NAD Masters Series M55 Universal DVD Player
By Thomas J. Norton   •   February, 2007 I recently reviewed the NAD Masters Series M15 AV Surround Preamplifier and M25 seven-channel power amp. A full report on a third entry in the Masters Series, the M55 upconverting universal player, was delayed pending arrival of a second sample.

The M55 costs $1,800 and is as solidly built and visually imposing as its Masters Series siblings. Its performance is also just as exemplary.

We have to be careful today when we use the term "universal" to describe a DVD player. While universal means what it always did in that context—a player that can handle the CD, DVD, SACD, and DVD-Audio formats—it does not yet imply anything about HD DVD and Blu-ray. In common with every current universal player, the NAD M55 will not play discs encoded with either of those high-definition formats.

Walk Around and Setup
The NAD player has an output complement that will be familiar to anyone who has seen the back of any recent high-end DVD player: SPDIF coax and TosLink optical audio out, 5.1-channel analog audio out, analog L/R stereo (called "Mixed Audio Out" here), and composite, S-Video, component, and HDMI video outputs. There is also a VGA video output (not common), an RS-232 connection, an IR Remote in, a 12V trigger, an IEC connector for a detachable power cord, and the main on/off power switch.

The M55's manual has more English language pages than the manual for NAD's M15 pre-pro. My early version had errors in its page references (both the index and references made within the text itself to other information were off by four pages).

All normal DVD player functions are provided. The resolution may be accessed directly from the RES button on the remote without going into the Setup menu. Push it once and a note pops up on-screen (and also in the front panel display window) telling you the output resolution. Push and hold it longer and the image goes blank for a couple of seconds, then pops up again in another resolution, cycling from 480i (component only) through 480p, 720p, and 1080i. There is no 1080p offered, either from component or HDMI, and in common with most other such players the component output is limited to 480p.

The M55's on-screen setup menus are self-explanatory for anyone who has used a high-end player before, and for those who haven't, the manual will guide you through it safely.

As with most players, the analog multichannel outputs of the M55 provide bass management for Dolby Digital, but not for CDs. They can also bass manage DVD-Audio and SACD music sources—a feature not found in all universal players.

The Setup menu for the analog multichannel outputs provides settings for Size, Level (with test tones), and Distance, although oddly there is no functional Distance control for the subwoofer. There are four options for the sub-to-main high- and low-pass crossover filters—80, 100, 120, and 150Hz. You make the subwoofer low-pass selection in the subwoofer setup first, and the other channels automatically switch to the same frequency. You can't choose different high-pass crossover frequencies for, say, the main and surround channels. This limitation is common to all the DVD players I've seen. Some pre-pros—like the NAD M15—offer more flexibility.

DTS, however, cannot be decoded in the player and output from the multichannel analog outs. DTS sources must be passed to an outboard, DTS-compatible AV receiver or pre-pro via a digital connection. I recommend connecting the player's digital output to a DTS- and Dolby Digital-compatible AV receiver or pre-pro for DTS, Dolby Digital, and CD material, reserving the 5.1-channel analog outputs strictly for SACD and DVD-A.

The player also offers a range of video adjustments, including Black Level ("0" or "7.5" IRE—applies only to the composite, S-Video, and component outputs, not HDMI), Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Sharpness, and Gamma. Not all of these controls are accessible on all outputs and at all resolutions. For example, only Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation function with HDMI.

The player has a screen saver mode that kicks in whenever the player is left in pause or stop for eight minutes. While this feature is less important than it was in the CRT days, I still think it's useful precaution for a plasma display (despite the declarations of many plasma manufacturers that burn-in is a thing of the past).

The M55 will not play back at 480i over HDMI or VGA (PAL players change the 480i/p option to 576i/p). This means you must use, at minimum, the player's onboard deinterlacing with an HDMI connection. But the M55 uses Faroudja DCDi video processing, so this is not really a major concern.

Composite and S-Video will play back at 480i only, but who cares? Why anyone would spend $1,800 for a DVD player and use a composite or S-Video connection is a puzzle to me. A composite output does have its uses, however. When I inadvertently switched the HDMI output Off and the picture disappeared, connecting the composite output to my video display let me see the menus again so I could reverse the setting. But you can do the same thing with the component output—or even by just connecting the component Y channel to a composite input on your TV.

Inside, the M55 has all the latest design wrinkles, plus at least one that isn't usually found in universal players. According to NAD, the player keeps SACD audio in DSD mode (Direct Stream Digital—the digital coding format used for SACD) all the way to the D/A converters at the outputs, even when bass management is engaged (and a different bass route is used for SACD than for Dolby Digital and DVD-Audio). More typically, universal players convert the SACD data stream to PCM somewhere inside the player before converting it to analog.

It Isn't High-definition
A tiny "HD" light on the M55's front panel display lights up whenever the player is set to 720p or 1080i. Not only that, but a comment on NAD's website reads, "Furthermore, the NAD M55 uses two separate video D/A converters to process Progressive and Interlaced signals. This eliminates mutual interference between the Progressive and Interlaced signals and allows both Standard Definition and High-definition pictures to be output simultaneously. . ."

I thought we had slain this particular dragon. The 720p and 1080i outputs from the M55—and from every other upconverting conventional DVD player as well, including those with 1080p upconversion—are not high-definition because they originate from a DVD, a standard definition 480i source. The main purpose of upconversion is to scale the 480i coming off a DVD to a higher pixel count, as needed, to match the native resolution of a display. This upconversion can be done by the display itself or by an outboard video processor or upconverting player. Some such devices do a better job than others, but none of them can turn a 480-line source into 720 or 1080 lines of true high-definition. End of rant.

Remote Control
The player's remote control is styled to match the remote furnished with the M15 AV Surround Sound Preamp, but smaller. It's sensibly arranged and easy to use, but with some shortcomings. The Search button searches only for bookmarks, not titles or chapters. If you want to go directly to a specific title or chapter, you push the DISP (Display) button (it only works if there's movement in the on-screen image) and enter the title number directly. Unlike the M15 remote, it is not backlit. The buttons do glow in the dark slightly, but not brightly enough to read their function labels.

If you invest in a complete Masters system, most (but not all) of the player's functions can be accessed from the M15's own multi-device remote. But I used the dedicated M55 remote for this review.

Shifting Gears
If you insert a hybrid SACD/CD disc in the player you will get an on-screen menu that offers an option between the disc's SACD and CD layers. But this menu disappears almost immediately. Fortunately, the default is SACD, which makes sense for a universal player. Most users will have no reason to call up this SACD/CD selection menu (I'm not sure why you'd buy an SACD player and not play back hybrid SACDs in SACD mode). But if for some reason you do, you can bring the SACD/CD selection screen menu back up by pushing the MENU button. If you don't want to mess with a video monitor to listen to music, push MENU, then push either the Up or Down cursor on the remote's "joystick" navigation control. The new setting—SACD or CD—will appear in the player's front panel display (and in the on-screen menu you're not using).

Most home theater fans will, I suspect, want to play back multichannel SACDs in multichannel mode. For those who do not, there is a control in the M55's setup menu to downmix multichannel SACDs to two-channel stereo.

Despite the fact that I had this downmix control turned Off, however, the M55 consistently defaulted to two-channel playback on multichannel SACDs. I lurched down several paths trying to figure out how to switch from this default two-channel mode to multichannel; some of them worked, others did not. I very nearly gave the player a big thumb's down for cruelty to reviewers.