 | What I should have bought in the first place
rating: 5
A couple of years ago I was looking for a stereo amp to power 8 sets of ceiling speakers in my home. I had already installed impedance matching volume controls so I was not overly concerned about the amp getting dragged down with a 2 ohm or similar load. My choices narrowed down to an Onkyo M-282 or the Audiosource Amp 100.
The Onkyo put out 100 watts per channel and the Audiosource did 50 watts at 8 ohms. Nod to the Onkyo
The Onkyo had an Amplfier Protection Circuit and the Audiosource had a fuse. We will come back to this point.
The Onkyo was $200 and the Audiosource was about $90 at the time. Nod goes to the Onkyo because it just had to be better at the price difference.
Last week, after just over 2 years, the Onkyo rolled over and quit. After way too much time on the phone at Onkyo Customer support, it became clear to me that there was no repair route that would be less than the cost of a new Onkyo; the culprit was the "Amplifier Portection Circuit".
Since the Onkyo was now a doorstop, I decided to try the Audiosource 100 and since they were 50 watts at 8 ohms or 160 watts bridged, I bought two from Amazon. They got here in 4 days and I took one out and inserted in into the system. It is now playing all 16 speakers at a level of sound volume and quality that is way beyond what the Onkyo did at 3X the price.
Did I mention that I set one of the amps up in 50 watt stereo mode? There is no need to use both amps in mono mode. The sound is very impressive.
Onkyo is dead to me and Audiosource has a new and happy customer. I only wish I had taken the chance before blowing good $$$ on the Onkyo M-282.
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A good amplifier
rating: 4
A quality product at a good price. I wish the A/B switch would turn on both sets of speakers instead of either/or--if so, I would have given it five stars.
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Pure Crap!!!!
rating: 1
Oh, boy!
Briefly, this item is just not worth your time or effort. It certainly isn't worth your money.
I bought this for only one reason: to take the audio from my computer and power my bookshelf speakers. I've been using an old (~25-year old!) unit and it finally died, leaving me looking for a replacement. This amp seemed to fill the bill, but I was completely wrong.
The sound is harsh and artificial (you may disagree--it's subjective), but my main complaint is that this unit has a "feature" that allows it to sense audio input automatically and to switch on (and off!) based on that input. According to the manual (just a pamphlet, actually) it's possible to deactivate the auto switching by placing a slide switch in the Manual position. Nope, not on my unit. That just doesn't work.
So, the result is that every time the audio drops below an arbitrary and unadjustable threshold, a relay drops out and the unit is silenced. You can only imagine the irritation at listening to this and having it drop out and pick back up countless times in low-level passages or spoken audio! Click, click, click. And no sound at every other click. . .
I repeat: the Manual selection does not work (at least on my system). This is a horrible design!
After placing a complaint to customer support (and waiting an entire week with no response), I'm warning you before you choose this item: don't! If they just ignore your inquiries, why even bother?
My intention is to simply open the unit and bypass the offending relay. If you don't know which end of a soldering iron to hold, however, you may find a solution like this a bit intimidating. No matter what, it's certainly frustrating either way.
Consider yourself warned.
--George Andrews
San Diego
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Excellent amplifier at a good price
rating: 5
The Amp-100 is a very good amplifier for the price. It is very easy to setup and use. It has good sound quality also. We connected four Dayton Audio 2-way speakers to the amplifier behind a Behringer mixer. The sound quality was excellent!
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Great, BUT YOU HAVE TO USE SOURCE 2
rating: 4
This amp is great (I have 2 of them, 1 for the right/left stereo signals and the other one just for my center channel) but there is one thing that you HAVE to know before you setup this device.
If you are only plugging in 1 device, plug it in source 2.
It makes very little sense, but I almost threw these things out the window.
See, they are auto-sensing, so they default to source 2 and will always amplify what is on source 2, BUT if there is a signal on source 1 (not just a low level but a few db) you will hear a definite 'click' as it moves to source 1. If your music or content plugged into source 1 all of a sudden gets quiet, you will hear another 'click' as it moves back to source 2. I made the HUGE mistake of plugging my equipment into source 1 and got all worked up that my equipment was cutting out when I would watch quiet scenes in the movies.
All I can say is: These things are awesome, IF you use them correctly.
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