Dayton DTA-100a owners -- channel imbalance?

M

MrSneis

2[H]4U
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Apr 5, 2006
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Scooped one of these up off of eBay and I think I should have paid more for one from Parts Express. The amp was new and is real but I'm getting the infamous channel imbalance issue. I think it's worse at low volumes (left channel will be playing but right channel not) so to get around it I set volume in Windows to 5% (yep 5%) and then crank the volume pot on the dayton to 50%.

It seems to be very common and I'm reaching out to the eBay seller, but have you guys run into this too? Did you just live with it?
 
Most volume pots have channel imbalance on the very low end of the spectrum. Cheaper pots will have it to an even greater degree. Most audio pots are designed to be used at the 9 o'clock position and higher. How far do you have to turn up the volume pot to get rid of the imbalance with windows at 50% volume?
 
Mine was purchased from PE, and it works fine, nearly a year old now.
 
JohnDC said:
Mine seems to track really well from low to mad loud. Of course speakers are only 3 ft apart............
Click to expand...

So are mine, it's not until I hit about 7 or 8 o'clock that I start getting sound through both channels. This is with Windows at 50%.
 
That sounds about par for most pots under $10.00. It kind of sucks, but unless you buy multiple pots and keep the best tacking one it's not going to get any better.
 
You could try a passive line level reducer (voltage divider), that will let you crank up the volume in Windows and still keep the Dayton's volume in the "sweet spot". But, yeah, most cheap audio pots are crap.
 
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