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NAD Wants to Connect With a New Generation Of Music Lovers

Component-audio supplier NAD hopes to connect with a younger generation of music enthusiasts who connect to PCs, smartphones and tablets to play music but who have shunned full-size audio components.

Component-audio supplier NAD hopes to connect with a younger generation of music enthusiasts who connect to PCs, smartphones and tablets to play music but who have shunned full-size audio components.

Greg Stidsen, Lenbrook’s director of technology and product planning (left) and Lenbrook marketing manager Mark Stone with NAD’s new $499 D3020 amplifier/DAC with USB input and stereo Bluetooth.
The company plans July shipments of the $999-suggested D7050 network receiver, $499 D3020 DAC/amplifier and $499 D1050 USB DAC. All but the USB DAC incorporate stereo amplification to drive a pair of passive speakers of the consumer’s choice.

The products target a new generation of music listeners who have never bought a CD and who store their music on computers and smartphones, said Greg Stidsen, director of technology and product planning for NAD parent Lenbrook Industries. Many of these “digital natives” never heard good sound and are uninterested in full-size audio components, but the new products will provide these consumers with an “audiophile experience” in compact form factors “that work with what people today are listening to,” he said.

Just as important, the D7050 network receiver and D3020 DAC/amplifier hold true to the basic component-audio tenet of enabling users to choose their own speakers, upgrade them over time, and add a subwoofer instead of being locked into the performance of a one-piece tabletop digital-media speaker, Stidsen said.

The new products will also help introduce NAD’s core audiophile customers to digital media. “A lot of them don’t know anything about digital music,” he said.

The company already offers multiple full-size integrated amplifier/DACs that connect to a PC’s USB port, an outboard USB DAC to connect PCS to a full-size component-audio system, and a wireless DAC to connect PCs to component systems.

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