This is a "half" review of the Mytek AMP+ stereo class D amplifier. I say "half" because one channel is broken in it. After consultation with the owner who kindly sent it to me, I decided to measure the working channel since the company says it is a "dual mono" configuration. The AMP+ costs US $2,500 from the company.
It is amazing how small Class D amplifiers are as Mytek has managed to stuff it in the same box as their desktop DACs!
The "M" logo lights up all around it in blue when you power it on and gets brighter when you push the power switch in the front. The back side has what you expect:
Speaker terminals are close to each other so a bit hard to get heavy cables into them but you can manage.
The unit supports bridge mode so I thought maybe that was activated and was the reason one channel was not working. Went to find the manual and it was very difficult. Eventually I found one on their European site. The switches are all in off position which should not have put it in bridged mode. There is USB input for their control app which I downloaded. That was for not as it did not find the amplifier. Windows complained about the USB device not having the driver or some such thing. There is a switch that enables that but that didn't make a difference.
And yes, I tried RCA input as well and the dead channel remained dead. I swapped out the AMP+ for another to make sure it was not my instrumentation/wiring. The other amp worked like a charm. I left the unit on and that didn't make a difference. Left if off overnight and tested today and the dead channel, you guessed it, remained dead. Put my nose close to the vent but could not smell anything burned. My guess is that input is disconnected from the main power board as I could see some amount of signal being amplified by the dead channel.
Mytek AMP+ Measurements
Here is our dashboard:
Distortion rises to high 80s. Add some noise and it drags SINAD down to 82 dB which is a bit above average:
Multitone test showed frequency dependency and distortion rises to -80 dB:
Frequency response with 4 ohm load is very good:
Sadly, switching to 4 ohm changes the frequency response so the amplifier response is speaker load dependent. Best in class amplifiers put the feedback loop around the class D output filter as to eliminate or lower its impact. Not so here.
Signal to noise ratio is not great at 5 watts but is reasonable at full power:
You can see how the broken channel attempts to produce some output.
Let's measure power versus distortion+noise starting with 4 ohm load:
That is decent amount of power but I don't like how the curve flattens very early meaning distortion takes over noise. With very low distortion amplifiers, the line keeps going down until at or near clipping as you see in the both references provided. The AMP+ doesn't do this due to rising distortion very early on.
Same is true with 8 ohm load:
There is more power available if we allow distortion to rise up to 1%:
Strangely the peak/burst power is not as high. Had not seen this before. Usually with regulated power supplies in class D amplifiers, burst mode produces the same power as max but not less. Anyway, it is not much of a difference to worry about.
Testing for frequency dependency, we see rather organized set of curves indicating no wild non-linearities:
Then again the primary distortion mechanism is high enough to obscure any secondary sources.
I was pleased to see the switching frequency is nicely attenuated:
Some amps reduce that to just -10 dB or so but here we have nearly 40 dB which is nice.
Conclusions
I admire the small and cool running amplifier here. Other than that though, performance is middling and nowhere near state of the art in class D amplification which you can get for these prices, albeit probably from lesser known companies. Reliability is a worry. Reading about it, there were some strange comments from the company in forums that some European contract manufacturer had produced faulty units that were literally going up in smoke. The changed manufacturing and supposedly the problem is fixed. I think the owner said he had sent his in for repair and this was the replacement unit or something like that. Doesn't inspire confidence.
I am not going to recommend the Mytek AMP+. It is too expensive for middle of the road performance with potential reliability issues.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
It is amazing how small Class D amplifiers are as Mytek has managed to stuff it in the same box as their desktop DACs!
The "M" logo lights up all around it in blue when you power it on and gets brighter when you push the power switch in the front. The back side has what you expect:
Speaker terminals are close to each other so a bit hard to get heavy cables into them but you can manage.
The unit supports bridge mode so I thought maybe that was activated and was the reason one channel was not working. Went to find the manual and it was very difficult. Eventually I found one on their European site. The switches are all in off position which should not have put it in bridged mode. There is USB input for their control app which I downloaded. That was for not as it did not find the amplifier. Windows complained about the USB device not having the driver or some such thing. There is a switch that enables that but that didn't make a difference.
And yes, I tried RCA input as well and the dead channel remained dead. I swapped out the AMP+ for another to make sure it was not my instrumentation/wiring. The other amp worked like a charm. I left the unit on and that didn't make a difference. Left if off overnight and tested today and the dead channel, you guessed it, remained dead. Put my nose close to the vent but could not smell anything burned. My guess is that input is disconnected from the main power board as I could see some amount of signal being amplified by the dead channel.
Mytek AMP+ Measurements
Here is our dashboard:
Distortion rises to high 80s. Add some noise and it drags SINAD down to 82 dB which is a bit above average:
Multitone test showed frequency dependency and distortion rises to -80 dB:
Frequency response with 4 ohm load is very good:
Sadly, switching to 4 ohm changes the frequency response so the amplifier response is speaker load dependent. Best in class amplifiers put the feedback loop around the class D output filter as to eliminate or lower its impact. Not so here.
Signal to noise ratio is not great at 5 watts but is reasonable at full power:
You can see how the broken channel attempts to produce some output.
Let's measure power versus distortion+noise starting with 4 ohm load:
That is decent amount of power but I don't like how the curve flattens very early meaning distortion takes over noise. With very low distortion amplifiers, the line keeps going down until at or near clipping as you see in the both references provided. The AMP+ doesn't do this due to rising distortion very early on.
Same is true with 8 ohm load:
There is more power available if we allow distortion to rise up to 1%:
Strangely the peak/burst power is not as high. Had not seen this before. Usually with regulated power supplies in class D amplifiers, burst mode produces the same power as max but not less. Anyway, it is not much of a difference to worry about.
Testing for frequency dependency, we see rather organized set of curves indicating no wild non-linearities:
Then again the primary distortion mechanism is high enough to obscure any secondary sources.
I was pleased to see the switching frequency is nicely attenuated:
Some amps reduce that to just -10 dB or so but here we have nearly 40 dB which is nice.
Conclusions
I admire the small and cool running amplifier here. Other than that though, performance is middling and nowhere near state of the art in class D amplification which you can get for these prices, albeit probably from lesser known companies. Reliability is a worry. Reading about it, there were some strange comments from the company in forums that some European contract manufacturer had produced faulty units that were literally going up in smoke. The changed manufacturing and supposedly the problem is fixed. I think the owner said he had sent his in for repair and this was the replacement unit or something like that. Doesn't inspire confidence.
I am not going to recommend the Mytek AMP+. It is too expensive for middle of the road performance with potential reliability issues.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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