The Quad 3 is not a completely perfect design but the combination of modern features with a striking and well executed retro aesthetic is going to be irresistible for some people. It’s a talking point that doesn’t make you suffer for your art and it’s an impressive arrival at the price point

• Superb industrial design
• Detailed, engaging and spacious sound
• Decent connectivity

• Might struggle with insensitive speakers
• Needs source equipment
• Not everyone will love the orange display

• 

• 65 watt class AB amp

• Digital board with USB, coax, optical, and HDMI ARC

Unless you have been living in a (very) deep cave for the last few years you will have noticed that retro is big business at the moment.

Across many aspects of design, art and fashion, companies have been revisiting trends and designs from decades ago, partly in the pursuit of eye catching looks and partly to remind us of a time when things were, if not less dreadful, certainly differently dreadful to the present.

Hi-Fi is extremely well suited to this because the basic layout of many systems hasn’t changed in a very long time (and the ongoing enthusiasm for turntables means that an extra dose of retro is being added to many systems anyway).

When you also consider that many of the companies active at the moment were equally active at the time when some design ideas were seeing their first time around, it isn’t tricky for them to revisit some older thinking.

Quad is one of the most venerable audio brands of them all so it should be no surprise that they’ve been quite adept at retro. Some of these offerings have been reissues of genuine historical products from the back catalogue but what you see here is a bit different.

The Quad 3 is an integrated amp swimming in design features from products of yesteryear but around the back, you’ll find a set of connections that are bang up to date. Is this the combination of old and new your system needs to shine?

In the UK, the Quad 3 can be had for £1249. Parent company IAG operates a wide ranging dealer network and it is eligible to be purchased online as well. In the USA, it is available for $2799 while in Australia, it is yours for $2999 AUD.

It is worth adding to this that, if you like the space but the retro elements of the Quad 3 that we’re about to get stuck into don’t appeal, it has a blood relative that forgoes this. The Audiolab 7000A is not exactly the same amp as the Quad 3; it differs in a few areas – but it offers a similar spec and power output, all dressed in casework that feels rather slicker and more modern.

• Casework ‘inspired by’ rather a ‘relaunch of’
• Aerial is a little unsightly and display is a touch odd.

Quad is at considerable pains to stress that the Quad 3 is not simply an integrated take on the 33/303 pre and power amp because it also takes design cues from the slightly older Quad 22 preamp as well.

They also point out that it cannot be a reproduction of an older Quad integrated amp… because Quad didn’t make one until comparatively recently. The company describes it as a combination of the 22’s basic styling and the 33’s colour scheme. On a more basic level, despite having not a shred of 20^th century ancestry, the Quad 3 looks like a Quad and, for quite a few people, that should be quite enough.

What is rather cleverer is that the Quad 3 is a special sort of retro. Older Quad equipment didn’t look like anything else made at the same time which gives the Quad 3 a unique aesthetic that can’t really be confused with anything else in the present either.

It’s a combination of shape, detail and colour that encourages you to interact with it in a way that quite a bit of modern equipment doesn’t. It is more likely to be a talking point in a room than most other devices. It is also flawlessly bolted together as well, easily as good as anything else as this sort of price point.

At the same time, there are a few bits I’m less keen on. The Bluetooth aerial is permanently attached whether you like it or not and, while you can rotate it out of sight, it’s not as elegant as being able to unscrew it. The controls are pleasant enough but simply not as tactile as the ones on the 33.

I quite like the orange display but it’s too bright out of the box (it can be turned down) and the contrast setting is largely pointless; turning a display that is already fairly tricky to read into something that is completely illegible. Overall, I have found the Quad a pleasant thing to live with though.

• 65 watt Class AB amplifier with unique tone controls  
• USB, Coax and optical inputs with Bluetooth powered by an ESS DAC
• Two RCA inputs supported by phono stage
• No on board streaming

The amp inside the Quad 3 is – beyond the use of certain components – specific to this amp alone. It’s a Class AB device that produces 65 watts into 8 ohms and 100 into 4.

The key elements to this amp section are that it uses a Complimentary Feedback topology which is closer (but not identical) to Quad’s historical design processes and the inclusion of a 235VA toroidal transformer supported by a 30,000uF reservoir is to ensure that current delivery holds up when connected to demanding speakers which are connected via a single set of speaker terminals.

There’s a uniquely Quad feature about the amp accessible from the front panel too Quad calls it ‘Tilt’ and it is related to the tone controls. Rather than simply boosting or cutting a fixed part of the frequency response, Tilt adjusts both ends of the frequency spectrum together, either attenuating the bass and lifting the treble or lifting the bass and attenuating the treble in 1dB steps.

Essentially, it rotates – or tilts – the audible frequency range on a 700Hz axis, thereby adjusting the overall sound balance with ‘warm’ or ‘cool’ hints without altering volume or adding colour to the sound. This might sound quite complicated but it actually works pretty well when you tinker about with it.

Quad expects most owners to prioritise using the digital board of the Quad 3 and it’s a well specified bit of kit. You get one coax, optical, USB-B and HDMI ARC input with the USB connection being able to handle PCM to 768kHz and DSD to 512, plus aptX Bluetooth is also supported as standard.

The HDMI ARC input is a PCM type and will not decode multichannel signals but it’s a useful addition nevertheless. The decoding that handles these inputs is a variation of IAG’s recently updated ESS DAC implementation.

It is built around an ES9038Q2M from the 32bit Series of Sabre DACs and, while some bits of the decoding are left to the (very good) in house software they are partnered with a proprietary clock and power supply circuitry alongside a Class A post-DAC active filter.

For the analogue side, two RCA line inputs are joined by a moving magnet phono stage. This is a FET (Field Effect Transistor) design in keeping with a number of IAG devices and it’s an excellent performer.

Unlike some pricier Quad gear, this only supports moving magnet phono stages but this should not be seen as too much of a limitation at the price. You also get a stereo preamp which would allow you to bolt a power amp on (and Quad actually makes such a thing) or, perhaps more commonly, use a 2.1 system if you fancied.

Something that’s worth finishing this section off with is that the Quad 3 is well specified but will still need partnering equipment to work. If you are running a NUC/Streaming NAS type device, you can connect it directly and be a complete system but some form of storage or streaming platform will be needed to make the Quad do anything.

This is not an unusual state of affairs for a modern integrated amp but do take into account that finding something that matches the Quad 3’s unique appearance might be trickier than with something more modern.

• Quality of digital decoding is excellent…
• …as is the phono stage
• HDMI ARC is capable too
• Does its best work with more sensitive speakers

Given that the digital board is going to be the point of connection for most owners, I kicked off using that via a Roon Nucleus via the USB connection. The results were immediately and consistently impressive.

It avoids any sense of brightness or that slightly ‘etched’ presentation that can sometimes be the case with ESS based decoding but it manages to balance this with some of the drive and enthusiasm that these DACs can often possess.

This means that the joyous and energetic Echo by My Baby sounds, well, joyous and energetic. The Quad captures the slickness and enthusiasm of this superb jam band and it does this without missing any of the points of technical capability that it needs to deliver to be a credible bit of hi-fi equipment.

Vocals are rich, detailed and well defined against backing instruments and those instruments are themselves tonally believable and impressively detailed. Something that the Quad has done very effectively over the time it has been here is tell the whole story rather than focus on one part of the frequency response to the detriment of the sound elsewhere. The Quad also responds well to the quality of decent recordings without tearing less than perfect ones to shreds.

The phono stage is also a very good listen. I used an AVID Ingenium turntable, SME M2 arm and Gold Note Vasari moving magnet cartridge to listen to the freshly arrived Wheels Turn Beneath My Feet Vol II by Fink and found the result to be very satisfying. This is an interesting record because it comprises some very small scale recordings made in some very large scale locations which makes for a challenging recording. The Quad does a fine job of working this balance out well.

Shorn of the digital board, the presentation is very slightly softer but the same excellent grasp of tonality and useful levels of refinement are retained.

Running the Quad via the HDMI ARC connection is more than respectable too. Like the Audiolab 6000A MkII we looked at recently, the Quad ships with HDMI CEC off which I understand up to a point but means wading into the menus early on to change.

With this done, it has behaved well and the same qualities that help the USB input ensure that Slow Horses is delivered with crisp dialogue and enough impact to the action to be convincing. Compared to some of the new eARC implementations arriving on the market that do their own downmixing of the multichannel signal, the Quad doesn’t feel quite as dynamic but this is the sort thing you are unlikely to detect in isolation.

In fact, the only real limitation to the sound quality of the Quad might not reveal itself as a limitation at all depending on what you elect to use it with it. I mainly used the Quad with a pair of Neat Petite Classic standmounts. These are easy to drive and have superb bass extension for a speaker of their, fairly titchy, size.

When I tried a pair of rather less sensitive Arendal standmounts, the Quad did reveal some limitations to both volume levels and bass extension. It would be overstating the case to say it is in any way underpowered but it does its best work with speakers of a reasonable sensitivity and there are more powerful options available for the price should you need more shove.

Should you buy it?

What makes the Quad stand out from the many excellent rivals at this price point is that it looks and feels special in a way that even some considerably more expensive amps can struggle to do.
 
Ultimately, the Quad 3 has made me happy using it in a way that more than a summation of the technology in it and many people will feel the same.

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• Tested with real world use
• Tested for several days

	Quad 3 Review
Manufacturer	Quad
Size (Dimensions)	300 x 332 x 101 MM
Weight	8 KG
DAC	ES9038Q2M
Integrated Phono Stage	Yes
Release Date	2025
Amplifier Type	Integrated
Connectivity	SPDIF (Coax), SPDIF (Optical), PC USB, HDMI ARC, Bluetooth 5.1 (aptX/aptX HD), 12V Trigger, Pre Amplifier,Stereo Speaker,Headphone, 12V Trigger
Frequency Range	20 20000 – Hz
Amplification	Class AB
Remote Control	Yes
UK RRP	£1249
USA RRP	$2799
AUD RRP	AU$2999