NAD 3030 experience


has anyone owned this or still uses it today? Any opinions to share?

On that note, anyone excited about the brand new NAD 3050? (still no real reviews anywhere)

My 2 cents: the 3050 design is absolutely botched. It looks like a Christmas tree (in April) compared to the flawlessly pleasing looking 3030. Why change it if it worked!?

grislybutter

OP:  Are you just unhappy with the number of LED's and the colors?

Personally I'm genuinely excited to see how the hybrid class-D amplification continues to work and evolve.  It's a rather unique, almost Class H.  Very cool stuff in terms of actually technically distinguished consumer tech

@erik_squires 

I was first super impressed. I am total sucker for the vintage look. But then I compared it with the 3030. Much cleaner look. And the led is just awful. that's so 80s. The designer should be arraigned!

The reason I asked this in this post is that I bid on a 3030 on ebay and besides the looks I hope it sounds good too.

I worked at a store that dealt in NAD in the mid 70s when Peter Treibman, formerly with Advent, became the US importer.  The 3030 was the base integrated amp and we liked it…but the failure rate was such that instead of New Acoustic Dimensions we began calling it Not Always Defective!  As I recall it was usually the round push buttons that got stuck and caused a channel to drop.  This sort of thing was not rare back then. H-K receivers were flaky too.  Pioneer, Sansui, Yamaha…much better QC.

@crustycoot 

Good to know! I will probably pass on it then

I heard in the darko interview that NAD sold millions of 3020s. And I owned Marantz amps from the same time period, that all worked amazingly well.

I don't think the design has ever been as stunning as in the 70s. Probably the golden age of industrial design in general.