NAD CS1 Review

Black elegant cases with rounded edges – these are hallmarks of a distinctive design line from NAD. At least in recent years, because when the company was founded more than half a century ago, NAD devices hardly stood out visually from their competitors. However, from that time comes a design role model for NAD: the legendary HiFi brand Braun. You’re reminded of this when looking at the network player CS1.

At this price, plastic as a housing material is acceptable, especially since it appears visually high-quality. With dimensions of 14 × 5.5 × 14 centimeters, the CS1 presents itself as a “Little Black Box”, with only a power switch with LED on the front.

Minimalist Connection Section

NAD also holds back on the connections: Line-out via RCA, plus digital coaxial and Toslink, network via LAN and Wi-Fi. The USB-C port is only used for power supply; an external mass storage device—such as an SSD—cannot be connected. Playing your own music collection can still be managed, although with a detour. To do this, you set up the internet router (for example, the Fritzbox) as a NAS media server, which then makes the music on the connected USB storage available in the home network. This is done via the widespread UPnP/DLNA protocol, which the CS1 also supports. To fill the USB storage with music, the Fritzbox allows the use of the SMB network protocol. This enables the USB storage to be set up as a network drive on PC or Mac. This way, for example, CD rips can be conveniently transferred via drag-and-drop.

The operation of the “Black Box” is done via apps; however, NAD doesn’t offer its own. This brings a peculiarity for setup, namely the use of Google Home, which is available as an app for Android and iOS. This is particularly necessary for Wi-Fi and multi-room operation. Other things are largely preset, such as UPnP and Roon, which therefore don’t need to be activated separately on the CS1. Direct access to music services isn’t possible anyway. It’s much better with manufacturer-specific apps that can handle all that.

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There are several ways to operate the CS1. It can be done for free via the UPnP protocol, in a dual use: first for music supply via access to a UPnP server (NAS) and then as a UPnP renderer. In doing so, the music is forwarded to the CS1 for playback. A UPnP app for smartphone or tablet is needed for this—like BubbleUPnP or mconnect. With the CS1, NAD uses a platform different from other NAD streamers, namely devices that work with their own BlueOS app but don’t support the UPnP protocol.

The second operation option is via Roon Remote since the CS1 is Roon certified. This allows access to your own music stored via Roon Server, but also to web radio and the services Qobuz and Tidal. Prerequisites for Roon and music services are, of course, paid subscriptions.

As a third option, the CS1 offers operation via the network protocols Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect—conveniently from within the respective apps. Furthermore, music reception via Chromecast and AirPlay 2 is possible.

Last but not least, the CS1 works with Bluetooth, so it can receive music from practically all smartphones. However, the transmission only uses the standard codec SBC, whose quality reaches about MP3 with 128 kbps.

The technical heart of the CS1 is the compact audio streaming module LS10, which uses a powerful quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with 1.5 GHz. It’s supported by an ARM Cortex-M3 MCU, a sub-processor for special tasks. Moreover, the LS10 module contains a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo chip. The digital/analog conversion runs on a differential design based on the PCM5141 chip from Texas Instruments.

The theoretical resolution of the converter is 24-bit/192 kHz, via Chromecast it’s limited to 24-bit/96 kHz, via AirPlay 2 to 16-bit/44 kHz. The CS1 works best with Roon, namely with maximum resolution, gapless playback, and fine gradation for volume control. It works similarly well with UPnP apps, even if not gapless. However, when playing back via the analog output, a frequency response limitation to 16 kHz becomes effective. This means the CS1 doesn’t quite achieve CD quality.

In the listening test, the NAD streamer behaved quite decently, producing tight, rich bass as well as stable mids and highs. Small losses occurred in terms of plasticity and fine detail, while the spatiality—for example, with electronic music from Kraftwerk—came across very well. However, the small NAD streamer is still a good way off from genuine, high-caliber high-res playback.

NAD CS1 Report

NAD’s network streamer offers good audio quality but doesn’t achieve what’s possible with today’s hi-res equipment: While it does play high-resolution audio like FLAC 192 kHz/24-bit, it limits the highest frequency output at the RCA output to 16 kHz. The signal-to-noise ratio reaches excellent 119 dB only in silence; with input signals quieter than -100 dB_FS, the output is muted. The usable dynamic range in music is 92 dB. The diagrams show the distortion spectrum (red) with the 1 kHz tone filtered out at full digital level and maximum volume (1.9 V; 0.012% THD+N). The second diagram shows the spectrum (L/R) with 1 kHz at -95 dB_FS, just before the muting threshold.

THE APP CHECK

NAD doesn’t offer its own app for the CS1. Control can be done via UPnP apps such as HiFi Cast (left). This allows access to your own collection and music services. Control via Roon Remote works very well, and through network protocols like Tidal Connect, streaming to the streamer from the respective app works as well.

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