The NAD M10 V2 is an upgraded integrated amplifier that significantly enhances audio performance and versatility, particularly through its advanced room correction capabilities (Dirac Live), making it a compelling all-in-one home entertainment solution.
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you've seen it in many videos leading up
to this one it's the nad m10 v2 it's
part of nad's masters series of
amplifiers this is the second generation
version of the m10 and it's still a
class d amplifier and it still gives us
100 watts per channel into 8 ohms and 4
ohms and it still features the same i
think probably
32-bit 384 kilohertz capable dac as the
[Music]
the m10 v2 sells for 2 750 us dollars
and it's still kallax phi
and if you don't know what that means
you need to go back and watch my
original m10 review because that video
contains i guess what we'd call assumed
knowledge for this one so what is
actually new in this v2 model well we
get what nad called improved gain algorithms
algorithms
which essentially means that this new
version is probably better capable of
driving harder to drive loudspeakers we
also still get a 7-inch ips lcd
touchscreen on the front
but apparently nad have improved the
viewing angles and i can tell you it's
way way better than the touchscreen pi
that we showed about a month ago now i
can't test nad's claims about the
screen's wider viewing angles or this
amplifier's better handling of harder to
drive speakers because i no longer have
the original m10
what i can tell you is when we're using
the hardwired inputs we still get the
dancing vu meters
in place of the cover art album name
artist info on the streaming inputs and
thanks to the n10s internal blue os
streaming module there are many many
many different ways that we can stream
audio into the m10 v2 so we get roon
tidal connect spotify connect
airplay 2 bluetooth and then inside the
blue os app we get amazon hd music
deezer and cobras that makes it futurify
with a capital f maybe two capital fs
but in a nod to the old school nad gave
us an infrared remote control this time
out which we didn't get with the og m10
and once i've pulled up music on roon or
spotify or tidal
i generally use that remote ones more
than any other way of controlling this
amp yes i can control it on the
touchscreen on the front but
getting up and then sort of bending down
to control it
i just i don't love doing that so much
you know i guess it's a nice thing to
have in theory but for me in practice
it doesn't really convince me that touch
screens on a device
are as
important as having smartphone capable
controls and then also yeah a
traditional infrared remote which i find
really useful now obviously that
infrared remote only gives us play pause
volume up and down track skipping
if you want to get
really really smug-tastic
about controlling the nadm10v2 you can
actually use the blue os
app on an apple watch [Music]
in my original nad m10 review i compared
it to the name unity atom
a similar shoebox size amplifier
now that additionally gives us support
for chromecast it gives us a headphone
socket and it gives us possibly the best
volume wheel that i've ever used having
said that the name app really isn't as
polished or as accomplished as the blue
os app i'm talking smartphone apps here
and tablet apps now in playing pj
harvey's rid of me produced by steve albini
albini
i hear a certain crispness from the
symbols on that record that i don't
recall hearing on the original m10 now
unfortunately that kind of comparison
stretched over time using audio memory
going back two years is wholly wholly unreliable
unreliable
it just can't do it so again in this
video i'm going to compare the nadm 10v2
to the name unity atom but i don't hear
that symbol crispness
on the name unity atom with pj harvey's
rid of me which brings us early to the
spicy finding in this video
in that i think the nad m10 v2 has as much
much
get up and go as much micro dynamic
flare as the name unity atom and i
didn't find that with the original
comparison this is what brits like to call
call pratt
pratt
pace rhythm and timing
i do think that the the new nad
matches the name in that respect the nad
is also a little bit more lit up in the
lower treble than the name which i would call
call
a little bit softer and a little bit
rounder which is no bad thing and that
makes the nad m10v2 perhaps
better suited to maybe warmer
loudspeakers or thicker sounding
speakers like the bookart s400 mark ii
that we made a video about last week
however the nad gives us that squeegee
clean transparency that i talk about a
lot these days
that the name unity atom really can't
muster now how you feel about this will
largely fall to your listener type
because are you ready for this we don't
all listen for the same things
we might think we do but subconsciously
that might not be the case
so if you're somebody who really gets
off on sort of the ultra resolution of
sound and being able to see all the tiny details
details
then you're likely going to prefer the
nad m10 v2 however
if you're somebody who doesn't care as
much about those details who doesn't
lose the wood for the trees as much and
enjoys the overall gestalt of music
then you're more likely to prefer the
name unity atom now in this side-by-side
comparison i generally prefer the names
more organic presentation when listening
to that pj harvey album or listening to
television's marquee moon or listening to
to
some hip-hop from the notorious b.i.g
but that's because i'm more of an
emotional listener when there are vocals present
present
when there are no vocals present i think
my brain kicks into more of a
cerebral visual type
listening mode
so when it comes to electronic music i
generally prefer the nad's greater
specificity and detail retrieval so
so
in that sense i feel once again
torn down the middle by these amplifiers
and if this is where this story ended
i'd be like i don't know which is the
best one you'll have to go and listen
for yourself
but we're only getting started [Music]
[Music]
if i want to get the most
when listening to deadbeats dubby the
double bong cloud ep
i really need to add a subwoofer to the
system so behind me you can see the
golden ear brx loudspeakers what you
can't see that's directly behind me
because i'm blocking it is goldeneye's
force field 3 subwoofer and when i want
to add a sub i find myself sort of
pulled away from the the names superior
haptics and its excellent zigbee remote
control and towards the base management
system that the nad amplifier gives us
because inside the blue os app we can
just tell it how many subwoofers we have
connected to its sub out in fact there
are two of them and then we could tell
it where we would like the crossover
frequency to take place and it will
design the crossover for us
so all we have to do is fuss a little
bit over
the gain on the sub and maybe position
but i think i've got that pretty much
sorted in this room for now and we don't
get base management from the name the
name just asks us to feed our subwoofer
from its preamplifier outputs in what we
generally call augmentation mode
now when listening to that deadbeat ep
i much prefer the nad's take on events
on musical events
and maybe that's down to the fact that
the nad
gives us high pass filtering on our mains
mains
whereas the name does not and if you're
at all confused by what i just said then
you need to listen to episode 30 of the
darko audio podcast however these
amplifier differences subwoofer or not
are small potatoes compared to the
audible elevation afforded by what i
think is the nad m10 v2s main draw card
and that is dirac room compensation and
for that we go over to terry ellis in
london thanks john
my name is terry ellis i'm a
professional direct live calibrator and
i help john set up dirac in his nad
amplifier by remote dialing into his computer
computer
and controlling the dirac software we
used a calibrated microphone measured
his speaker's performance at specific
points around john's main listening position
position
dirac then creates a target curve that's
trying to optimize the sound that john
will hear by trying to flatten the
frequency response and undoing some of
the negative effects of the room i then
created some custom target curves that
are more specific to john's system
and his taste so terry team viewered
into my macbook
to install dirac on at least three
occasions in the last five months
we direct the the zoosol 6 and then we
did the vivid audio kaya s12 with the
kef kc62 subwoofer and then most
recently we did the golden ear system
that you see behind me so the brx and
the forcefield three subwoofer and then
with those target curves that terry
talked about loaded into the nad m10v2 i
could switch dirac on and off but then also
also
move through those target curves when i
felt like changing it up a little bit
now i definitely definitely prefer
dirac on
now i know you're looking at my room
thinking doesn't john have a treated
room yes i do but i don't have a lot of
low frequency treatment which is where
really i think dirac comes into play for
rooms like this
you treat the room and then you use
dirac to ice the cake
now for me
dirac made the biggest difference or the
biggest improvement to the zoo sol 6 and
the least to the vivid kaya s12
and i also thought that the standard
correction curve
that dirac delivers out of the box
was just a little bit too dry a little
bit too light on in the base
and which is why i asked terry just to
kind of create a few custom curves for
me to give me a little bit more push in
the low end and in one curve a little
bit more of a tickle in the top end for
the golden ears behind me now where i
think dirac really excels
is improving the sound stage
layout or organization of sounds or musicians
musicians
sometimes that's called imaging
i hear that very nicely on this new
compilation of remixes just issued by
kraftwerk i think it's been on streaming
services for a year or so but it's only
just come to cd and vinyl
and it's a it's a great i hate to use
the word test disk
but it is i mean it's a great way to
kind of just work out you know what's
going on in your sound stage and depth
and width and things like that and yeah
direct makes better sense of the music
and the way i i tend to explain it
is that
with drag off when you go when you've
heard direct and you go back to it not
being engaged you kind of go oh that
sounds horrible and wrong and then you
re-engage you go oh that makes much more
sense and horrible and wrong means the
sort of mid-range appears as this big ball
ball
between the speakers
but then when you engage dirac even the
standard curve it sort of pushes it back
and then spreads it around between the speakers
speakers
now because we're tidying up low
frequencies more than i guess mid-range
and higher frequencies explicitly so anyway
anyway
the knock-on effect of tidying up your
base is you also get to tidy up the
mid-range i think that's what's going on
here but the takeaway here is that the
lad m10 v2 with dirac set up properly
and engaged
for me blows the name unity atom out of
the water
i'm joking of course with the blows it
out of the water because nothing really
just does that but the
nadm10v2 is
comfortably better
than the name unity atom
once dirac has been properly set up and engaged
[Music]
now there is one caveat to this is i
think dirac you can absolutely do it by
yourself the process in conducting the
measurements is super easy there's a
microphone supplied in the box
what isn't so easy
is knowing what you're doing when
customizing the target curve which is
why i asked for terry's help in doing
this because i think for beginners
there's a high risk of you know just
experimenting a little bit and messing
things up so if you've got the time
for trial and error then great but if
you don't
then maybe yeah you need to get a
professional to help you with the direct
setup as i did
now this brings us to the lingdorf tdai
1120 which has its own room compensation
algorithm inside it's called room
perfect now i still have the lindorf
here so i could do a side-by-side
comparison between the nad and the lingdorf
lingdorf
now in their stock form i found the nad
to be brawnier and ballsier
than the more sort of finessed and
skeletal sounding lindorf but that's
with the golden ear loudspeakers no sub
no room compensation engaged but with
the sub and room compensation added this
is a much much closer race or battle or
competit none of these things are
battles of competitions but this is i
guess the nature of side by side
comparisons now dirac on the nad
ultimately did a better job for me but
only really with the help of terry ellis
if i were forced to go it alone
i'd probably opt for the room perfect on
the lingdorf i think the whole setup
procedure is a little bit more
user-friendly and the out-of-the-box
target curve and therefore audible
result for me it's just a little bit
more satisfying there's just a little
bit more low end push
also the linked off has power user features
features
that allow me to
just tweak the phase alignment of the
subwoofer a little bit more accurately i
don't know how you would even do that
in in dirac i'm pretty sure they have a
subwoofer base module coming in their
software but i think that's fairly
pricey whereas with the room perfect
it's completely free
the drag i do have the full frequency
range version installed i had to pay an
extra 100 bucks for that but i think
that's well worth it [Music]
[Music]
yes the nad amplifier
is ethernet and wi-fi capable
but this amplifier is not just about
streaming music from the cloud or from a
nearby server for example i've got my tv
connected to its hdmi e-arc input i also connected
connected
my project cd transport
to the coaxial socket on the back of the
nad and i've also got a little xiaomi me
box s which i was using with my
projector previously and that was going
toslink into the back of the nad and
then also my turntable and its phono
stage i come out of the the phono stage
and go analog in to the back of the nad
m10 v2 amplifier now some of you will be
thinking at this stage there's no bloody
way i'm going to have the nad digitize
my precious phono stage signal no way
but here's the thing
i just cannot relate to people who think
like that because
with all that the nad gives us
especially with room correction we gain
far more from dirac than we lose from
the a to d conversion that greets an
analog signal coming into the amplifier
now in the box with the nad m10 v2 were
a pair of blue sound pulse flex 2i these
are like little pint-sized wireless
speakers i've got one there and one there
there
why do i have them here like that well
they're set up wirelessly there's no you
can do ethernet if you want to there's
no ethernet here but i'm using these as
wireless rear surrounds
for the m10 v2
because what the dsp in the m10v2 can
also do
is create sort of fake surround sound for
for
stereo content
which is great for music i have these
set actually quite a low level and they
just give i normally sit here and they
just give me a little bit of a sort of a
tickle from behind it's not a full-range
signal that gets sent to these
loudspeakers it's heavily filtered and
focuses on the sort of upper mids so it
kind of just
fills out the recording a little bit and
it's really really good for live albums
like lcd sound systems shut up and play
the hits but also
with the tv
feeding the nad
using hdmi arc
i can now tap
5.1 surround content from netflix
and what the nad does is converts that
into 4.0 or 4.1
sound channels now i've got a 4.1 system
running here so the two golden ears then
the sub then these two surrounds
so now i have a sort of wireless
surround sound system so no wires are
running under the rug and across the
floor which i would never in a million
years do
nor would i ever kind of
drill speakers into the ceiling because
well yeah acoustic panels are far more
important to me than having dolby atmos
but you know a 4.1 system is a lot of
fun i guess when watching a movie i'm
not super into movies but it still
enhances the the netflix viewing
experience and then the virtual surround
for stereo content enhances the stereo
experience sorry olaf just reminded me
that i said that
the blue sound the little pint-sized
speakers came in the box yeah nad sent
me those for me to test this they don't
ship free with the m10 v2 but
but
here's the thing
is that you can see that the nad has
expanded my listening world if you like
it's one of the reasons i've got a tv
now one of them so i can use the er
connection that's one of those reasons so
so
really for me this nad m10 v2 is not all
about the music
neither does it get out of the way of
the music because in fact
it does my vinyl it does my streaming it
does tv and
surround sound and virtual surround
sound it does everything so this may be
a really good
solution for people like me who
predominantly listen to music but occasionally
occasionally
like to watch movies and netflix and
youtube and things like that it's what
we might call a home entertainment hub
is that a bit cheesy maybe it's a little
bit cheesy i don't know but cheesy or not
not
this nad m10 v2 has made me play more
music and also watch more youtube and netflix
netflix
than i've done with any other amplifier
that i've reviewed in the last few years
and i think that's a total win so if you
like this video please hit the like
button down below if you like my
attitude towards high-end audio in that
it factors in room correction software
and dsp
and hdmi connections from tvs and
surround sound and virtual surround
sound and
all these other things if you dig that
then please subscribe to this channel
and as always thank you ever so much for watching
those differences
pale into in no this is not right and i
don't hear that symbol crisp i can't say it
it
and i don't hear that crisp like
crispness crispness why can't i say it
and that brings us to the lingdorf tda
tda no
no however
however the
the
the n-a-g now in this side-by-side comparison
comparison
i generally pref
if i want to get the most from deadbeats
very dubby the double
i can't even say that either
there's so many d's and b's in this title
title
okay one thing this nad amp made me do
was play more music than i've ever done
with pretty much any other amplifier that
that
i've tested in the
than any other amplifier then i can recall
recall
oh why can't i get this right olaf then
any other amplifier
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