The Best Amp for the Price of Dirt

Check out the tnt web site that containes a rave review on the sonic impact ($39 ) and the T- Preamp ( $ 80'ish) for 15w @ 8 ohms w/ high eff speakers of your choice. Appears to be one way to go . Lots of DIY tweeks to ramp-up the amp .

The current issue of TAS has a combo review of a NAD int.amp and CD player for $700. More bread no tweeks. Perhaps another alternative.

Eldee: Are any of these many alternatives at $160 for something with an equally small footprint/portable? And are any of them new, or would they all be 'vintage'?

Zaike...Portable? Not that I know of. But the Behringer a 500 mentioned by the thread starter would compete on price. I have a Panasonic multichannel receiver SA XR-70 that I use for TV and DVD viewing, which includes five amps comparable to the Sonic Impact (but more powerful) that I picked up at Best Buy for 200 and change. It drives three Dynaudio monitors, very well I might add. There is a big difference between $30 and $159.

...$129 to be precise.

Zaike...$159 is the price on the website. I think that Parts Express price is the same. But I'll go with $129 if you accept that the original model has been sold for $19.95.
The darned thing is so lightweight that it's hard to find a way to "install" it in a system. One idea that would work would be to remove the tiny circuit board from the plastic enclosure and build it into some speaker wires as a bulge. Now that would truly be "magic" speaker wires. Connect your preamp directly to speakers.