NAD M33 home theater bypass?

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34 comments

  • Official comment
    Sam R.

    Hello,

    At this time, the M33 has no fixed volume feature and so no Home Theatre Bypass feature so to speak. 

    That being said I have forward to our engineering team.

    Regards,
    Sam R.

  • Dominique R

    Bonjour,

    Avez-vous des nouvelles au sujet de l’implémentation de la fonction By-Pass pour la connexion des pré-amplicateurs HomeCinema au NAD M33 ?

    Cordialement

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  • Peter Honkoop

    Hi Dominique,

    My French is really bad (it stops somewhere at deux bierre), I guess you're asking me about the status of the fixed volume? If so: nothing from NAD as of now. For me, there's a lot of work that remains to be done on the M33: source/input selection with the Bluesound app is inconsistent, source selection on the M33 screen only works when an input signal is available, the remote control has yet another structure in it's functionality, and the button layout is incomprehensible. next to that, the different remote channels of the remote are all consumed by the M33, which is also weird.

    The 12v trigger is also something for improvement: why not setup this trigger according to a source selection? integration of M33 with other NAD products (M50.2 for instance) is very limited, even when using the RS-232 cables between M33 and for instance M50.2. All in all: M33 software is basically a beta version, and the paying users / owners are beta testers that first need to pay €5000. Strange. Specially since there's no published road map which might imply that this is the end state. For me, it will mean getting rid of my NAD devices

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  • Tony W.
    Product Support Manager

    Hi Peter

    Please feel free to contact support@nadelectronics.com and they will be happy to assist or make recommendations with issues you are seeing with your triggers.

    As for volume limits - it is something we are looking into and has been escalated to our product development team for review. It will however not include Home Theatre Bypass.

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  • Dominique R

    Non je parlais d’une évolution du M33 « By-Pass », connectez les sorties Pré-out d’un amplificateur HomeCinema...

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  • Tony W.
    Product Support Manager

    Oui - you can connect the pre-outs to another amplifier such as your AV Receiver.

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  • Dominique R

    Non, c’est l’inverse que je souhaite...
    Je souhaiterais brancher les sorties pré-out d’un amplificateur AV aux entrées By-Pass du M33...
    Quand cela sera t il possible ?

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  • Peter Honkoop

    despite my non-existing knowledge of the French language, I sense that Dominique says that an inversion of the pre amp and amp proposal won't work, and I concur. Why buy an expensive stereo  amp to hook thsi up to a AVR? that's like putting a Ferrari engine on your bike when complaining that a bike is slower than a Ferrari: it won't give the desired driving experience.

    it's pretty normal to have a volume bypass on a stereo integrated amp, even NAD had this in older amps. And it makes sense to hook up an AVR to the M33 for the front speakers. So it's just an incomplete M33 feature set that we're facing here? So I'm not talking volume limits here, I'm talking volme bypass.

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  • Dominique R

    Exacte!
    Il n’y a pas de by-pass pour mon AVR sur M33... :(

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  • Peter Honkoop

    but can't you connect a pre out (either analog RCA/XLS, or digital, like coax or optical) to the M33?

     

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  • Dominique R

    non il faut pouvoir connect les sorties préamplifiées L/R de mon AVR au M33.

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  • Magnus J

    Yes you could, but a ht passthrough means a fixed volume and that the signal bypasses the tone control/Dirac Live, so the AVR sees it like a power amp. for the front speakers, used in a multichannel system (5.1, 7.1 and so on) that way you can use the M33 for music and your avr with movies with the same front speakers.

    Otherwise you will have two units to control the volume and tone controls.

    Its common om premium amps.

     

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  • Dominique R

    Sur quelles entrées du NAD faut il connectent les sorties de l’AVR ?

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  • Peter Honkoop

    Hi Magnus,

    Indeed, it's common, but Tony W states that this won't be implemented on the M33. Maybe a not so premium amp?

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  • Dominique R

    Ok, c’est vraiment dommage cela à pour conséquence que sans by-pass je ne puisse acheter le M33. Cette fonction est pratique pour partager ces enceintes L/R entre AVR et Hifi.

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  • Magnus J

    Well I fixed with buying a Hegel H390 instead...

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  • Dominique R

    Le Hegel H390 a des entrées by-pass pour AVR ?

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  • Dominique R

    pas de télécommande ni trigger sur le Hegel H390 ?

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  • Magnus J

    I solved that with sending remote commands over ip

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  • Dominique R

    quelle telecommande ip ?

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  • Peter Honkoop

    on the NAD site, one can download a (very old) BluOS HTML / XML command list. Alternatively, start a Telnet session to the IP of your amp / preamp, and  type a questionmakr followed by enter (set Enter to CR LF).

    Another approach is setting up a Wireshark session on your computer, start the BluOS app on your laptop, and just see all the commands going through your Wireshark window. a wee bit more work, but you'll get much more than the commands listed in the above mentioned document on the NAD site.

    The one gets a device specific list of alle Telnet config commands. This is not bluOS, but it does work. 

     

    ANd Magnus: yeah Hegel seems to be an alternative too. Big old A/B amp, but no AES/EBU, and a less luxerious display. But definitely something for me to start auditioning, I don't see BlueOS and NAD coming up with fully functional software with is however part of the price we paid for our NAD gear.  so indeed, I'm looking at a NAD replacement this year, I'll ask on the NAD fora too what good replacements will be for the M33 and M50.2. 

    Moreover, NAD still states that COVID forces all employees to work at home, same as here in NL I'm working at an IT company too from home, but this did not influence our productivity nor our quality. So BluOS and/or NAD is just not up to par anymore / given up on the quality beloning to the price and marketing level.

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  • Dominique R

    Et le NAIM Uniti Nova est un concurrent sérieux pour des Focal Electra 1028 BE...

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  • Magnus J

    Yes no AES/EBU on the H390, but instead you get a usb interface with dsd up to 384kHz, which for me is more interesting.

    Old class A/B fits nicely with my Martin Logans :)

    I will stay in the Bluesound infrastructure, so I will connect a Node 2i to the H390, Im also working on a simple display solution with javascript to mimic the M33s nice display to see whats beeing played and in which format, you can do a http get to the Node 2i and retrieve a lot of information.

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  • André Döring

    Hi Magnus,
    how did you resolved the problem with the missing home theater volume fix?
    Is there really a solution? Maybe with the Logitech harmony?

    Does the M33 „save“ the volume level on each input or is it a General volume over all inputs?

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  • Peter Honkoop

    According to NAD, the issue here is that the time delay for analog inputs from an AVR to the M33 would be too high for comfort. that is: NAD claims that the amp section in the M33 is a digital amp (while I always thought it was essentially an analogue amp), so that ADC processing is needed which causes the delay. So one needs an AVR that can set a  a delay/'lip sync' on separate channels or something like that.

    I would opt for something like a HDMI splitter, that splits the 2 (digital) front channels from the rest of the channels, but that still doesn't solve the volume settings on those 2 front channels.

    Best option IMHO: perhaps NAD can produce a MDC card or so, that accepts an HDMI (arc), takes the 2 front channels and processes these, and outputs through a return HDMI the rest of the channels back to an AVR? That MDC is the primary input from a blue ray player or so, and the MDC outputs to the AVR, in such a way that the volume setting is arranged for by the M33 (it's volume knob is also volume for all other channels). Wish list item!

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  • Magnus J

    Sorry Andre, I did not fix it, I changed to a Hegel H390.

    Regarding the delay, I guess you could try if the delay is noticeable if you connect your avr to any analogue input on the M33 and turn off Dirac and tone controls, if its not noticeable it should be possible.

    Otherwise I would consider that as a designflaw as other manufacturers of digital amps, lika Arcam, has solved it.

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  • Nicolas Heldenbergh

    BluOS 3.14 is coming in the next few days "with great added features..." => ok, we'll have to wait and discover these great features to come but could they be related to some sort of HOME THEATER BYPASS?? or is it really a dead end? => because, otherwise...the only solution would be selling the M33 for a C658+C298 instead or changing all setup for the M17v2i+M28...

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  • Tony W.
    Product Support Manager

    Hi All - as mentioned, the NAD M33 does not support Home Theatre Bypass.

    There are no plans at this time to include it in a near future release. For more questions or concerns about the NAD M33 or NAD's T-Series AVR Line Up, please feel free to reach out to NAD Electronics directly at support@nadelectronics.com

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  • André Döring

    Hi Toni,

    understood and NAD never mentioned this feature with the M33.

    My question nevertheless is, is it possible to use the M33 with Analoge Pre-Outs of an AVR and the Line-In on M33 when setting the volume level manually?

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  • Tony W.
    Product Support Manager

    Hi Andre

    It's best that our friends at NAD Electronics answer this, please reach out to them at support@nadelectronics.com 

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