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Substance over Flash
Pros
Great styling, volume knob, nice tone controls, fantastic sound
Cons
weak tuner, no changer control, clunky faceplate
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Heartily recommended to everyone who wants quality sound and elegant design, no glitz and flash here, just great sound!
I love this unit! Now that I have that out of the way, lets look at what this is... and isn't. The styling is the first thing that appealed to me here. No color pictures, no dolphins splashing around, no gimmicky response curves or bouncing displays in beat to the music. No motorized faceplates and no scrolling advertisements. What you do get is a cleanly and logically styled faceplate that displays the needed info and nothing more. In the upper left corner is the power button that does double duty as a source change button. Right below this is the rotary volume knob. To the immediate right is the select button. Press and release this quickly and you cycle through the tone, fader, and balance adjustments. Push and hold it for a few seconds and it activates the loudness function. The main portion of the disply, to the right of the select button is the information display. When the unit is off you get the time. When it's on it will display aux if you are using the auxiliary inputs. Otherwise it displays your chosen radio station or the track/time if playing a CD.
The right side of the faceplate, at the top, is the CD eject button. Below that is the am/fm button and, below that the preset scan/auto memory button. The bottom row consists of tune/CD track up/down buttons and 6 clearly labeled buttons for the CD transport and radio presets. A small button in the lower right corner releases the faceplate and a very tiny, recessed button on the lower left is for resetting the unit in case of a problem. That's it! I love it, no 400 page manual to figure out the color, 20 function display that contributes nothing to the sound.
Let's go over the pros first. I've already covered the styling but it gets on more mention because it only takes a few minutes to get all the controls down pat. The volume knob is great, no more having to either repeatedly press a button or hold it down to change volume, I wish all units worked this way. It's not a smooth rotation but it's well made and has a good feel. The tone controls are the next best thing to an equalizer, you have bass, midrange and treble. While you can't change the center frequencies they are well chosen (+/- 11db at 100 hz, 1khz, and 10khz).
This is a modestly priced unit and it's clear where that money was spent, on the quality of sound. This unit gets the best promo I can give... it adds nothing of it's own to the music! The 3 pre-outs make setting up a breeze. I haven't used it yet but the auxiliary inputs are a great bonus. I cannot comment on the onboard amp as I have never used it.
Nothing is perfect though and the FM tuner on this unit is a prime example. If you give it a good, strong signal you'll be rewarded with sound quality about as good as it gets for an FM tuner. The problem is that it's a pretty insensitive tuner so you have to have strong, local stations to really enjoy it. Stations that used to come in clear on my Blaupunkt are marginal on the Nak. The lack of changer controls is definitely a con. It's easy to forget when listening to this and with the classy styling that this is actually the second from the bottom of the Nak CD deck line. I still think they should've included changer controls.
The clunkiness of the faceplate isn't due to the design, which is clean and elegant. It refers to the way it's held onto the deck. It uses two round, spring loaded clips on the left side that it snaps in and out of and a spring loaded clip on the right that is released with the release button. What makes it clunky, at least here in the U.S. is that the release is on the far side for the driver making it awkard to use.
I couldn't be happier overall with this unit. The moderate price belies the sound quality. While the trendy Las Vegas Blvd. displays may look spiffy on the typical teenagers dash, given the relative expense of the display and support software... how much is really left to build a quality sound reproduction unit? The money here is where it belongs and I can only hope the next generation of Nak units, reportedly due fairly soon, continue with this philosophy... but feel free to add mp3 playback!
The right side of the faceplate, at the top, is the CD eject button. Below that is the am/fm button and, below that the preset scan/auto memory button. The bottom row consists of tune/CD track up/down buttons and 6 clearly labeled buttons for the CD transport and radio presets. A small button in the lower right corner releases the faceplate and a very tiny, recessed button on the lower left is for resetting the unit in case of a problem. That's it! I love it, no 400 page manual to figure out the color, 20 function display that contributes nothing to the sound.
Let's go over the pros first. I've already covered the styling but it gets on more mention because it only takes a few minutes to get all the controls down pat. The volume knob is great, no more having to either repeatedly press a button or hold it down to change volume, I wish all units worked this way. It's not a smooth rotation but it's well made and has a good feel. The tone controls are the next best thing to an equalizer, you have bass, midrange and treble. While you can't change the center frequencies they are well chosen (+/- 11db at 100 hz, 1khz, and 10khz).
This is a modestly priced unit and it's clear where that money was spent, on the quality of sound. This unit gets the best promo I can give... it adds nothing of it's own to the music! The 3 pre-outs make setting up a breeze. I haven't used it yet but the auxiliary inputs are a great bonus. I cannot comment on the onboard amp as I have never used it.
Nothing is perfect though and the FM tuner on this unit is a prime example. If you give it a good, strong signal you'll be rewarded with sound quality about as good as it gets for an FM tuner. The problem is that it's a pretty insensitive tuner so you have to have strong, local stations to really enjoy it. Stations that used to come in clear on my Blaupunkt are marginal on the Nak. The lack of changer controls is definitely a con. It's easy to forget when listening to this and with the classy styling that this is actually the second from the bottom of the Nak CD deck line. I still think they should've included changer controls.
The clunkiness of the faceplate isn't due to the design, which is clean and elegant. It refers to the way it's held onto the deck. It uses two round, spring loaded clips on the left side that it snaps in and out of and a spring loaded clip on the right that is released with the release button. What makes it clunky, at least here in the U.S. is that the release is on the far side for the driver making it awkard to use.
I couldn't be happier overall with this unit. The moderate price belies the sound quality. While the trendy Las Vegas Blvd. displays may look spiffy on the typical teenagers dash, given the relative expense of the display and support software... how much is really left to build a quality sound reproduction unit? The money here is where it belongs and I can only hope the next generation of Nak units, reportedly due fairly soon, continue with this philosophy... but feel free to add mp3 playback!
