This is a review and detailed measurements of the Sylph Audio FB100 stereo amplifier Kit board. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $175.
I asked for a finished implementation for ease of testing. This is what you get for the price:
The core engine is TI TPA3251 with PFFB design.
And as implemented here:
This is a balanced implementation with SpeakOn speaker terminals. While SpeakOn terminals are great, they did necessitate an adapter to convert them to my dummy load wiring. This likely caused a bit of degradation which wouldn't be there if you wired straight from SpeakOn to your speakers.
Rear panel shows this:
But again, you are buying an assembled board. You need to provide your own power supply, case, connectors, etc.
Sylph Audio FB100 Amplifier Measurements
This is a low gain amplifier which likely is one of the reasons for its excellent performance:
Shocking to see these amps be just below Purifi ranking!
Noise performance is excellent, far exceeding 16 bit dynamic range even at 5 watts!
And as you see, despite the low gain, just about any proper balanced DAC/Pre-amp will drive to max power with 4 volts in.
Benefit of PFFB together with good tuning of the output filter results in excellent, and load independent, frequency response:
Multitone test shows very low distortion where our hearing is sensitive:
We are talking distortion below threshold of hearing there! Of course, there is some rise with frequency which we see more of in 19+20 kHz distortion test:
I was amazed at the channel separation:
It is matching our reference design!
We see the nice and low distortion and noise in our power measurements:
The small variations as I noted, is likely caused by the less than secure adapter I had in the loop.
Power rating nicely meets spec:
And still holds with 40 Hz tone:
Of course some of this is a function of the power supply in the sample provided.
The variations in distortion and rise with respect to frequency is better than I expected:
Power on/off glitch is kept under control:
Finally, the amplifier is stable on power up:
Conclusions
Lately I have been in a bit of malaise, finding it harder to get the motivation to do another review. Then I come across such a well engineered amplifier as FB100 and all of that goes in the window, putting a smile on my face! Such a movement we have started to squeeze every bit of performance out of these chip based class D amplifiers. Not only do you not have to apologize for using them, you can stand next to them and with proud announce that you some of the best performing amplifiers! Then show them the little board that brings this to us and the shock factor must be something to die for!
I am happy to recommend the Sylph Audio FB100 stereo balanced amplifier kit.
------------
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/
I asked for a finished implementation for ease of testing. This is what you get for the price:
The core engine is TI TPA3251 with PFFB design.
And as implemented here:
This is a balanced implementation with SpeakOn speaker terminals. While SpeakOn terminals are great, they did necessitate an adapter to convert them to my dummy load wiring. This likely caused a bit of degradation which wouldn't be there if you wired straight from SpeakOn to your speakers.
Rear panel shows this:
But again, you are buying an assembled board. You need to provide your own power supply, case, connectors, etc.
Sylph Audio FB100 Amplifier Measurements
This is a low gain amplifier which likely is one of the reasons for its excellent performance:
Shocking to see these amps be just below Purifi ranking!
Noise performance is excellent, far exceeding 16 bit dynamic range even at 5 watts!
And as you see, despite the low gain, just about any proper balanced DAC/Pre-amp will drive to max power with 4 volts in.
Benefit of PFFB together with good tuning of the output filter results in excellent, and load independent, frequency response:
Multitone test shows very low distortion where our hearing is sensitive:
We are talking distortion below threshold of hearing there! Of course, there is some rise with frequency which we see more of in 19+20 kHz distortion test:
I was amazed at the channel separation:
It is matching our reference design!
We see the nice and low distortion and noise in our power measurements:
The small variations as I noted, is likely caused by the less than secure adapter I had in the loop.
Power rating nicely meets spec:
And still holds with 40 Hz tone:
Of course some of this is a function of the power supply in the sample provided.
The variations in distortion and rise with respect to frequency is better than I expected:
Power on/off glitch is kept under control:
Finally, the amplifier is stable on power up:
Conclusions
Lately I have been in a bit of malaise, finding it harder to get the motivation to do another review. Then I come across such a well engineered amplifier as FB100 and all of that goes in the window, putting a smile on my face! Such a movement we have started to squeeze every bit of performance out of these chip based class D amplifiers. Not only do you not have to apologize for using them, you can stand next to them and with proud announce that you some of the best performing amplifiers! Then show them the little board that brings this to us and the shock factor must be something to die for!
I am happy to recommend the Sylph Audio FB100 stereo balanced amplifier kit.
------------
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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