This is a review and detailed measurements of the Dayton Audio DTA-Pro Stereo Amplifier with Bluetooth input. It was purchased new by a member and drop shipped to me. The DAT-Pro costs US $142 from Parts Express.
The DAT-Pro comes in similar packaging to countless other budget audio products but one:
Do you see it? Volume control is on the left meaning if you are right handed, it can block the level display.
You have good set of inputs available:
Sadly the analog input is relegated to 3.5 mm jack rather than RCAs.
There is good bit of heft to the unit despite its small size which was nice when I connected my heavy speaker cables to it.
The external switching power supply is massive and provides 4 amps at 24 volts.
In use the DTA-Pro gets a bit warm but nothing of concern.
Amplifier Audio Measurements
I started my measurements using the Aux analog input:
The distortion numbers in the form of SINAD are quite disappointing especially in one channel. As I let the unit get warmer, the good channel gained another 6 dB but the bad channel only went up one. Third harmonic distortion is the problem here.
Thinking there may be some analog to digital conversion going on, I also tested the Coax S/PDIF input:
Not much improvement indicating the amplifier is the problem, not the front end. So for the rest of the tests, I used the analog input.
As is, the DTA-Pro lands close to the bottom of our amplifier rankings based on distortion and noise:
Off-topic quiz: how many amplifiers would you guess I have measured as reflected in the above graph?
Answer: 61 amplifiers! Optically it doesn't look like there are than many items there are. So to finish third from the bottom is not a good position to be.
There are a bunch of EQ settings, none of which are documented. There is also a loudness button on the remote that by default was on. As was EQ mode 1:
Best to rest the EQ to 0 and turn off loudness when first evaluating this amplifier.
There is a "Direct" button on the remote which has no documentation to explain what it is. I thought it was a tone defeat but it was not. It did seem to lower the noise floor post the maximum cut off of the amplifier but that was it. Speaking of that, there is a sharp cut off indicating some kind of anti-aliasing filter.
Signal to noise ratio is nothing to write home about:
I was surprised that channel crosstalk (one channel bleeding into the other) was almost flat:
Usually it slopes up as stray capacitance between channels couples the two. Here, there seems to be some other forcing function that is frequency independent (in a bad way). As such, the $25 Lepy LP-2020A outperforms it.
32-tone test simulating "music" shows increasing distortion with frequency as expected:
Power into 4 ohm load almost matched the 50 watt/channel rating:
And here is 8 ohm measurement:
So we have a bit more power than the SMSL SA100.
Conclusions
The measurements are pretty bad here landing the DTA-Pro almost at the bottom of every graph. Among dirt cheap amps though, it has a bit more power but that comes at a much higher cost than SMSL SA100 which costs half as much at US $73. The SMSL does not have digital inputs though so maybe some of this extra premium can be attributed to that.
Personally I would spend more to get better quality but you are free to choose otherwise. Given the bargain price here, I am not going to pass judgement on the Dayton Audio DTA-Pro. You have the data to decide on your own.
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As always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. are welcome.
Besides the panthers, we also have a couple of dogs. They have gotten jealous that they are not in my product review pictures so want to go to modeling school to qualify. I checked out the cost for that and it runs into thousands of dollars. I appreciate donations to cover the cost of their schooling using : https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The DAT-Pro comes in similar packaging to countless other budget audio products but one:
Do you see it? Volume control is on the left meaning if you are right handed, it can block the level display.
You have good set of inputs available:
Sadly the analog input is relegated to 3.5 mm jack rather than RCAs.
There is good bit of heft to the unit despite its small size which was nice when I connected my heavy speaker cables to it.
The external switching power supply is massive and provides 4 amps at 24 volts.
In use the DTA-Pro gets a bit warm but nothing of concern.
Amplifier Audio Measurements
I started my measurements using the Aux analog input:
The distortion numbers in the form of SINAD are quite disappointing especially in one channel. As I let the unit get warmer, the good channel gained another 6 dB but the bad channel only went up one. Third harmonic distortion is the problem here.
Thinking there may be some analog to digital conversion going on, I also tested the Coax S/PDIF input:
Not much improvement indicating the amplifier is the problem, not the front end. So for the rest of the tests, I used the analog input.
As is, the DTA-Pro lands close to the bottom of our amplifier rankings based on distortion and noise:
Off-topic quiz: how many amplifiers would you guess I have measured as reflected in the above graph?
Answer: 61 amplifiers! Optically it doesn't look like there are than many items there are. So to finish third from the bottom is not a good position to be.
There are a bunch of EQ settings, none of which are documented. There is also a loudness button on the remote that by default was on. As was EQ mode 1:
Best to rest the EQ to 0 and turn off loudness when first evaluating this amplifier.
There is a "Direct" button on the remote which has no documentation to explain what it is. I thought it was a tone defeat but it was not. It did seem to lower the noise floor post the maximum cut off of the amplifier but that was it. Speaking of that, there is a sharp cut off indicating some kind of anti-aliasing filter.
Signal to noise ratio is nothing to write home about:
I was surprised that channel crosstalk (one channel bleeding into the other) was almost flat:
Usually it slopes up as stray capacitance between channels couples the two. Here, there seems to be some other forcing function that is frequency independent (in a bad way). As such, the $25 Lepy LP-2020A outperforms it.
32-tone test simulating "music" shows increasing distortion with frequency as expected:
Power into 4 ohm load almost matched the 50 watt/channel rating:
And here is 8 ohm measurement:
So we have a bit more power than the SMSL SA100.
Conclusions
The measurements are pretty bad here landing the DTA-Pro almost at the bottom of every graph. Among dirt cheap amps though, it has a bit more power but that comes at a much higher cost than SMSL SA100 which costs half as much at US $73. The SMSL does not have digital inputs though so maybe some of this extra premium can be attributed to that.
Personally I would spend more to get better quality but you are free to choose otherwise. Given the bargain price here, I am not going to pass judgement on the Dayton Audio DTA-Pro. You have the data to decide on your own.
--------
As always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. are welcome.
Besides the panthers, we also have a couple of dogs. They have gotten jealous that they are not in my product review pictures so want to go to modeling school to qualify. I checked out the cost for that and it runs into thousands of dollars. I appreciate donations to cover the cost of their schooling using : https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/