I, as a big owner of what is now considered 'vintage' NAD gear (6 NAD 2200's, 2 NAD 2100's, & a NAD 4300 TUNER).
I personally (although others may) would not recommend any NAD gear made in the era after NAD was sold in 1999 to The Lenbrook Group of Pickering, Ontario, Canada, in spite of Bjørn-Erik Edvardsen (“Erik”) [also known as BEE] continued involvement.
A little history:
Bjørn-Erik Edvardsen (“Erik”) was born in Bergen, Norway, at the end of World War II, the son of a captain in the merchant navy. He himself boarded a ship to cross the North Sea to pursue his studies in Electronics at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Erik’s UK centred career began at ITT KB, known at the time for their transistor radios, and he then moved to Dolby Labs. Erik was involved in the very early demonstrations of Dolby noise reduction in cinemas in New York and London, initially with a recording of “Speed Merchants,” a documentary about the lives of Formula One racing drivers, and then with the very first film soundtrack with Dolby, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
Erik left Dolby Labs to join Acoustic Research (AR), first in England, before moving with them to Boston, Massachusetts, where Erik carried out research in the areas of acoustics, digital audio delay, reverb and speaker/room equalization and developing turntables, amplifiers and receivers. The area was then a hotbed of electronics and hi-fi companies, with the leading technical university, MIT, just across the river in Cambridge, and also the home of the Boston Audio Society, an influential forum hosting prominent experts from industry, academia and the audiophile world.
Thus began what was to be a long career working together with Marty Borish, then President of the speaker company, Acoustic Research (AR). Marty recognized and nurtured Erik’s creative talent and the rest, as is said, is “NAD history!” When AR decided to shelve plans for a range of hi-fi electronics and a worldwide group of AR distributors began a cooperative to develop their own brand (New Acoustic Dimension –“NAD”) in 1972, the time became right for Borish and Edvardsen to move to London and become the first two full-time employees of NAD. Marty, as President, worked from his attic, with Erik as Chief Designer/Head of Engineering using a small spare bedroom as his design lab.
