Inappropriately smol Amps Powering Big Speakers

Equipment / Electronics / Gear / Accessories Speaker Amps
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For the longest time I was of the mind that I would need amplification that is rather large and Class A/B. But then I watched Z Reviews and thought about it. I became active in this forum and I’ve had conversations with other forum goers. Recently I acted on my thinking and then this happened:

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I got the SMSL AD18, added Bluetooth 5.0, and am powering the Klipsch R-620F. Guess what, it sounds real good.

I’m still kind of shocked too because part of me really wanted to be let down so I could convince my wife to let me go out and buy a clean class A (and the Klipsch RP series speakers). But then I just didn’t need to because it sounds good enough. After all I don’t need to go loud and since I’m left to my own devices downstairs with my headphones, and I don’t really have a good excuse now to spend a very much lot of money on living room speakers, DAC, and amp that my daughter will probably destroy in the next few years.

So, who else wants to share their inappropriately small amp powering a big speaker? I know I can’t be the only one, or at least I shouldn’t be.

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AD18 definitely has enough power for those! Can’t beat the extra functionality of that little box, too.

Closest I’ve got is a 3W tube that powers some 6.5" Klipsch bookshelves in my living room.

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Makes me want to buy Dayton Audio T652 towers and try to power them with the tiny 20$ “Nobsound” amp.

The one Zeos reviewed, and someone in the comments said he “nearly sounded like he was pissed off because everything worked fine”, lol.

Here it is :laughing:

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And the new version even has bluetooth 5.0 now. Nice, haha!
Edit: And even a DAC for USB in, oh wow. :laughing:

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I remember reading something on ASR about how most of music playback happens in the first few watts u see most conditions. I’ll have to see if I can dig it up.

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Yeah, especially for nearfield listing, since you really don’t need much power up at all when you are that close

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Yes, it is how speakers are designed given sensitivity in dB per watt. In the case of the Klipsch R-620F the first watt gives 96 dB at 1 meter.

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I have a tiny 2.1 (50w+50w+100w) amp that I paid $23 on Amazon. It has Bluetooth 5.1 and a 3.5mm input, master volume with bass and treble controls and a separate frequency and volume control for the subwoofer channel, It doesn’t come with a power supply but I have one already that is more than adequate and the one they recommend is only another $20. It calls for 12 to 24 volt power supply but that 24 is far superior for powering the amp and they weren’t kidding. I’ve had my Jamo S-809 towers with an old Onkyo 10" subwoofer on it and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The sub was a powered one but I disconnected it’s built in amplifier and ran speaker wire straight to the terminals on the speaker. It cranks and I’ve had it for a few months with no issues, it barely even gets warm when I’m driving it pretty hard.The only other thing about it is that it comes as a kit that you have to assemble and no instructions but it only took me about 5 minutes to figure it out and get it working.

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That form factor.

Id liked to hear floorstanders powered by a $100 DAC and infineon amp.