Hello Tony212…I have the NAD658 with Elac ARB51s. NAD TuneIn (I live in USA) provides radio from many countries as of 11/20/2021 (see pic).
The NAD works great…the Elacs sound great…although no expert on Dirac…it does make a difference to adjust well for various reasons…all of which depend on calibrated mic, room acoustics, furniture, etc.
Hi, and thanks for your reply. I'm glad you're happy with the C658 and that it works well with active speakers.
I still have my actives (Dynaudio) and I'm still looking for a preamp with room correction to drive them. I haven't totally discounted the C658 yet.
However, today I discovered news of the NAD C399, which is becoming available here in the UK before the end of the year. It's an integrated amp but looks to me like an updated version of the C658, but with a power amp stage included.
Very similar except it doesn't have balanced preamp outputs. It has more digital inputs and it includes an HDMI ARC port, which is great. It also has a decent headphone amp, designed to drive high impedance top of the range headphones.
It's a bit more expensive than the C658 and the downside is that you have to spend an extra $549 if you want BluOS and DIRAC, as it's only available on an MDC-2 module.
I think this device might be a contender for me as it does everything I need and covers me in case I go back to passive speakers. The power amp stage seems very well specified.
Streaming integrated amplifier with ESS ES9028Q2M and Hypex nCore NC252MP. https://nadelectronics.com/nad-launches-new-c-399-hybriddigital-dac-amplifier/ Flagship Classic Series integrated amplifier featuring Masters Series grade HybridDigital nCore amplification, ESS Sabre DAC and MDC2...
www.audiosciencereview.com
Regarding Tunein, the issue I mentioned previously is specific to the UK, and most international stations are still blocked. Some background to the issue:
completemusicupdate.com
It's not really a problem any more as I now have a Chromecast Audio device, so I can just plug that into an optical port and use a ton of other radio streaming apps on my phone that don't have Tunein's restrictions.