NAD Masters M33 -- first review

[David A]

Not sure it is right to downplay the review because Dirac Live was used to correct the room, and an expert was brought in (and what he did is easy to do).

To me, Dirac Live is an integral part of the M33, just like SAM is integral to the Expert Pro. It is ok to compare the M33 with and without Dirac Live to see its impact. It does not make sense to use the M33 without Dirac Live in any comparison with other products.

Actually, I'm going to disagree and say that it does make sense to use the M33 without Dirac Live in any comparison with other products. I you want to compare the M33 with a Devialet, the only fair comparison is to compare the M33 without Dirac Live to the Devialet without SAM. My reason for saying that is that Dirac Live and SAM are doing very different things. Add them to the comparison and you're comparing an apple to an orange. If you want as close to and "all things being equal" comparison, you compare the amps without using Dirac Live or SAM.

I've got no problems with comparing the M33 to itself with and without Dirac Live active, or comparing the Devialet to itself with and without SAM active, but once you start comparing one amp with Dirac Live active to another amp with SAM active you're no longer just comparing amps, you're also comparing a room correction system to a loudspeaker bass frequency phase correction system and those technologies are doing entirely different things and some people may benefit more from room correction than from SAM, definitely those with speakers for which a SAM profile is not available. On the other hand those have an acoustically good room because of room design and/or physical acoustic treatments may derive little benefit from Dirac Live and more benefit from SAM if a profile is available for their speakers. There are valid reasons why a Devialet user may have no use for SAM and why an M33 user may have no use for Dirac live, and those reasons plus the fact that the 2 technologies involved are correcting quite different problems, are why it really does make sense to compare amps with technologies such as these to each other without these technologies active if you're going to compare one amp to another.