This is a subjective review of the Topping PA3. I’m doing it on my phone so it will be rather brief and not overly breathy. I bought the PA3 on eBay a few weeks ago as a placeholder for another amplifier I was using for a near field, bedside setup. It’s been in use there with a DX3 Pro and Peachtree DS4.5 speakers. Today I compared the PA3 to one of my tried and true B&K amplifiers with Vandersteen 2Ce Signature speakers. I do live in an apartment so I contend with some levels of ambient noise. I do not have any measurement equipment so these are my subjective impressions. I recognize my ears and brain are not reliable implements to give an accurate assessment of performance, so take what I say with large grains of salt.
For those who haven’t seen some of these desktop amplifiers and DACs, they are unbelievably small. Stock photos from the manufacturers don’t make this apparent since they don’t have anything in the pictures for scale.
The diminutive chassis is half the length of the Onkyo CR-325. The Onkyo is what I would consider to be small, the Topping is tiny! There’s a small catch of course, the external power supply, which is almost the same size as the PA3. For those that are curious, the power supply is 32v 5.5amps.
The sound. It sounds like it should. It doesn’t seem to impart some erroneous character on the material I listen to with it in the near field setup. It does have an audible hiss at the speakers, but it’s not disruptive with the low efficiency Peachtree DS4.5s.
Today I had time after work to setup my one man control A/B amp switch to do some amplifier comparisons. I level matched as best as possible by ear. In this case turning the gain on the PA3 to max appeared to be matched to the B&K 125.2 amplifier I’ve been using in a setup to run Vandersteen 2Ce Sigs. This is a sighted A/B comparison done with a rather rudimentary setup that consists of a Sima SSW-L4EX speaker/amplifier switch. This unit has impedance matching and output is limited by this unit. I used a Y split pair of single male to dual female to feed each amplifier with equal type and length of shielded RCA cables. I used spare bare wire I have around, the lengths weren’t even, however the lengths between the switch and the two amplifiers used in this evaluation were under 1ft. The runs to the speakers are equal in length at 7ft.
With the amplifiers switched on and the preamplifier off the B&K noise to speakers was imperceptible to my ear. I attribute that to the relatively low efficiency of the 2Ce Sigs (86dB). Switching to the PA3 I can now hear a hiss, but it is not audible from my seated position with ambient noise. The hiss is very minor for me, but if you have high efficiency speakers and listen near field this may be a point of contention for you.
I’ve been listening to Kimbra’s album Primal Heart lately so I used it primarily for the duration of my tests. Kimbra’s vocals are prominent and present a strong phantom center on the track Everybody Knows. The bass in this track is also heavy and there’s a variety of different tones and patterns. There’s also a nice “space” to this track with the reverb in the vocals. It’s probably not a reference recording, but it’s not wrought with clipping and has some dynamic range.
Using the A/B switch on the Sima I switched back and forth between the B&K and the PA3 while listening. I don’t have to stop the music or change anything, it instantly switches from one to the other. At my typical levels of output I was unable to discern any notable differences. I did push it a little further momentarily with the PA3 to see if I could get it to distort audibly, but no such luck (or is that a good thing?). The PA3 wasn’t “etched” or dry compared to the B&K, nor the bass lean. It just sounded like it seemed it should to me.
This isn’t very climactic, but I don’t know what to really say. I expected it to wimp out powering these larger, somewhat power hungry speakers. Maybe I just don’t listen loud enough to need the extra power.
Just for yucks I hooked up the Onkyo CR-325 and level matched by ear. Taking it to the same levels I was getting audible clipping. The Onkyo is a class A/B design which the specs state does “28 watts RMS”. Why not 25 watts? Why not 30 watts? Meh. It could be more like the Sony desktop amp Amir tested earlier this week and only capable of mustering 10 watts.
In any case, an amplifier this small and this inexpensive has no business sounding this good.
I’d recommend it if you can live without remote functionality, having only two analog inputs, and don’t have Klipsch horn speakers.
Edit: one small note. There’s something inside the amp that makes a noise when I set the amp down with any force at all. I have to very gently set the amp down in order to avoid this noise occurring, which I can only describe as a spring type sound that dings the chassis.
For those who haven’t seen some of these desktop amplifiers and DACs, they are unbelievably small. Stock photos from the manufacturers don’t make this apparent since they don’t have anything in the pictures for scale.
The diminutive chassis is half the length of the Onkyo CR-325. The Onkyo is what I would consider to be small, the Topping is tiny! There’s a small catch of course, the external power supply, which is almost the same size as the PA3. For those that are curious, the power supply is 32v 5.5amps.
The sound. It sounds like it should. It doesn’t seem to impart some erroneous character on the material I listen to with it in the near field setup. It does have an audible hiss at the speakers, but it’s not disruptive with the low efficiency Peachtree DS4.5s.
Today I had time after work to setup my one man control A/B amp switch to do some amplifier comparisons. I level matched as best as possible by ear. In this case turning the gain on the PA3 to max appeared to be matched to the B&K 125.2 amplifier I’ve been using in a setup to run Vandersteen 2Ce Sigs. This is a sighted A/B comparison done with a rather rudimentary setup that consists of a Sima SSW-L4EX speaker/amplifier switch. This unit has impedance matching and output is limited by this unit. I used a Y split pair of single male to dual female to feed each amplifier with equal type and length of shielded RCA cables. I used spare bare wire I have around, the lengths weren’t even, however the lengths between the switch and the two amplifiers used in this evaluation were under 1ft. The runs to the speakers are equal in length at 7ft.
With the amplifiers switched on and the preamplifier off the B&K noise to speakers was imperceptible to my ear. I attribute that to the relatively low efficiency of the 2Ce Sigs (86dB). Switching to the PA3 I can now hear a hiss, but it is not audible from my seated position with ambient noise. The hiss is very minor for me, but if you have high efficiency speakers and listen near field this may be a point of contention for you.
I’ve been listening to Kimbra’s album Primal Heart lately so I used it primarily for the duration of my tests. Kimbra’s vocals are prominent and present a strong phantom center on the track Everybody Knows. The bass in this track is also heavy and there’s a variety of different tones and patterns. There’s also a nice “space” to this track with the reverb in the vocals. It’s probably not a reference recording, but it’s not wrought with clipping and has some dynamic range.
Using the A/B switch on the Sima I switched back and forth between the B&K and the PA3 while listening. I don’t have to stop the music or change anything, it instantly switches from one to the other. At my typical levels of output I was unable to discern any notable differences. I did push it a little further momentarily with the PA3 to see if I could get it to distort audibly, but no such luck (or is that a good thing?). The PA3 wasn’t “etched” or dry compared to the B&K, nor the bass lean. It just sounded like it seemed it should to me.
This isn’t very climactic, but I don’t know what to really say. I expected it to wimp out powering these larger, somewhat power hungry speakers. Maybe I just don’t listen loud enough to need the extra power.
Just for yucks I hooked up the Onkyo CR-325 and level matched by ear. Taking it to the same levels I was getting audible clipping. The Onkyo is a class A/B design which the specs state does “28 watts RMS”. Why not 25 watts? Why not 30 watts? Meh. It could be more like the Sony desktop amp Amir tested earlier this week and only capable of mustering 10 watts.
In any case, an amplifier this small and this inexpensive has no business sounding this good.
I’d recommend it if you can live without remote functionality, having only two analog inputs, and don’t have Klipsch horn speakers.
Edit: one small note. There’s something inside the amp that makes a noise when I set the amp down with any force at all. I have to very gently set the amp down in order to avoid this noise occurring, which I can only describe as a spring type sound that dings the chassis.
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