Has anyone played with the little Lepai Tripath Amps?

Shadowfax

Shadowfax

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I posted my Cheap Speaker w/ Good Electronics over at AK and it started a small storm.

One person responded with this-
"$26 will buy a decent sounding amp these days, new. $26 in new speakers might get you one quality driver. Good speakers with cheap electronics gets my vote."

I said I would like to see a $26 amp drive my Dyns to full potential and he pointed me to the Lepai 20-20.

I really have a hard time believing this thing can drive an 87db 4ohm speaker.

Have any of you experimented with any of these toy amps? If they really work OK, it might be a cheap option to keep and drive my Polks in a PC setup. I'm thinking about dropping the big $30 just to give it a try but was hoping for more input from those whor are not Dumpster Divers looking for the cheapest thing out there.
 
I run a Lepai on my PC driving PSB Imagine Mini speakers and it sounds surprisingly pretty decent. I say surprisingly since my expectations are not very high to begin with. Will it drive your Dyns to their 'full potential' as you are seeking? C'mon now, let's get real. It's a cheap amp that sounds alright, but obviously your Dyns would sound better with more suitable amplification. That's my two cents for what it's worth which isn't much in this economy!
 
audio.bill said:
I run a Lepai on my PC driving PSB Imagine Mini speakers and it sounds surprisingly pretty decent. I say surprisingly since my expectations are not very high to begin with. Will it drive your Dyns to their 'full potential' as you are seeking? C'mon now, let's get real. It's a cheap amp that sounds alright, but obviously your Dyns would sound better with more suitable amplification. That's my two cents for what it's worth which isn't much in this economy!
Click to expand...

That was my exact argument. But there is a whole other Belief System over at AK.

Like I said, it may be OK to drive the little Polks in a PC setup but I would never think to base my rig around one.

It came out of the Sub Argument Speakers first then Electronics or any speaker any electronics.
 
With all due respect (but that's not very much!) many of those guys at AK are nothing but dumpster divers trying to convince themselves that their trashy gear is as good as any SOTA equipment. I think most of us here know better than to buy into their somewhat altered belief system.
 
:), maybe the guys have not heard the saying that a chain can only be as strong as its weakest link...


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Interesting enough, the guy over at AK has just offered to send me his spare one to play with. I guess I can't reject that offer. If it's a fun toy, I will send him a check.
 
The little toy showed up the other night in the mail but I have only had a few minutes to make sure it worked and play with it. For starters I just hooked it straight to my PCs cheap sound card with a 1/ mini to RCA cable and played a few tracks via VLC Player. Didn't sound very good at all, but I only listened for 5 minutes. Last night I installed JRiver and used that to play a few good FLAC files out to my Polk Monitor 30s and at low levels it sounded OK for a PC Home Office rig on the cheap. The next steps are to drop my little Foobar USB DAC in-line as well as hook up a standalone CDP instead of computer.

From what I have been reading, I need to pick up a 12V 5A wall wart to get anywhere close to the misguided output rating. With the 2amp wart, you really only get a few decent watts. So along with having a better sounding PC based setup for $28 (which I promptly PayPal'ed to the gentleman that sent me this out of the blue) I can have a Travel-Portable setup anywhere using Laptop, DAC, Lapai, and any speakers.

It's a fun little toy to play with but obviously not quality sound, but thats fine for the experimentation I was interested in. When I get time, I will try my other speakers with it for a good laugh.
 
That's about what I paid for my sonic impact t-amp some years ago, and it sounded surprisingly good driving an older pair of efficient klipsch. Now my son has it with the same speakers driving an analog rig, and compared to his mp3s it is high end! It's always fun to see just how far you can go in the cheap n cheerful realm, knowing that your main system is always waiting in the wings...
 
Hey,

I am looking to upgrade the PS for this toy and was about to order a 12V-6A PS when I found an old Texas Instrument PS I have that says 12V - 12A. I am so far from Electronics knowledge so I don't fully understand what is needed or if I will fry the Lepai with a 12V-12A PS. I have seen that the unit will only pull what it needs, but I am scared to fry the little toy.
 
Never ceases to amaze me at all the experts out there that can't hear the difference between a small amp with a toroidal that is under powered with no reserves & always clipping to the difference it makes to have an amp properly spec'ed to your system that has the reserves & power to render the music in the best possible delivery. That is probably why you don't see me on those sites.
 
Ha, It cost him $10 from New Mexico to PA and he asked for $28 Pay Pal so I did OK and the adapter I have is not right so it will cost me another %10 to power it properly.

As is, nearfield listening at low volume and FLAC files sounds fine.
 
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