Dayton Audio HTA100BT Hybrid Stereo Tube Amplifier with Bluetooth USB Aux Phono in Sub Out 100W

I bought this amp to replace a cheap solid-state integrated amp with an external Bluetooth adapter. I have a playroom with some pretty decent speakers (JBL mains, plus a Polk sub). The music is just a background, but I still want it to be pretty good. I was expecting this to sound about the same as my previous amp, especially since the output power amp is just a solid-state "chip" amp, but in fact the sound is noticeably better.I'm an electrical engineer, and have done a lot of work with low-level electronic design - I'm definitely not an "oxygen-free south-end-of-the-vineyard" type of guy, but I freely accept that tube amplification can bring a warmth to sound playback that's a real thing; I just didn't expect such a dramatic difference. Of course, the speakers and the sound source have the largest effects, but after I hooked this up I spent a couple of hours just hanging out listening to playlists I'd played a dozen times, just because they sounded *so much better*.I'm not using several of the features of this amp. In particular, I'm not using the phono input (so one of the tubes per channel is just a space heater for me), nor the digital inputs. The Bluetooth connects well (others have remarked "aggressively", and that's sort of true - it's hard to make it forget), and the "aux" line-level input is of course perfectly clean. The built-in USB player sounds good enough (for MP3s), although there's very limited control over it - just skip forward, backward, or pause.Importantly, the sub-woofer output is extracted *after* the volume control. For some unknown reason, many of the small integrated amps here on Amazon bring the sub-woofer out before the volume control, which is only useful if you never change your listening volume - in other words, not at all. This one does it correctly.I haven't opened the unit up to see which chip amp it uses, but it's probably something like a TPA3116 or a TDA7492. Whatever it is, it has plenty of power. I haven't measured it, because it's adequately meeting my needs, but it sounds like it's probably capable of at least 30 watts per side; regardless, the power amps are nicely clean, and the entire unit has very low noise, not quite "digital black", but close. Again, I've not used the phono input, so I can't speak to the performance of that (very demanding) portion of the amp.The tone controls are musically useful, being able to tailor the sound usefully while not burlesquing the final result. There's no "loudness" control, so at low listening levels you'd need to simulate this with the tone controls. Oddly, there's also no balance adjustment - hopefully your speaker arrangement is pretty symmetrical...So, overall I'm very happy with this unit. Yes, it was four times the cost of an equivalent solid-state unit, but in fact it does sound pretty darned good, and of course the tubes bring a certain cachet to the whole system. It also has just the feature set that I needed (plus a couple of things I didn't), which I was having trouble finding in any other offering.

I'm not gonna lie, I was totally expecting to be disappointed with this.I was expecting a poor performing gimmick and a bunch of bought off reviews.Happy I was wrong! Sucker arrived today and right out the box I'm VERY happy.I have this paired to a set of 3-way Vintage Acoustic Suspension speakers from the 70s (fantastic things, they take 60watts at 8 ohms with 12" alinco subs) and it's replacing my budget Yamaha RS202, which did an alright job as a replacement for my old Sansui Receiver that's past its prime..But this Dayton brought back some that old magic + some. The Yamaha is rated at 100W per channel @8ohm, but this has LOADS more power for sure, even though it's rated at 25W per channel @8ohm, I keep the volume knob turned about 20%-30% and it's plenty loud. The music is definitely richer, the sound stage opened up more (specially the DEPTH), and the vocals are smooth and it still retains good separation.I hear it takes time for the tubes to burn in which has me even more excited. I'll definitely update the review after some time with it, but out the box I'm pretty damn happy to get some performance and a tube look for my vintage speakers!EDIT: Day3, Yup. CLEAR improvement. If you're looking at the budget stereo receivers from Yamaha and Sony, this is a definite upgrade for not much more... Considering the next level of solid state receivers are all around $350-$500. I don't see a reason to move up if this lasts. I also don't hear this fan everyone else is talking about.. but this could also be that the speakers are drawing so little power it's running cool enough? I'm also running Bluetooth, sounds great to me.EDIT: Some 12 days later. I'm quite surprised at how well this thing handles stuff like EDM and remixes. I don't know what it's doing, but I feel like it's adding tons more atmosphere to this otherwise usually flat genre. I also noticed I'm not getting the same levels of ear fatigue the Yamaha was giving. I didn't get fatigued with the old Sansui receiver either... I'm chalking this up to just having a bigger sound stage and more power to FILL it.EDIT: Some 6 weeks later? I think my tubes have burned in, I've been playing at low volumes as background noise while reading at night. Properly listening and I can tell the highs have broken through. You could describe the amp when it was new as a little 'dark' no longer the case, it's absolutely brightened up a bit and voices are sounding more natural.