Review on 🔊 HiLetgo PAM8610 Mini Stereo Amplifier Audio Amplify Board Digital Portable Ampli Module 10W+10W Dual Channel Class-D 12V DC by Terrance Singletary

Great little amp for the money, but it took me my audio/electronics skills to figure out how the connectors were laid out. It would be great if the diagram was included in the description or on the map that came with the unit, but it isn't. It's basically a demo board for a chip that can do anything, so you can google that chip and get a bunch of different boards that use it, along with their documentation. but they did not correspond to my measurements. You can also get the manufacturer's datasheet for this chip, which can be interesting but not very useful if the traces are hidden under some large components. I thought I'd follow the screw terminal back to the chip and then look up what the datasheet calls that pin, but no, I don't see it. Also, I can't get the dipstick under the radiator without ripping it off. (Let's not do that) Anyway, checking the continuity of the power connection to the main capacitor gave me that polarity so I could turn it on without a 50/50 chance of destroying it. (Note: the continuity tester says it's connected *both ways* until the capacitor is sufficiently charged, so let it beep for a while and see if it continues.) I also checked the audio ground on the negative source supply and found that they were really connected, so that's good too. It looks like they at least followed the input schema datasheet recommendations. I then felt comfortable playing in the sawtooth created by Audacity and playing it in a loop to see which of the 4 screw terminals is which. I hooked up my old analog oscilloscope to it and there was so much switching noise I couldn't see anything else. So I played with a real speaker instead. Pretty quickly I knew which two pins corresponded to which channel, and since the sawtooths are asymmetric I also knew the polarity. The speaker cone bounces faster in one direction than the other, and I already know which way the signal is going. Slow enough sawtooth (2Hz for me) at high enough volume allows you to just look at the cone and see it move. The standard is that higher voltage or higher numbers in the digital world will cause the cone to pop out; and lower tension or lower numbers will cause the cone to retract. This is for a single driver with no crossover; A multi-band enclosure is intricately designed to allow the resulting wavefront to do this, but the drivers themselves may not. (The phase response can be insane over the full range of a multiband speaker). So test with a single driver connected directly, even if you end up connecting something else to it. I've attached the results of my experiments so you don't have to do it yourself. However, it wouldn't hurt to check if they have different designs that qualify as 'interchangeable'. Yes, they all transmit sound, but the next paragraph describes what can go wrong even if it "makes sound". I mentioned at the beginning that there are some differences between this board and some others that Google has to offer. . The one that seemed closest - it looked identical in the picture - had its output channels reversed, and one of them had its polarity reversed. With this connection, my stereo field will be reversed (something moving across the screen in one direction and across the soundscape in another), and the center sounds will be weird due to phase cancellation. I used this phase reversal to test if it was actually reversed. When playing the same thing, both speakers sounded quieter together than either of them individually, so they were definitely out of phase with each other. But to understand what it was, I needed an asymmetric test tone. So if you're willing and able to do some testing and carefully raise it, this is a great little amp for the money. But I have a feeling you *should* do it just to get it working properly. You can "get sound" in many other ways, but that sound can have problems, as discussed above. So I'm deducting a few stars for that.