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 - 60W against 70W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Room size | depends | We rate NAD D 3045 the better fit for desk or near-field listening and a small room, and Audiolab 7000A for a mid-size room, a large room and a very large room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Noise floor | B | Audiolab 7000A is the quieter design on paper - 110dB against 98dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. NAD D 3045 goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Audiolab 7000A takes more analogue sources - 3 against 2. |
| Room to grow | B | Only Audiolab 7000A offers a pre-out/main-in loop - which decides whether you can add a subwoofer or a power amplifier later without replacing the box. |
| Amplifier class | depends | NAD D 3045 is Class D and Audiolab 7000A is Class A/B. Class D runs cool and draws almost nothing at idle; Class A/B runs warm and is the long-established mainstream choice. Modern examples of both measure well - judge by the rest of the page. |
| Shelf space | depends | NAD D 3045 takes up about 86% less shelf area (208cm² against 1510cm²), and it is 51mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | NAD D 3045 costs less - $899 against $999 at list. |
A NAD D 3045 B Audiolab 7000A
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: Audiolab 7000A measures better, NAD D 3045 costs about 10% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here.
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.