deadbone
New Member
I recently purchased a SMSL SA-36A Pro (mind that suffix: the plain-jane SMSL SA-36A contains a Tripath TA2020 chip), which does not use the TPA3116D2 chip; it does however, use its little brother the TPA3118D2. The only appreciable difference—far as I can tell—between these chips is that the 3116 is rated at 50 Watts per channel, and the 3118 is rated at 30Wpc.
First off, I haven’t received the amp due to slow shipping from China, so grains of salt are recommended, but here are my thoughts. It was $36 (on eBay, shipped) without a power supply, and comes in a very nice-looking case as far as these little chip amps go. They are $50 with a 12V power supply, a few more dollars for a 24V supply, and come in silver, black, or gold. (e.g., http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L7D0LDK/) I have a spare 24V SMPS from a Dayton DTA-100a T-amp that I exchanged due to a bad volume pot, so I saved myself some change and got just the amp.
Now—I think the DTA-100a is a pretty nice-sounding amp. It’s marketed as a 50Wpc amp, but is more realistically a 30Wpc amp because its THD past 30W gets pretty large. I rarely run past 11 o’clock on the volume with my 86 dB/W/m nearfield speakers, and run at even less with my other speakers (89 dB/W/m). These speakers are “pretty inefficient” and “not very efficient,” respectively, and I’m not using a good two-twirds of the pot’s sweep. Which likely isn’t ideal because the cheap pots on these things tend to have greater channel imbalances as they approach maximum resistance.
I just don’t usually listen really loud. Maybe you do, and maybe there are noticeable sonic differences between the TPA3116 and TPA3118, but I really highly doubt it. I think the TPA3118 got more attention because it’s the heaviest hitter of the TPA31xxD2 series and people happened to notice the cheap boards and well, just look how much discussion there is in this thread alone.
It does kind of baffle me that there aren’t more options for finished 3118 amps, and I briefly considered picking up that offering someone mentioned a few posts back for $115 (plus shipping) with the built-in power supply. But it just didn’t seem to warrant the outlay to me ... think I paid something like $90 for my Dayton T-amp, and I’ll bet there’s a pretty decent markup embedded in some of these finished chip amps.
Now, barring any serious defects, $36 is a price I’m willing to lay down to try a new technology, especially wrapped in that aluminum housing. If the thing turns out to be garbage, I’ll be disappointed, but ... $36.
Anyone here with experience on the SMSL 36-A Pro, or the 3118 chip in general? I’ll admit to getting bored somewhere nearing the halfway mark of this thread....
At Sure they do really care about their image and pack boards safely and nicely in the box with quick shipment. The board looks great and pro.!
