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NAD M10 Streaming Amplifier Review

Descartes

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This is a review and detailed measurements of the NAD M10 streaming amplifier and DAC. It was purchased and drop shipped to me kindly by a member. It costs US $2,749 from NAD dealers.

The M10 sports a very large touch screen LCD display that covers the entire front face:

View attachment 79596

Sorry for leaving the protecting plastic on. Like to keep things as new as possible for members.

As nice as the display is, it simply is not as responsive as your phone or tablet. What could be really cool such as the VU meter mode, becomes a jittery display that doesn't please much. A much faster processor with GPU would be needed to really make the display the star. Still, it is heads and shoulders above others that have small displays.

The back panel is notable for inclusion of HDMI ARC input:
View attachment 79597

Alas, I have no ARC capability on my workstation so could not test that feature.

In normal use the plastic case barely gets warm. Under heavy stress of power testing, it got somewhat warm making me wish the case was made out of aluminum than plastic. You are not likely to push the switching amplifiers this hard and at any rate, the M10 runs much cooler than any Audio/Video Receiver.

While I did not have time to test it, the M10 comes with Dirac Room EQ which is nice.

I noticed one operational/design issue. I unplugged the unit to take its picture but noticed that the display went crazy flashing random stuff. I thought it was a capacitor that was discharging but this continued and would not stop! I looked in the back and I realized I still had the HDMI cable plugged in. Knowing that it provides a 5 volt "hot plug" signal, I disconnected it and the display finally shut down. This is improper design. The device must NOT draw any power out of HDMI connection.

DAC Audio Measurements
I connected the Coax output of my Audio Precision APx555 analyzer to the M10 and measured what came out of the pre-out with volume adjusted for 2 volt output:

View attachment 79600

Distortion is quite low at -110 dB (near threshold of hearing) but the noise floor kept jumping up and down causing SINAD to vary with it. This shows lack of isolation between sensitive DAC subsystem and busy processor running other functions of the device. As it is, performance is respectable which is a sigh of relief:

View attachment 79601

Anything in green and blue is good.

Testing at other output levels shows that the M10 is capable of pumping out good bit of voltage:
View attachment 79604

Dynamic range clears the bar for 16 bit CD/streaming content but not much more:

View attachment 79602

IMD distortion versus level shows the same noise issue:

View attachment 79603

Filter response also shows higher than it should be noise floor:

View attachment 79605

Jitter and noise test shows a lot of unwanted tones but audibly they are below threshold of hearing:

View attachment 79606

Linearity is very good:

View attachment 79607

EDIT: forgot to include multitone in the original review:
View attachment 79744

Finally, we see the penalty of the DAC filter not being sharp enough in distortion+noise versus frequency:

View attachment 79608

Amplifier Audio Measurements
I was hoping that analog input was not digitized but alas, it is:

View attachment 79609

And at very low sample rate. Maybe there is a setting to change this but I did not bother to look.

Using the same analog input, I witnessed wild swings in noise floor of the unit:
View attachment 79610

So I abandoned the analog input and switched to Coax for the rest of the amplifier tests:

View attachment 79611

Performance is improved and stable as well. This rates the M10 above average for more than 100 amplifiers tested so far:

View attachment 79612

Signal to noise ratio is disappointing as even with full power, it barely clears the 16 bit hurdle:
View attachment 79613

Frequency response using digital input is wide enough:

View attachment 79614

But for those people with ultra sensitive high frequency hearing, you will lose half a dB at 20 kHz.

Let's see how much clean power we get out of M10 starting with 4 ohm load:

View attachment 79615

I allowed the distortion to go higher (1%) and got even more power:

View attachment 79616

I tried to get the burst power rating but some kind of limiter in the M10 was fighting the analyzer and wouldn't allow me to get there. It was nice that it would not shut down.

Power naturally drops at 8 ohm:

View attachment 79617

Conclusions
Performance of the NAD M10 is generally acceptable especially for a multifunction device where we see a lot of fails. Alas issues here and there took away my enthusiasm for it. There is no excuse for poor analog input performance in a nearly $3000 device. Or rather high and variable noise floor.

So overall, I gave it a "like it" panther award but it is not something I would personally buy. I can be stubborn that way!

-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

So stressed out with the terrible backlog of reviews, I have nothing sarcastic to say. So I will just ask that you donate what you can to change my mood using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Thank you for saving me money!

I wonder if the updated version is better?

NAD Masters Series M10 V2
 

Antlestxp

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Nov 8, 2023
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I know this is a forum purely about audio quality but I want to point out that the m10 is a surprisingly easy device to live with day to day. Everything works. Livability gets glossed over in most reviews. This device always works. Never needs to be rebooted. I have not had the app crash or freeze once. And best of all, for those of us that have audio setups that include a tv, it has hdmi arc/cec properly implemented. As an added bonus it will show album art on the tv its connected to when streaming from any source with meta data. All nads do this but is not advertised as a feature. In addition to that, if you are afraid of hdmi, optical signals will trigger it to wake from standby and you can teach it use any ir remote. On the audio side of things, all I can say is I have no complaints. Dirac is a nice tool for those of us with partners that are not ok with acoustic panels everywhere. In a room shared with a spouse, I think it is the perfect device. In my dedicated music space I still enjoy the ritual of getting all of the devices on and the process of listening. That being said I find myself spending more time in my living room where the M10 is setup. It has 99% of the quality with a fraction of the effort.
 

Antlestxp

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Hi, Im a proud new owner of the M10-V2. I am extremely happy about the features and better than expected sound. There is just one thing which really worries me.
The device gets when listening even pretty silent very hot. In System Settings you can see left + right temps after few hours listening at 65-69 degree Celsius.
To my "taste" this might really harm the electronics over time, or am I wrong?
2nd there is no real off switch. Does anybody know if switching off with a programmable socket (10pm-8am) could harm the device over time ?
I think the lack of a power switch is to keep the device active for remote control and keep boot time down. Is there a reason you want to completely shut it down rather than let it go to standby? I think power it on and off all the time with a socket may introduce software issues. These are basically little computers at this point.
 

SIY

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I know this is a forum purely about audio quality but I want to point out that the m10 is a surprisingly easy device to live with day to day.
I've been doing so for several years now. No regrets, the only "upgrade" I made was adding external power amps for extra power when running my dynamic speakers. I just use it as-is for running my Quads and the sound/convenience is superb.
 

chefffe

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Dec 20, 2020
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I think the lack of a power switch is to keep the device active for remote control and keep boot time down. Is there a reason you want to completely shut it down rather than let it go to standby? I think power it on and off all the time with a socket may introduce software issues. These are basically little computers at this point.
No, the device has its standby function with just few Watts. This is the network standby. Why not the BluOS Software nor the device itself has a button for it I dont know. You can only stop music and it will automatically go after, I guess 15min, into this standby. There is also a real shutdown via a little button on the back but this is not needed.
With Remote there is a button, but I dont use the remote.

Nevertheless, the M10 is still THE device for me ... I am missing absolutely nothing.
 
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