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Topping L30 Headphone Amplifier Review

Veri

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I have same issue with L30 and my planar magnetic headphones lacking in the bass, I dont know how to describe it, less control? I dont know if it's imagined or not but it is very easy to notice.
I have used a speaker amplifier with these planar headphones also and bass is much better, the problem with this amplifier is quiet hissing noise.
I stayed using L30 because I thought it was distortion from speaker amplifier causing a difference, with recent SBAF thread on L30 could there be a real problem with L30 that does not show in normal testing?

If you read the entire thread, Marv points out that any 'problems' he caught were with dynamic headphones, planars resemble a resistive load so much, they measure absolutely perfectly using the L30 in his set-up (however flawed it may be, I dunno). So no, the SBAF thread can't possible explain your experience, it directly contradicts it.. ;)
 

solderdude

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I'll repeat what I posted above:

You are probably referring to the noise made by the SBAF guru who actually made the HUGE, HUGE, HUGE discovery that the L30 has an output resistance of around 0.1 ohm.
When I calculate the back EMF of the Grado and use an output resistance of around 0.1 ohm. Most likely the measurement guru has a plug + socket or splitter in there to tap the signal from, correlates pretty exactly (within a few dB) from the measured 'increased distortion' values by the all discovering measurement guru.


Case solved. b.t.w. @JohnPM (of REW fame) already hinted the great leader towards the reason.
Voltage division due to the driver producing back EMF and its impedance v.s. output R of the L30.
A measurement error due to a physical output resistance and voltage division. That's exactly why measurements are usually done with dummy loads but some planars could also be used.
 
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Chagall

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So cringy reading their review...ASR/Amir is mentioned more times then the product on review.

One thing I still don't understand. As far as I can tell they got different results with Jotunheim (also 0.1 ohm). Why is that? Balanced output?
 

solderdude

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Lower output resistance and the ground not being used just both amp outputs.
 

abdo123

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Case solved. b.t.w. @JohnPM (of REW fame) already hinted the great leader towards the reason.
Voltage division due to the driver producing back EMF and its impedance v.s. output R of the L30.
A measurement error due to a physical output resistance and voltage division. That's exactly why measurements are usually done with dummy loads but some planars could also be used.

can you explain this in layman terms please? no offense but not all of us have degrees in electrical engineering :p.
 

JohnYang1997

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So cringy reading their review...ASR/Amir is mentioned more times then the product on review.

One thing I still don't understand. As far as I can tell they got different results with Jotunheim (also 0.1 ohm). Why is that? Balanced output?
Different output jack, different plugs, different cabling. And the load is not good enough.
 

solderdude

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can you explain this in layman terms please? no offense but not all of us have degrees in electrical engineering :p.

The simplest explanation is to view the driver as a 'generator'. A dynamic speaker can be used as a microphone. Movement of the cone generates a voltage. When applying test signals the cone is moved and thus also provides back EMF (Less so with planars due to construction).
That back EMF voltage is the input signal of a voltage divider (Vin). The impedance of the driver (Z1) determines the damping current + output R (Z2) but this is negligible at these values when it concerns the damping current.

1625480262034.png
Z1 = headphone driver impedance, Z2 is output resistance of the amplifier.
When Z1 = 32 ohm and Z2 = 0.1 ohm the voltage measured at the output of the amp (Vout) = 0.003x the back EMF = -50dB of the back EMF.

How much back EMF there is is highly driver dependent (not only impedance) so depending on the headphone in question when you connect your measurement device on Vout you will see the signals produced by the amp (which are very low, see dummy load measurements) plus the attenuated back EMF. The key is in the plus here. That's what he is measuring and will have realized by now.

attenuator drawing is from this wiki.
 
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D

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I'm not here to fight and I don't care about SBAF or Schiit products either. If you query me you would see that i'm mainly posting on head-fi and local forum. I do listen a lot with headphones and ASR got me interested in L30/E30 which was my first upgrade from portable oppo ha-2 dac/amp.

I found an improvement over the ha-2 using my clears, but still listening experience was tiring, too forward. I could EQ annoying peaks, but that brought Clear's to the level of PM3 with faster and a bit more spacious sound. Tried to live with it, but appearing headaches pushed the final button. Sold them and upgraded to Utopias just to find them worse sounding than Clear. Started my mumblings about Focal company and returning my Utopias while one member invited me to bring all of my equipment and to the test.

What we only did is compared amplifier one with A,B,C,D headphones and then amplifier two. For second round we swapped dacs to give L30 Qutest dac (3V input to L30) and P1U/E30.
If we disregard the size on paper topping is way more powerful amp. Both rounds of testing were with similar results while topping did a decent job with headphone A it failed with B,C,D. Luxman P1U sounded good with all of the headphones and as well edged the performance with headphone A.

Now you can blame B,C,D companies that they made bad headphones which includes Arya,LCD2,Utopia,HD800 and say that only PM3,HD650 are good ones, but I'm choosing an amp that sounds better and could play with wide range of gear.

L30 does the job with easier to drive/warm headphones. In the tests where L30 failed, increasing the volume brought thinner/sharper mids/highs while leaving low frequencies behind. On high gain sound was getting even more out of whack. P1U kept everything well under control even pushed well above normal listening levels.
Another interesting catch while swapping between dacs with L30 I couldn't really tell the difference between E30 & Chord qutest dac, apart L30 playing more loudly when we set Qutest to 3V output, but P1U responded nicely to them. While Qutest had better imaging, a bit more detailed and airy presentation, E30 had more flat sound, with thicker bass. Even though E30 fell short in performance against Qutest, but it really stood nicely against way more expensive DAC and yes DAC's do sound different.
 

THW

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I'm not here to fight and I don't care about SBAF or Schiit products either. If you query me you would see that i'm mainly posting on head-fi and local forum. I do listen a lot with headphones and ASR got me interested in L30/E30 which was my first upgrade from portable oppo ha-2 dac/amp.

I found an improvement over the ha-2 using my clears, but still listening experience was tiring, too forward. I could EQ annoying peaks, but that brought Clear's to the level of PM3 with faster and a bit more spacious sound. Tried to live with it, but appearing headaches pushed the final button. Sold them and upgraded to Utopias just to find them worse sounding than Clear. Started my mumblings about Focal company and returning my Utopias while one member invited me to bring all of my equipment and to the test.

What we only did is compared amplifier one with A,B,C,D headphones and then amplifier two. For second round we swapped dacs to give L30 Qutest dac (3V input to L30) and P1U/E30.
If we disregard the size on paper topping is way more powerful amp. Both rounds of testing were with similar results while topping did a decent job with headphone A it failed with B,C,D. Luxman P1U sounded good with all of the headphones and as well edged the performance with headphone A.

Now you can blame B,C,D companies that they made bad headphones which includes Arya,LCD2,Utopia,HD800 and say that only PM3,HD650 are good ones, but I'm choosing an amp that sounds better and could play with wide range of gear.

L30 does the job with easier to drive/warm headphones. In the tests where L30 failed, increasing the volume brought thinner/sharper mids/highs while leaving low frequencies behind. On high gain sound was getting even more out of whack. P1U kept everything well under control even pushed well above normal listening levels.
Another interesting catch while swapping between dacs with L30 I couldn't really tell the difference between E30 & Chord qutest dac, apart L30 playing more loudly when we set Qutest to 3V output, but P1U responded nicely to them. While Qutest had better imaging, a bit more detailed and airy presentation, E30 had more flat sound, with thicker bass. Even though E30 fell short in performance against Qutest, but it really stood nicely against way more expensive DAC and yes DAC's do sound different.

uh huh.

interestingly, in these sorts of reviews, 99% of the time its more expensive = better. funny how that works.
 
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Chagall

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I'm not here to fight and I don't care about SBAF or Schiit products either. If you query me you would see that i'm mainly posting on head-fi and local forum. I do listen a lot with headphones and ASR got me interested in L30/E30 which was my first upgrade from portable oppo ha-2 dac/amp.

I found an improvement over the ha-2 using my clears, but still listening experience was tiring, too forward. I could EQ annoying peaks, but that brought Clear's to the level of PM3 with faster and a bit more spacious sound. Tried to live with it, but appearing headaches pushed the final button. Sold them and upgraded to Utopias just to find them worse sounding than Clear. Started my mumblings about Focal company and returning my Utopias while one member invited me to bring all of my equipment and to the test.

What we only did is compared amplifier one with A,B,C,D headphones and then amplifier two. For second round we swapped dacs to give L30 Qutest dac (3V input to L30) and P1U/E30.
If we disregard the size on paper topping is way more powerful amp. Both rounds of testing were with similar results while topping did a decent job with headphone A it failed with B,C,D. Luxman P1U sounded good with all of the headphones and as well edged the performance with headphone A.

Now you can blame B,C,D companies that they made bad headphones which includes Arya,LCD2,Utopia,HD800 and say that only PM3,HD650 are good ones, but I'm choosing an amp that sounds better and could play with wide range of gear.

L30 does the job with easier to drive/warm headphones. In the tests where L30 failed, increasing the volume brought thinner/sharper mids/highs while leaving low frequencies behind. On high gain sound was getting even more out of whack. P1U kept everything well under control even pushed well above normal listening levels.
Another interesting catch while swapping between dacs with L30 I couldn't really tell the difference between E30 & Chord qutest dac, apart L30 playing more loudly when we set Qutest to 3V output, but P1U responded nicely to them. While Qutest had better imaging, a bit more detailed and airy presentation, E30 had more flat sound, with thicker bass. Even though E30 fell short in performance against Qutest, but it really stood nicely against way more expensive DAC and yes DAC's do sound different.


EQ all your headphones (not just remove annoying peaks) to a target curve (there are EQ corrections for all the HPs you mentioned) and then see if you hear any differences with amps/dacs and if those differences are worth P1U/Qutest price premium over L30/E30.

EQing HPs will be night and day difference vs. coloring the sound with dac/amp combinations (so called synergy).

In my limited experiance I would buy a dac and amp that fits my needs (budget and amp power being the most important, looks, preamp, connections, MQA - non MQA and so on) and not care to much how dac sounds.
 

shoto

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Thanks for response, I dont understand it really
If you read the entire thread, Marv points out that any 'problems' he caught were with dynamic headphones, planars resemble a resistive load so much, they measure absolutely perfectly using the L30 in his set-up (however flawed it may be, I dunno). So no, the SBAF thread can't possible explain your experience, it directly contradicts it.. ;)
I did read the entire thread... they did not test my headphone the Audeze LCD2 classic, I do not understand that all planar headphone will be the same.

I use dynamic headphones too, I want best performance for these aswell... even if I do not notice a problem already.
 
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D

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EQ all your headphones (not just remove annoying peaks) to a target curve (there are EQ corrections for all the HPs you mentioned) and then see if you hear any differences with amps/dacs and if those differences are worth P1U/Qutest price premium over L30/E30.

EQing HPs will be night and day difference vs. coloring the sound with dac/amp combinations (so called synergy).

In my limited experiance I would buy a dac and amp that fits my needs (budget and amp power being the most important, looks, preamp, connections, MQA - non MQA and so on) and not care to much how dac sounds.

Ofcourse it is not worth the premium as most of audio products, even if we consider topping. you can find similar designed chi-fi amps for way less in Ali express which could make topping sweat for its money. EQ is not a holy grail and there are many things which you wont be able to fix, but everyone has the right to stick to their own truth. Peace and stay safe I won’t disturb this thread anymore
 

solderdude

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they did not test my headphone the Audeze LCD2 classic, I do not understand that all planar headphone will be the same.

That doesn't even matter.
The measured 'distortion' is a measurement error.
The amp does NOT distort more when loaded with a headphone it only looks like it distorts more.
LCD2 impedance is also flat so is no problem anyway.
All planars are not the same. The vast majority of them will have a flat impedance and act very similar to a dummy load.
 
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