Amplifier for nearfield

Don't sweat it. There isn't really a "near field" amplifier, since the response curve is tailored into the speakers, and the amplifiers are always designed to be flat in the bandwidth.

Depends on your budget and needs, you can get some pretty nice amplifiers. Anything particular you need in the amplifier ? What is "affordable" to you mean ?

I've been trying different mini-amps for a few months. The three I've tried are:

Pyle PCA2 2x40w amp- $40 Overpriced and under powered. It's really about 2x4w

Audio Source amp50- $75 Really about 18 watts per channel. This one sounds great, but runs really hot and uses about 27watts at idle.

Lepai 2020a+ $20 Cheap but good, this gets you roughly 7 watts per channel. Which is a little under powered, but the sound is very clean and distortion free. It also runs very cool, and wastes almost no power. It's what is known as a t-amp

Today I just ordered (but have not yet received), a dayton audio DTA-100a ($90) which is a t-amp with about 25 watts per channel. I'm hoping it's as cool and energy efficient as the lepai (being a t-amp) and as powerful as the audio source amp 50. Also this claims to have a "World compatible" 24 VDC switch mode power supply, so it might work in the uk.

The lepai is great for listening at normal levels, but it's not quite powerful enough if you want anything loud.

Seeing you're in the UK (and I expect the power supplies would be different) I might go with this:

http://compare.ebay.com/like/170745283415?var=lv&ltyp=A...

(basically look for a t-amp that uses a tk2050 chipset)

That Dayton is, I think the cheapest as it goes price wise for a slightly higher powered Tripath amplifier. There are some more expensive Tripath amplifiers, my favorite is the Virtue Audio series.

Are those (Virtue T-Amps) still for sale anywhere? I'm interested but it looks like they stopped making them.

My choice of the Dayton is definitely a price/performance decision. From their reviews it sounds like a 5% chance that I'll get a defective unit, but at least they have a great return policy.

The tripath 2020 just isn't powerful enough for me (and I'm not a loud music guy). It's listed as 20wpc is for 4 ohms and 5% thd. At 8ohm .1% thd it only gets up to about 6watts. The tk2050 on the other hand gets to about 25 wpc at 8 ohms and 0.01% thd. So that's about 4 times as much power.

The Virtues are still being made, but the company periodically is out of stock and they are moving physical locations (warehouse, i think). They will get more stock later this fall as per their website. As far as I know, they are also working on a Virtue 3 of sorts. There also used to be a TK2050 based tripath amplifier called the Mouse, not sure if it is still being made.

I have an old version of the Virtue 2, and absolutely love it. I also have used the Trends 10.1, PopPulse TA2024, 2 DiyParadise Charlize 2 TA2020 based amplifiers, and at one point also had a KingRex TA2020 + PSU. With the TA2020 based amps, you can supply it up to 13.5 Volts, instead of the usual 12 Volts to get the maximal power output out of them. Current wise they are not a problem, since most desktop speakers are 8ohms, so the more voltage, the better, but watch out, the specifications sheet lists the safe maximum voltage to be at 13.5 volts, so you really need a regulated power supply that doesn't venture much above this. You can also check to see if there is a polarity reversal diode on the input of the amplifier, removing this yields another half a volt or so of usable voltage swing.