If I'm honest, I do not notice much difference between the C298 and my previous amp (Nord two 1200as2). However, no noise when not playing music is nice and also being able to use unbalanced inputs makes the C298 much more versatile. I did just exchange my model at the dealer, the C298 always went in standby mode after 2 hours, even when music was playing.
I did the same too. Mine used to go out after an hour. It is connected to a C 658 via a trigger. Switching the C 658 off and on again does not help. You could only turn the C 298 off and on again with the power switch, not on the front.
Gentlemen I have my C298 for one week now. It has played for numerous extended sessions but intermittently shut down on three occasions for no apparent reason. My unit does double duty in a hybrid HT system and in each case it occurred after several hours of extended play with both music and video. I am in the process of having it replaced but would be curious if those of you with replacement units have encountered any intermittent shut down issues?
Count me as number four with a shutoff problem. Something is going on in terms of quality control. Paging
@Kal Rubinson just in case he might be able to bring this up with NAD since they’re not very responsive (I had a very simple, short question over email for them two weeks ago and they acknowledged receipt but never took the time to follow up).
What happens to me is, I’m listening normally for an hour or two, not touching the remote or my smartphone or anything that might cause a spike in signal, and the sound just stops and the unit is unresponsive and the red light is on and stays on until I do a hard reset with the rear power switch. After that, the amber standby light reappears, and the unit powers on and goes back to delivering the SHD’s signal that never stopped playing. This has happened three times now.
So that we’re all clear, the unit has three LED colors at the power button: amber for standby, red for the transition from standby to operational
and for power protect shutoff (and other fatal errors I assume), and blue for operational.
My preamp is a miniDSP SHD, so I’m forced into using auto sense because of lack of 12V trigger, but I don’t think this problem we’re having has anything to do with it becuase my “auto sense on” turns on fine (set to low), and I don’t have “auto sense off” activated (press and hold power button while unit is operational for ~15 seconds — two flashes from the bridge mode light mean auto sense off has been disabled, and three flashes mean it has been enabled). When auto sense off is activated the unit goes into standby, which means the light turns from blue to amber and can be turned back on with a fresh signal.
Crutchfield has me covered, so after a 5mins phone call a new unit is on the way. Hoping I get a perfectly functioning replacement like
@Canth but this is troubling from a long term reliability standpoint. Part of the reason to go with someone like NAD over the small scale assemblers is the sense that all kinks are worked out.