Impressive power and
sonics from a sub-
compact design
Dynamic enough to
handle a wide range of
speakers
Useful Bass EQ/
subwoofer filter options
Digital conversion
does not extend to
32-bit/384kHz
Price: $699
nadelectronics.comAt a Glancemini-jack—plus two optical and
one coaxial digital inputs. Other
connections include asynchro-
nous USB digital, the above-
mentioned HDMI-ARC port, and
a 12-volt trigger input. (There’s
also a USB type-A port, but it’s
just for firmware updates.)
SETUP AND LISTENINGThe D 3045 is clearly aimed
in part at the desktop audio
market, so I elected to begin my
listening that way, plunking the
NAD down next to my iMac to
supply USB digital audio, and
connecting a mature, but still
excellent, pair of 5-inch two-way
speakers tilted well back on
either side of the screen. This
sort of near-field listening array
has real advantages—mainly
the demotion in importance
of room reflections due to the
proximity advantage of direct
sound —as I was pleased to
be reminded of upon firing
up Tidal’s Deutsche Gram-
mophon Masters stream. (This
is a single-movement feed, a
practice I find objectionable in
principle, but it’s very conve-
nient for “hot reads” of reliably
good-to-excellent-sounding
material.)
The new NAD is MQA-
compatible, and the MQA logo
dutifully lit up on its display
whenever I played a Tidal
Masters stream. (This is not
the place to try to quantify the
merits of MQA “fold/unfolding”
other than to observe that the
presence of the MQA logo, at
least here in the early going,
predicts beer-sounding
source recordings to some
extent.) Thus, a high-res
performance of Liszt’s “tran-
scendental” Grandes Études
streamed via Tidal (Trifonov,
DG) presented piano reproduc-
tion of the very highest order.
The Mad Hungarian’s blizzard
of top-octave piano pings
demands total clarity, transient
agility, and audiophile “air” (for
the overtones and resonances),
all of which the lile NAD inte-
grated delivered in spades.
At the opposite end of the
genre spectrum, the odd-
Wilson Picke, who used it
as album filler on his classic
Midnight Hour LP. More
probably given Mellencamp’s
arrangement cop, it came from
Ry Cooder’s Into the Purple
Sunset record, which is where
I learned it, and subsequently
played it about a million times in
a hundred bands.)
The remaining three Bass
seings are 120, 80, and 40 Hz
high-pass filters meant for when
one connects a subwoofer to
the NAD’s preamp/subwoofer
line outs. I happened to have
a suitable small, but quite
capable, 8-inch sub lying
around, so I slid it under the
desk and this proved the hot
setup. With the sub balanced
well below localizable/booming
level, the result was honestly
full-range reproduction with
strong, razor-sharp imaging.
Boom line: The D 3045 can
definitely brew up serious
desktop listening, but you must
first do something to tame the
1-2 kHz suckout caused by
the floor-bounce—er, desk-
bounce—first reflection. (A
double layer of bubble-pack
covered by some fuzzy stuff
worked quite well for me.)
Of course, many, if not most,
users will deploy NAD’s latest in
a big, or at least bigger, system,
so I moved the D 3045 over to
my main rack and connected it
to my ancient but still excellent
Energy Veritas 2.8 three-ways.
These compact standmount
monitors are very nearly full
range despite their size. But as
Villchur’s Iron Law of Speaker
Design (sensitivity, extension,
or compactness: pick two)
predicts, they pay no small
price in sensitivity, being 3 or 4
dB less so than most modern
speakers of similar ability. This
laid out a fairly serious chal-
lenge for the NAD’s nominal 60
was per channel (my everyday
power amp is 150 was per
channel), but the D 3045 proved
up to it. I noted no loss in resolu-
tion or dynamic detail, and while
I can’t say that the NAD equaled
my regular power amp’s ultimate
level and dynamics capability,
the shortfall was very slight. Ata guess I’d say it was much less
than 3 dB, which suggests that
the lile D 3045 was delivering
substantial dynamic power —a
hallmark of NAD designs.
NAD calls the D 3045 a
“hybrid digital” amplifier in
its marketing materials, but I
could find no elaboration on
this sobriquet. It’s likely that
the D 3045 is a class-D design,
or some variant thereof (a lile
Internet sleuthing suggested
that it uses Hypex class-D
modules), but whatever the
topology, I found it a highly
capable lile power producer.
All things being equal, more
power is always beer than less.
But that said, in modest-sized
rooms, with speakers of typical
modern sensitivity (say, 88 dB
SPL/1m or higher) the D 3045
should prove capable of serious
playback at serious levels,
meaning it’s perfectly suitable
as a “main” system amplifier
even for discerning listeners.
The D 3045’s headphone
amp—an item likely to be of
equal interest to potential
owners among that same set—
similarly passed muster. Not
surprisingly, it sounded amply
loud, decidedly extended, and
impressively dynamic via a
set of NAD Viso headphones,
yet managed to avoid shrill-
ness with my longterm (very)
Sony MDR-V6 cans, a widely
accepted, if on-the-bright-side,
standard. Another checkmark:
It had enough output to driveshaped amp also impressed
me with controlled reproduc-
tion and well-stamped drive
when pounding out a reveren-
tial account of the Booker T.
classic “Green Onions” by The
Heartbreakers, an HDTracks
hi-res download. The click and
electronic whistle of Benmont
Tench’s Hammond organ was
faithfully rendered, and so was
the grit and spring-reverb wash
of Mike Campbell’s (channelling
Steve Cropper) Telly sound —
and all of it came across cleanly
at any rational level I chose. At
absurd volumes (on the plus
side of the NAD’s -90 to +10 dB
readout), the sound became
obviously flaened and band-
passed, but overt clipping was
hard to find.
One of the D 3045’s few
features—beyond volume,
source-select, and, of course,amplification—is its bass-EQ/
sub-filtering options. These
are accessible from a key on
the included small remote
control that cycles through
four possible seings. The first
of these, Bass EQ, imposes
a modest shelving boom-
octaves boost of perhaps 4 or 5
dB at around 90 Hz. I judged this
to be just about perfect for small
two-ways like my desktop pair
since it extended and solidified
the boom two-plus octaves
but was mild enough to avoid
much risk of boom or thud. The
benefit with pop/rock-music
bass was amply demonstrated
via playback of “Teardrops Will
Fall” from John Mellencamp’s
eminently listenable (and
MQA-encoded) Other People’s
Stuff album (via Tidal), where, at
moderate levels, it very nicely
corrected the lile woofers’
considerable rolloff. (This 1958
classic, originally released by
the immortal Dickie Doo and
the Don’ts in straight-up Four
Freshman style, might have
come to Johnny Cougar viasoundandvision.com (^) [ 45
"The little D 3045
delivered substantial
dynamic power."