THD shoots up massively after 100W which is a thing to watch out for, also not sure if you can actually bridge the modules in the conventional way (by attaching out of phase input signals, then connecting the speaker between the two channel outputs) - looking online a couple of hits say they can’t be bridged and looking at the data sheet circuit diagrams the bridge configuration is completely different to the stereo configuration.
If you want an ultra-cheap PCB to play with then you can get boards from AliExpress for less than £20.
I have the SMSL SA-50 in use for the computer audio - TDA7492 based. In this application 50W (in reality 10-20W before THD becomes ridiculous) is more than loud enough for me.
Oh yes, B&W to name just one have a sound to their cabinets, some quite expensive speakers are still thin in the cabinet design and rectangular boxes that are not good for reflected waves internally. My epiphany had been the Q acoustics Concept speakers that have two cases separated by a gel core non setting compound and so the cabinets sound inert. Then they have separately mounted drivers on isolated mountings, Helmholtz absorbtion tubes and point to point bracing arranged by clever thermal acoustic monitoring, all in all they are neutral sounding and dissapear from the soundstage so holographic (cliche) sounds just appear from the end wall with something I have never heard before from speakers I have owned.
Sorry, I should have been clearer - for guitar it’s the actual driver units, but absolutely if you’re going to start tuning and porting then that will also massively affect the tones.
FWIW in one cab I use a 10" eminence speaker with a foam pad. The foam damps the effects of a relatively small cab for a more open sound. It’s helped keep my rig small and easily portable. My absolute fave speakers are celestion blues, and they add a bit of classic rock magic to everything. No good for metal though.
You’ve reminded me of a guy I knew in the pub - good guitar player who always aced it at the monthly turn up and play night - anyway he worked for Marshall’s designing amps. He organised his working time to link in with the US.
I also recall - he was a drummer in the opening night / performance for the Olympics in Stratford 2012. Top secret until after the event, he gave us all a rendition in the pub one night. Edit - complete with the costume!
Yes, I’ve never stopped using a record player since I bought my first one in the mid 70s. It’s still the main way I listen to music although I do have quite a lot of digitised obscure stuff that’s too expensive to buy on vinyl.
You won’t get better quality than the 44.1kHz / 16 bit that you start with on the CD - but a lossless file format like WMA, AIFF (uncompressed, so big files) or Apple’s ALAC (compressed but lossless) will preserve that.
MP3 or AAC (which are lossy) may still be acceptable to many people - it depends what your personal quality threshold is and what you are playing the music back on.
Arguably there’s little point in using lossless files if you are going to play them back on cheap earbuds in a noisy environment!
But on a good home audio system a FLAC or ALAC track is going to sound better than an MP3.
Depends on the MP3 - one saved at (standard top MP3 rate) 320 kbps or even (non-standard) 640 kbps will sound pretty good to most people.
But if you are one of those ultra hifi folks that can hear the difference between an ordinary mains cable and one made of OFC copper with a gold-plated plug you will definitely not like MP3.
320k is supposed to be the highest bitrate supported by MP3 and I suspect that the standard psycho-acoustic models won’t make good use of higher rates even if some encoder allows them.
Also you are getting to bitrates which are achievable by lossless codecs - FLAC can achieve up to 50% compression (though typically it’s a bit less) which would get a stereo 16-bit 44kHz sampled stream down to about 704kbits/s
These days I’d probably use FLAC if I were ripping CD’s - given that one can pick up a 128GB USB3 flash drive for less than 20€ which will store about 200CDs worth of uncompressed audio and closer to 300 FLAC compressed I’m not convinced that it is necessary to use lossy compression for a home audio vault any more.
Now I use Windows media player to rip as I am being a bit lazy. Is there a way or different player that I can adjust rip levels as some tracks are quite quiet compared to others which is a nuisance in the car.
I’m not certain that “possible” is not the better word here - I wonder how they have configured the TPA3255 - perhaps they have it in PBTL mode but kept the power down to control THD (it will output 600W into 2Ω in that mode but at a cost of 10% THD**)
Pluggable op amps is a bit of a gimmick to be honest.
** if you are bothered about getting 600W out of an amp, you probably are not in a domestic listening environment - so might not mind some distortion. It’s debatable how many people can even hear 1% harmonic distortion anyway.
Afterthought: I’ve just looked at the product page and am slightly confused with 300W and 240W both being claimed as power output, and slightly irritated as THD is listed as 0.006% which is very much "best case if you get the supply voltage, output power and measurement frequency just right.
By the way - please don’t interpret the above as an out and out criticism, I’m generally in favour of the small class D amps and in general the Fossi ones have a decent reputation - I have a DAC-Q5 driving the SA50. So far no real complaints (but it’s always good to understand the product spec as much as possible).
Yes agreed and chinese watts can never be relied on. I dont need anywhere need the max power but nice to have some on tap when required like the Nad. Some of the OP amps are not just a gimmick, as with anything hifi it can change the dynamics depending on whats required. I have heard the difference despite originally being sceptical.
