One is a streaming all-in-one and the other is an amplifier. Judge them on how many boxes you want and what you already own, not on the spec sheet alone.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | A | 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 | A | 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 | A | 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 | B | 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. |
| Streaming | A | Only Onkyo Muse Y-50 has AirPlay 2 and Chromecast. |
| Room to grow | B | 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. |
| Room correction | A | Onkyo Muse Y-50 has room correction. In an awkward room that does more for the sound than any other difference on this page. |
| Shelf space | depends | Onkyo Muse Y-50 takes up about 25% less shelf area (1225cm² against 1633cm²). |
| Price | A | Onkyo Muse Y-50 costs less - $1,500 against $1,899 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Onkyo Muse Y-50 is the cheaper watt - about $12 per watt against $19. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Onkyo Muse Y-50 B NAD C 3050
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.