Bought A Pair OF SMSL A-300 PWR AMPS - - - Egads Another Disaster

[DesertRatt]

After pretty good luck with the Aiyima A-200, I wanted to try another brand I see a lot - the SMSL. I have a Bi-Amp system and I planned on the Aiyima on top, with TWO SMSL A-300s in bridge mode for the bass driver.

The box it came in was pretty. That's about the last good thing I have to report. My two units both had European power cords, so I had to run off to home depot to buy IEC cords.

Well, then, there is the setup. As it is customary with Chinese gear, a manual was printed in 4-point type with many contradictory and half-explained items. What I really loved, though, was the dark green print over little black boxes that were supposed to represent the screen display - - which used 7-segment LEDs from the 1980s to display nonsensical 3-letter indicators that were utterly unexplained.

It's not really an "amp" in the sense audiophiles think of an amp. It's more of an all-in-one home entertainment box with dozens of "features" accessed through multi-level nested menus that are left completely unexplained. Bass, treble, EQ, various modes of stereo, mono, BTL, USB, BlueToof, and on and on. But. by the time you spend two hours trying to decipher the menus, the setting is all boogered up, and there IS NO RESET TO DEFAULTs!

I finally got something to play from one channel of one amp. The buzzing noise was louder than the music. The other amp was totally dead on output. Lots of silly menu flashing - no sound.

I suppose with a few more hours of fiddling menus at random I might have landed on the lucky combo to get sound out, but really....WHY? This is just not worth the time. And, in the future if a setting should get accidentally changed by my wife, I'd have to take another couple of hours to jigger it back. BLECH!

The company website is, as usual, utterly worthless, with no support. I had hoped to find a more complete manual online - - no dice. Only the same Chinglesh weirdo thing that was in the box.

Of course, I got this on Amazon, so it's headed right back to them already. I think I've learned my lesson with this level of crap - it's just not my cup of tea.

So, on the Class D amp quest I'm batting .500. One good one, one strike out. The quest continues but maybe not with the low end crapola.

 

[eiraved]

Too bad. I purchased a SMSL SA300 3 years ago, my first foray into chip amps. It was actually a nice sounding amp with good power to boot.

 

[sberger]

For anybody reading this thread now or in the future, it's true that the instruction manual as supplied by SMSL is extremely problematic. For this, and other answers I went to the forums at Audio Science Review, where they review and discuss amps like this all the time. Extremely knowledgeable and helpful folks. Here's connection instructions from part of the thread where bridging two A300's, as well as running them as mono blocks, is discussed:

Bridge Instructions:

"Connection procedure

1. Turn off both A300s with the power switch on the back.

2. Connect the audio signal cable from DAC etc. to the R-ch / L-ch of IN1 of the first A300 (master side) respectively.

3. Then connect the output of BTL-R to the L-ch (upper side) of IN1 of another A300 (slave side).

4. Turn on the power switch of the two A300s.

5. From the MENU, set both units to the bridge mode of br1.

6. Set the input selection to IN1 for both units.

This completes the settings. Outputs music from the DAC.

Since the volume of the A300 on the slave side is already controlled by the master side, set the volume to the maximum (60).

My two A300s are operating in bridge mode with the above settings.


"Note"
It is difficult to use because both of them change when the volume is operated with the remote control.
After all it is better to control the volume on the input device side such as DAC."

Running amp as two independent BTL amps:



"1. Turn off the power switch on the back of the two A300s.
Disconnect the BTL-R connection cable. There is no change in the speaker connection. Is the same.

2. Connect the R-ch of the audio output cable from the DAC etc. to the L-ch of IN1 of the first A300, and connect the L-ch to the L-ch of IN1 of the second A300.
If there are other connected devices, connect them to IN2 L-ch in the same way.

3. Turn on the power of the two A300s.

4. Set the amplifier operation to br1 in BTL mode.

5. Set the input mode to IN1.

6. Set the volume to the same level for both units. Subsequent adjustments are operated with the remote control.
The response of the remote control is good, and the volume of the two A300s and the items in the MENU work smoothly in tandem. It is very comfortable to be able to set two A300s at the same time with one remote control operation. Of course, the power can be turned on and off at the same time with the remote control.
Of course, BT and USB cannot be used in BTL mode."

Diagram of speaker connection(same for both set ups):

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...l-class-d-power-amp.34607/page-3#post-1236233