![]() Music can also be streamed from mobile devices to the amplifier or from the amplifier to wireless headphones with two-way Bluetooth aptX HD. Audio can be streamed from iOS devices with Apple AirPlay 2, and the BluOS module works with the Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect apps. The BluOS module allows audio to be streamed from local storage on the owner's network or from Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon Music Ultra HD, Deezer, TuneIn radio stations, and other streaming services,with digital resolution up to 24bits and a sample rate of 192kHz. Inside, however, the C 3050 LE is thoroughly modern. With its wood-grain vinyl wrap, the cursive-font "New Acoustic Dimension" logo on the front panel, and its twin, illuminated VU meters, the amplifier's styling is distinctly retro, resembling that of the NAD 3030 amplifier from 1976. (There will be a non-LE version, which will cost $1899 with the BluOS module, $1299 without it.) (1972 was, as mentioned above, the year of the company's founding.) The price includes an MDC2 BluOS module. The LE in the amplifier's name stands for Limited Editionjust 1972 samples will be sold at a US price of, you guessed it, $1972. So when I learned that NAD was introducing a 50th Anniversary integrated amplifier, the C 3050 LE, which also included Dirac Live, I asked for a review sample. The M10's price included a free license for Dirac Live low-frequency room equalization, which I found invaluable with my long-term reference standmounts, the KEF LS50s. One of the most recent was the Master Series M10 class-D streaming integrated amplifier, which I purchased to use as my daily driver after I reviewed it in January 2020. Stereophile has favorably reviewed many NAD amplifiers over the decades. NAD subsequently went through ownership changes and in 1999 was purchased by Canada's Lenbrook Group, the brand's Canadian distributor since 1978. NAD was little known in 1980, but the 3020 put the brand on the map, the company selling 1.1 million units over the amplifier's lifetime. In 2002, the 3020 was nominated by Stereophile's writers and editors as one of the 100 most significant audio products in the magazine's first 40 years (footnote 2). Designed in England by Bjørn-Erik Edvardsen (footnote 1) and manufactured in Taiwan, the ridiculously inexpensive 3020it cost just $135 back thenshowed that an amplifier didn't need machined faceplates, intimidating heatsinks, or technically glamorous components to be able to drive real-world speakers. I bought an NAD 3020 integrated amplifier after hearing it successfully drive Acoustic Research's current-hungry AR9 loudspeakers. Although NAD was founded in England in 1972 as New Acoustic Dimension, my introduction to the brand was in 1980.
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