Quiet in recent years, the British brand Quad, founded in 1948 by Peter Walker, is returning to its origins with products in the style of the 60s. After recently presenting the new 33 preamp and 303 power amp, real homages to the former released in 1967, Quad is now releasing an integrated amp with a design close to that of the 22 preamp, released in the mid-50s.
Completely modernized, the Quad 3’s gray front panel features a large volume knob on the left and four large rotary knobs on the rest of the unit, which now also features an LCD display bar at the bottom (orange to match the brand’s identifiable colors). With an impressive 235 VA toroidal transformer and filter capacitors totaling 30 000 µF, the new integrated amplifier can power transistor amplification circuits to deliver 65 W per channel at 8 ohms and 100 W at 4 ohms.
As well as being able to adjust the balance or bass, the Quad 3 retains a technology developed by its creator 50 years ago. Called ‘Tilt’, this allows the overall sound balance to be adjusted on a 700 Hz axis to make it warmer or cooler, without the risk of overdeveloping one extreme and drying out the other. A full-featured device, it also has an MM phono input, two RCA line inputs and a Pre output, which can be used to drive a subwoofer.
Above all, this modern integrated is also digital, incorporating a Sabre ES9038Q2M DAC chip paired with pure Class A post-DAC filtering circuitry, which can be integrated not only in optical and coaxial, but also in USB to decode frequencies up to PCM 768 kHz/32-bit. An HDMI eArc port is also present, as is a Qualcomm 5.1 Bluetooth chip supporting aptX HD codecs for simple wireless transmission of 24-bit music files. In good English, the Quad also offers file upsampling, up to frequencies of 352.8 and 384 kHz, as well as MQA.
Pricing is not yet official in Euro, but as it is 1 249 £ in the UK, it should stay around 1 499 € for the rest of Europe, with a remote control!
20/07/2025
