Budget class D amp

[jamesbowers]

Howdy guys,

I am trying to outfit my office with a budget system. I have an old pair of Minimus 7's I'll be using but I don't have an amp. I need something very small and inexpensive, and sound quality isn't extremely important. I'm just looking to utilize those speakers take a step up from the crappy Philips speakers that came with the computer.

There are several amps on Amazon under $30 that have a small footprint and in the 20 watts range. Would these fit the bill? I will be listening at very low volumes, purely ambient music.

Thanks in advance.

[pandy]

Howdy guys,

I am trying to outfit my office with a budget system. I have an old pair of Minimus 7's I'll be using but I don't have an amp. I need something very small and inexpensive, and sound quality isn't extremely important. I'm just looking to utilize those speakers take a step up from the crappy Philips speakers that came with the computer.

There are several amps on Amazon under $30 that have a small footprint and in the 20 watts range. Would these fit the bill? I will be listening at very low volumes, purely ambient music.

Thanks in advance.

Excuse my curiosity but why you insist on class D? Are you limited in power supply and amplifier will be battery operated?

[Hoser Rob]

Try Dayton, they make some good cheaper small amps ... http://www.daytonaudio.com/index.php/ ... you can find them on AMazon too AFAIK.

Many of those small class D amps are Chinese built and the power specs are a bit optimistic. I have a Topping tripath amp and it's rated at abot 14 watts/channel. However that's a 10% distortion, which is ludicrous. Clean, it has about 6-7 watts per channerl. Believe it or not that's enough for me because I listen in the nearfield and my speakers are small monitors which crap out in the bass easily anyway at high volume. But this practise is common.

I quite like my Topping, tripath amps really DO sound like tubes without the noise, but while they're pretty cheap I think they's be more than 30. I bought a LepaI Tripath amp before, and it's probably in your price range, but it's cheaply built and sounds much worse. But the Dayton Audio stuff is pretty good, they cater to electonics geeks.

[aedipuss]

i've heard the dayton class d/tube combo and was very impressed. costs more than a ss amp but...

[dfisher052]

Have you tried ebay? I got a Technics 25 watt per channel receiver that's about 40 years old for less than $50 that sounds great. I use it with a pair of small Sony 5 inch speakers as my sound system for my computer. Berfore I got the sony's (also on ebay) I was using a pair of old Realistic speakers (also ebay) and they have worked great...great sound.

[jagabo]

In the past I've often disconnected a TV's internal speakers and routed the wires outside the case to a pair of stereo speakers. A while back I bought one of these to use with a small LCD TV and a pair of unpowered speakers:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077MKQJW2/

It's connected to the headphone output of the TV and gets it's power from a USB port on the TV (so it switches on/off automatically with the TV). It's mounted in a cheap plastic project case so it has to stay a few inches away from the TV to prevent EMI noise.

That amp is adequate for the particular usage scenario but you may want something with a higher power output. That means you won't be able to power it from a USB port. There lots of inexpensive audio amps like that at amazon and ebay.