NAD C440 AM/FM Stereo Tuner.

Manufacturer: NAD Electronics Ltd., London, England

Distributor: NAD Electronics of America, 6 Merchant St., Sharon, MA 02067; 800/263-4641; www.nadelectronics.com

Price: $299

Source: Distributor loan

Reviewer: Thom Moon

Over the years, NAD has had a reputation for excellent design but sometimes iffy production quality control. I think it's fair to say the days of the latter are over.

Witness the NAD C440 AM/FM tuner: one look and you know it's from NAD, largely due to its simple exterior look and the NAD-ubiquitous dark gray enclosure just over 17" wide, 3.75" high and 11.5" deep. It's one of their typically clean, "form-follows-function" designs.

Starting at the left side of the front panel we encounter the power switch, followed by a series of eight pushbuttons. The first selects AM or FM, and the second, the desired preset bank (1-3). Button three determines whether the tuner is set to search (what we in the U.S. call "seek"), the 30 presets or manual tuning (in 25 kHz increments). The next one engages/disengages the effective blend circuit. Then, there are buttons for memory, FM mute (which automatically throws the tuner into mono), and finally, buttons marked "display" and "character." The right third of the panel contains the frequency display and the tuning up-down rocker switch.

The rear panel contains a 75-ohm "F" connector for the FM antenna, two terminals for the supplied AM loop antenna, a pair of audio outputs and a pair of RCA jacks for the" NAD Link," which allows the remote controls of NAD amplifiers to operate many of the tuner's functions as well. And for stateside distribution, there's a captive two-wire AC lead.

What I saw when I removed the unit's cover surprised me: most of the box is empty! The guts of the tuner are found on a 7" x 4" printed circuit board. There's a small board for the output and NAD Link jacks and a 3" x 2" power supply board. The control circuitry for all the front panel functions and display are located on the main tuner board. While the components will not set a supertweak's heart aflutter, they are certainly adequate; the board layout is efficient (with some space for extra components in, most likely, a more expensive unit); and the traces, nice and heavy.

As mentioned above, the C440 has 30 presets, arranged in three banks (NAD's term) of 10 each. You can mix AM and FM randomly within banks. To set a preset, tune to the desired station either on search or manual, press "Memory," then the "Bank" button to select the proper group of 10 presets, then use the tuning rocker switch to get to the preset you want to store.

There's one feature of the C440 that really doesn't enter into its performance but is a bit fun and adds to the unit's "cool" quotient: you can program the display to show anything that can fit into an eight-character line. For instance, if you were to access the presets oil bank 1 of the tuner I've been using, you'd see entries such as "WGUC 90.9," "The Wave" and "Jazz 740." Near as I can figure, this feature is available because in Europe, C440s will automatically pick up stations' RDS (Radio Data System) signals, which already include the station name. On this side of the pond, we have to pick the names ourselves. The process really is easy once you've done one or two stations.

First you select the preset to which you wish to attach a name, then press the Character button, which will clear the display and place a flashing dash in the first character spot. You then use the tuning rocker switch to scroll through the 54 possibilities that include all the digits, all the alphabet and symbols such as brackets, a question mark and a comma. It took me about 25 minutes to set up character displays on 17 of the 19 presets I actually used. All preset and custom display information is stored in non-volatile memory, so the C440 will remember them all, even if it's been unplugged for some time.

In most areas, 30 presets probably are overkill, but in practice, there's a good reason for that number: manual FM tuning is bog-slow, because the unit tunes in 25 kHz increments. Given that each FM channel is 200 kHz wide, that means there are eight steps to go from, say 99.3 to 99.5 and, considering that usually, stations one can receive are at least two channels (400 kHz) apart, that means 16 steps from station to station. The 25kHz tuning is offered to accomdate the off-center-frequency operations of many cable system FM feeds. But, nonetheless, the presets are more than welcome.

NAD says in literature I downloaded from their website that the C440 "... goes directly after what listeners want in real-world situations." They describe that as "intuitive, simple operation that tuners used to supply," but with "the convenience of modern day technology." That's fair, but they get a bit hyperbolic in other parts of their promotional text.

For instance, they state the design of its MOSFET RF section and front end "guarantee excellent FM sensitivity with low intermodulation distortion to provide noise-free reception. And its sensitivity numbers aren't achieved at the expense of selectivity." Well, something gave somewhere, because by comparison to nay Magnum Dynalab "Etude" (which, I grant you, costs more than four times the list price of the NAD), the C440 is neither particularly sensitive nor selective. In my trials, the unit offered average-or-slightly better sensitivity with only moderate selectivity. This is not a tuner for use in places such as the area between New York and Philadelphia, where on a really selective unit, one can receive something nearly every 200 kHz. In my review, the C440 was totally unable to reject a fairly strong station on 88.7 and receive a weaker one on 88.5.

The tuner also has a rather mediocre specified capture ratio of 2.5 dB. This means that if two signals are being received on the same frequency, one must be 2.5 dB stronger (almost double) than the other for the tuner to select one signal. Most tuners today have capture ratios closer to 1.5 dB, which is a good choice (some sort of capture ratio is needed, but it should be a fairly small number). On the two frequencies I can use to test capture ratio, the C440 picked one of the possible stations, while the Etude picked the other, even though both were using the same antenna in turn. Go figure -- I can't.

In a test with both units in turn using the same antenna, the NAD C440 picked up (in "Manual" tuning mode) 25 stations, 18 of which were received well enough, in my estimation, to be listened to long-term in stereo. The "Etude" received 30 stations, of which 21 I felt I could listen to for a long period. The "Search" tuning mode on the C440 resulted in 15 stations, all of which were received in stereo.

The NAD tuner, however, is somewhat prone to "falsing" -- that is, picking up images of strong signals at multiple spots on the dial, and it was a problem both on manual tuning and search. If you live within a mile or two of a high-power FM station's transmitter, the C440 may encounter some difficulty. In my case, the falsing was more of a nuisance than a real problem.

In most of the country, where one is able to receive 15-25 FM stations, the tuner's reception performance is more than adequate. And, as high selectivity often results in high phase distortion of the received signal, and the degradation of sound that goes with it, it strikes me that the C440 offers a fairly good compromise, because its sound is excellent.

Operating the C440 through my Linn Majik-1P amplifier and either NEAR 50-Me II or the PSB Alpha/Subwoofer 1 speaker systems, I found the NAD to rank right up there with the Etude in quality of reproduction. It reproduced very deep lows and high highs equally well. Although the C440 has a very slight upper-midrange peak on FM that makes most vocals a bit brighter than on the Etude, its sound is by no means strident.

Another point in its favor is that it's quiet. On medium-to-strong signals, its signal-to-noise ratio is the Etude's equal, as is its rejection of SCA "birdies" that are present on some tuners when the stations use a subsidiary carrier for background music, data transmission, or specialty programming services.

Its "Blend" circuit is one of the best I've encountered -- nearly as good as the Etude's. On marginal-strength signals, the blend cleans up the sound with only a small loss of stereo separation.

Finally, commercial FM broadcasters have long believed that "louder is better," and process their audio to cut both the very high and very low frequencies and unnaturally boost the midrange. This is particularly the case in my town. The NAD C440 is a good choice for it or any other town where egregious processing is the rule (most places these days). It is more forgiving of the heavily processed FM station sound than is the Etude (or for that matter, than I am), despite its slight upper-midrange peak. For all these reasons, plus the ease of use the presets offer, much of the time I had the NAD tuner, I used it more than the Etude.

I have only two dislikes of the FM side of the tuner: its lack of any signal strength indicator, and that when the muting is defeated, the unit goes to mono-only reception. Granted, very few signal-strength meters or LEDs are truly accurate, but if one has a movable antenna, any indication is better than none when trying to get the best signal strength. And, in most cases, if a station is too weak to rise above the muting level, it's too noisy to listen to in stereo. Nevertheless, I'd rather have the choice. But both those quibbles are more of personal preference than serious shortcomings of the tuner.

The AM section of the C440 is a station-hunter's dream. It's highly sensitive and selective, and the unit's loop antenna can be aimed effectively. Often, as I turned the antenna the tuner would go from one station on a dial position to another. For me, that was a treat.

Of course, selectivity on AM has its own downside: narrow frequency response. My guess is that the C440 tops out at about 3.5 kHz on AM, and its sound has a nasal quality -- not pronounced but discernible. By comparison, my old Dynaco AF-6 sounds better on AM than the NAD, but doesn't come close to the NAD in its ability to receive nearly any signal that's out there.

In short, I really enjoyed my time with the NAD C440. Although its FM sensitivity and selectivity are only average (but adequate in most situations), its sound sells it in my book. And at $300, it's a reasonably priced way to add excellent FM sound to nearly any system of almost any price. In my opinion, the NAD C440 tuner is a most $ensible choice! - TM