Ok after a decent amount of testin the A90D vs my A30Pro I'm pretty conclusive about my findings.
A90D hands down beats the A30Pro in sound quality in about every genre I tried. Main difference being a smoother more balanced sound with better instrument separation and positioning. Faster tracks tend to get a bit messy on the A30Pro where the A90D undoubtedly handles this better and with more grace.
What else is that the A30Pro sounds quite hot and in my face compared to the more relaxed and smooth A90D. My HD660s is known for having a bit hot upperbass and vocals. The A30Pro makes this worse, where the A90D has a less aggressive approach to these areas of the frequency range. Also tried the Mad Dogs (Fostex T50RP Mod) and same results.
All in all I really LOVE the A90D for it's sound. It's just a better amp for all the cans I tried on it with the D30Pro. Hands down a better listening experience all round without endlessly sharing my subjective opinion here. That said I send it back. Why? Because function wise it doesn't suite me for it's price. It doesn't have physical buttons on the front other than the knob which is very limited in usage. For the rest of it's function Toppings sends you their flimsy plastic remote that just doesn't work very intuitively and just feels like a cheap piece of plastic, squeeking, having gaps and just built poorly. As the main tool for controlling the amp I expect more at this price point. Also my A30Pro has a nice pass-through option to let my D30Pro directly send the signal to my speakers when the amp is off. Thus saving power and one less step in the chain to disrupt the sound. I don't need the pre-amp function of the A90D. The D30Pro is perfect as it is for this. And then the final nail in it's coffing which isn't it's fault, I just don't use the amp enough these days for listening to music to make it worth the swap. I mostly use my ADAM T5Vs and they are doign really well on the D30Pro by passthrough and sound better directly to the D30Pro than through the A90D. So all in all not the right pick for me.
Sounds better than A30Pro by quite a bit (hard to argue even subjectively.. Not just taste. Technically). Function wise lacking for my use case. Flimsy remote is embarrassing at this price point. Give us back the A90 switches instead of that LED volume thing..
A90D hands down beats the A30Pro in sound quality in about every genre I tried. Main difference being a smoother more balanced sound with better instrument separation and positioning. Faster tracks tend to get a bit messy on the A30Pro where the A90D undoubtedly handles this better and with more grace.
What else is that the A30Pro sounds quite hot and in my face compared to the more relaxed and smooth A90D. My HD660s is known for having a bit hot upperbass and vocals. The A30Pro makes this worse, where the A90D has a less aggressive approach to these areas of the frequency range. Also tried the Mad Dogs (Fostex T50RP Mod) and same results.
All in all I really LOVE the A90D for it's sound. It's just a better amp for all the cans I tried on it with the D30Pro. Hands down a better listening experience all round without endlessly sharing my subjective opinion here. That said I send it back. Why? Because function wise it doesn't suite me for it's price. It doesn't have physical buttons on the front other than the knob which is very limited in usage. For the rest of it's function Toppings sends you their flimsy plastic remote that just doesn't work very intuitively and just feels like a cheap piece of plastic, squeeking, having gaps and just built poorly. As the main tool for controlling the amp I expect more at this price point. Also my A30Pro has a nice pass-through option to let my D30Pro directly send the signal to my speakers when the amp is off. Thus saving power and one less step in the chain to disrupt the sound. I don't need the pre-amp function of the A90D. The D30Pro is perfect as it is for this. And then the final nail in it's coffing which isn't it's fault, I just don't use the amp enough these days for listening to music to make it worth the swap. I mostly use my ADAM T5Vs and they are doign really well on the D30Pro by passthrough and sound better directly to the D30Pro than through the A90D. So all in all not the right pick for me.
Sounds better than A30Pro by quite a bit (hard to argue even subjectively.. Not just taste. Technically). Function wise lacking for my use case. Flimsy remote is embarrassing at this price point. Give us back the A90 switches instead of that LED volume thing..