I've been listening to this $89 T-amp for a couple of hours, and frankly, i'm completely surprised how good it sounds. I've been listening to Bruce Cockburns Inner City Front and a Ziggy Marley CD with a long strange title. Both of which I'm very familiar. I first routed through my IRD Purist preamp to the Dayton and found the sound very good, only slightly lacking in bass compared to my $3000 200/400 watt Coda Stage amp. I then switched to the Dayton direct, and was surprised to find the sound a little punchier and a little more bass. Very nice vocals and very good low level background retrieval. I then went back to the IRD and the CODA. The differences were a little more weighty bass, slightly less forward vocals, which surprised me. Also, I think the background detail was a little better with the Dayton, surprisingly. I had to concentrate to notice it though. The soundstage was good with both amps but there was a certain refinement to the sound, cymbals and spatial cues, that made the CODA amp sound more expensive. But I tell you, if you didn't listen to them back to back, you probably wouldn't know. This through VMPS 626 speakers with planar mids and ribbon tweeters. Not super high efficiency. The Dayton uses the 2050 chip and it displayed plenty of power. Consider me impressed. Now I have to decide where to put this baby-probably a new system in the bedroom or , more likely, the computer.
If I were starting all over and assembling a main system...this little Dayton amp would be included if it wasn't only one input. It's a real eye opener and makes one think twice about the money we spend on components.
