Fyrme
Well-known member
I figured I'd give a quick review of a shop tool that most can't live without in their shop. Tunes! If you are one of those people that like pure silence in the shop, I respect that, but please don't rush in here tell everyone about it. We get it
So I was using a free, cheapo RCA Home audio receiver that I absolutely hated. I wanted to replace it and one of my requirements was i wanted small. And I didn't care if it had a tuner or CD player. My budget was under $100. I toyed with buying a car stereo and hooking it up to a converter, but that seemed like a pita. After searching for a few days, I decided on a plain old power amplifier with aux inputs. The best options to value ratio I found was the PYLE PTA4. I picked it up new off ebay for $74 shipped. It comes with 4 aux inputs. One on the front and 3 on the back. Power output is a little light, but I don't provide tunes for the neighbors. It is a 4ohm amp so you can run a pair of 8ohm speakers and get very stable sound from it. Or you can parallel two pairs of 8ohm speakers to get 4ohms per channel for more power. I am currently just pushing two 8ohms and its plenty loud. I take my laptop to the garage and play Pandora all day. If I want to listen to other music or the raido, I just use my iPod Nano which has a FM tuner on it. As a bonus, you can push your tv sound through it too. Nothing fancy, just simple knobs and switches. Perfect for a garage. And best of all, its foot print is only 8.25"5.25"x2.75" Not much bigger than a car stereo.
So I was using a free, cheapo RCA Home audio receiver that I absolutely hated. I wanted to replace it and one of my requirements was i wanted small. And I didn't care if it had a tuner or CD player. My budget was under $100. I toyed with buying a car stereo and hooking it up to a converter, but that seemed like a pita. After searching for a few days, I decided on a plain old power amplifier with aux inputs. The best options to value ratio I found was the PYLE PTA4. I picked it up new off ebay for $74 shipped. It comes with 4 aux inputs. One on the front and 3 on the back. Power output is a little light, but I don't provide tunes for the neighbors. It is a 4ohm amp so you can run a pair of 8ohm speakers and get very stable sound from it. Or you can parallel two pairs of 8ohm speakers to get 4ohms per channel for more power. I am currently just pushing two 8ohms and its plenty loud. I take my laptop to the garage and play Pandora all day. If I want to listen to other music or the raido, I just use my iPod Nano which has a FM tuner on it. As a bonus, you can push your tv sound through it too. Nothing fancy, just simple knobs and switches. Perfect for a garage. And best of all, its foot print is only 8.25"5.25"x2.75" Not much bigger than a car stereo.
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