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 | B | Onkyo Muse Y-50 has more power - 125W against 100W into 8 ohms. That is about 1dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| Grip on hard loads | B | Onkyo Muse Y-50 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 | B | Onkyo Muse Y-50 is the quieter design on paper - 100dB 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. |
| Streaming | evenly matched | Only NAD C 3050 has Roon and BluOS; only Onkyo Muse Y-50 has Chromecast. Neither list is longer in a way that matters - check the one service you actually pay for. |
| Room to grow | A | Only NAD C 3050 offers a pre-out/main-in loop - which decides whether you can add a subwoofer or a power amplifier later without replacing the box. |
| Shelf space | depends | Onkyo Muse Y-50 takes up about 25% less shelf area (1225cm² against 1638cm²). |
| Price | B | Onkyo Muse Y-50 costs less - $1,500 against $1,799 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Onkyo Muse Y-50 is the cheaper watt - about $12 per watt against $18. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A NAD C 3050 B Onkyo Muse Y-50
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?
Onkyo Muse Y-50 is the easier recommendation: it leads on most of the measured areas and costs less. Take NAD C 3050 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 - Onkyo Muse Y-50 is the safer partner, because how an amplifier behaves when the impedance drops matters more than its 8-ohm rating.
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.