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Inexpensive amps and inexpensive dacs

Brian S

pfm Member
Twice in the past year I have availed myself of inexpensive dacs to fill in while one of my dacs was away for attention. On both occasions I have been more than surprised by how near they came to satisfying my listening demands to the models I have costing several hundred percent more. The two cheap dacs: Dacmagic and Topping E30. To my ears, disregarding price, they were both in the same league as my Naim, my Brooklyn, my Hugo TT and my Qutest.

Am I missing something or are there similarly priced mini amps out there that would sit with equal comfort alongside my Masterclass, Chord 265 and Toby? Or do quality amps require greater all round input? I am aware of very good cheaper amps, but the disparity between my previously owned Arcam Alpha 8 and Alpha10 was far greater than the hardly dicernible difference between the dacs.

I am not interested in headphone amps, which I don't use.
 
A refurbished and Dada modded Quad 303 poweramp astonished me for a bit over £300. Easily the equal of far more costly designs.

I was going through a Quad electronics phase in my box swapping at the time; pre and power amps, cdp.
The ones that are still with me are the 303 and 606ii power amps.

I got the 303 more out of a sense of completeness than anything else (I also had a DADAed 306). I was expecting laidback and smooth. What the 303 actually delivers is taut, fast, detailed transparency. It was quite a shock, actually!

The 606ii is a bit more laidback and relaxed, but still enjoyably listenable.
 
A refurbished and Dada modded Quad 303 poweramp astonished me for a bit over £300. Easily the equal of far more costly designs.

I was going through a Quad electronics phase in my box swapping at the time; pre and power amps, cdp.
The ones that are still with me are the 303 and 606ii power amps.

I got the 303 more out of a sense of completeness than anything else (I also had a DADAed 306). I was expecting laidback and smooth. What the 303 actually delivers is taut, fast, detailed transparency. It was quite a shock, actually!

The 606ii is a bit more laidback and relaxed, but still enjoyably listenable.



Thanks for this. I agree that would be a way to go. I should have emphasised I would be looking for something new and compact - like the dacs. I have sold two excellent valve amps quite recently due to problems of transportability and my age.
Thanks, again.
 
Ah, fair enough.
The 303 is quite compact, though. ;)

If you want new, small, cheap and good I'd recommend the little TPA3116 chip amps. Stupidly good for the money, imo.

Search eBay for item number
274740955800

(For reasons that currently escape me, I can't copy the link to take you straight there!)
 
Yamaha 803D is a great amp IMO. Plenty of grunt and subtlety. For me it is more satisfying than my previous 82/180 combo. I suspect that the 801 may be a smite better. My next amp is likely to be a Yammy and my next speakers,Maggies. It’s nice when you get near to what you really want. It’s an amp I could live with for a long while.
 
I picked up a S/H Pear Drop amp from BK Electronics recently for £100. It's the best small, inexpensive class D amp that I've heard.
 
You don't have to cut many engineering corners to make a cheap but decent DAC.
Amplifiers are trickier, but with a ~30W power limit class AB chipamps or class Ds can be pretty good. More power starts getting hard without spending money.
 
You don't have to cut many engineering corners to make a cheap but decent DAC.
Amplifiers are trickier, but with a ~30W power limit class AB chipamps or class Ds can be pretty good. More power starts getting hard without spending money.


Yes. You are addressing the question I am really asking. I should have been more direct. The Topping DAC, purely in sound term, seems to compare well with my other DACs. Is it possible to cut the engineering corners you mention and produce an amp that compares similarly with my amps.
 
Yes. You are addressing the question I am really asking. I should have been more direct. The Topping DAC, purely in sound term, seems to compare well with my other DACs. Is it possible to cut the engineering corners you mention and produce an amp that compares similarly with my amps.
Like I said, up to about 30 W before the corners get too obvious and I would also add - a sane speaker load of not much less than 6 Ohms at any frequency.
 
Yamaha 803D is a great amp IMO. Plenty of grunt and subtlety. For me it is more satisfying than my previous 82/180 combo. I suspect that the 801 may be a smite better. My next amp is likely to be a Yammy and my next speakers,Maggies. It’s nice when you get near to what you really want. It’s an amp I could live with for a long while.


I have had a Yamaha in the past and share the enthusiasm.
 
Ah, fair enough.
The 303 is quite compact, though. ;)

If you want new, small, cheap and good I'd recommend the little TPA3116 chip amps. Stupidly good for the money, imo.

Search eBay for item number
274740955800

(For reasons that currently escape me, I can't copy the link to take you straight there!)

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/27474095...d=link&campid=5338728743&toolid=20001&mkevt=1

I run a TPA 3116 based amp in to Rogers LS3/6, on 24 hours a day. Sound is almost as good as anything else I've got.
 
This site contains affiliate links for which pink fish media may be compensated.
Big expensive heavy parts like transformers, heatsinks, big smoothing caps etc for power amps are a lot more expensive than SMD chips generally
 
I was given a free trial of a Burson OP amp (V51-D) to try in my Topping D10s dac, the difference was unbelievable, like a completely different DAC, in a good way.
 
If you want new, small, cheap and good I'd recommend the little TPA3116 chip amps. Stupidly good for the money, imo.

Search eBay for item number
274740955800

That looks rather nice and a bargain price, just an unfortunate name.
 
Thanks everyone for information and suggestion.

Utterly astonished by PC into Topping E30 into Fosi Audio TPA3116 based amp into my 40 year old resurrected Musical Fidelity MC-2. ... : Would I dare begin selling Chord, Sugden, Mytek...?
 
I set up a system in my Daughter’s Uni accommodation using her Mac into an old Topping VX1 and her Grandad’s Arcam 2 speakers. It sounds pretty good to me, she’s chuffed to bits with it.

Cheers BB
 


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