Hi from an old newbie!

[vegasllew]

Hi, my name is Dr. Llew Williams; I am retired from my former position as the Senior Science Advisor to the Director of U.S. EPA's National Enviromental Monitoring Laboratory. It has been a lot of years since I put together integrated amplifiers from kits or worked out the crossover network requirements for speaker systems I was assembling. I played upright bass in a musical group for years, and still build golf clubs and fishing tackle.

In my scannings for low-cost, low-power amps, I was led to this forum, and the more threads I read, the more I learned and the more impressed I became with the participants on this forum. I just tried a new SI T-Amp and loved the clean sound it gave me running my Sony CD/DVD player through it with new JBL Control1Xtreme speakers (as suggested by one of the forum members). Those speakers are not that sensitive, so I was a bit disappointed with the low end. If I have to rig up a powered sub-woofer, it will have defeated the whole idea. Is there anything reasonable (<$50) out there among the passive speakers that would be sensitive enough to give a bit of low end with 5 or so watts of power?

Your recommendations for bolstering the power output of the T-Amp will also be greatly appreciated. The sound with 8 NiMH AA's was clean, but I'm sure some of my lower-end disappointment might be solved by pumping more power out with a better power supply. If I wired up speakers in parallel to drop the impedance, will I gain significantly more power (without upping noise levels)?

THanks for receiving me into your group. Hopefully over time, I'll be able to give back!

Llew in Naples Florida

[planet10]

Welcome to the forum llew.

Your lack of bass with the cheap SI t-AMP is something inherent in the amp because they input caps are of such a size that the amp starts rolling off below 100 Hz. If you mod the amp with larger input caps bass cabn be improved considerably. There is also 1 othe cap recommended -- a local poswer supply resevoir cap near the chip. These mods mean recasing the amplifier, but that is a good idea anyway, allowing better I/O hardware and replacement of the pot (either with a better one or a fixed R).

I haven't done any of these mods on mine, instead just buying a better executed version of the amp (Trends 1A10) since it is handy to have an amp around to mate with my iPod in the event of a power failure.

dave

[Cal Weldon]

Welcome to the forums Dr. Liew.

[pinkmouse]

Why Vegasllew? Are you in the spangly catsuit stage of your career?

[Geek]

Hi, welcome!

Is there anything reasonable (<$50) out there among the passive speakers that would be sensitive enough to give a bit of low end with 5 or so watts of power?

Only in a very small listening room. The CSS FR125 can go really low, so can a few Aurasound and Tang band. But to go low, they trade efficiency. Hence the need for a small room with only 5 watts.

If you have a larger listening room, you'll need expensive speakers in BIG cabs to extend them. Checkout Planet10's site for those plans.

Cheers!