Integrated Amp Reviews

Years ago, Corey Greenberg wrote a memorable headline: "GO NAD."

NAD, which then stood for New Acoustic Dimension, was founded in 1973 but really got going in 1978, with the 3020 integrated amplifier. Audio stores loved the line because Crazy Eddie didn't sell it and because they no longer had to turn away customers who wouldn't buy expensive stuff.

I well remember the original 3020—so many of my friends owned one. It was one of the first solid-state amplifiers, integrated or otherwise, to lack the sterile transistor sound so beloved of Stereo Review. (Test tones, anyone?) It also offered an alternative to tubes. I believe the original list price was $149.

Today, many of us would probably consider the 3020's sound soft and lacking in resolution. It was rated 20Wpc into 8 ohms, and delivered around 50W into 4 ohms. Still, it was no powerhouse. That's why it was outfitted with a protection circuit, called "soft clipping," that limited the voltage when the current draw became too great. In other words, soft clipping made it almost impossible to blow up the 3020—a perennial problem with certain low-power solid-state amps to this day.

This marks the point where mass-market hi-fi went wrong. I'm not talking about NAD now, but many other once-legendary brands. They piled on more features, and fiddled with the designs to deliver more rated power on critics' test benches. The original NAD 3020 was designed to deliver music, not test tones for Julian Hirsch. Rather like the Croft Phono Integrated, wouldn't you say, JA?

The original NAD 3020 had a pretty good moving-magnet phono stage, too. It was built in Taiwan, where the quality control could be iffy. Its only sonic competition at the time was the Advent 300 receiver.

Fast-forward 35 years.

To mark its 40th anniversary, NAD has introduced the D 3020. Perhaps the D stands for class-D amplification (which isn't digital), or the built-in DAC (which, of course, is). At $499, it costs three times as much as the original; but the original's price of $149 would be $534 in 2013 dollars.

Feature-wise, the D 3020 has little in common with its ancestor. There are no tone controls. There is no phono stage. But there is a similar sound, warm and sweet, which I'll get to in a moment.

NAD calls the D 3020 a "hybrid digital amplifier," by which they mean that not all of its circuitry is in the digital domain. The D 3020 combines a Cirrus Logic DAC (eight channels mixed down to two) with a class-D output stage designed by Hypex, of the Netherlands. According to NAD, the output stages aren't fazed by low-impedance speakers.

The power supply incorporates NAD's proprietary PowerDrive circuit, which can deliver short bursts of high voltage when the music requires. Hats off to the head of the design team, Bjørn Erik Edvardsen—who, not coincidentally, designed the original 3020 in 1978.

It takes a real genius to design a great, inexpensive hi-fi product—a genius with a concern for real-world people. It seems to me that many hi-fi designers just want to pump up their egos (and their profit margins) with ever-more-expensive stuff that doesn't always sound very good. Or even work very well.

The D 3020's rated power output is 30Wpc into 8 ohms, but NAD claims that it can drive "difficult" speakers with relative aplomb. In other words, like the original 3020, the D 3020 should be difficult to blow up. It worked fine with the DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93s, and with my Harbeth M30.1s.

Yes, I've heard better sound—from the Croft Phono Integrated and my LFD LE IV integrated. But the LFD costs nearly eight times the price of the NAD, and the Croft nearly four times as much, and both lack all of the NAD's useful features.

Right now, NAD's D 3020 is the best bargain in all of hi-fi.

It's a single box measuring 73/8" (186mm) high by 25/16" (58mm) wide by 85/8" (219mm) deep and weighing only 3 lbs (1.4kg). It can be positioned horizontally or vertically. (The amplifier has no feet, but it's designed not to scratch delicate surfaces.) But whether you stand it up (most convenient for changing sources) or lay it down, give it some ventilation—don't squeeze it between two books. In operation, the D 3020 runs slightly warm; in standby (which it slips into automatically after not receiving a signal for a while), it runs cool as a cuke.

Here's what $499 gets you: a 30Wpc power amp, a remote control, a line stage, one RCA coaxial S/PDIF connector, two optical S/PDIF connectors, one asynchronous USB input, one RCA analog input (for a phono stage, turntable, etc.), one mini-jack input (for a smart phone, iPod, etc.), a subwoofer output, a mini-jack headphone output, and . . .

Ta-dah!

. . . aptX Bluetooth.

I'm buying the D 3020 to make it my reference integrated amp. I can't bear to part with it. My son bought one, too. He's getting tired of tube tsuris. He can pack up the D 3020 in a case and take it back and forth between his city digs and his country dacha. His reaction so far? Astonishment that it can drive his Harbeth HL5 speakers so well (though he intends to use the D 3020 with smaller speakers).

Yes, the sound quality. You would ask about that. I no longer care about sound quality. It can only mean trouble. (Just kidding.)

The D 3020's sound quality is just fine, unless you're an audiophile fussbudget or ostentatiously filthy rich.

For starters, and as with the original 3020 of 1978, I found the D 3020's sound completely nonfatiguing and non-irritating. Tonally, the sound seemed natural, with not quite the presence of a great tube amp . . . like the Croft. But does the Croft have remote control? A USB input? A DAC? aptX Bluetooth? A headphone output? Nyet.

Using my Harbeth M 30.1 monitors, I noted that the bass was surprisingly rich and full, more like a Harbeth HL5. Turning to a different beast, the DeVore Orangutan O/93, I thought the bass could be slightly . . . well, plump. I perused NAD's white paper on the D 3020:

"Because we expect this amplifier will often be used with smaller speakers that have limited bass extension, we have brought back NAD's BassEQ feature, a low Q filter centered on 80Hz with about 7dB boost. This gives just the right amount of 'heft' to small bookshelf speakers without adding chesty coloration to male voices."

Ah-ha! Well, as the late J. Gordon Holt wrote, "Down with flat!"

Want more bass? The D 3020's subwoofer output engages a high-pass filter for the amp's outputs. (The BassEQ is defeatable.) I thought this was just on the edge of causing problems in our living room with the DeVore Orangutans. The Harbeth M 30.1s seemed to love the bass boost.

Musically, the D 3020 was most enjoyable: warm and only just a bit fuzzy compared with amplifiers costing, say, six times as much. You want more power, more punch? A more expensive NAD model won't drain your bank account, either.

Common sense will tell you not to use the D 3020 in a large room with insensitive, extremely "difficult" speakers. NAD has plenty of products that can handle that. In a pinch, though, the D 3020 could probably drive almost anything to moderate volume levels. I'd like to try it with, say, a $60,000 pair of speakers.

Nah. Better yet, with a $1500 pair.

Yikes! Stephen was right.
It was Stephen Mejias who suggested I listen to NAD's D 3020 in the first place. He also suggested that I try it with my KEF LS50 monitors.

A splendid combination, said he.

Perfect. The NAD D 3020 was fully up to driving the KEFs in my listening room, and the bass boost warmed up their sound just right.

The great feature of the KEFs is that UniQ concentric driver, with the tweeter placed, in effect, inside the mid/woofer's cone. This driver delivers sound comparable in coherence to that from a single-driver loudspeaker. It seems seamless.

Despite my slightly lame ankle, I swapped in Triangle's Comète Anniversaire speakers. Again, the added warmth struck me as just right, making the speakers sound bigger than they are—and the D 3020 much more powerful than 30Wpc.

Another thing. The D 3020 seemed to be particularly well suited to Internet radio.

I remember something my Uncle Stan told me. A bank teller by day, he sold radios nights and weekends. Most customers shopping for a radio, he said, wanted a "beautiful tone," not a flat frequency response. Stan himself was a big fan of wind-up Victrolas.

More mischief.

I had a houseful of Russians over for the weekend and needed a little time to myself. I hied me up to my listening room and used the finest headphones I have: the Audio-Technica ATH-W3300 ANVs, now discontinued. The D 3020's bass boost was generally welcome. The sound had few shortcomings—mostly a lack of ultimate delicacy and detail, along with diminished dynamics. But compared to what—a separate headphone amp that alone costs more than the D 3020? The NAD's remote volume control was a blessing.

And the D 3020 was a superb sonic match with my somewhat lean Pioneer MJ 591 headphones.

Even if you own far more expensive gear, you might find it fun to have the NAD. Bluetooth background listening is ideal in the kitchen or dining area, office or waiting room. The NAD makes a splendid backup for almost your entire system. It's easily transportable. It makes an ideal holiday gift and comes nicely boxed, rather like an Apple product. At $499, it's practically a gift for yourself.—Sam Tellig