NAD's C 3050LE is 100% 'VINTAGE' Future-Fi!
NAD's C 3050LE is 100% 'VINTAGE' Future-Fi!
👉🏻 This episode is brought to you by Patreon:
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🎥 Camera: John Darko
🎬 Editor: John Darko
🛋 My listening room in 2022:
🎵 Song IDs? Playlists of all music heard in this video – and other videos – can be found on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/johndarko
👉🏻 As mentioned in this video…
NAD C 3050LE at Crutchfield
🛒 https://howl.me/cinuofQ3sLP 👈🏻 product is no longer available (yes, I asked) 😩
Podcast interview with NAD Product Manager Cas Oostvogel
🎧 https://darko.audio/2022/10/the-c-3050-le-isnt-your-fathers-nad-amplifier/
NAD’s UcD HybridDigital white paper
📖 https://nadelectronics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/HybridDigital_WhitePaper.pdf
👉🏻 Also seen in this video…
PSB Passif 50
🛒 https://howl.me/cinPMKoEMHu
NAD M10V2
🛒 https://howl.me/cinPO7Jw7su
NAD C700
🛒 https://howl.me/cinPO7xXwoH
JBL SA750
🛒 https://howl.me/cinPO7utuop
LEAK Stereo 130
🛒 https://howl.me/cinPO7Wzy0A
#vintage #retro #futurefi
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NADs website actually list this for $3,050.00 not $1,970. Quite a difference
cheers John. Ordered one as it looks phenomenal, if it sounds as good as it looks I will be a happy camper. If not its a lemon then will be forced to return.
Please tell NAD to send me one. In silver, Thanks.
Would you think the Main Input is a fixed gain (bypassing pre-amp) input, so I could use this as a Stereo Future-Fi amp, and yet slave it to my HT receiver so I can use the same speakers?
If so – I cannot see anything on the front panel to choose this input and not dealt with Nad before – would you think is this done in the app OR will the pre-out and Main in be bridged externally when it comes in?
What they don’t tell you about class D is that they are irreparable 9 times out of 10. No body is going to be pulling these amps out of closets and restoring them. dunno about you, but if I cant work on my own stuff I don’t want to know about it, that goes for everything I own
Interesting amp has Pre-Out and Main-In. Does the Dirac still work if you hookup an external amp. Is the DAC upto the task …not ESS (the Leak 130 for example was embarrassingly bad). I’ve ordered anyway but I am concerned … Fingers crossed at this point.
lost me with the $$$. well, actually I changed my stereo a year ago….
Great video John. Really that’s all you need to do. Straight cuts voiceover’s no fancy camera moves with fancy music behind it. “Just the facts ma’am”
Your video title threw this Vintage guy off and for a loop ? Never heard a Vintage class D amp 😆 Would love to hear one and compare to a real vintage amp like me Sansui G8000 or Marantz 2270 or Yamaha Ca-810 – (Did you mean a Vintage look ? ) bass management is nice if you use active subs .
Thanks for the video I
‼
Amp looks Great ! N.A.D. has always been a solid Company – Yamaha/Leak/NAD/Techniques/Luxman all of them have brought back the Vintage Flare
Thanks John APPRICATE you my dude !
Thanks for the video, well worth the view, lot of info I haven’t heard before.
that said on NAD and Class D stuff: After not being happy with it I just got rid of my "100 Watts" NAD M10v2… and got a Musical Fidelity M5si proper class A/B amplifier. I am not going to "fall" for the Class D stuff again, just sounds to anemic and not enough "punch" and "grunt" from the lows for my KEF R3s nor my Focal Kantas. Sorry to hear that NAD is steering completely towards the digital domain… not my cup of tea.
Will definitely move up the food chain with better NAIM or even McIntosh gear ( if I can afford the latter)… Class D and NAD not considering worth my money nor my time… but other listeners tastes with other speakers to drive might come to a different opinion….
Hi John I love the look of the NAD compared with modern amplifiers .
if I had the disposable amount, I would have loved to waste away the $4500 for the 3050LE and PSB 50 pair, just for the looks. I am sure they will not sound "awful" anyway. In a less than ideal room to listen, form-over-function would be enough. No, wait! form AND function, over the unknown sound quality. Looking forward to the actual review….
Whenever a product has fake wood that is a tipoff they are trying to justify a price that they believe is on the high side
I prefer my ADCOM GFA 555mk2 any time.
I think the term "load invariant" is not really correct in your description of the NAD C3050LE. Amplifiers that drive passive loudspeakers should be as close as possible to ideal voltage sources; i.e., they should not have output voltage that varies under different loads.Which, by definition means that a load invariant amp that puts out 100 watts into 8 ohms, should put out 200 watts into 4 ohms, not 100. What a 100 watt spec into both 8 and 4 ohms indicates to me is an amplifier that has significant current limitation when driving low impedance loads. But…that’s kind of "retro" too, as many of the old integrated amps and receivers were not comfortable driving low impedance loads either. Will any of this matter? Probably not…most people will buy it because of the cool (and useless) VU meters on the front. Maybe they should have lit them up in blue….or does Mac have a patent on that?
Sounds like a boatload of unnecessary features.
I pre-ordered one of these a few days after they became available. I have doubts that i will receive one and Crutchfield has already taken it off their site. My first good sound came from a NAD 7240PE; never forgot about that amp. Not sure if i will get a similar experience out of class D given my most recent audition of the M33 but just could not pass up the feature list on this amp.
UcD class D modules are also made by Hypex, it just a previous generation (prior to NC-series).. NAD is one of the first companies that has been using Hypex UcD modules for many years.
I won’t buy any NAD gear again.
And after 50 years we selebrate Made in China, great job NAD.
Great Pre-Review! Plus I always dig the out-takes. I really enjoy your channel and the gear you review. How about a review of the Leak Stereo 130 + Leak CDT? I love the looks! Carry on.
J’apprends à ré de. Ouvrir la musique des années 80/90
Bought a NAD tuner, preamp and amp 3 years ago. The blue on light failed on the power amp, but it still works. Two of the inputs on the preamp failed and are not usable. Tuner still OK. I like the philosophy of high tech for a reasonable price, but will not buy them again for the reliability. My Carver stuff lasted decades with no problems.
6:45 UcD is Hypex…
GO NAD!!
Thank god. Touchscreens need to die.
I’m kinda new to Hi-Fi, so please be kind:
What’s that all about classes? A,B,D… Would be interesting to me
Way overpriced for what it is.
Hi John. I had the 3020 many years ago and when I saw this new NAD I thought, WOW! That looks amazing, but £2400 is just too expensive. Much the same with the Mission 770’s. Do Hi Fi companies not see what’s going on in the world today. I don’t care if you have to do low rent style vids, I’ll still watch them because your health is the most important thing. Howsabout maybe doing some more vids on slightly more affordable Hi Fi? Anyway, love the channel.
Looks nice, but the price is just too high. I own a C320bee, a vintage 140 with nice blue lights and warm sound and had a C7025PE and I have to say the 7025PE made me most happy of them all. Best of the other two and like the 3020 it’s less about precision, linearity, bass etc, but tickling a sweet spot and giving You joy. Sadly I lend it to a friend (having 3 amps…) and he friend and sold it out of shame? before I could get it back and repair it.
Now I use the 320bee and tried to give it better speaker, the 140 collects dust and needs probably new condensators and I can’t decide if I extend the 320bee with a bluesound, or buy a completely new C368/C700/M10, which I will not be able to listen to with matched speakers in my room…don’t know.
Maybe I buy again a 3025PE with a Bluesound node and directly well made active loudspeakers😂
"NAD" or N-A-D ?
I’ve listen to the NAD C3050LE in a show…. and it’s really good !
The M33 (also shown) is even better…
It’s the kind of product you ask yourself why did you spent so much time and effort building up your system…
Any NAD product shouldn’t be sold at that price. On the other hand if SAE came back and revived the Mark series or the 2900, 2600, 2500, or the famous Mark VI… 😀 You know that would be a different story. I’ve owned a few NAD Power Envelope Receivers, and what they called high end was a huge mess. The Monitor Series is a massive clusterf*ck of a circuit board mess. I’ve had the 712 and I can’t complain enough about the silly LCD that one has… NAD resonates with bad design to me.
Yeah. Olaf needs to be back as soon as your health improves. I want me some creamy bokeh on audio gear videos.
I’m Canadian so if everything else is equal i’d buy a Canadian product but i’ve always thought that PSB and NAD are overpriced. NAD has always defended their amplifiers by saying they’re high current so their amps can put out way more than their rated power but for the same money you can have another amp from Pioneer/Technics/Yamaha/Kenwood etc…. with a much higher power rating so they probably have similar power output so where’s the NAD advantage other than appealing to audiophiles?
My old NAD 3100 monitor series which I had restored would sound much better than this modern class d crap.
I already want two of them, one to play with, and one to save UNboxed !
"Beneath this vintage exterior lies a thoroughly modern amplifier with advanced features such as BluOS high-resolution multi-room music streaming, Dirac Live room correction and the proven design of the NAD HybridDigital UcD amplifier."
Class D amp technology, vintage in name only, I’ll pass ! 😟
"Not your Father’s NAD" was what brought me here. I still think you missed an opportunity and the tag should’ve been "Not your dad’s NADs".
Great video John. I love the “high rent” videos made with Olaf, the fantastic musical and visual edits and all the rest but not at the expense of your health! This video was fantastic as always and I, for one, will look forward to and enjoy every video you put out. I am new to this hifi hobby and I feel like you are a trusted friend helping me along the way. Thank you for all you do and your honest guidance through this challenging new world I have begun to traverse. Also always enjoy the bloopers!
Yes this new NAD C 3050 LE is class D . You say NAD is no longer really doing so, making class a/b amplifiers, they are going full steam ahead with class D. Lets not forget the NAD 40n amplifier which is indeed a class a/b amplifier. You did a very good review of it just 4 months ago ! Just wanted to point this out, more so to the viewers, that they still make a class a/b amp. Yes I know that most of their efforts are committed to making class d. But less not forget the NAD 40n class a/b amplifier.
I’ve never understood horizontally offset tweeters.
Kick him in the Nad’s Beavis.
Great review! thanks for the great content. This system with the passif 50s!
So this amp will actually play back sound as it sounds for real?
ANALOG METERS!!!
Only 1 analogue input (besides phono) is a bit disappointing.
Why sell so few if they can sell more?