Review on Soundstream T5 2500DL Tarantula 5 Channel Amplifier by Jamie Simpson

First off, I'm an old school audiophile car enthusiast. I'm coming from the days when Soundstream and Crossfire were a serious force to be reckoned with. However, I decided to give this amp a try after reading all the great reviews. I didn't want to spend a lot of money commuting to work by car, so it seemed promising. The previous amp it replaced was a 4 liter Onyx OA1100.5. This amp impressed me with its purity, especially as a Maxxsonics product. Unfortunately, he lost channels and had all sorts of problems. Initially I was very impressed with the build quality of this Soundstream amplifier. It has a real stainless steel body, nice features and overall it feels like it was designed and packaged with their product in mind. The cable lugs are particularly good. They are deep and the set screw is angled inwards so you know the connections are very strong and will not come loose for any reason. The functionality initially disappointed me. I have to say right away that it doesn't claim to be rated. I accepted it, so it wasn't a big surprise. If I had to find out, it would probably put out a decent 80 watts per channel into 2 ohms. The bass channel is very solid and beats my MBA Quart amp to shame. Much fuller and cleaner. It also sees 2 ohms and I'm rating it at around 300-350 watts. I expected that here too. I had a real problem which is frustrating that the amp seems to have a natural boost around 250 Hertz. This is not a tuning issue as the primary range is set to full range and all bass boost and crossovers are disabled. There was so much EQ boost in that frequency range that I only had to scoop my 200Hz band down a few decibels. From there it went up to about 12 dB per octave. Now that I've got everything set up in a couple of days, it sounds acceptably clean and has good power output. The bottom line is, as with all electronics, you get what you pay for. I recommend this product but meet your expectations.