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Amazon Basics 80 Watt Amplifier Teardown

amirm

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This is a follow up to the review of the Amazon Basics 80 Watt Class D amplifier. As promised, here is a quick teardown of the unit:

Amazon Basics 80W Teardown.jpg


I must say it is much cleaner construction and layout than I imagined. Wiring is nice and neat. Larger components are glued down. There is no manual re-work in sight.

Architecture is simple. The board on the left is a switching power supply which in addition to low voltages, produces + and - 32 volts for the amplifier output stage. Can't see the main silicon that performs the amplification but seems to be a "chip amp" mounted underneath to take advantage of the chassis for cooling. This is much smarter than desktop chip amps which just use a small vertical heatsink instead of using the chassis. In use, the bottom of the unit barely got warm where the chip amp is located.

Electrolytic capacitors are all Yuscon brand. I am not familiar with them but I suspect they are third-tier company.

Overall, this is better than its performance.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

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johnnyx

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A case with +/- 32v PSU and neat wiring could be used to house a better amplifier section, and still be cheap.

But even so, distortion is still less than 0.1%, which was used as the standard for acceptable distortion for decades.
 
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JSmith

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What on Earth are Bass and Treble doing on the rear of the unit? Looks like a screwdriver or long fingernail is needed to adjust? o_O



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YSC

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it's great looking actually, so the SINAD is likely they are using some poor IC amp, but any chance knowing which chip amp they are using?

sometimes I just wonders as the IC amp in big guys' actives likely use similar chips and will measure similarly when review independently, so if that's the case the actual pairing result shouldn't be too far off with this amp + passive from same speaker brand actives?
 
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amirm

amirm

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it's great looking actually, so the SINAD is likely they are using some poor IC amp, but any chance knowing which chip amp they are using?
It could be messy if it has thermal compound. Do we really care anyway?
 

YSC

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It could be messy if it has thermal compound. Do we really care anyway?
well it's not my money but if I were the buyer I would suggest to dig into that to know who's the culprit, or we can help pay the doner to do so inspite the potential damage to the amp itself?
 

YSC

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You are not accounting for my time! :) I could be doing another review than tearing this one up.
ok, that will be beyond my affordability, it was just out of curiosity about the model as personal interest.
It's just like knowing what dac chip used by some crappy dac and you see was it the manufacturer or the chip itself is the problem, and if it's the chip, it's good to know if some really well received actives can achieve top tier end result (Sound) with such mid to low tier dac/amp chips and hence we should know will that be enough for pairing with some good speaker to achieve something like what Neumann or Genelec are doing
 

MiloTheFirst

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What on Earth are Bass and Treble doing on the rear of the unit? Looks like a screwdriver or long fingernail is needed to adjust? o_O



JSmith
it actually makes a lot of sense if you think of this product as intended for the ambient music system of a small shop or restaurant. this way the employees will have less of an opportunity to mess with it. I guess the idea was for the installer to use them to "tune" the system a little bit to compensate for the architecture of the location then leave the box in a closet hoping no one touch it
 

SoundsGood2Me

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AmirM -

Apologies.

THIS IS YOUR BEST EVER RECOMMEND

DCA AEon
 

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JSmith

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it actually makes a lot of sense if you think of this product as intended for the ambient music system of a small shop or restaurant.
For that small use case it may make sense... otherwise it doesn't at all IMO. Put 'em on the front or don't have them at all... I suppose it matches it's performance really.



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MiloTheFirst

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For that small use case it may make sense... otherwise it doesn't at all IMO. Put 'em on the front or don't have them at all... I suppose it matches it's performance really.



JSmith
I wouldn't call that use case small by any means, in fact I am pretty confident that most buyers for these kind of amplifiers come from the utility market I suggested rather than the enthusiast and high end consumer market which fills our community, most individuals who look for a leisure product tend to look elsewhere to begin
 

JSmith

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I wouldn't call that use case small by any means
The odd restaurant or shop is a big market for amps is it? ... rightyo then. ;)
They're from and on Amazon... target market is clearly the basic home consumer.
the enthusiast and high end consumer market which fills our community
Enthusiasts yes... high end performance maybe, at a much lower price. If this performed well, regardless of where it comes from many members would have snapped one up, shop owners or not.



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proj964

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Thanks for the teardown. It's fun and educational to look inside!
 
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