Dayton Audio APA150 150W Power Amplifier

I have only had this week or so, and it did take a little break in time to come out of it's shell, but this seems to be a well made, sturdy amp that has good sound. This is powering a pair of ~88db, 8 ohm, outdoor speakers and it does the job just fine for moderate volume levels.For the price I would recommend this, it has decent power, it sounds good, but it has a few missing things that would otherwise make it nearly perfect.It does not have Bass and Treble controls which would be useful. It has a very flat sound which is good as it does not unnaturally color the music, but for outdoor speakers or really any other 2 channel application it would be nice to turn the volume down some and push up the bass a little. An additional equalizer will likely be purchased.The Volume control knob should be the type that clicks into place, it would make it easier for small volume adjustments.The LED is super bright. Not a big deal as a little tape can tone it down.To the positives, I like that it is bridgeable, I may get another, as for the price the amplification quality it provides may be nearly unbeatable. The size is good, I could fit two, maybe three, of these next to each other in the same space one regular sized amp would take up.The self on/off works fine even with only a small signal sent.The sound, I like flat and natural by default which this has, yet still would like it more if I could tweak the bass/treble right from the amp itself.Overall I am happy with this product for the price.

I needed a no-frills amplifier for my gym room. I didn't need any pre-amplifier features but wanted to have a volume control knob, and did not need an immense amount of power due to the small size of the room. The Dayton unit fit the description perfectly and I am very happy with my purchase.I have the amp hooked up to a pair of Sony SS-B3000 speakers. I have two signal sources, a Sony LCD TV that in turn gets its signal from a Roku box and a DVD player via HDMI, and a Squeezebox Touch player. The amp has only one input so I use a cheap external RCA signal switcher to toggle between them. The unit has line out connections in case you want to chain it with another amplifier, e.g., to drive a subwoofer.The unit is extremely solidly built and simple to set up and operate. It is compact, exactly the width of the Roku and Squeezebox Touch units which I keep on top of the amp. Voice quality is very good to my non-expert ears, and the unit delivers so much power I rarely have the dial turned to more than 20%. The design is simple, with just the volume dial and an on/off button on the front panel.You can toggle on the signal detection feature using a switch on the back panel. With that feature activated, the unit sniffs the incoming signal level and goes to sleep if the audio source has been idle for a while. I am extremely pleased with this functionality. It wakes up really quickly, and does not take a high signal level to wake up (My comparison point is my Onkyo 2x100W power amplifier which I have downstairs and I can't use its signal detection feature because the input volume needs to be turned up relatively high for the amp to detect it, and the amp goes to sleep when there are quiet passages in the music, like for Chopin). The LED embedded in the power button changes color from red to blue to indicate whether the unit is sleeping or active.

After much research I've found really only two quality Amps for Bookshelf speakers based on price, features, RMS Output and reviews. The Emotiva Mini-x a-100 and the item I'm reviewing now (Dayton Audio APA150). I went with Dayton simply because it's small depth fits on the bottom shelf of my small desk, looks a little nicer and about 40 dollars less than the Emotiva.For reference I'll tell you that I bought this Amp to go along with NHT Mini-Monitor speakers and NHT Super 8 Subwoofer. This is used for a small office because I wanted really good sounding music on my PC. The speakers are rated at 75 Watts/Channel and are 8 Ohms. I was worried about the Dayton Amp not being loud enough to take full advantage of the speakers potential being you can supposedly only acheive 50 Watts/Channel with 8 Ohms. Well I can't tell you how many watts I was able to muster from the Dayton Amp but all I know is it gets REALLY Loud in my office with no noticeable distortion untill about 85-90% volume on my PC sound card. However at that volume it felt like my speakers might have been the ones distorting but it's hard to know for sure. I can say with complete confidence that there is way more than enough volume for near-feild listening and possibly even enough volume to fill a large room, even with 8 Ohm speakers. I generally sit about 2 feet from the speakers and honestly going to much above 60% volume is entering ear damage territory if you listen for extended periods of time. For general listening I set it around 30% volume. So needless to say I am very impressed.The sound is crystal clear as well and the device itself has no problems whatsoever with heat as long as you are in a well ventilated area. Right when the vents start to feel a little hot, you can feel the fan kick in for short little 5 second bursts which instantly cool it off. The fan is also virtually noiseless, especially sitting next to my noisy PC fans. I also find the construction of the Amp to be Fantastic. I was shocked that nearly the whole unit is made of solid metal including the front panel and volume knob. It comes with all the connections I need to hook up speakers, sound card, and Subwoofer to the Amp. It would have been nice to see some headphone jacks and another RCA jack for inputing other devices. Overall there isn't much to criticize with this Amp. If the internal parts are as quality as the exterior, this should last quite some time!