NAD Music System: L40 CD Receiver and PSB Alpha Minis.

Manufacturer: NAD Electronics International, A Member of The Lenbrook Group, 633 Granite Ct., Pickering, Ontario, Canada L1W 3K1; 888/ 772-0000

Distributor: NAD Electronics of America, 6 Merchant Street, Sharon MA 02067; 781/784-8586

Price: NAD Music System, $799 (NAD L40 CD

Receiver, $600; PSB Alpha Minis, $199/pair), PSB Alpha Subsonic 1, $439

Source: Distributor loan

Reviewer: Kevin East

One of the advantages of being the Lenbrook Group is having both NAD Electronics and PSB Speakers under the corporate umbrella -- no messy partnering, brand trade-offs, and the like. The other advantage is the ability to play to the strengths of both product lines. In the case of the NAD Music

System, Lenbrook has mated a new product from industry stalwart NAD, the L40 CD Receiver, with a pair of PSB Alpha Minis, which were reviewed in depth by TM in Issue 75. The rig that NAD shipped this time also included PSB's Alpha Subsonic 1 subwoofer, also reviewed by TM. Of course NAD is venerated for the Model 3020 integrated amplifier, and PSB, if nothing else, is the affordable speaker champ of the Upper 12 and perhaps the Lower 48 and The Rest of the Planet.

The Music System's petite marriage 'tween NAD and PSB also signals Lenbrook's entry into the so-called "executive system" sweepstakes, joining Linn, Onkyo, Harman-Kardon, and others in the high end's long-awaited, but not breathlessly anticipated, discovery of the small-system market, a market long the sole province of Pacific Rim mid- and mass-fi manufacturers such as Aiwa, JVC, Sony, and so on.

The Basics: The heart of the Music System is of course the L40 CD Receiver. This remarkably compact (17"W x 11.25"D x 4.25"H) unit houses a 20 wpc amplifier, preamplifier, tuner (the Receiver) and a full-function compact disc player. Before we go overboard and heap scads of praise on NAD for ingenious engineering feats, keep in mind that the Pacific Rim has been doing this for years -- sometimes well and sometimes not so well -- and if you can get the same package to fit into your 4x4's dashboard, then it shouldn't be that tough to throw the whole shebang into a box that could easily hold three or four dashboard units.

The unit's front panel is neat and well organized. Just above the power switch is a small LED that glows green when the unit is still powered up but is in "stand-by" mode. Below the power switch is a 0.25" headphone jack socket. Inserting a headphone jack into the socket automatically switches the speakers off. Next to the elliptical CD drawer is the LCD display panel. The panel displays information appropriate to the selected playing mode. If you're playing a CD, it tells you what track is playing and how much time has elapsed on that track. Push the "Display" button on the remote or the front panel, and it tells you how much time remains on the CD. Push "Display" again and it tells you the total number of tracks and the total time of the CD. Pushing "Display" a third time returns you to the track/elapsed time information--the display's CD default setting. The panel also has an appropriate indicator if you're repeating tracks or the entire CD, programming the CD (by eliminating tracks--see below--it doesn't "program" by selecting tracks and order in the usual sense), or have invoked the random track selection function.

In Receiver mode, the panel tells you what preset FM station is being tuned (you can store up to 30), its frequency, and whether or not it is broadcasting in stereo. There is also an "Antenna" bar, which calibrates the FM station's signal strength, allowing you to move your antenna around, if need be, for optimal reception. Pushing the "Display" button in Receiver mode would reveal any RDS (Radio Data System) information being broadcast by the FM station. However, despite the fact that some American FM stations are now including RDS information in their broadcast signal, the American version of the L40 does not have an RDS retrieval function. Only the British/European version does. However, if you've named your FM presets (see below), the "Display" button will toggle between the station's frequency and your name. Finally, if the tone defeat and/or bass EQ are engaged, the display panel so notes.

Directly below the display panel is the CD drawer's open/close button, the CD player's play/pause button, and two rocker switches. The "Skip/Preset" switch toggles among tracks in CD mode and FM presets in Receiver mode. The "Input Selector" switch, toggles among the L40's input options, CD, receiver, an auxiliary input, and a tape loop. To the right of the display panel are two rows of four buttons each. The "Repeat" button pressed once plays the same CD track over ... and over. A second press selects the "Repeat All" mode, where either the entire CD or a preprogrammed set of CD tracks is played again ... and again. A third press turns the function off. The "Random" button allows random play of a CD. The Random and Repeat All functions can be combined to recycle a CD with a different random order of playing selections.

The "Random" button in Receiver mode allows you to input, within an eight-character limit, pretty much whatever information about the FM station you're tuned to. This is useful if you want the display to say "WAMU" instead of "88.50". However, the input sequence could be daunting. You use a combination of the "Search/Tune" and "Skip/Preset" buttons to scroll among the full array of alpha and numeric characters, A-Z and 0-9. I input "WAMU" for "88.50". Happily, it took less than 30 seconds, and the balance of station call letters were input without incident. And the function is useful if only for making up for the lack of an RDS function.

The "Tone Defeat" button switches the tone controls out of the signal path. Even if you set the tone controls at the twelve o'clock position, NAD recommends that if you don't use the tone controls, the L40 will provide a cleaner audio signal with the defeat switched in. And, by golly, it works. Switching in the tone defeat lifted a small, but perceptible, veil especially in the mid-high and high frequency ranges. I normally use tone controls to compensate for aging cassette tape deterioration, but I didn't connect a cassette recorder to the L40 and kept the "Tone Defeat" function engaged full time.

The "Bass EQ" button engages a circuit that enhances LF reproduction in the small, bass-limited speakers that will typically be used with the L40. However, to prevent overloading small drivers, the function includes an infrasonic filter that rolls off all sonic information below 25 Hz. While testing the L40 with the Alpha Minis, the Bass EQ was an acceptable and fairly unintrusive LF enhancement. However, with the Dana Model 1s, whose larger cone driver spells superior mid-bass performance, the Bass EQ was at times an unwelcome sound-muddier. With the PSB Alpha Subsonic 1 inserted into the speaker chain, the Bass EQ became superfluous. You're going to have to decide for yourself whether or not the Bass EQ function fits in with your speakers and your room layout.

The "Store" button, like virtually every button on the L40, has uses in both CD and Receiver modes. In CD mode, the Store function along with the "Cancel" button allows you to preprogram tracks you want to skip while playing. "Programming" is subtractive -- you delete unwanted tracks, but you cannot selectively reorder the ones you want to hear. In FM mode, the Store function stores up to 30 FM stations and assigns a preset number to each. While the procedure is straightforward (tune in the desired frequency and press "Store"--the L40 locates the lowest numbered available preset--and press "Store" a second time to confirm the preset location), an extra step, involving two hits on the "Cancel" button, is required if the preset is already occupied. Ordinarily, this would deserve a small mention, but all of the presets on the review sample were occupied, all at the same frequency. So setting presets necessarily involved canceling out the prior occupant. When I mentioned this to NAD, they assured me that it was a fluke and that retail models would have all presets unoccupied.

The "Display" button engages the Display Panel functions. The "Mono" button converts only the tuner signal from stereophonic to monophonic. It has no effect on the CD player or other inputs. If you store a particularly weak FM station in your presets, one that is considerably strengthened if listened to in mono, pressing the Mono button during the storing sequence will cause the stereo signal to automatically convert to mono whenever that preset is recalled. The "Search/Tune" rocker switch skips forward or back within a CD track. In Receiver mode, it tunes in FM stations. The function is looped, so once you get to 108.00 MHz the next frequency is 87.50 MHz. Interestingly, even though the frequency display has two places after the decimal, the tuner advances and decreases in increments of 0.1 Mhz. When a station is correctly tuned, a little dot is illuminated just above the station frequency display. At the extreme upper right is a large volume pot, below which are the tone (bass and treble) controls and the balance control.

The L40's rear panel is suitably austere. There is a set of stereo speaker binding posts that will accept banana plugs, even the dual variety, spade lugs, pins, and bare wire. There is also a standard RCA line-level auxiliary input, input and output for the tape loop, and a preamp output. The "Tape In" slots have the same line-level specifications as the auxiliary input and can be used as another line-level input. There's a coaxial input for a 75-ohm FM antenna, and an input and output for NAD's proprietary linking protocol, which allows multiple NAD components to be controlled from one remote. Finally, there is a hard-wired, two-prong power cord.

The hidden wonder in the L40 is its remote control unit. First, a plain blue button toggles between play and standby modes. Standby mode is the L40's sleep state. The unit is still "on," but consumes only a couple of watts of power. This means of course that effectively turning the unit on and off can be done from the remote. NAD counsels, however, that if the unit is going to be unused for an appreciable period, it should be completely shut off from the front panel. The remote has individual buttons for each of the inputs, versus the rocker toggle on the front panel. It has a "Play/Pause" button for the CD player and a "Stop" button, another function not on the main unit. The "Skip/Preset" and "Display" buttons function identically to their front panel counterparts. Another function not on the front panel is a "Mute" control that lowers the volume by 20 dB -- effectively silencing the unit. I had the L40 installed in my home office, and the Mute button was utterly invaluable when the phone rang. Finally, the coup de grace is the motorized volume pot control, two arrows which raise and lower the volume, ideal when changing from WAMU's quotidian menu of public interest gabfests to WETA's classical music repertoire to jazz and blues on WPFW. Despite my dim views of modern radio as a whole, the introduction of the L40 into the office has made me a radio listener again.

NAD's owner's manual is a trim nine pages, but the panel charts and function descriptions are thoroughly and lucidly covered. (The manual is actually over 80 pages, but that includes the same information translated into another six languages.)

Performance: Like the Linn Classik, the L40 is a paragon of "plug-and-play" virtues. Lenbrook includes in the Music System a pair of 5' Phoenix Gold 16AWG copper speaker leads, twisted and soldered at the ends. I terminated them with double banana plugs when connecting with binding posts on the L40, Alpha Subsonic 1, and Dana Model 1s. The Alpha Minis have spring clip termini into which the steel pins fit quite nicely. When using the Alpha Subsonic 1, I supplemented the set-up with short runs of Kimber 4VS terminated with single banana plugs.

My home office is a cramped affair, so I squeezed the L40 on top of an old Army footlocker (otherwise storage) and put the subwoofer on the floor in front of the locker. The Alpha Minis and Dana Model 1s went on to a couple of old, cheapo Standesign stands. The speakers ended up about 4' apart and about 4.5' from my desk chair. (I told you it was cramped!) For all that I demanded of it in this microenvironment, I could not have been more pleased with its performance. I played it with the Alpha Minis, and later installed the Dana Model 1s. But the sound really came to life when the Alpha Subsonic 1 went in. The Danas' strengths are in the midrange and high frequencies, and the powered sub relieved them of bass duty so the mids and highs shone magnificently. The L40's 20 watts were more than ample for this application.

Digital Recordings' CD-Check was used to test the error correction capabilities of the CD player. As RT explained in exquisite detail in Issue 72, CD-Check's five tracks are designed to reveal the ability of the CD player to correct for loss of digital data. If too many data are lost, then compensatory recovery mechanisms, such as interpolation, data substitution, or signal muting, try to make the loss inaudible. However, when these mechanisms fail, the result is often altered and/or distorted sound reproduction. RT's evaluation standards require that a CD player pass the first three tests, with errors ranging from negligible manufacturing errors to an 0.75mm interruption. The L40's CD player passed the first two tests without a glitch. However, the third band elicited an intermittent stream of pops and clicks sounding very much like the interband "silence" on a worn LP. The fourth and fifth tests unleashed cacophonies of digital grunge. Now, not one music CD ever mistracked or otherwise malfunctioned in the L40, even though its error correction capabilities fell a bit short of expectations.

The Tuner section is a delight. Using a Terk electronically amplified directional beam antenna, the L40 managed to pull in 23 of the 28 FM stations in the metro Washington, D.C. area. We live 25 miles west of Washington, and the five no-shows were all relatively low-output channels from the Maryland suburbs some 35-50 miles away. However, the L40's tuner also pulled in a whopping 22 stations from West Virginia, the Baltimore metro area, and various Virginia points west and south. Folks, 45 stations are a bunch to choose from. The signals received from the "local" stations were uniformly clean. There was no need to switch to a mono operation to keep a station tuned in.

Conclusion: Now we're getting somewhere. After the cost disappointment of the Linn Classik and the fragility of plastic Pacific Rim boxes, the NAD L40 is a delight. Its construction is solid, its performance flawless, and its ease of use, especially from the remote, exceptional. This is a nifty little unit that invites creativity from the space-challenged. While I have a longstanding bias in favor of the Dana Model 1s, the Music System package, the L40 and Alpha Minis, is nice bit of marketing cleverness that should do well.

My sole reservation is cost. As we went into in considerable detail in Issue 76, you can get a full-sized and higher-powered receiver, CD player, and small speakers for quite a bit less than the Music System. The advantage to having multiple components is that you can upgrade piecemeal and that the failure of one doesn't necessarily send your entire system down. All of this presupposes that the Music System will be your main listening rig. If so, I suggest you audition both and critically evaluate your needs, space requirements, and potential upgrade strategy, especially speaker upgrades. Twenty watts per channel will have difficulty driving more complex and/or less efficient speakers.

Conversely, the NAD L40, either as part of the Music System or standing alone, will function beautifully as a small second system for the bedroom, dormitory room, or Office space. And once you get past the upgrading conundrum -- don't expect as wide a range of speaker choices as you would have with a full-powered receiver -- the L40 is an outstanding component. Recommended -- price .reservations notwithstanding. -KE