Naiu Laboratory Ella Mark 3 Class ND Stereo Amplifier Review

If you click on my name in the header, you can see the equipment I used throughout the review process. I recently acquired the excellent Topping E70 Velvet DAC, which features a pair of the latest top-of-the-line AKM AK4499EX DAC chips (AKM’s production came back online mid-2022). The E70 Velvet presents digital music (especially DSD files) with an exciting level of transparency and musicality in combination with the already outstanding Euphony gear. And I’ve had the Ella Mark 3 amp set up in my larger listening room for several months now, connected to the Magneplanar LRS+ loudspeakers. I used an AudioQuest Blizzard w/DBS AC cable to provide power to the Ella Mark 3, and the entire system used balanced connections throughout. Since the origins of this review came from Robert Devcic’s interest in my impressions of the Ella with my Magneplanars, this was the logical place to start. A word of note: while the Ella Mark 3 doesn’t generate the kind of heat an amp that’s biased into pure Class A does, it gets somewhat warm to the touch with extended listening. In my experience with Ella, it sounds a bit cold from startup, and needs time to reach its normal operating temperature to achieve the ultimate in sound quality.