NAD Silver S500 CD player

The S500 tops NAD's distinguished family tree of high-performance, high-value CD players with a sophisticated design built around an enormously accurate 24-bit digital-to-analog converter from Crystal Semiconductor. Along with its analogue-audio output section, this superb converter is fully modular, making any potential future upgrades quick and easy to accomplish (with minimum labor cost) by any authorized NAD Dealer. Unlike the great majority of CD players, the S500 supports its outstanding DAC converter with custom-engineered, purpose-designed auxiliary circuits. They include a highly unusual five-pole analog filter section and all-discrete output amplifiers that provide exceptionally pure audio-band signals for transparent musical results. Just as uncommonly, the S500 provides "pro-standard" AES / EBU digital output alongside its conventional S / PDIF coaxial digital output. Both outputs are buffered and transformer-coupled to provide a very stable and perfectly precise 75-ohm interface that eliminates jitter and reflections. The high aims of the Silver Series dictated the S500's carefully developed and obsessively tested power supply. Multiple sections, independent voltage regulation for digital, analogue, and servo- circuit blocks, a top-grade toroidal transformer, and very extensive filtering combine for remarkable freedom from hum and noise in both the analogue and digital domains. Fully Class-A audio stages deliver very-low-impedance outputs, which insure uncompromised signal quality to downstream components. The S500 complements its conventional RCA outputs with fully balanced XLR outputs that are compatible with the S100 preamp and S300 integrated amp, as well as with other high-end or professional components with balanced inputs.