Just bought this during 7.7 to replace my cheapo RM50 TPA3116 desktop amp. My previous amp is working fine but I wasn't pleased with the fixed crossovers provided. It's making my subs speak vocals too much with the high crossover point so everything goes w00mw000wm00wm when you get closed mic vocals in your audio.




Nice little small package enclosed in diy kit aluminum case


Definitely fits under my screen riser.


Looks sleek on my table compared to my old acrylic fishtank amp.

Other than added bluetooth included in the amp, overall it's a nice amp. I get bass and treble control for my fullrange and a separate sub and crossover frequency control for the subwoofer I use. I doubt the crossover affects the fullrange. It seems to play my speakers full unrestricted when I did a frequency sweep. Clean and smooth knobs despite slippery metal. Everything feels nice to twist. Best part is that turning the master volume won't change the tone of the speaker

My previous acrylic amp unit was only 3 knobs with terrible volume attenuation. The 3 knobs were L/R volume, Sub volume and master volume. And if those 3 were to lower down below 50% you can hear the audio start to "filter out" as if someone putting a highpass on the eq. It just sounds... "not direct" Had to keep the volume max on all 3 and use my interface to control master volume instead. Plus one of the RCA jacks were broken thanks to my overly tight RCA connectors from Kadas. They strip off any cheap RCA with ease.

I was curious to see what's inside since it was warmer than my old amp. I'm using the same 24V 5A PSU but this unit definitely warmer despite same TPA3116? Not sure. I'm no expert in electronics but this is a sealed aluminum case compared to the older airy open case that collects dust like mad.

Just gonna share some pics here for viewing pleasure












Aiyima said they use "premium ELNA" capacitors.
I have no experience with good ELNA parts. Maybe someone can verify if its legit?

I swapped the thermal grease with GD9000 on the pair of TPA3116 chip. The heatsink was pretty loose as expected from these chinese amp. Red threadlock prolly did nothing. Glad they did put thermal grease in it. My acrylic amp has none of these grease. Weird to see them use small aluminum pieces to stack the heatsink on. Guess that's how they get away with machine tolerances.

Overall I'm getting proper temperatures now. The heat is now soaking into the heatsink instead of the bottom of the PCB

A pic of the circuit board in hi-res phone quality in case anyone interested

This post has been edited by power911: Jul 17 2020, 11:37 AM

elna got bassssss

As long as it sound good, should not matter premium or not.

Caps are hard to confirm by eye whether they;re legit or not, as long as the voltage and temp ratings are correct they should work ok.
Threadlock won't do much seeing how they put it on the heads at the board, you need to put threadlock on the threads before you screw it in. The screws were already loose even before they put threadlock on them it seems.
Those aluminum pieces sandwiched between the amp IC and heatsink helps to spread the heat better. It simulates a thicker substrate in cases where manufacturing thicker heatsinks can be costly. Refer to a Naim NAP200 for example. The output transistors are heatsinked to the floor of the amp, but there's an aluminum slab sandwiched between them to spread the heat. In the following image you can just about make out the aluminum slab underneath the transistors

niceeeeeeeee

I've been happy with the TPA3116 amp so far le. It sounds amazing even on my RM50 unit too. Just some design flaw with the volume control and crossover only.
Which leads me to slowly doubt what high end amp could do to fight lower budget stuff like these. Even my office starting to replace the oldschool Omniphonics Class AB amp to a simple Crown XLS series amp to reduce floor noise.

Yeah the threadlock is kinda
But the aluminium pieces to simulate larger heatsink? You mean to add more heat mass?
Because from what you said to spread heat, it looks nowhere bigger or wider than the IC chip for it to give a bigger spread.
It's still gonna make a small hotspot on the thin aluminium heatsink no?

Usually the sandwiched pieces are bigger, they must be saving up a lot of production cost lol.

High end amp rely on branding, exclusivity, quality assurance, and desire as the selling point for their product. There's people that rely on these when making purchase.
Like recently iFi Audio and Drop came out with ZEN CAN Signature 6XX amp. An amp exclusively for HD 6XX. Even though most amp don't have problem to power the headphone. Since HD 6XX already sell more than 100k and HD 650 maybe even more, they feel there will be enough people that will buy an amp made exclusively for the headphone.

you went from one tpa3116 to another ? Why didn't try its newer sibling tpa3251 or tpa3255 from aiyima ?

The price jump too high for my MCO wallet haha
Got any recommend a? As far as I know they only have basic stereo tone controls with no sub out/sub control

This post has been edited by power911: Jul 24 2020, 12:12 AM

ok i see your point, your model has the most detailed controls