NAD 522
Little is documented about the NAD 522. It is a CD player, reviewed in the July 1998 issue of HiFi/Stereo Review (p.46-47) by Ken C. Pohlmann of Hammer Laboratories. He said he had bench-tested hundreds of CD players since 1983. He found the NAD 522 delivered performance that needed no excuses despite its low-cost position, as reported in HiFI-Stereo (July 1998, p.47).
The rear panel is simple - two RCA jacks and a power cord. There is no front-panel headphone jack, and the reviewer would have liked one. On the bench, frequency response was flat to less than 0.5 dB, and distortion at 0 dB was low, according to a HiFI-Stereo review (July 1998, p.47). In listening, the 522 was judged capable of conveying soft and delicate musical elements, reverberation tails, and "silent" room ambience, which are among the hardest things to reproduce well.
Beyond that review, almost nothing else is recorded about the NAD 522. No production years, original price, or detailed specifications have been located in period directories or service literature. The unit appears to have been a straightforward CD player from NAD's late-1990s lineup.
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