Thirty years ago, I started work in a little shop in Exeter, selling Technics Hi-Fi (remember them?!). We did pretty well, but then another Hi-Fi shop opened up just across the road from us and stole all our customers. The simple reason for this was that our rival was selling a brand new 'wonder product' called the NAD 3020. What made the NAD so revolutionary was that its designers placed far less emphasis on paper specification and far more on 'real world' sound quality. So although the 3020 only output 20 watts per channel, it outperformed all its rivals by a massive margin and was effortlessly 'musical' to boot. The 3020 turned the amplifer market upside down, sold a million units (a record that still stands today) and made NAD famous throughout the world.

Nowadays, the most popular piece of stereo equipment is the high-quality all-in-one micro system - so guess what NAD have just launched? Yes, it's a revolutionary new micro unit with the high quality sound performance we've come to expect from them, plus a host of useful facilities as icing on the cake. The most significant facility is the inclusion of a front mounted USB port which allows a customer to playback music that's been recorded on mp3, or (perhaps most interestingly of all) to record CD or radio onto a USB device. It's early days, but we may see history repeat itself here!