This is a review and detailed measurements of the Lotoo PAW Gold Touch portable digital audio player (DAP). It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $3,199 although I see it on sale for US $2,599.
The unit is hefty as all DAPs seem to be:
Scrolling around was not as smooth as I like with some judder. But the VU meter emulation that was active while I was testing it as a USB DAC was the most faithful and beautiful I have seen! The rotary control is easy to turn although it moves through the volume range rather slowly. Luckily a bar graph comes up and you can just grab it and pull up and down.
Dual outputs are provided for balanced and unbalanced headphone connection:
As you see, the 3.5mm unbalanced is also the low gain output.
Lotoo PAW Gold Touch Measurements
Starting measurements showed serious problems both with unbalanced and balanced outputs:
I was about to close the thing up and send it to its owner when I noticed this "XRC" option on the main menu. It was on so I turned it off and was amazed what a difference it made in balanced mode:
This kind of performance blows away any other DAP I have tested so far by a mile. It is so good that it give serious competition to desktop DACs:
Sadly the improvement did not fully translate to the unbalanced/"lo" output:
The low output seems like an afterthought.
Anyway, good news continues as we sweep the output level:
And measure dynamic range:
IMD test is passed with flying colors:
Linearity is as perfect as it gets:
Filter response is the very slow type which I don't like:
I went to look for the manual to change it but did not find it. Hopefully it is a setting and can be changed to something sensible.
This naturally impacted THD+N vs frequency given its wide bandwidth:
Notice how switching to higher sample rate fixed the high frequency issue indicating it is a filtering problem.
Back to good news, we have more of it in the form of multitone signal:
Many desktop DACs would be jealous of this kind of performance let alone a portable DAP!
The meat of the unit is a headphone amp though so let's measure power into a high impedance 300 ohm load:
The low output is not useful but the balanced out turns in very respectable performance with 53 milliwatts. Switching to 50 ohm we get:
Measuring noise when outputting very little signal to sensitive IEMs we have:
This is above average but not top of the class:
A proper, working lo output could have aced this measurement.
Listing Tests
I started with my killer test which is the 25 ohm, tough to drive Ether CX headphone. The Lotoo had no problem pushing this headphone, producing stellar fidelity in the form of dynamics, bass response, detail, etc. I did not have another headphone handy with the balanced connector handy so tested the Sennheiser HD650 using the unbalanced out. There just wasn't enough volume here to be usable.
Conclusions
Man, we have been waiting some two years for a performant DAP and here comes out of the blue a brand I had not heard of before wiping the floor with the rest of its competitors. Regardless of price, we had struggled to find a DAP that would match a good smartphone let alone one that competes with desktop products. Lotoo PAW Gold Touch changes all that. It delivers desktop performance that you can take on the road with you. Yes, it does so at nose bleeding prices but shows that technically there are no barriers to great performance -- just as we had predicted.
Happy to recommend the Lotoo PAW Gold Touch for excellence in engineering. You want great sound in a DAP? This is it so far.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The unit is hefty as all DAPs seem to be:
Scrolling around was not as smooth as I like with some judder. But the VU meter emulation that was active while I was testing it as a USB DAC was the most faithful and beautiful I have seen! The rotary control is easy to turn although it moves through the volume range rather slowly. Luckily a bar graph comes up and you can just grab it and pull up and down.
Dual outputs are provided for balanced and unbalanced headphone connection:
As you see, the 3.5mm unbalanced is also the low gain output.
Lotoo PAW Gold Touch Measurements
Starting measurements showed serious problems both with unbalanced and balanced outputs:
I was about to close the thing up and send it to its owner when I noticed this "XRC" option on the main menu. It was on so I turned it off and was amazed what a difference it made in balanced mode:
This kind of performance blows away any other DAP I have tested so far by a mile. It is so good that it give serious competition to desktop DACs:
Sadly the improvement did not fully translate to the unbalanced/"lo" output:
The low output seems like an afterthought.
Anyway, good news continues as we sweep the output level:
And measure dynamic range:
IMD test is passed with flying colors:
Linearity is as perfect as it gets:
Filter response is the very slow type which I don't like:
I went to look for the manual to change it but did not find it. Hopefully it is a setting and can be changed to something sensible.
This naturally impacted THD+N vs frequency given its wide bandwidth:
Notice how switching to higher sample rate fixed the high frequency issue indicating it is a filtering problem.
Back to good news, we have more of it in the form of multitone signal:
Many desktop DACs would be jealous of this kind of performance let alone a portable DAP!
The meat of the unit is a headphone amp though so let's measure power into a high impedance 300 ohm load:
The low output is not useful but the balanced out turns in very respectable performance with 53 milliwatts. Switching to 50 ohm we get:
Measuring noise when outputting very little signal to sensitive IEMs we have:
This is above average but not top of the class:
A proper, working lo output could have aced this measurement.
Listing Tests
I started with my killer test which is the 25 ohm, tough to drive Ether CX headphone. The Lotoo had no problem pushing this headphone, producing stellar fidelity in the form of dynamics, bass response, detail, etc. I did not have another headphone handy with the balanced connector handy so tested the Sennheiser HD650 using the unbalanced out. There just wasn't enough volume here to be usable.
Conclusions
Man, we have been waiting some two years for a performant DAP and here comes out of the blue a brand I had not heard of before wiping the floor with the rest of its competitors. Regardless of price, we had struggled to find a DAP that would match a good smartphone let alone one that competes with desktop products. Lotoo PAW Gold Touch changes all that. It delivers desktop performance that you can take on the road with you. Yes, it does so at nose bleeding prices but shows that technically there are no barriers to great performance -- just as we had predicted.
Happy to recommend the Lotoo PAW Gold Touch for excellence in engineering. You want great sound in a DAP? This is it so far.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
