NAD C399 Hybrid Digital DAC Amplifier

By: Paul Seydor

Affordable Excellence

NAD’S new C399 is a streaming integrated amplifier that incorporates many functions and features and high performance into a remarkably compact component. Its preamplifier section has two line-level inputs; a moving-magnet phonostage; balance, bass, and treble controls; switching for two pairs of speaker systems; outputs for two subwoofers; a headphone jack; and a pair each of preamp-out and record-out jacks (the latter doubling for home-theatre bypass). The onboard DAC has a pair each of coaxial- and optical-in jacks and an HDMI-eARC port for accessing high-quality audio from a TV. The Bluetooth circuit (two-way apt-X HD) allows 24-bit streaming from mobile devices and a high-quality output to Bluetooth headphones; there’s also a built-in dedicated headphone amplifier that NAD claims will “drive demanding high-impedance studio monitor headphones.” (As I do not use headphones for serious listening, I did not evaluate these functions, but given the overall excellence of the C399, I see no reason to doubt the claim.) The Class D digital amplifier is rated at 180 watts per channel into four and eight ohms (250 watts peak).

The C399’s architecture includes a new version of NAD’s Modular Design Construction, i.e., MDC 2, a pair of slots on the back panel that accept plugins for upgrades to help make the unit future-proof. The review sample came already fitted with the BluOS-D module that incorporates NAD’s Bluesound Node 2i streamer, controllable by its proprietary BluOS app, which accesses dozens of streaming services (Tidal, Qobuz. Spotify, etc.) and several radio stations, and which includes Dirac Live, a new digital-signal-processing room-correction technology that addresses frequency-response anomalies introduced by your listening room and your loudspeakers.

If my description together with the photograph of the C399 strikes a note of déjà vu, it’s because the fascia and chassis are the spitting image of NAD’s C658 Streaming DAC that TAS editor Robert Harley reviewed, along with the C298 power amplifier, last year (Google “Harley NAD C658 TAS”). The C399 essentially combines the C658 and the C298 into a single chassis. Together these two components retail for $4187 (including the BluOS-D module) versus $1999 for the C399 alone or $2598 when equipped with BluOS-D, as the review sample is. How is such a price differential possible for close to identical performance and features?