Review: Dayton Audio DTA-100a Amplifier

Category: Amplifiers

This little integrated amp, for its purpose, is a hell of a buy.

It's not a great all around amp - just good when trying to play rock at volume - gets muddy in the middle.

BUT - with jazz, acoustic, easy listening, classical? This thing is a gem. Can't believe the clean, crisp, yet warm sound coming out of these speakers, powered with my music library from my blackberry.

Jamming some Pat Metheny or Wes Montgomery or some Vivaldi, sounds AMAZING. Sting, sounds great. Imaging is great, no noticeable distortion at all. Get into some Rush, Zeppelin, some poorly recorded reggae - still sounds good, but loses its musicality. Nwo you're just listening to music on a decent stereo.

For $100, hooked up to some efficient monitors, just plug in your ipod, blackberry or what not and leave the volume knob at half mast (using source for volume) and you will be shocked at the quality. Sounds as good as same speakers powered by my hopped up Odyssey Amp (with an outlaw pre-pro). I actually pulled the Acoustic Energy monitors from the system because the extra M&K bookshelves I had available were 4 ohm.

What else. NO SUB OUT, so you need speaks that will give you some bass.

It also has a built in (non-tripath) headphone amp with 1/4" jack.

Has rca inputs in the back, with a small headphone jack size input in the FRONT which automatically takes precedence over the RCA's in the event two sources are hooked up.

CAn't say enough about how I am enjoying this little amp. Just the amp and two speakers now makes up my entire dedicated system. For $100, everyone should have one.

Comes with banana plugs (doesn't take bare wire) plus RCA adapters and a small, coiled headphone cord to attach your ipod/mp3 player.

I've had this for a few weeks and it sounds better than it did on day one.

I don't like any distortion and I appreciate nice imaging. Can't stand it when you can tell where the speakers are.

Money no object, would I own this? Probably not, but maybe, just because it's so damn small (maybe 3" wide, 6" deep and 2" tall?) and cool, I'd still own one for my office system.

What a nice surprise. Really sounds amazing. I don't like crappy sounding music at all. This little amp blew my socks off - I had read the BS about tripath amps sounding as good as this or that...when I saw one with some actual power, I went for it.

Try one - you'll like it.

- Dan

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