The TPA3116 class D board arrived today, so I put it in a little plastic box that I had spare. All I had to do was attach wires for the in, out, and power.
It’s quite incognito on top of my rack bag.
It sounds really good to me, though unfortunately I can’t compare it against much... I’ve been using a tube poweramp until recently and the only other solidstate poweramp I have to compare is the amp out of a really cheap Kustom PA speaker (TDA7294 chip amp, which appears to be pretty old tech). It sounds loads better than the TDA7294, that old chip amp sounds pretty dull and gutless to me.
The TPA3116 is apparently 100 Watts (technically 50 Watts per side stereo but this is a bridged mono board), not sure if that is peak or RMS. probably peak.
I’m happy with it, punchy and clean, amp models sound clear to me. I just lost about an hour and a half to the IIC++ model, I haven’t made it sound this good in a while.
I don’t know how it would hold together at gig volumes or anything, I’m just playing at loud bedroom volumes right now. I set the volume trim pot on the board at half way and I’m just using the axe fx’s output level to control volume (at about 15%). Also into a 16 ohm cab so that also reduces some output. I got a big fat 15 amp (way overkill) DPDT switch so I can make it switchable between 4 and 16 ohms, but my speaker cable isn’t here yet.
The wire, jacks, and box I all had spare so this cost me £10.89, which is money well spent for me. Still under £15 if I had bought everything. If you can work a drill and soldering iron I would recommend giving it a shot. I bet it’s comparable in sound to a 44 magnum or that Mooer baby bomb, if you opened one up I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re using this chip (or maybe the lower wattage version).
edit - it works on something like 5 volts to 26 volts, I'm just using an old 19 volt laptop power supply, which is kind of noisy with some pedals, but its dead quiet with this, so that's a plus. I'm not really sure what amperage this chip draws so I didn't want to use my usual power supply. The laptop power supply can supply up to 4.7 amps though so that is plenty.