Sonic Impact T-Amp - question

sully5604

After reading a bunch of great reviews on this little amp I decided to buy one to see what all the hype was about.

Well mine was delivered today and I'm afraid things aren't going so well. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong, if I got a bad unit, or ....

My first attempt to set this up was to use 8 brand new AA batteries. I hooked it to my laptop and to a pair of bookshelf speakers. The distortion was terrible. There was a relatively loud hiss. There was also a fairly rapid "ticking" noise.

I tried to change power to a 12V power supply, but that didn't improve anything.

I've tried three different sets of speakers, but no improvement.

Now I don't even get a music other than a quick 1 second sound bite before it stops and just makes that "ticking" noise.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

Any advice? Thanks!

RuSsMaN

Get an adapter, and hook it to one of your CD players, I've had nothing but good luck with these little switching amps. Get it off your dirty pc.

Cheers,
Russ

Shizelbs

Oh man oh man, laptops are the worst source ever. I get nothing but terrible noise, hiss and crackles from mine.

As Russ said, hook it up to a real source, then draw conclusions.

ezc

I agree with russman. Get it off the laptop. I have 2 SI that I use, one in the garage that drives a pair of smaller floor standing speakers that I got at a garage sale for $10. I use usually use my palm to play mp3 or an old sony dvd player. I have had no problems so far. It sounds ok for what it is. I have a 2nd one that I have been playing with at my store. I had it driving NHT St4 towers using a moded Tosh 3950 player & now driving SB3 using the same player again sound is not bad. I have tried using my laptop at the store & it sounded worse than using my Palm. Need to remember digital is very noisy, I feel my laptops are extremely noisy. Listening to music using headphones from my laptop there is lots of noise that shouldn’t be there, I get a much better sound using my Palm T3.

sully5604

Thanks all for the replies.

After a round of frustrating trial and error I finally sent the unit back and exchanged it for another one. That was the ticket. Believe it or not...this little sucker is driving a pair of LSi9's pretty darn well. Volume is only turned up 1/4 turn and it's plenty loud for casual listening. Keep in mind my speakers are only about 3 feet away.

Now that I know it works....I may just get another to bi-amp the LSi's

I'm not looking for room filling sound, just nice sound in my office. This does the trick.

Thanks again.

michael_w

I too tried mine along with a pair of LSI7s and an ascendant audio atlas 15 sub and it filled my room quite nicely. Kind of funny how it rivials a $300 receiver I have for ht...

You might consider replacing the binding posts. The stock ones are excessivly crappy and hard to put anything over 16 awg into. I replaced my binding posts for about $12.

madmax

They sound really nice on the big SDA's too.
madmax

Schris22

Not quite sure how these power those speakers, but what I did notice is that...
you have Lsi's in your office. Nice....

Chris

ND13

I just read some reviews on this little wonder and it received rave reviews.

Sounds like something to get to play around with. Where did you guys get your's? How much should I expect to pay for one? I know that retail is $39 , but should be available for around $20-25, right?

michael_w

$30 from Parts Express ... plus I got the coveted catalogs and some other goodies like replacement binding posts to go with it.

sully5604

Picked mine up through Amazon. Ends up it comes from Target. Total with shipping was $37.

Considering how much I have paid for other gear this thing is a steal. Plays louder than I would have expected....and very clean. Can't imagine what it would do with highly efficient speakers.