Price Paid:  $300.00 from Bay Bloor Radio

Summary:
Honestly, this is a difficult product for me to review..... I owned a NAD C352 Integrated Amp and C521Bee CD Player for almost 2 years and before I upgraded to Rotel seperates (which I absolutely love).....

For the price I think NAD delivers good audio quality and an overall decent performance..... but Unfortunately from what I've experienced with theses two NAD products they suffer from at least 2 real issues:

1) They are Ugly and look cheap (which is not necessarily a major concern to everyone)....

2) They seem to always suffer from some type of really annoying electrical problems..... My Amp has the crappiest volume control via remote ever (it basically switches from low voliume to too high with just one touch of the volume button)... it also showed some issues when I started hooking up all my HT components to it and tried to switch audio signals..... My CD player takes a ridiculously long time to read a ot of my CDs and can't read many of them.... my old cheap Technics CD player had no such difficulties.... I recently returned to the store where I bought the NADs to check for speakers and was told that they no longer sell the NAD AV Receiver line becuase of problems with Video Switching....

My overall assesment is that NAD creates good products but I believe that they cut too many corners in order to try and cram as much 'quality sound' in for the minimal cost..... which can lead to glaring and frustrating flaws in what would otherwise be amazing equipment (for the price)....

So, my advice is to thoroughly tryout any NAD product you're considering buying and ensure that you can live with any potential shortcomings before purchasing one.....

Strengths:
Good Price.... Good Audio Quality and Power relative to price....

Weaknesses:
See points 1 and 2 in the Summary above.....

Similar Products Used:
Techniics Receiver, Rotel Amp & Pre-amp, Musical Fidelity XT100

Price Paid:  $199.00 from audio X

Summary:
I recently purchased the C521bee from my local Audio X. I got this player to replace my marantz cd player. My sstem is a marantz pm4400 amp with Mission M33i speakers, im using black rodium interconnects with black rodium ast400 bi-wire. Im Very pleased With the C521bee sounds Exciting no matter what music you play the detail is Excellent and the bass is warm with good timing. Theres plenty of warmth and Scale no matter what music you like The bass maybe Big but is well controlled. If like Me you love hifi But are on a tight budget Yo wont go far wrong with the nad. You will probably have noticed there are savings to be had if you buy online but beware it does affect your warranty with nad. I payed full price for the c521bee but my local audio X also included A black rodium interconnect worth £30 so its not always cheaper to buy online.

Strengths:
The C521bee sound great at this price with excellent build quality and sonic abilitys to shame players costing much more.

Weaknesses:
At this price none really some might not like the styling of the Nad but in its titanium form i think it looks stylish and gives no clues of its budget price

Similar Products Used:
marantz Cd5400
Cambridge audio azur540c

Price Paid:  $299.00 from Harvey's Electronics

Summary:
Very disappointed! Bought this CD player brand new less than two weeks go. From the very first day I noticed that it makes occasional tiny skips when playing CDs. The issue seemed to have reslved after 1-2 days. However, after 7 days of usage, it just stopped recognizing CDs and playing all together. I still cannot believe it: one would think that they could have learnt by now how to manufacture a reliable basic CD player. Apparently, NAD has not! It doesn't matter what the sound is, if it the player doesn't last!

Strengths:
Sound (rumors say)

Weaknesses:
Reliability

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
This is a follow up of my previous review....
Recently, I've tweaked this unit with blu-tack and the result is superb!
Tweaked the CD mechanism and also put the tacks on top of the capacitors.
The unit became more alive, soundstage magically improved!! More detailed!!
I believe the good quality of the unit before tweaked is already THAAT GOOD!!
After tweaked....Superb!
Highly recommended unit....

Strengths:
Very good low investment with High Quality result

Weaknesses:
none

Similar Products Used:
none

Price Paid:  $300.00 from soundcity

Summary:
great cd player. the only other "high end" cd player i've owned was a harmon kardon. and that thing sucked. this cd player is fantastic. clean, detailed sound. its beging used with a adcom gfa-6002 amp, rotel 980 pre-amp, and phase tech tatro 7.5 speakers.

Strengths:
clean detailed sound

Weaknesses:
no HDCD

Similar Products Used:
harmon kardon 5 disc changer. various dvd players