Many complaints are made against NAD products because of poor design, features, and/or reliability. These are legitimate complaints. However, I think it is worth noting that NAD is a "budget audiophile" company, dedicated to bringing their clients the best possible sound quality for their dollar. In doing so, they neccesarily sacrifice some in serivce, reliability, features, etc. Keep that in mind. Caveat emptor. I own a NAD 512, very similar, and it has yet to break on me but, if it does, I knew what I was getting: the best sound for less than $300.

I own a 513. I chose it against direct competition from Rotel and Marantz. It was easiy the best. As my dealer said "When you get it home, it will sond bright and harsh. Give it a month." I am a believer in the burn in. He was absolutely right. It sounded too bright at first, but about there was a marked difference after about 2 weeks. People who don't realize this are likely to judge a component based on its out of the box performance.

What a great sounding player, when everything is working. I began to wonder about the quality of the 513 the first time I had a serious problem. It wouldn't play to the end of a disc. No problem (according to the store I purchased it from), the laser just had to be adjusted a little. When it returned, I noticed some background noise. Having returned this one, I received yet another ( the 3rd) which I found out was returned by someone else (and it was never repaired). This player may sound great for a bit, but it's definately not worth considering. I ended up upgrading to the 515...what an improvement in mechanical and sound quality!

I hate my NAD cd player. I bought it because my old sony cd player thew in the towel, after 8 years. So far my NAD cd player needed, a safty resistor fuse, carrage motor, spindle motor and alignment. Plus the display dosent work. I have never seen a 1.5 year old cd player break so much. The good thing is that it sounds a lot better than my old sony. I recomend this product if you never listen to cds.

beautiful sound.Shitty quality. Like the others display failed and play gets tempermental after awhile. I've already had it fixed three times but it still doesn't want to be my friend.
try the upper models

Its a shame to read so many negative reviews of an NAD product. But in their quest to bring audiophile quality to the masses they are certainly overlooking quality control. I myself have been a big fan of NAD and I've recommended their products to friends in the past, only to be embarrissed by a friend's choice of this machine; with much of the same quirkiness and QC problems mentioned below. Its been a halmark of NAD for years to bring great sounding, high performance, Hi-End gear for mid-fi prices. Maybe they felt pressure to release such a junky product. Don't be steared away from NAD however. Compare the sound of an NAD CD-player to those of Marantz, Meridian, Sony ES; etc.

I must report that this player, which I purchased as a refurbished unit, began to malfunction after 3 weeks. NAD should not be reselling these units if they know they are not going to function. The problem with my unit was that diskswould not play and the display read EE.

Sound quality? No sound!

The NAD 513 that I have is my second, the first having had no display when I got it home. I've had the second for 2.5 years now and is my Number 2 CD player, Number 1 being the Adcom GCD 700. It's been reliable and works well. I find the method that NAD chose to move disks around to be most entertaining--and quite time consuming. The sound is good--not too bright, not too smooth. I would buy NAD again, but probably a single disk unit. 4 stars because of the rocky startup.

Finding the NAD 513 in the "Hall of Shame" exemplifies how misleading statistics can be without qualitative analysis. Most of the negative reviews (one of which is included twice) find fault with the reliability and inconsistency but not with the sound quality. Although this certainly is legitimate reason for dissatisfaction, it seems that the frustration which should be attributed to bad experiences with dealers and repair shops has been redirected unfairly toward the unit itself.
I have owned a NAD 513 for over three years and estimate that I have logged about 1200 hours of playing time on it. I have not experienced any of the problems with mistracking or malfunction described in the reviews posted here.

The sound quality is outstanding for its price range. I also auditioned changers from Marantz, Rotel, Adcom, and Parasound, as well as the NAD 5 disc changer, at the time I bought the NAD 513 and felt it was the clear choice in performance-for-value. I find the three disc motorized drawer transport to be very convenient, easy to operate, and quite steady when I fumble around with other discs in the tray while one is playing. The only significant drawback I can think of is that it does not have digital output so cannot be upgraded with an outboard DAC.

My system:

McCormack DNA-0.5 Deluxe amp
Parasound preamp and tuner
Rega tt w/ BPS cartridge
B&W 604 speakers
Kimber 8TC biwire
MIT/Kimber/Apature interconnects
Tice line conditioner
AudioPrism IsoBearings under the NAD 513

I noticed that there is a duplicate entry of an unfavorable review in this list.
I am posting this to offset the statistical imbalance caused by the false datum.

Please see my review below for detailed comments about this product.