Nad C520 - CD player

Over the years, NAD has built an enviable reputation for producing excellent CD players that offer exceptional value for money. The C520 model further enhances this reputation with its excellent performance and ease of use at a very affordable price.
As always, sound quality is NAD’s top priority. Rather than adding a host of rarely used features or focusing on design, NAD’s engineers have concentrated on engineering to deliver the best possible performance at a competitive price. Behind the deceptively modest front panel lie sophisticated circuits.
The RANDOM function offers the listener a random selection of all tracks on the disc being played, and REPEAT allows for repeated playback of the disc or individual tracks. Individual tracks are easily accessed via SKIP (Forward and Back).
SCAN (Forward and Back) provides an audio preview of individual tracks, giving the listener the ability to skip to specific sections of the track.
Using electroluminescent backlighting, the display provides essential yet comprehensive information for the listener. The track number is displayed and, for those who regularly transfer CDs to cassette, the button shows the elapsed or remaining time for full CDs or individual tracks. A ‘calendar’-style section on the display provides immediate visual information on the total number of tracks on the CD.

THE TECHNOLOGY

Separate power supplies for the digital and analogue sections electrically isolate the two circuits, and furthermore, careful layout of the PCB traces around the Digital-to-Analogue converter helps to minimise RF interference.
The NAD C520 features a high-resolution 20-bit Burr-Brown Sigma-Delta digital-to-analogue converter chip, chosen for its excellent low-level linearity and ability to reproduce detail.
Metal-film resistors and polypropylene capacitors are used in key areas to ensure a highly accurate frequency response. Unusually for this price point, high-quality 5532 operational amplifiers are used instead of the much lower grade and type normally found at this price point, if not higher. Apart from the single output capacitor, no other capacitors are used in the signal path.
The output impedance is very low at 300 ohms, making the NAD C520 less sensitive to the cables or ancillary equipment with which it is paired.
Not all digital outputs are created equal. In the case of the NAD C520, great care has been taken to ensure that the best possible use can be made of the ever-increasing number of products available with digital inputs (DAT, DCC, MD, external D/A converters, etc.). The coaxial output is buffered and isolated from the converter itself by a transformer, and the output impedance has been carefully matched to produce a precise 75 ohms, thus ensuring perfect compliance with standards.

Truly excellent sound quality is hard to find at this price. Anyone interested in high performance without frills should put the NAD C520 at the top of their list.