Lotoo PAW Gold Touch Review (DAP)

[vcl0124]

Hi, I am not familiar with sound measurements and I really enjoy learning on this forum.

I find it a bit strange that of the daps reviewed i read on the forum, this is the only one that did not include jitter tests. I am curious how this dap performs and I can’t find jitter measurements of this dap anywhere on the internet. Although, while searching for the jitter measurements of this dap, I did come across a website that uses a chart to rank playback accuracy for daps and PAW Gold Touch placed similar to iPad Air. I find this to be confusing. Can anyone tell me what I am missing?

Do you have access to the dap to measure its jitter performance?

Digital Portable Audio

Objective audio measurements of digital portable players.

soundexpert.org

I think this is the website. Looking forward to learn more about the difference between measurements.

PS. I just found I clicked "report" rather than "reply" last time. Please ignore my "report".

Edited:
More detail about there measurement.

Diffrogram: visualization of signal differences in audio research - Articles - SoundExpert

Method, accuracy and applications.. SoundExpert news and articles

soundexpert.org

 

[Garrincha]

I’m not sure my aging ears are worthy of a three grand DAP. This Is convincing me to pull the trigger on a decent music player with a great camera (iPhone 12) which appears to be a better value than I originally thought.

Add a good $110 dongle (e.g. E1da 9038s or Hidizs S9 Pro) and your "decent" music player from the iPhone easily outperforms any DAP. And if you have battery issues, add e.g. the $140 Hidizs DH 80S. Using the actual most powerful iPhone (13 Pro Max 512Gb for $1400) still amounts only to $1650 altogether, the best price for the Lotoo right now seems to be $2400. Insane in the comparison. And you can't make a single call with the Lotoo

​

 

[damytzeus]

Add a good $110 dongle (e.g. E1da 9038s or Hidizs S9 Pro) and your "decent" music player from the iPhone easily outperforms any DAP. And if you have battery issues, add e.g. the $140 Hidizs DH 80S. Using the actual most powerful iPhone (13 Pro Max 512Gb for $1400) still amounts only to $1650 altogether, the best price for the Lotoo right now seems to be $2400. Insane in the comparison. And you can't make a single call with the Lotoo

​

have you actually listened to any of the lotoo players? have you listened with high quality cans? anyone who thinks that any phone can perform at the level of the the lotoo players must be listening with very low quality ear or headphones.

i have the paw gold, paw6000 and paw5000mkii. these are all fantastic daps and no phone can perform to these levels. the parametric equalizer alone is incomparable. before these players, i tried to get the best sound from a phone and there's absolutely no way anyone can compare a paw gold to any phone. to fully appreciate any of the lotoos, you'll have to upgrade your earphones. i have a pair of ultimate ears live iems ($2200). if you want to hear want the paw gold can do, listen with some very high quality headphones or earphones. even the ultimate ears ue7 ($900) will reveal the outstanding performance of the lotoo daps. try listening to full size planars with a phone. the paw gold drives my large planar (monolith m1070) cans comparable to my high quality desktop headphone amp/dac (monolith balanced thx aaa).

this reminds of people who listen to high quality amps via lower quality speakers and say the amps don't sound any different. to hear what the amps can do, try pairing them with quality speakers.

and, when i thought i had an issue with a lotoo player, lotoo promptly responded via email. fortunately, these players are built like tanks.

 

[nyxnyxnyx]

Add a good $110 dongle (e.g. E1da 9038s or Hidizs S9 Pro) and your "decent" music player from the iPhone easily outperforms any DAP. And if you have battery issues, add e.g. the $140 Hidizs DH 80S. Using the actual most powerful iPhone (13 Pro Max 512Gb for $1400) still amounts only to $1650 altogether, the best price for the Lotoo right now seems to be $2400. Insane in the comparison. And you can't make a single call with the Lotoo

​

Using the same logic, you can also just say that a $9 apple dongle can already do the job just as fine as the $100-range dongles.
you should ABX both devices (dongles & DAPs) before making such a bold statement.

 

[BDWoody]

anyone who thinks that any phone can perform at the level of the the lotoo players must be listening with very low quality ear or headphones.

He mentioned a couple of dongles he thought to be good choices that would be added. Did you miss that part?

Using the same logic, you can also just say that a $9 apple dongle can already do the job just as fine as the $100-range dongles.

They don't have as much power to drive headphones, but used as a desktop feeding an appropriate amp it would be perfectly fine.

you should ABX both devices (dongles & DAPs) before making such a bold statement.

Maybe those claiming it sounds better could provide that AB/X, since there is no evidence that is the case.

 

[nyxnyxnyx]

Maybe those claiming it sounds better could provide that AB/X, since there is no evidence that is the case.

I agree, it should go this way no matter what direction people are coming from.
I saw enough elitist audiophiles claiming the most prestigious devices are the ones that sound absolutely best, and the crowd that seems to think the cheapest, near-sota devices can make other devices somewhat obsolete.

 

[Garrincha]

Using the same logic, you can also just say that a $9 apple dongle can already do the job just as fine as the $100-range dongles.
you should ABX both devices (dongles & DAPs) before making such a bold statement.

The Apple dongle measures just fine, no audible noise or distortion and linear FR, no need to ABX as there couldn´t be any difference. It just does not have enough power for many headphones.

 

[Garrincha]

have you actually listened to any of the lotoo players? have you listened with high quality cans? anyone who thinks that any phone can perform at the level of the the lotoo players must be listening with very low quality ear or headphones.

i have the paw gold, paw6000 and paw5000mkii. these are all fantastic daps and no phone can perform to these levels. the parametric equalizer alone is incomparable. before these players, i tried to get the best sound from a phone and there's absolutely no way anyone can compare a paw gold to any phone. to fully appreciate any of the lotoos, you'll have to upgrade your earphones. i have a pair of ultimate ears live iems ($2200). if you want to hear want the paw gold can do, listen with some very high quality headphones or earphones. even the ultimate ears ue7 ($900) will reveal the outstanding performance of the lotoo daps. try listening to full size planars with a phone. the paw gold drives my large planar (monolith m1070) cans comparable to my high quality desktop headphone amp/dac (monolith balanced thx aaa).

You really seem to think that money directly transform into superior audible quality. The (maybe to you surprising) finding on ASR again and again is that many cheap but well enigineered audio gear outperforms expensive one. Many dongles for $100 have SOTA dacs and headphone amps that are transparent to the source. The Lotoo or any other DAP simply cannot sound better (only if it adds distortion and someone prefers distortion). There are also phones that have dacs on par with the best desktop ones (https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...o-measurement-of-lg-g7-thinq-smartphone.4468/)

this reminds of people who listen to high quality amps via lower quality speakers and say the amps don't sound any different. to hear what the amps can do, try pairing them with quality speakers.

Oh my, you also believe in amp sound??? If an amp has low noise and distortion and enough power for the speaker load, there is no audible difference.

and, when i thought i had an issue with a lotoo player, lotoo promptly responded via email. fortunately, these players are built like tanks.

For $2400 they better provide a good service

 

[The_first_one]

Has anyone used the Lotoo PAW gold touch to listen to audiobooks? I'm interested if it's possible to bookmark (to listen from a certain place) or to change the speed of listening?

 

[leonasj500]

how lpgt compared vs modern late dap in technical sound quality(dx340,dx260mkii,M8T,SP3000,dx340ti max,n8 ii,r8 ii,rs8) ? latest will be way better in all spec?

 

[gofishus]

have you actually listened to any of the lotoo players? have you listened with high quality cans? anyone who thinks that any phone can perform at the level of the the lotoo players must be listening with very low quality ear or headphones.

i have the paw gold, paw6000 and paw5000mkii. these are all fantastic daps and no phone can perform to these levels. the parametric equalizer alone is incomparable. before these players, i tried to get the best sound from a phone and there's absolutely no way anyone can compare a paw gold to any phone. to fully appreciate any of the lotoos, you'll have to upgrade your earphones. i have a pair of ultimate ears live iems ($2200). if you want to hear want the paw gold can do, listen with some very high quality headphones or earphones. even the ultimate ears ue7 ($900) will reveal the outstanding performance of the lotoo daps. try listening to full size planars with a phone. the paw gold drives my large planar (monolith m1070) cans comparable to my high quality desktop headphone amp/dac (monolith balanced thx aaa).

this reminds of people who listen to high quality amps via lower quality speakers and say the amps don't sound any different. to hear what the amps can do, try pairing them with quality speakers.

and, when i thought i had an issue with a lotoo player, lotoo promptly responded via email. fortunately, these players are built like tanks.

You are in the wrong forum. People here are of the belief that an LG phone or apple dongle outperforms everything else on the market regardless of price. There's no convincing them and if you say that your DAPs sound better they will just say you are pushing snake oil. I've learned to ignore most of the posters as well as most of Amir's reviews on here. You should be on Head-Fi, not ASR.

 

[YSC]

You are in the wrong forum. People here are of the belief that an LG phone or apple dongle outperforms everything else on the market regardless of price. There's no convincing them and if you say that your DAPs sound better they will just say you are pushing snake oil. I've learned to ignore most of the posters as well as most of Amir's reviews on here. You should be on Head-Fi, not ASR.

Man I think you two arae on the wrong focus, if you feel head-fi or reddit could make you feel better, it's fine to go ahead, there's no issue to go ahead and purchase whatever makes you happy in a hobby, but it's like what you define as "better", Amirm here have always make it clear, Hi-Fi by definition is to have as few distortion and signal alteration as possible. If true Hi-Fi (AKA true to source material) is your goal, then Amirm's reviews on said dongles couldn't be much or even any better. Of course, "synergy" is absolutely a thing, a pair of speaker/earphone/headphone etc. can't be really neutral, and human taste varies also, so it can have a technically not so "hifi" gear sounding more pelasant to certain music to someone, that's perfectly fine, but surely personally I would differ what is technical superior vs more pleasant for something.

 

[sunhuino1]

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:

View attachment 102325

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:

View attachment 102326

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:
View attachment 102327

View attachment 102328

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:

View attachment 102329

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:
View attachment 102330

Sadly the improvement did not fully translate to the unbalanced/"lo" output:

View attachment 102331

The low output seems like an afterthought.

Anyway, good news continues as we sweep the output level:

View attachment 102332

And measure dynamic range:
View attachment 102333

IMD test is passed with flying colors:
View attachment 102334

Linearity is as perfect as it gets:
View attachment 102335

Filter response is the very slow type which I don't like:
View attachment 102336

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:
View attachment 102338

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:
View attachment 102339

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:

View attachment 102340

The low output is not useful but the balanced out turns in very respectable performance with 53 milliwatts. Switching to 50 ohm we get:

View attachment 102341

Measuring noise when outputting very little signal to sensitive IEMs we have:
View attachment 102342

This is above average but not top of the class:

View attachment 102343

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.


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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

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Adjusting the filter Settings of the player can yield the best measurement results

option --> filter -> set to Sharp rolloff
default set Super slow rolloff