I have been using, experimenting with, and loving tiny-watt amplifiers for a long time. This started with the TA-2024 chip found in a Trends Audio TA10.1 desktop amplifier that I purchased way back after seeing the review on 6moons. It was driving some nautilus-looking Scandinavian MiniPods and delivered a fun, musical, clear, and plenty loud sound field coming from a low watt amplifier. 

That amp served mostly as a desktop listener, and even as my system was in a continual state of flux, the sound was so enjoyable that I never traded it away. Since it was semi-portable, I took it with me to listen to a pair of Klipsch Forte IIs from a Craigslist ad. The seller was so perplexed and surprised at the sound, and at that moment, so was I. This was the first time I hooked it up to a rather large home speaker and it ROCKED. Due to the high sensitivity of that speaker, it took almost no power to come alive. I had an iPhone with a headphone jack at the time, and I remember the song I played was Traffic by Thom Yorke. I still love that album for a good speaker workout.

At that point I had a new realization – with a high-sensitivity speaker, that little chip came alive. That moved my journey into low power + high sensitivity setups. Not long ago, digging around in my stash of old audio curiosities, I found an old Sonic Impact T-amp and started thinking more about it.

The Sonic Impact T-amp has its own story in audio lore because of that TA2024 chip inside. It was developed by Tripath Technology, a semiconductor company founded by Adya Tripathi in 1995. The technology was termed Class T, and became known for its efficiency and high-quality sound reproduction. The chips were tiny, inexpensive, and had a surprisingly amazing fidelity. At the time (early 2000s) Class D chips were emerging, but not renowned in terms of fidelity. The TA2024 had the high-efficiency characteristics of Class D, but this one had a distinctive personality to it. The box says it brings horsepower to your system, but that’s definitely from the marketing department.

I love reading the reviews for that little plastic bugger from trusted high-end listeners… Especially this one from Jeff Day at 6moons or this one using its bigger brother Super-T by Wes Phillips at Stereophile.

When I dug mine out, it was looking a little worse for wear because of its aging plastic case. Also the speaker terminals are prone to breakage, especially when trying to jam in any speaker wire larger than a small gauge. Not that functional in my system, but I knew it had the good stuff inside. I figured I should just take it apart and re-mount it in a more appropriate enclosure with actual speaker connectors and see what happens. 

Taking the little thing apart was a fun challenge… I learned about a tiny hidden screw after getting frustrated and prying the case open with a screwdriver. After busting the case open and getting the board out, I could appreciate the engineering of this ugly little thing even more. I was never wowed by using this amp with batteries, so I decided to ignore that function in its new incarnation. Finding a suitable Hammond enclosure and some subtle speaker terminals really got me moving. I decided on an upright approach to the controls and speaker terminals and kept the power and input fixed in its original orientation. After hooking everything up, I fell in love again. It’s now easily swapped in and out without speaker cable dongles… however, I did have to dig out and old mini jack to RCA cable to connect to my DAC. I’ve been going direct without a preamplifier to isolate the amplifier’s character, though I do like using a passive pre to have more control and smoothness than the factory pot. The factory pot has power included, so I just click it on, turn it up to full power, and control the sound level externally.

Get a small guitar pedal enclosure from Hammond, add paint, then created labels with laser printer for fun effect.

I made another one with a little larger case and super chunky speaker terminals.