Talk:NAD 3020

General
Properly performing amplifiers do not sound like anything, they reproduce what was recorded accurately. Most solid state amps did that so well, they cannot be distinguished in double blind testing (i.e., they sound the same). Amps also cannot be said to have musicality as they are not musical instruments and should not add anything to the recorded sound. The NAD amp was designed to work with real speaker loads, which means they would perform better (in terms of not clipping or not having greatly increased distortion) when driving challenging speaker loads. This will mean the amp could sound better than another similarly rated amp when driving difficult speakers. If the load presented no challenge to other amps, they would sound the same as the NAD. Robotczar (talk) 04:52, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

2N3055
This needs a section on the choice of output transistors, the 2N3055/2N2955 complementary pair.

These transistors were some of the most commonly used high power transistors of the day. However they weren't an audio transistor. This was the go-to DC switching transistor of the time. Opinions on the 3020 were thus split: was this a good choice or not? Those (who I admit, included my teenage self) considered that such a design must be made by accountants penny-pinching and so it was beneath consideration (at a time when discrete+op-amp Hi-Fi was further up its own abstract backside than at any time before or since). Those who actually plugged them in and listened found that they were rather good, and for the price surprisingly good. The quality was hard to tell from a Linsley-Hood design with six times the parts count and there really was little else out there to compare for the same pricetag (the early Maplin 80W MOSFET brick, when well set up, being about the only one).

The reason for this was not that the 3020 was a particularly accurate amp in reproduction, but that it was remarkably stable at doing so. This amp would drive unpleasant speaker loads and not bat an eyelid. It must have been the only amp for anything like this price that could handle Linn Isobariks. It was also (as many student parties found) a stalwart of driving stage PA speakers when turned up to 11, without either responding weirdly to a stage crossover and driver at half the designed impedance, killing your precious hi-fi speakers (which were very probably Mission 700s) or simply self-destructing their own output stage. An output stage that could, if killed, be restored to health for tuppence and a couple of beers to any electronic engineering student.

This behaviour was down to the output transistors. Transistors that anyway had an impressive spec sheet, for current if not frequency range, but were very well known for being 'unburstable' when driven beyond this. The transistor's internal and inherent stability, when passing currents far in excess of anything that belonged in the back of a "20W" amp kept their response stable and kept them from runaway deaths. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:42, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't recall in all that detail. Most of the review of that era never made it online. Can you help? If you have still have some old hard copy Popular Hi-fi, Hi-fi Answers, or HFN etc from those days, it would help me supplement the sources to be used for the Linn Sondek, Roksan Xerxes, Rega Planar 3, and other articles I have created or trying to create. Regards, --  Ohc  ¡digame! 13:22, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Standard issue to students
Can we get something in about the standard issue hi-fi for British students in the early 80s: Dual CS-505 turntable, NAD 3020, and a pair of Mission 700s (I forget the favoured cartridge, but mine was a Grado). This setup was so popular as the starter hi-fi that many of the dealers offered it as a bundle, and even as a student bundle. One of them in Manchester sold it to students and offered free delivery to the halls of residence on arrival, to save you carrying it in the parent's Volvo! The hi-fi mags of the period ought to be able to source this. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:46, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Haha, I've been meaning to thank you for all your little tweaks, wondering how deep your interest lay. Now all is revealed! A few of my contemporaries had that setup too, obtained from Billy Vee and Richer Sounds. I threw out all my hi-fi mags eons ago, unfortunately... --  Ohc  ¡digame! 13:17, 7 February 2014 (UTC)