Has the Topping A50 headphone amp appeared yet?

[ninetylol]

A power bank. Right.

You do know what's inside a "power bank" don't you? Lithium Ion cells and a noisy, cheap little buck converter to provide 5V. They are pretty nasty little supplies as they are only meant to be an emergency charger for your phone. Go look at the noise on your scope and lack of regulation on a typical power bank and compare it to even a bog standard 7805 derived supply and report back with your findings.

And citing a Youtube video as a source? Come on.

Dude battery has like the most stable voltage swing ever. If you dont know what you are talking about troll in another forum.

 

[Deleted member 12179]

Maybe it happened the same as with the Topping D50 DAC?: it had some not so good performance on the first version, then they nailed with the D50s version right after it...

 

[Deleted member 12179]

I'm sorry, I just find these dinky little boxes hilarious.

I've got vintage integrated amplifiers here with onboard D/A converters, phono stages both MM and MC, tone controls, passive volume controls, headphone stages, speaker switching, multiple inputs, pre/power loops etc.

The "modern, break each thing into a little box and sell it for a ton of money" would mean the example I'm looking at right now, would become 9 (nine!) separate boxes, with massively limited capabilities.

Whatever floats you boat I guess, these makers of let's face it, grossly overpriced, single task boxes are laughing at you all. The latest being external power supplies instead of the sea of wall warts on your powerboards...

Anyway, let's see some actual testing of the power supply. 5V x3@1A. Load it down and let's see the regulation, ripple and noise. Let's see how much better that is (or not) than a 7805 2" away on the PCB to performance...

By your same logic, passive speakers makes no sense, at all; you can have monitors with integrated bi-amps per speaker, right? ;-D
And therefore, you can skip that whole integrated amplifier...

 

[sejarzo]

Dude battery has like the most stable voltage swing ever. If you dont know what you are talking about troll in another forum.

He's not trolling. This is one of a number of articles that I have read over the years that describe why batteries are not the most low noise/low ripple/stable DC voltage sources. Yeah, the chemical reactions in a battery cause high frequency ripple and it is readily detectable.

https://medium.com/@larryhotwit/battery-power-vs-linear-power-supply-915cbf1854b0

 

[restorer-john]

By your same logic, passive speakers makes no sense, at all; you can have monitors with integrated bi-amps per speaker, right? ;-D
And therefore, you can skip that whole integrated amplifier...

Well, when manufacturers start putting quality amplification into their active speakers instead of the cheapest thing they can hide in there, perhaps.

But serious amplification needs space, cooling and quality construction. Jamming all that in a speaker box is a recipe for a short life. We already have active speakers with fans to cool the electronics and I'm yet to hear or hear of an active speaker that doesn't have a residual noise issue.

 

[Deleted member 12179]

Well, when manufacturers start putting quality amplification into their active speakers instead of the cheapest thing they can hide in there, perhaps.

But serious amplification needs space, cooling and quality construction. Jamming all that in a speaker box is a recipe for a short life. We already have active speakers with fans to cool the electronics and I'm yet to hear or hear of an active speaker that doesn't have a residual noise issue.

Well, same with the tiny boxes; most dacs with integrated amplifier will not be that good in one of those 2 functions, for example the d50 dac not that good, d50s is good, maybe the A50 is not a good amp. compared to a JDS atom, maybe... The integrated usb power source it's, maybe, actually not that good so they offer a separate, optional, one for those who want it... maybe the D50s is actually expensive and a khadas tone board is 1 third the price for a similar sound quality, although with way less features... The small boxes offer that flexibility. An integrated amplifier is more convenient, certainly. In any case, I think a 4000$ pair of ADAM or Hedd active monitors with a subwoofer sound bloody well for electronic music, for example.

And then again, why a subwoofer? why not integrate it all in a proper speaker instead of selling another box? and this could be endless.

 

[mid_fi_Senpai]

 

[Deleted member 12179]

Chinese new year it's sooner this year, we are actually in the middle of it right now, maybe that explains a lot too.

 

[Koeitje]

Dude battery has like the most stable voltage swing ever. If you dont know what you are talking about troll in another forum.

I really doubt battery voltage is stable on an amplifier. If I run my racing drone hard the battery voltage drops like crazy. But maybe that is because I'm pulling 1500 watts.

 

[Deleted member 12179]

Truth being told, it's well over 500$ plus import duties the whole thing, quite a rip off if purchasing the whole stack IMHO, some other topping dac's with integrated amp has better price and performance all in one box.

 

[saturnaal]

Sooo... Much less expensive than the Benchmark DAC3 and RME ADI-2, but similar in price to the Sabaj D5, Jotunheim, Singxer SDA-2 etc. Leave the entirely unnecessary LPS out and the D50s+A50 combo is cheaper with similar performance. Hmmm..... Sure sounds like a variety of consumer friendly options to me.

Do I need to find some arbitrary and tangentially relevant thing to complain about?

 

[L5730]

I know it's not relevant, but I really wish they squared up the D50s DAC in the product image of the stack. It just does my head in seeing it slightly twisted compared to the units underneath. This probably asks more questions of myself than it does of the product photographer

 

[Xyrium]

I know it's not relevant, but I really wish they squared up the D50s DAC in the product image of the stack. It just does my head in seeing it slightly twisted compared to the units underneath. This probably asks more questions of myself than it does of the product photographer

LOL, good catch! It matches the alignment of some of their displays...just a little off.

 

[Xyrium]

Well, when manufacturers start putting quality amplification into their active speakers instead of the cheapest thing they can hide in there, perhaps.

But serious amplification needs space, cooling and quality construction. Jamming all that in a speaker box is a recipe for a short life. We already have active speakers with fans to cool the electronics and I'm yet to hear or hear of an active speaker that doesn't have a residual noise issue.

While I agree, some are better than others, as you might expect. However, some of those that you would expect to be better are actually worse. I had Focal Solo 6 monitors for two years, one amp died, then 6 months later, the other one bit the bullet. Warranty was two years, classic.

Conversely on the pricing scale, I've had el cheapo JBL 305s for three years without issue. I've also seen some dude online do a teardown of cheap behringer monitors, and their amp was actually pretty stout. Will edit if I locate it....

Most of those monitors use heatsinks on the outside, or vent heat through the speaker port. If they are sealed, AND don't have fins, then I'd definitely be concerned.

Edit: Sorry for the double post as well. Here's the review with the internal shots. http://noaudiophile.com/Behringer_Truth_B2031A/

 

[Deleted member 12179]

Unless something comes out in the market sooner and it's better, gonna order one of these bad boys, just the A50 amp, as soon as it becomes available again in stock in EU. Waiting for sennheiser 6XX too. I have zero experience with these kind of hardware pretty much, so won't be able to compare it with anything unfortunately. I just hope I will notice an improvement over my bluetooth cheap headphones, will be used with CD quality files 1411kbs.

Can't wait!!

Hope everyone is good in China and things get better, for any chinese or people living there now.

 

[Zerviscos]

I'm thinking of selling my G109-A for this or the Heresy, unsure which though since this still has no full reviews.

 

[Veri]

I'm thinking of selling my G109-A for this or the Heresy, unsure which though since this still has no full reviews.

Will you use the A50's balanced output? If no I'd get the Heresy.

 

[Zerviscos]

Will you use the A50's balanced output? If no I'd get the Heresy.

No, but I do plan to use the D50s bluetooth feature, and I do think I can go with the stack if this is good enough. Although I don't like it when companies tend to refresh/upgrade their models. If this has the chance to get an A50s, I'd like to avoid buying this and wait instead.

 

[Deleted member 12179]

D50s is already tested and reviewed, and it's a hell of a good DAC apparently. It's not the cheapest, but features and build quality support that price. About the amp, reviews are slowly coming. Timing is not with us, due to chinese new year and the big virus isolations, I suspect. And yes, better wait for that A50s if that's the case, or the Atom, or the heresy for build construction. Thing is, with all these measurements we have today, I don't think any budget and conscious buyer is gonna risk to buy something not properly reviewed yet. This thing has to be better than a heresy to be worth it, otherwise jds atom takes it, even though I would personally prefer a pass through line out rather than preamp with another volume knob in my system... Actually, maybe a switcher instead of line out is the way to go, but then again, another box needed... hope this topping rules, but considering that high impedance, not sure it will make it.

 

[Deleted member 12179]

Geshelli Archel 2 is another great candidate, no line out though, requires a switcher for using it with speakers on the same systme.