These are not the same size of amplifier: Yamaha A-S501 has roughly 2.1x the power of NAD C 328. That is about 3.3dB, 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 | Yamaha A-S501 has more power - 85W against 40W into 8 ohms. That is about 3.3dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Yamaha A-S501 the better fit for a mid-size room, a large room and a very large room, and NAD C 328 for desk or near-field listening and a small room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Noise floor | evenly matched | Much the same signal-to-noise ratio (99dB vs 100dB). |
| Built-in DAC | evenly matched | Both have a DAC on board with much the same capability. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Yamaha A-S501 takes more analogue sources - 6 against 2. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Yamaha A-S501 is Class A/B and NAD C 328 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. |
| Shelf space | depends | NAD C 328 takes up about 21% less shelf area (1349cm² against 1710cm²), and it is 83mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | Yamaha A-S501 costs less - $550 against $699 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Yamaha A-S501 is the cheaper watt - about $6 per watt against $17. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Yamaha A-S501 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?
Yamaha A-S501 is the easier recommendation: it leads on most of the measured areas and costs less. Take NAD C 328 if one of the "depends" rows above describes your system. 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 - Yamaha A-S501 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 45 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate Yamaha A-S501 poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason.
What a spec sheet cannot show: how either sounds with your speakers, how the interface feels 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.