NAD M33

NAD is a company that made its name in solid and relatively affordable Hi-Fi separates — the classic CD, amp and speakers ‘student’ system. Yet it has also been at the forefront of two of hi-fi’s most transformative technologies in the last decade: streaming, and ‘digital’ (or switching) amplification.

The main streaming technology adopted by NAD was developed by its parent company, Canada’s Lenbrook, first as Bluesound and then as the BluOS wireless multi-room platform, which NAD has since incorporated into a number of highly successful smart amplifiers, most notably the multi-award-winning M10, with its large visual display and excellent amplification.

The M10 was (and still is) part of NAD’s Masters Series, which began a little over a decade ago to showcase the company’s other innovation, which was to bring new ‘digital’ amplification concepts successfully into Hi-Fi amplifiers above the level usually occupied by NAD. At the time, such amplification was regarded suspiciously by most Hi-Fi fans and companies, but NAD was quick to see its potential, working closely with particular companies and technologies — first a British semiconductor company called Zetex on the technology which became known as Direct Digital, and then with Dutch company Hypex, using its Universal Class D (UcD) and Ncore amplification in what NAD called HybridDigital.

Many other companies have since adopted and adapted Hypex’s modules to take this ‘digital’ amplification to even higher levels of audiophilia. But now NAD has found a new partner, Denmark’s PurifiAudio (which includes Bruno Putzeys of Hypex), and has adopted its Eigentakt amplification technology in order to deliver an amplifier that goes further still.

EQUIPMENT

Before delving into the new HybridDigital PurifiEigentakt amplification within, however, let’s see what NAD has built around it. The Masters Series M33 takes the successful equation of the M10 and enlarges it from