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First impressions of the $30 SI-5 Portable Class-T Digital Audio Amp

A box arrived today from Global Mart in Utah. I'm glad I hadn't seen the email they sent after I ordered it, which said the Sonic Impact amp was out of stock and not expected until mid-June.

I plugged the cute little plastic box (it has both fit and finish) between my Meridian 508.24 CD player and Silverline Sonatina II speakers with a generic dual-RCA to stereo miniplug cable and solid-core CAT5 for speaker wire. After filling the room with a burnt plastic smell from a 12V wall wart I got at a yard sale for $2, I fitted up a 9V wall wart and sat down to listen.

Japan's "Gentlemen Take Polaroids" CD was still in the CD player from last night, so I gave it a spin to note any differences there might be between my Blue Circle preamp/Gainclone amp combo and this teeny plastic toy. One difference was the bass. Right away, I had to turn down the subwoofer! Goooood bass. Clear. Deep. Room filling.

I could tell a few bars into the first song that I was hearing something new. Before I could even get seated, my head was bobbing up and down to the music. Whole melody lines I had never noticed before were floating in the air between the melody lines I recognized. I've had this CD for 20 years now, and the LP for a couple of years before that, and to hear anything new, let alone new melody lines, was quite a shock. A pleasant shock. Nice. I liked the way that many instruments were playing at once and none really distracted from the others. There's some really cool bite and clank to the sound, in all the appropriate places.

So, the upside is detail, clarity, a mystical tunefulness, and a truly new perspective (for me) on the music, maybe not the right one, but who's to say? It isn't often that $30 provides a whole new listening experience.

It's a little early in the game to criticize this thing considering it's had a whole 90 minutes of burn-in, and the cables and underpowered supply were the first random things I pulled out of a drawer, but I don't want to leave anyone with the impression that this amp will make all others obsolete, or anything like that.

For me, the obvious downside was the near-total emotionlessness of the sound. Both of my feet were bouncing up and down on the floor, but my heart was grumbling, "So what?" I didn't *feel* anything from the sound. Whatever the opposite of goosebumps are, I had them. Goosepits, maybe. My head kept interjecting, "Neat!" and "Wow, listen to that!" but my tear ducts were very dry.

Who knows, maybe after it has another 2 hours of burn-in, or after I put in the new AA NiMHs I got at Walgreens, I'll be weeping over the deep emotion in a Spike Jones rave-up and convince you all to trade in your favorite amp for one of these. Or not. For $30, who cares? That's like half a tank of gas these days.


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Topic - First impressions of the $30 SI-5 Portable Class-T Digital Audio Amp - mrgil 20:28:25 06/07/04 (9)


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