trisweb

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
More than 1 year

Visitors rate this review
5.00 of 5, 1.00 votes

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
This is a classic these days, and at $30 or whatever I paid for it, certainly worth it. I got it a while back as an amp to use on my desk with small bookshelfs, and to this day it's still performing well for that task, even through several speaker upgrades. It even served as my primary amp for ADS L520's for a week or so while I sourced a good receiver/amp for the living room. Ended up with a Yamaha HTR-5960, which is no slouch and has a great sound, but I still think I lost something when I took away the T-amp.

It's perfect for a desk/bedroom system. Currently have it powering a pair of Cambridge M50's that sound pretty decent in this setup. I don't think I'd trust it to a larger task, though it can pump out the volume on these small speakers when you want it! Always surprises me to this day how pure and crisp the amp sounds, and with decent imaging and a depth of soundstage you wouldn't expect from such a tiny plastic toy. Definitely don't pass it up if you find one, especially at its original price!

alvinio

Overall Rating
 3 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
More than 1 year

Visitors rate this review
3.50 of 5, 2.00 votes

Price Paid:  $35.00 from www.crafty.nl

Summary:
after reading several good reviews on this little amp i decided to give it a try,
so when this little cheap amp arived i tested it with different setups (tannoy,von sweikert speakers,marantz cd 67 se, nad, denon cd players,and high end cables,
i think this little amp performs the best with small bookshelf speakers, damm this little amp has a clear sound!!!!,soundstage is good not superb, power i good (with booshelfs) on sertain volume levels it can conpete with very expensive amps but when you play to hard the quality goos down and it sounds like crap, the little amp is still in active duty on my pc with wideband bookshelves and performs outstanding here.

Strengths:
clarity
very good high frequency
good soundstage
very cheap!!!!
can compete with high end amps at an serain volume level

Weaknesses:
crapy build quality (plastic)
crapy speaker outputs
not much bass
lack of power

Similar Products Used:
super t-amp
tube amplifiers
quad amplifiers
avi amplifiers

Price Paid:  $39.00 from Parts express

Summary:
This plastic thing makes my Rogers LS7s rock
Should not do that
But it does
Not the easiest speakers to drive.
I have also replaced the original Celetion tweeters with North Creek tweeters
much more musical

Strengths:
IT WORKED
And sounds very cool

Weaknesses:
volume if you need it

Similar Products Used:
Quad 2, Marantz, Sony

Price Paid:  $29.00

Summary:
Hey ho,yet another completly over hyped product!!!Jeez if this thing cost 100USD it would have passed under the bridge unnoticed,the thing in it's favor is the price,end of story,it's no giant killer folks,don't fall for the hype,it sounds OK,its sterile,no emotion,cold,distorts,plastic,tacky.

Strengths:
Cheap,clean sound

Weaknesses:
distorts,doesn't get you close to the music,plastic,for tiny girls fingers to use.

Cole Tamminen

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
Less than 1 month

Visitors rate this review
5.00 of 5, 1.00 votes

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
I tested this funky little thing out for a week in my home, including a couple of multi-hour listening periods, and I just wanted to report in with the items I mated it with, thinking that at this point in the T-amp's history the experience might be unusual.

Long story short: I only had a week's window of opp. to fiddle with this. I didn't get it burned in or anything, but after I returned it, I DID go out and buy one of my own.

First I took the little thing up to my step-son's room and hooked it up to the re-edged 30 year-old EPI 70C speakers he's using. I used a Philips Expanium personal cd/mp3 player as a source. Not a high-end system by any means, of course. I mostly wanted to see how loud it would go with the EPIs, which have a minimal cross-over and which I thought would be an easy 8ohm load. They were! The T-Amp easily goes loud enuogh for a bedroom system, even for those afternoons where no one else is home and Boy Wonder wants to Crank It.

I can't rate the precision and staging very well because nothing in the bedroom is really set up for optimal listening. But the detail was easily discernable, and the bookshelf EPIs put out as much bass as i think they are capable of. The combination was an odd but highly functional one, Based on this I can recommend the T-Amp as a great bedroom/dorm room amp, especially with efficient speakers.

Then we took the T-Amp to the living room and presented it with a different task. I uncabled the Magnepan MMGs from my Khartago amp, added new plugs to the amp-end of the monster cable, and plugged the MMGs into the T-Amp. Then I connected my Linn Kolektor into the T-Amp's single input. So we had a Linn preamp as a source and 4ohm MMGs as speakers. I was not certain the T-amp would like this. But 4 hours later, as I listened to Diana Krall lick her lips in my living room, I was pretty darn amazed.

So what I learned was that a T-Amp Will push MMGs to comfortable listening levels in a small- to medium-sized living room. It won't do head-banger volume, but it will go loud enough to hear all over a small home, no worries. I had no issues with clipping that I could notice, but i Did hear what I'll call 'breathing,' which manifested in the overall SPL fluctuating gently up and down, after about 2 or 2-1/2 hours heavy listening. This only happened for a period of 30 seconds, during a Crowded House CD. I'm guessing it was a self-protection circuit or a voltage issue (all listening done with a 12v wall-wart adapter, not batteries) which caused this, but I can't say with certainty.

The T-Amp IS very detailed. I did not find this fatiguing. I think that in high-end detail it is a very good match for these small maggies or other speakers with similar "high resolution." The apparent stage was easily as wide and as deep as my 110wpc Odyssey Khartago can make it, although the Khartago certainly delivers more V, and more Bass as well.

I did not ever remove the active preamp -- the Kolektor -- from the setup mostly becuase I was too lazy to fiddle with the cabling, but I'd like to understand better how it affected these results. I've read where others have said a pre does not affect the amp's output, but I have to believe that in this particualr setup the pre-amp's gain stage is helping the t-amp with its heavy lifting.

Always more to learn!

At any rate -- i thought these two tests might contain some useful information or inspiration.

Strengths:
clarity, clarity, clarity. simplicity. funky-factor.

oh: and cost!

Weaknesses:
can't be mono'd. A true bummer. Otherwise, buy two of these and be done!

not a heavy-lifter.

Many reviewers suggest that normal household batteries or normal household AC adapters are insufficient to make this sound its best. Possibly true, although a generic adapter is worth trying.

Similar Products Used:
none 'similar'!

I've used a variety of box-house name brand amps and recievers over the years -- yamaha, pioneer, technics, scott and then Adcom. I currently use a Khartago