Hi guys,
I bought an AVR380 from Audico on the special, and finally got around to installing it this afternoon.
First impressions, right out of the box:
Very intuitive menu, much easier to navigate and setup than the NAD.
And the sound... better, much better than the NAD when it comes to sound clarity. Now I haven't even done any Audyssey setup, simply crossover at 80Hz. It just so happened that War of the Worlds was playing on DSTV when I switched it on and the 5.1 sound (which is not that great on DSTV) was obviously way better than it had been on the NAD.
Switched to the PS3 and started playing Sicario, and again, some of the sounds from the opening 5 minutes I'd never heard before (same DTS copy). And then the clincher was the Apocalypse Now opening scene, which again was showing some new sounds.
I then played some of my favourite FLAC files (Mark Knopfler, Manu Katche, Eagles), and again, in standard stereo mode the sound was perceptibly clearer, 'cleaner', more detailed. There were trombone notes on the Manu Katche set that I had not heard before that were now jumping out.
I will spend this weekend doing the setup, speaker distances, etc., and report back.
What I do not like:
It doesn't have on-the-fly speaker/config modes like the NAD does, which makes it incredibly easy to switch speaker setups. On the Arcam one has to open the menu, fiddle around, etc.
The source switching is also not very quick, there's a 1-2s delay when switching from DSTV to PS3.
I'm sure I will find some other cons, but so far it looks like I'll be keeping it and selling the NAD
I bought an AVR380 from Audico on the special, and finally got around to installing it this afternoon.
First impressions, right out of the box:
Very intuitive menu, much easier to navigate and setup than the NAD.
And the sound... better, much better than the NAD when it comes to sound clarity. Now I haven't even done any Audyssey setup, simply crossover at 80Hz. It just so happened that War of the Worlds was playing on DSTV when I switched it on and the 5.1 sound (which is not that great on DSTV) was obviously way better than it had been on the NAD.
Switched to the PS3 and started playing Sicario, and again, some of the sounds from the opening 5 minutes I'd never heard before (same DTS copy). And then the clincher was the Apocalypse Now opening scene, which again was showing some new sounds.
I then played some of my favourite FLAC files (Mark Knopfler, Manu Katche, Eagles), and again, in standard stereo mode the sound was perceptibly clearer, 'cleaner', more detailed. There were trombone notes on the Manu Katche set that I had not heard before that were now jumping out.
I will spend this weekend doing the setup, speaker distances, etc., and report back.
What I do not like:
It doesn't have on-the-fly speaker/config modes like the NAD does, which makes it incredibly easy to switch speaker setups. On the Arcam one has to open the menu, fiddle around, etc.
The source switching is also not very quick, there's a 1-2s delay when switching from DSTV to PS3.
I'm sure I will find some other cons, but so far it looks like I'll be keeping it and selling the NAD
