These are not the same size of amplifier: NAD C 3050 has roughly 2.5x the power of NAD C 328. That is about 4dB, so it is a question of room size and how hard your speakers are to drive, not of one being the better amplifier.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | A | NAD C 3050 has more power - 100W against 40W into 8 ohms. That is about 4dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Grip on hard loads | evenly matched | Both behave much the same into 4 ohms - output barely increases (100W and 40W). |
| Noise floor | B | NAD C 328 is the quieter design on paper - 100dB against 95dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. NAD C 3050 goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| 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 | NAD C 328 takes up about 17% less shelf area (1349cm² against 1633cm²), and it is 54mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | B | NAD C 328 costs less - $699 against $1,899 at list. |
A NAD C 3050 B NAD C 328
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?
The usual trade-off: NAD C 3050 measures better, NAD C 328 costs about 63% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here. Start with the room. In a large or open-plan room, or with speakers that are hard to drive - low sensitivity, or an impedance that dips - NAD C 3050 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 40 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 60 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear. Think about the whole system: the roughly $1,200 saved by taking the cheaper one would buy better speakers or a subwoofer, which does more for the sound than the difference between two competent amplifiers.
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.