User Review: C 715 Compact Music Systems - Great sound, but no lossless audio file playing

March 12, 2012

Products: C 715 Compact Music Systems

I paired the NAD C 715 with Wharfedale Diamond 10.1s, and the sound is remarkable. Clean midrange, pure upper registers, powerful bass. This is for my study upstairs, and the system is as musical as my old NAD 7140 driving Vandersteens, though of course without the sheer power. Still, it is odd that the USB is so poorly thought out, surprising from such a company. It will not play AAC files on an iPod via USB connector. It plays only mp3s which are hardly hi-fi. And the file system to find things (I tried a few mp3s on a stick) was just awful. This is not like NAD engineering at all. It does, however have an Aux input, so one could just use an iPod that way, which does not sound very good, given the DAC in the iPod. Still, just having the inputs in back for such things a tape deck or DVD player is pretty amazing at the price. Still, for the money and for CDs and radio, there is not a better bargain out there for musicality in an all-in-one unit.

Mark Kipperman - Chicago, IL