No single best amplifier here. What decides it is what you have to drive, what you need to plug in, and how much of the system you want in one box.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 135W against 130W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Grip on hard loads | A | Emotiva BasX TA2+ holds up better into a 4-ohm load: its output nearly doubles to 250W, where the other barely increases. That matters with demanding speakers far more than the 8-ohm figure does. |
| Noise floor | A | Emotiva BasX TA2+ is the quieter design on paper - 120dB against 95dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | evenly matched | Both have a DAC on board with much the same capability. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Emotiva BasX TA2+ takes more analogue sources - 4 against 3. |
| Use with a TV | depends | Only NAD C 389 has HDMI eARC, so the television can drive it directly and one remote controls the volume. If the system is for music only, this changes nothing. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Emotiva BasX TA2+ is Class A/B and NAD C 389 is Class D. Class A/B runs warm and is the long-established mainstream choice; Class D runs cool and draws almost nothing at idle. Modern examples of both measure well - judge by the rest of the page. |
| Price | A | Emotiva BasX TA2+ costs less - $1,299 against $1,999 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Emotiva BasX TA2+ is the cheaper watt - about $10 per watt against $15. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Emotiva BasX TA2+ B NAD C 389
depends neither is better in the abstract - it turns on your room, your system or how you will use them. Only specs published for both amplifiers are judged; anything missing on either side is left out rather than guessed.
Which should you choose?
Emotiva BasX TA2+ is the easier recommendation: it leads on most of the measured areas and costs less. Take NAD C 389 if one of the "depends" rows above describes your system. If your speakers are a difficult load - 4 ohms nominal, big woofers, or a sensitivity in the low 80s - Emotiva BasX TA2+ is the safer partner, because how an amplifier behaves when the impedance drops matters more than its 8-ohm rating. If this sits under a television, NAD C 389 is the one to buy - HDMI ARC means the TV remote controls the volume and there is no second box in the way.
What a spec sheet cannot show: how either sounds with your speakers, how the controls feel day to day, and what the app is like to live with - which is where most all-in-one amplifiers are actually won or lost. Power figures are the manufacturers' own and are not measured to a common standard, so treat small differences as noise. If you can hear both, that will tell you more than any row above.