Dual DA10004D Review

I did not send this one in, but this is from Audio Science Review

Dual DA10004D

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...plifier.25765/


Below is copied and pasted from ASR

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Dual DA10004D Car audio amplifier. It has 4 channels and is on kind loan from a member. It is sold everywhere it seems for just US $110.

Despite its very low cost, the Dual brings a bit of style to the party:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-d-jpg.147406/


The shocking bit is on each end:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-d-jpg.147407/


Check out the beefy power terminals and array of filtering and gain settings. I had no trouble getting my 8 gauge power cables into its terminals. Both low pass and high pass filtering is provided together with bandwidth for each.

I have been testing a few car audio products but good bit of frustration. When I used to repair them decades back, we always had a lead acid battery to power them so that we could have a) plenty of juice and b) not have mains interference. In anticipation of getting this amp to test, I decided to bite the bullet and build a high-current LifePoFE4 battery. I had four spare cells from my work on our RV when I converted it from AGM to Lithium. Decided to build a solution around that and was most impressed with what you can get these days. Bought a 100 Amp sustained/200 amp peak BMS for just $16 including Prime shipping from Amazon! The one I put in the RV cost me $1,000! Granted, that is a much more flexible unit but still, this one even has a current switch in it which I had I build externally for my RV. While I was at it, I spent just $20 for a power monitor. Most of the rest of the parts I had. Put it all in a battery box and this is how it came out:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...ng-jpg.147409/


It worked beautifully during this test! Not only did it power this amp without blinking, the power monitor was fantastic in showing current usage and voltage that were completely accurate. Being Lithium, it had slightly higher output voltage of around 14 volts fully charged so probably overstates power just a hair if you are running on the alternator with led acid battery.

Dual DA10004D Measurements
Here is our usual dashboard at 5 watts into 4 ohm with gain adjusted to 29 dB:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-d-png.147410/


This is quite good! Average of all home amplifiers I have measured is 78 dB and here we are almost there with a SINAD of 75. Definitely a competent design.

Same story continued for signal to noise ratio:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-d-png.147411/


Frequency response at 4 ohm is reasonable:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-d-png.147412/


But as you see, with 8 ohm load it overshoots. The class D amplifier filter is resonating with that load causing that peaking. Only the best class D amplifiers for home use have post filter feedback to deal with this. Will have to test high-end car class D amps to see if any of them do the same.

Here is the effect of the low and high pass filters:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-d-png.147414/


All look fine except when using the HPF filter at its minimum setting. It causes that overshoot which is going to screw up your crossover. Seems to behave if you go up a bit in the dial. You better measure your system to make sure you are not getting hit with this.

Crosstalk is not great but certainly good enough for the application:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-d-png.147413/


Multitone test shows fairly sharp rise in distortion with frequency:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-d-png.147418/


Company rates the amplifier as 80 watts into 4 ohm for 4 channels. I only created a setup for 2 channels but there, we seem to be getting what they say:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-d-png.147415/


https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-d-png.147416/


Power drops a lot with 8 ohm though due to power supply voltage being too low:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...-d-png.147417/


Testing for frequency sensitivity we get:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...el-png.147419/


As noted earlier, high frequencies are not treated well but otherwise, this is a very respectable design seeing how the lines at 1 kHz and below are smooth and similar to each other.

Conclusions
You look at the price and you think you are going to get junk. Indeed the bit of chatter that was about this amplifier online, said the same. Objective performance though erases any such thought. This is a very well designed and feature rich car audio amplifier. I don't know how they have done. Or why they decided to set such a high bar for themselves when they could have gotten away with far less. But hey, we take it! This amplifier outperforms many home amps and does it for next to nothing. Just remarkable.

By the way, in use the case got warm but nothing to be concerned about. If you drive 4 channels though, that may be a different situation. Then again it may just divide the available power between 4 channels rather than 2.

I am happy to recommend the Dual DA10004D.

I am pumped to test more car audio amps now! https://www.caraudiojunkies.com/imag...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7