As NAD today celebrates 50 years since its original founding in 1972, its audio equipment is sold in some 80 countries worldwide. The company is recognised for pioneering work in amplification from the budget mid-range to the highly-regarded series of Masters series products which have pioneered ongoing development of new ‘digital’ amplification technologies. And in the new millennium under Canada’s Lenbrook Group, NAD has successfully leveraged wireless multiroom technology from its sister brand Bluesound/BluOS to lead the new wave of smart streaming audio equipment.
Even as it has pushed to these new heights, however, its success has remained built on core values established by two key personnel: Martin (Marty) L. Borish, who died in July 2017, aged 89, and hot-shot Norwegian designer Bjorn ‘BEE’ Erik Edvardsen, who passed in December 2018, aged 73.
Group think
Perhaps the first origins of the ideals behind NAD can be spotted back in 1963, when the pages of US industry journal Phono-Tape Merchandising carried a comment from a hi-fi sales manager who wanted to make his views following a reported ‘disagreement’.
“Customers want equipment that loolcs good in their homes and doesn’t occupy a lot of space, ” wrote the 35-year-old sales manager, one Marty Borish. “They want integrated compact component systems that are or can easily be put into cabinets.”
In the years to come, Mr Borish would make it just so — and then some. His idea for ‘a different approach’ to hi-fi was developed further at the start of the 1970s through a small group of international audio distributors looking for marketable electronics “with a non-traditional outlook” — affordable, but truly audio-orientated. Eight European distributors met in Munich, Germany, to discuss the concept, with plans to distribute initially in Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland and UK. They discussed the possibility of working as a co-operative to launch a new brand. And they even came up with a name — New Acoustic Dimension, or NAD for short.
Perhaps most enthused among this group, and certainly influential with his ideas, was Mr Borish again, who was at the table representing Acoustic Research from Boston, at the time one of the world’s early true hi-fi speaker makers. Borish had got into hi-fi audio after initially following his father into the family optometry business in New Jersey, until his love of music drove him towards the idea of retailing the nascent breed of high fidelity equipment — he would now cater to customers’ears, instead of their eyes. In those days of circuits and mods he decided a degree
