In addition to the M5 product introduction, NAD is also adding a new Universal Disc Player known as the T585 to its mainstream audio product line. Also due out towards the end of the year, the T585 will handle CD, SACD, DVD Video and DVD Audio discs. Here’s more on the NAD disc player announcements from CEDIA.

The NAD M5 Masters Series SACD and CD Player
The upcoming NAD M5 SACD and CD player will be the fifth product in the company’s flagship Masters Series component line that was introduced at CES 2006 in January. (The four original products in the NAD Masters Series are the M15 Surround Sound Preamplifier, M25 7-Channel Amplifier, M55 Universal Digital Disc Player and M3 Dual Mono Integrated Amplifier.)

According to NAD officials “The M5 offers superlative audio performance for all standard CD and SACD media. Despite all the demands for A/V products, the need for high-end CD players from serious audio enthusiasts has never gone out of style. For those that still require the absolute best in 2-channel sound reproduction, the M5 CD Player ensures a major sonic upgrade to anything heard before at this price point.

SACD uses a fundamentally different approach to transferring the analog musical waveform into the digital domain for storage on the disc. This is called Direct Stream Digital (DSD), and is widely considered to be a fundamentally better approach to digital encoding. This requires very high speed processing that simply wasn’t available at the birth of the CD format. This high data rate process avoids the quantization errors inherent in the Pulse Code Modulation process used for the traditional CD and DVD. Extended high frequency response, enhanced detail and a more analog-like sound quality are often stated improvements of SACD over CD.”

In addition to high quality Stereo CD, Stereo SACD and 5.1 Surround Sound SACD playback, the NAD M5 will also offer bass management features for Surround Sound SACDs and HDCD decoding of CDs with HDCD encoding. The M5 will also support the playback of MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) files as well.

The player has separate audio paths for CD and SACD playback and both disc formats are said to benefit from the Digital to Audio Converters (DACs) and Analog Output circuitry in the M5. NAD says that “Separate digital filters are employed for the SACD and CD signal paths to perfectly compliment these uniquely different signal formats. NAD’s specially designed discrete Class A gain modules keep all the detail in high resolution SACD perfectly intact, and offer very low output impedance across the frequency spectrum. The audio stage of the M5 is fed from a separate linear power supply utilizing a specially designed C-core transformer for the lowest possible noise and best supply regulation. The mechanical and digital circuits have their own independent NAD designed switch mode supply.”

NAD T585 Universal Disc Player
Over the 30 years that NAD Electronics has been around, they have been known for their reasonably priced components. At CEDIA they are addressing that segment of the market as well with the new NAD T585 Universal Disc Player. As the name suggests, the T585 will handle a multitude of audio and video disc formats including CD, Stereo SACD and 5.1 Surround Sound SACD Audio, DVD Video, DVD Audio, MP3, HDCD and Windows Media Audio (WMA). The T585 will also support several blank media types including CD-ROM and CD-RW and DVD+R and DVD-R discs.

The T585 shares a number of features with its Master Series big brother the M5 player. These include separate signal paths for CD/DVD/DVD-A and SACD discs and bass management for both SACD and DVD-A Surround Sound discs.

The T585 also features high quality video playback circuitry, HDMI connections, a Faroudja DCDi chip that will upconvert today’s DVD Video discs to 720p and 1080i and Dolby Digital and DTS decoding.