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Is the Sonic Impact Super-T a worthwhile upgrade from a T-amp?


wuzzzer

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I'm thinking about selling my Harman/Kardon 2 channel amp to a co-worker who's looking for an amp for a garage setup. With the money I would probably be getting the Sonic Impact Super-T amp. Before I do I just want to make sure that it would be an upgrade over what I have now.

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Parts Express has the little original Sonic Impact on sale, but NO power supplies any more. Does anyone know of a replacment that might work?

DeanG has the SuperT- sounds great even if it does look a bit silly next to the Jubilees!

Colter, did you try ordering directly from Sonic Impact? si5.com is their website I think.

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I wasn't very impressed with the small one, nor the Trends for that matter. The Super-T sounds great if you can live with one good watt -- that's all it's good for. The great majority of my listening is very late in the evening, and it excels in that application.

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Dean, just curious, did you listen to the small one plugged into the outlet (instead of on batteries)?

I have both the Super T and the original in various places in the home, and I have not listened to the little one enough yet plugged in to see how the two compare. The little one does sound pretty good on my KGs outside, but there were limitations running on battery power. However, the Super T sounds "great" on my Fortes.

Carl.

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Does anyone know of a replacment that might work?

I could totally build an overkill power supply for anyone interested. A proper switching supply with enough filtering might run around $20, but don't quote me on that. A classical transformer implementation might run around $40.

If I were going to spend the money on a digital amp, I might opt for one of the nicer Hypex or Tripath implementations. The choice will mostly revolve around how much power you need. The Hypex amps have lower IMD...in fact, lower than I think any other amp on the market! [:o] (I think the significance here is that PWK purposely picked the lowest IMD amp he could find for his playback at home).

Not to get too far off-topic, but one of the interesting things about tubes is that they're better at high power high switching frequencies....essentially making tubes a better candidate for a digital amp [:o] As long as the output impedance could be controlled, I think we might be experimenting with that this semester in one of my design labs. If nothing else, tubes make it audiophile right?

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I wasn't very impressed with the small one, nor the Trends for that matter. The Super-T sounds great if you can live with one good watt -- that's all it's good for. The great majority of my listening is very late in the evening, and it excels in that application.

Dean, my cheap little ones with the Radio Shack 12v Wall wart (only good for 1 amp), tested perfectly out to 5 Watts before distortion kicked in. So how come the more expensive version is good for only 1 Watt? Are you just being conservative in saying this, reserving the other 4 or 5 for dynamic headroom??

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Wuzzer,

Yeh, I'd say the Super T is a worthwhile upgrade to the T amp. The T amp, IMO, is a relatively cheap, certainly built cheap, but impressive little toy. IMO it is not satisfactory for duty in a serious home audio system.

Sonic impact, I think, was surprised at the world of modders opened up on the T amp. It's because at heart, the chip is good, but have you looked at the circuit board? Anyway, What they did with the Super T amp was put in production a piece of gear with the necessary parts to optimize the performance. I couldn't listen to the T amp long without fatigue. Some forum members taped tissue paper over their tweeters to make the T amp more tolerable with K77's.

Dean's description and evaluation rings true with my experience. I also prefer the Super T to the Trends Micro, but it's not a huge preference and the Trends is pretty cool little guy. It's just a clear preference for the Super T.

I'd suggest to listen to the Super T before you commit your HK for sale. The Super T might not be your cup of tea.

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