Topping A90 Discrete Review (Headphone Amp & Preamp)

[olds1959special]

Is this better than Apogee Duet 3’s “zero ohm”headphone jack?

 

[robbiekhan]

Been using mine for a bit now and I love it as HP and pre-amp.

 

[Wolfram98]

Is the XLR input and XLR output(backside) just bridged directly, or is the turned on/off and volume control influence the XLR output?

 

[the_brunx]

Am I missing something? The original A90 has more power than the A90D.

 

[Chiangeg]

Hi all I've been a follower of this forum for a long time and have been reading this threads discussion for a long time before finally getting the A90D from a local reseller in Australia here, I have been very happy with it driving my HD800s together with D90iiiD DAC, however it is very short lived.... It's only been 2 weeks using this Amp for few hours daily, today it finally shows -5 when booting up every single time for a few seconds before "click" and working again.

I might accept this if I have used for 2 years and time to get higher end Amp, but this is only 2 weeks!!! Also my unit came with latest firmware out of the box. The -5 always shows for few seconds, I guess it's on the threshold of failure very soon!.

 

[robbiekhan]

I recently sold mine as I have consolidated to the Luxsin X8 as pre and headphone amp given both sound virtually identical, but before I did in the several months I had it, it was used at least 12 hours a day with no issues at all^

I have heard about Topping QC being iffy but the only product that failed from them for me was my DX Pro headphone amp a couple years ago after about 1 week which I then returned to Amazon.

 

[Chiangeg]

I have owned countless of audio equipments over the past 10 years as cheap as 10's $ and as expensive as 10000 dollars but non failed as quickly as this, not to mention the dreaded -5 error I never thought it would happen to me, is it just back luck or bad design? We can only guess.