I was going to post this last Friday but due to UPS sending my monoblocks in the wrong direction and not putting things right quickly there was a delay in receiving them.
I had been away from home for sometime and as soon as I returned the Nord NC500 monoblocks were despatched on a next day service as promised, but UPS sent them all over the country and I received them 3 days late.
Anyway they are here now and they were very well packed (just as well) for transit in very good quality boxes with internal foam linings to keep them protected.
I must say I am very pleased with the look and finish. Workmanship is of a very high standard inside and out, mine are black cases. Speaker bing posts are very solid, they and the XLR connectors are very high quality.
As I said before they are made by Nord - IQ speakers, the price I paid for two of them is £1,014.00 including delivery and VAT and I consider this to be a real bargain.
Plugged them in switched on and everything worked fine, no thumps, no hum no hiss, silence when nothing playing just as it should be.
So how do they sound well I have not heard my favourite music sound this good before. They are neutral, very detailed, clean sounding and have exceptionally good bass control. The clarity is amazing.
Sorry but I will have to complete this later as have to go out for a while.
Back now so will finish.
I find there are subtle details in the music that I had not noticed before. My favourite violin concertos and orchestral music sound so clear and detailed it is a revelation. Also because of the power available the sound is effortless and the sound stage is huge.
I am not very good at describing sound all I can say is that I believe these amplifiers have improved my system considerably and I feel that for the quality it is a very reasonable cost.
The Nord model that I have is fitted with the Hypex input buffers and LM4562 op amps which I believe are the same as fitted to the Acoustic Imagery ATSAH 500 monoblocks that I was originally thinking of buying. This is before I discovered the Nord monoblocks at a much lower price.
A full review of the Acoustic Imagery amplifiers was published in another well known Hi Fi magazine recently and they were highly rated.
On the subject of sound quality when I purchased my monoblocks I knew that Nord would be offering up rated buffers with high quality discrete op amps at a later date but I did not want to wait the extra 4/5 weeks for delivery and so purchased the amplifiers with the standard Hypex buffers.
I did want the upgrade as I have heard that it does improve the sound but did not want to wait so I arranged with IQ Speakers to have the uprated parts sent later. The uprated buffers will soon be available and I hope I have made the right decision as these monoblocks sound pretty good as they are.
I will be fitting them myself as it is quite a simple job. IQ would of course do this for you if you wish in fact Colin at Nord - IQ offered to come to my home at no cost and I live about 100 miles away but I told him not to worry as I have done many similar tasks in the past and that I was happy to do it.
I should add that in a few weeks time I believe Nord will be offering the amplifiers with uprated buffers already fitted with a choice of op amps. Also it is not just the op amps that are different some of the components on the board are also uprated
Nord are very kindly going to send me Burson V5 and Sparkos op amps so that I can try them both and keep the one I like the best. With either I hope to have another step up in detail and sound quality thus for a small extra cost I will be turning the basic Nord monoblocks into even greater giant killers.
I will give you further info on how they sound after fitting the uprated input buffers later on , next year.
Even with the extra cost for the uprated buffers the coist is still well under the Acoustic Imagery price and all the other manufactures using the NC500 modules.