My Lepai amp is dying a slow death and so I decided to replace it. I've tried to bootstrap my hi-fi system here with cheap but high sound quality components - starting with the Lepai amp (which I bought to drive my cheap outdoor speakers in the garden). If you haven't come across this, it's possibly the cheapest 2 channel amplifier you can buy - I paid ~ £20 for it, they go for about $20 on Amazon.com.

It was reasonable and the reviews tend to rave about it. I worried that, just as audiophiles tend to assume more expensive products sound better than cheaper products, people thought the Lepai amp was better than it was because it was so cheap. After moving to Berkeley, I eventually picked up a set of the critically acclaimed Andrew Jones SP-BS22-LR speakers for $75 (they normally retail for $130 ish but Amazon has some amusing pricing fluctuations).

This combination sounded great but would distort significantly if you tried to drive the speakers at any sort of volume. I put this down to the amp.

A few weeks ago the left channel would fail. A quick jiggle (for lack of a more technical term) of the speaker cable would help but eventually it would cut more frequently and this wouldn't help. It still works sporadically but for the most part - it wouldn't. This means the amp failed after just 2 months of use. At £20, that makes it relatively expensive. I normally expect to at least a year out of my electronics (my Acoustic Energy Aego-M speakers at home are still going strong, 5 years later).

After some googling, it was a split between the Dayton DTA-100a and the Fiio A1, which were both cost effective good quality amplifiers.

In the end I chose the A1. It was slightly cheaper and put out less power but several reviews questioned the reliability of the Dayton amp (having had amps fail after a few months). So far, the A1 has proven to be significantly more reliable than my Lepai amp - but only time will tell if this persists.

The power concern seems to not be such an issue either, it will easily go loud enough for my music to be heard on the street outside our flat (again, a very scientific metric). As for quality, I've found it is significantly clearer at higher volumes than the Lepai amplifier. Tonality seems to be better - in particular, the bass seems more pronounced.

You could buy 4 Lepai amps for the same as Fiio but you really do get what you pay for. Other people don't seem to have had the same reliability issues (or seem to have overlooked them, based on the low cost of the Lepai) but if you're after a quality product, you can't go wrong with the Fiio. (Plus, I'm hopeful that the warranty/support situation is better, since Fiio appears to be a more reputable business.)