is dissapointing. Hopefully Lenbrook quickly makes improvements, but their history with surround sound is not great.

Onkyo's Pioneer Elite is on the 6th generation of their Direct Energy HD (class D) amplifiers. I have owned several generations of their class D receivers including their SC-25, SC-75 and my current SC-LX801. They have all sounded good to me and I'd wager they'd measure in the neighborhood of this NAD receiver.

Martin

 

[A Surfer]

I must say that I am happy with my NAD M3. Really good two channel amplifiers is in the NAD wheelhouse. I can see how the AVR segment must be a nightmare to compete in. NAD will clearly have to up their game considerably, or exit that market segment. I guess the problem for NAD is that the AVR market is likely where a lot of growth potential lies. I don't think this is an unreasonable suggestion/prediction, but I think even among "audiophiles" and people who just appreciate building great sounding systems they will want AVR functionality.

I wish I could afford to send my M3 to get measured as I think it is likely to fare well and represent the side of NAD engineering that is competent and focused on achieving high performance, but it is just an integrated amp so functionality is limited. Mind you I have used the preamp functionality to put a built in 40Hz high pass to my mains and use the other preamp out to feed two lovely SVS SB2000 Pro subs so for a 2.1 user like myself, the M3 is certainly a satisfying product. I get extra bang for my dollar as I had a nice speaker tap cable made and for 5 years now I have been driving all of my headphones directly from the speaker terminals of the M3.

 

[GigaChunk]

You're welcome.

Roon actually converts internally to 64-Bit float when performing it's DSP functions so any resolution loss is inconsequential.

I'm not sure it's fair to blame the AVR manufacturers for the recording industry's over-mastering habits. That said, at this point, considering how widespread this practice is becoming, they probably should consider at least a 1dB digital gain reduction before they hit their DSP processing. Most DSP in AVR's is running at 48kHz anyway so just doing a small volume reduction before the processing shouldn't really compromise the resolution.

I agree that poor mastering is the root cause, however I still view the problem as the manufacturer's responsibility to alleviate. There is clearly digital gain reduction applied in the DSP pathway for multichannel streams, but this step is omitted when dealing with stereo. I can find no rational reason for this difference, apart from some misguided assumption that users won't be running their main speakers with bass management when playing music.

Out of interest, how much headroom adjustment is necessary to completely avoid the clipping issues? Your screenshot says -3dB, but is it possible to get away with less?