Topping B100 Amplifier Review

[Ziroz]

Mother of god, my v3 monos are obsolete after two month

Not really, the v3 mono has a lot more power than this.

 

[Esprit]

Audiophonics is a retailer in France, offering the B100 to customers in Europe

Where is it written that the "seller" cannot sell a product that has higher consumption?
It seems to me that it is the manufacturer who must comply with a whole series of indications, rules and laws to have the CE certification but once the certification has been obtained and the seller verifies that it is present on the product he has no further obligations.

If anything, if I, the consumer, notice that the consumption is higher than that declared and certified, I can return the product, well beyond the cooling-off period, as it is "non-compliant".

 

[Roland68]

Either I've misunderstood the EU rules on standby power consumption, or Audiophonics shouldn't be selling this.

It goes up to 1W if there's information display, or 2W to 8W for different sorts of networked devices, but none of those apply here. Unless there's an exception I've missed then I don't think this amp shouldn't be sold in, or imported into, the EU. The limits are tightening in future too. I'm not sure what the situation is in the UK but I expect it's still the same.
https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/standby-networked-standby-and-mode_en

If you go by that, you would probably have to take 80% of HiFi devices off the market, including many from the EU.
In addition, an additional transformer or power supply is often required to comply with the specifications. I don't want something like that in my hi-fi devices.

In my opinion it was a mistake by the EU that most devices do not have to be unplugged when they are switched off. It is pure laziness if you don't go to the device to switch it on. Most devices definitely do not need to be in standby mode, and that doesn't just apply to HiFi devices. Displays can also be operated for weeks and months using super capacitors.

 

[rongon]

No, the topping B100 is Class AB! @amirm just didn’t correct it.

That's strange. Can you share where you saw that Topping states this B100 amp is biased to class AB operation? I can't find anything solid using a Google search for "topping b100" "class ab".

I would expect it to be a class AB output stage, perhaps with great gobs of negative feedback applied to get those incredible numbers. (And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, in case you were wondering...)

But if it really is a class B output stage, that would leave me in complete awe of the Topping engineers.

Amir wrote in an early reply in this thread:

Class B amps are only used in RF due to crossover distortion. So the common version is a hybrid Class AB, not class B. Here, feedback is used so much as to nullify crossover distortion in class B. Much like the way Hypex amps use a lot of feedback to deal with all sorts of non-linearities in class D.

So it looks like Amir has information that the B100 does indeed have a class B output stage. I don't know.

@amirm - Is that mention of class B operation a typo? Or did that information come directly from Topping?

BTW, I wouldn't be spending so much time on this if I wasn't genuinely interested in and intrigued by this Topping B100 amp, based on the measurements in this review.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

I might just pickup a pair of these. I am superstitious against class D's and don't need more power either, "Shit loads of feedback" don't bother me.
I just need to hear them with my own ears, What can I say, I am old-fashioned.
Thanx Amir for the review.

 

[ryanmh1]

[I was going to add this as an edit to another post, but I think it deserves it's own post.] I'm going to expand a bit on an earlier thought about why we have not seen a lot of amplifiers like this, despite knowledge of how to achieve this performance level being public domain for decades. There is a potentially significant issue for manufacturers, and that is the "commoditization" problem, the death of their entire industry, and ruin of a significant part of this hobby--amplifiers.

DACs were ruined once when the jitter problem was solved in the early 2000s, came back due to streaming, but are essentially ruined again. There is hardly any point in designing or selling one for more than $100 since for $100 you can get something that measures almost perfectly six ways from Sunday in dynamic tests, static tests, you name it. Not everyone realizes it yet, but they will soon enough. As an audiophile item, DACs are living on borrowed time.

Amplifiers have avoided dying as an audiophile product. But what if, 30 years ago, manufacturers started selling straight wires with gain (which they all could have)? With very little fanfare, one of these things actually was designed and stuffed into a PA amplifier in about 1996. Well under .01% THD at any frequency at any power level up to 500W. And I think it cost about $900. That's basically "solved". No one followed. Why not? Partially, fear of the 80s, where amps were "solved" but really weren't since the measurements weren't good enough (i.e. they were not measuring the right thing). But more importantly, if everyone follows, and everything measures below any possible level of audible consequence, the amplifier becomes little more than a blender or a box fan, and they've all gone and put themselves out of business. Benchmark repeated the low distortion performance and added a switching supply to get the noise out, and once again, no one followed. It took decades for Krell or any "boutique" manufacturer to do this (edit: forgot Halcro and Boulder ... which no one followed, again), but they finally are. Linn, Krell, and EMM Labs amps all recently measured by Stereophile show distortion levels from 20Hz to 20kHz that aren't ridiculously bad (read: 1978 levels). 20Hz to 20kHz flat lines below .01%. Very little of any likely audible consequence in any of them. How long can they all sell the same product? What if they all really did sound different before because they were all purposefully imperfect? And now Topping is selling perfection, outside of power levels, for $300. But, the B200 solves some of the power issues for $600. I suspect with a stereo chassis they could solve all of them for about $2000.

What if, say, perhaps not Topping but Parasound, Rotel, or NAD break their adherence to decades old designs and go and sell a 400wpc amp for $2500? Hypex couldn't do it with Class D (so far) since the problems (as they've admitted) are more difficult to solve there, and the elusive "flat line from 20Hz to 20kHz" is more difficult to achieve. But they're getting there. But this thing is just straight lines. No sane person could claim there is anything measured even possibly of consequence. It's a wire with gain. Now, I'll never put it past many audiophile to come up with wild levels of faith and superstition, but at some point, the jig is up. The subjectivists and objectivists have always had at least some deviations in the measurements to fall back on--"well, I can hear that" (you can't, but whatever). But if you throw every measurement in the book at something and it never does anything except perfectly amplify what you stuck in the input jacks, they've gone and screwed themselves. You can't improve or innovate on perfect. I mean, what can Topping do to follow up on this short of adding more power or meters or some other triviality? Nothing. They can sell one to everyone who wants one, and so long as it doesn't break, that's it.

This is not just a potential end game amplifier for some, but if this performance level were adopted industry-wide, it could the end of the whole game. Will the industry ever do it, and cause the death of the hero amp? We'll see.

 

[rongon]

Or, option 2. The amp is AB, but without much bias current. There's no reason to assume Topping broke the mold here. The distortion levels are low, but nothing that DIYers haven't been doing for years. There's no reason to believe they've done much more than put a derivation of one of those established DIY designs into a box and sell it. That's not to diminish the achievement, since no one else has bothered to do it. Amps with these distortion levels have existed for years. You just had no way of buying one assembled, which was absolutely maddening and ridiculous

Sincerely interested here!
Would you be able to link to a page describing a DIY amp like you mentioned? It could help us better understand what kinds of designs have achieved this level of performance. Thanks.

 

[Toku]

RF typically uses Class C not Class B.

RF devices differ according to the type of radio waves they use. Devices that are only for FM or AM are class C, while devices that handle SSB are class AB.

 

[Cool Runnings]

[I was going to add this as an edit to another post, but I think it deserves it's own post.] I'm going to expand a bit on an earlier thought about why we have not seen a lot of amplifiers like this, despite knowledge of how to achieve this performance level being public domain for decades. There is a potentially significant issue for manufacturers, and that is the "commoditization" problem, the death of their entire industry, and ruin of a significant part of this hobby--amplifiers.

DACs were ruined once when the jitter problem was solved in the early 2000s, came back due to streaming, but are essentially ruined again. There is hardly any point in designing or selling one for more than $100 since for $100 you can get something that measures almost perfectly six ways from Sunday in dynamic tests, static tests, you name it. Not everyone realizes it yet, but they will soon enough. As an audiophile item, DACs are living on borrowed time.

Amplifiers have avoided dying as an audiophile product. But what if, 30 years ago, manufacturers started selling straight wires with gain (which they all could have)? With very little fanfare, one of these things actually was designed and stuffed into a PA amplifier in about 1996. Well under .01% THD at any frequency at any power level up to 500W. And I think it cost about $900. That's basically "solved". No one followed. Why not? Partially, fear of the 80s, where amps were "solved" but really weren't since the measurements weren't good enough. But more importantly, if everyone follows, and everything measures below any possible level of audible consequence, the amplifier becomes little more than a blender or a box fan, and they've all gone and put themselves out of business. Benchmark repeated the low distortion performance and added a switching supply to get the noise out, and once again, no one followed. It took decades for Krell or any "boutique" manufacturer to do this, but they finally are. Linn, Krell, and EMM Labs amps all recently measured by Stereophile show distortion levels from 20Hz to 20kHz that aren't ridiculously bad (read: 1978 levels). Very little of any likely audible consequence in any of them. How long can they all sell the same product? What if they all really did sound different before because they were all purposefully imperfect? And now Topping is selling perfection, outside of power levels, for $300. But, the B200 solves some of the power issues for $600. I suspect with a stereo chassis they could solve all of them for about $2000.

What if, say, perhaps not Topping but Parasound, Rotel, or NAD break their adherence to decades old designs and go and sell a 400wpc amp for $2500? Hypex couldn't do it with Class D (so far) since the problems (as they've admitted) are more difficult to solve there, and the elusive "flat line from 20Hz to 20kHz" is more difficult to achieve. But they're getting there. But this thing is just straight lines. No sane person could claim there is anything measured even possibly of consequence. It's a wire with gain. Now, I'll never put it past many audiophile to come up with wild levels of faith and superstition, but at some point, the jig is up. The subjectivists and objectivists have always had at least some deviations in the measurements to fall back on--"well, I can hear that" (you can't, but whatever). But if you throw every measurement in the book at something and it never does anything except perfectly amplify what you stuck in the input jacks, they've gone and screwed themselves. You can't improve or innovate on perfect. I mean, what can Topping do to follow up on this short of adding more power or meters or some other triviality? Nothing. They can sell one to everyone who wants one, and so long as it doesn't break, that's it.

This is not just a potential end game amplifier for some, but if this performance level were adopted industry-wide, it could the end of the whole game. Will the industry ever do it, and cause the death of the hero amp? We'll see.

Good points. But nah I don’t think the amp nor DAC nor audio industry is in any danger of coming to a standstill. Have faith in the power of marketing, branding and diversity of human preference and desires.

We don’t live in a logical world especially when it comes to consumerism and consumption of non-essential products. I am no exception either.

As you said such things have happened before in the audio world but the industry keeps growing and consumers keep wanting more variety and “innovation”.

The same thing could be said for many other categories of consumer products. But yet those industries continue to grow.

 

[rongon]

Yes, this fad started when AVM introduced their first monoblock amplifier in '88/89 for an affordable pair price of around DM 1400 / € 700 and also published the circuit diagrams for DIYers. Since then, mono power amplifiers have been introduced more and more often that are in an affordable range.
The AVM Mx mono power amplifiers were and are so good that they are still hyped by many users today and the selling prices are often higher than the original price at the time.

The expensive ones were always the power supplies with heavy transformers and high-quality capacitors with high filter capacities. Switching power supplies are cheaper and more compact.

Monoblock amps go all the way back to the dawn of stereo. The Dynaco Mark II, Mark III and Mark IV amps were originally meant to be used for mono setups (ca. 1957), but by 1960 lots of people were buying pairs for stereo. I bought a pair of Mk IIIs for stereo back in the mid-1980s. I should have kept them. Good design from the tube era.

Totally agreed on your comments about power supply quality and cost. The power supply is 100% in the signal path in almost all audio amplifier designs, so for elite performance you want a bulletproof, quiet and preferably over-spec'd PSU. That inevitably costs more money. SMPS are getting better all the time, though. But there is that switching frequency issue to filter out -- and the filter costs extra money too.

 

[Deleted member 72219]

That's strange. Can you share where you saw that Topping states this B100 amp is biased to class AB operation? I can't find anything solid using a Google search for "topping b100" "class ab".

I would expect it to be a class AB output stage, perhaps with great gobs of negative feedback applied to get those incredible numbers. (And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, in case you were wondering...)

But if it really is a class B output stage, that would leave me in complete awe of the Topping engineers.

Amir wrote in an early reply in this thread:


So it looks like Amir has information that the B100 does indeed have a class B output stage. I don't know.

@amirm - Is that mention of class B operation a typo? Or did that information come directly from Topping?

BTW, I wouldn't be spending so much time on this if I wasn't interested in and intrigued by this Topping B100 amp, based on the measurements in this review.

Topping themselves initially responded to me Class-AB when I asked them directly BUT THEN they responded AGAIN and advised that it’s Class-B, as Class-AB was an error/typo.

-Ed

 

[rongon]

Topping themselves initially responded to me Class-AB when I asked them directly BUT THEN they responded AGAIN and advised that it’s Class-B, as Class-AB was an error/typo.

-Ed

That's even stranger!

I don't know what to make of this.

Maybe it's a marketing strategy. Calling it class B would generate a lot of buzz, but calling it class AB would not differentiate it from the crowd of other class AB amplifiers. But I really don't know.

 

[Deleted member 72219]

That's even stranger!

I don't know what to make of this.

Maybe it's a marketing strategy. Calling it class B would generate a lot of buzz, but calling it class AB would not differentiate it from the crowd of other class AB amplifiers. But I really don't know.

Non-Class-D with this type of measured performance in general, regardless of whether it’s -B or -AB, already gets the attention of plenty of people.

-Es

 

[Haskil]

Audiophonics is a retailer in France, offering the B100 to customers in Europe. They need to follow EU legislation.
https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/power-amplifiers/topping-b100-silver-p-19764.html

I don't mean to single out Topping here - we've seen other manufacturers with reported standby consumption >0.5W like the Schiit Vidar 2, Fosi V3 Mono (in auto-sleep), Soncoz SGD1.

In addition to these standby problems, very easy to solve by using a general socket which allows you to cut off the power...


If this B 100 amp is purchased from this well-established French reseller, customer service will be strictly regulated by European laws: two years of legal warranty to all buyers provided by the seller. Then extended warranty in the event of a "defect in form, assembly, design, material": example, a recognized problem such as that of the module which prevented good cooling of a circuit of another Toping model will de facto lead to the application of the warranty if the breakdown occurs more than 2 years after purchase... The seller will then act as a link with the manufacturer.

This is to somewhat counter the recurring anti-Topping discourse in terms of warranty and customer service...

 

[terryforsythe]

That's even stranger!

I don't know what to make of this.

My speculation is that they designed a circuit that performs like a class A/B amplifier, but without the biasing diodes, hence calling it class B.

 

[MAB]

The power supply is 100% in the signal path in almost all audio amplifier designs

Totally incorrect.

Also, putting aside the position of power supply within an amplifier architecture, so many tests have been done on power supply interactions (or lack thereof), including replacing Linear PS with SMPS.

The power supply is about the lowest thing on my list of important amplifier features.

It's unfortunate that after page 2 or 3 of these ASR reviews, all sorts of speculation and misinformation on the review subject flourishes.

 

[welwynnick]

My speculation is that they designed a circuit that performs like a class A/B amplifier, but without the biasing diodes, hence calling it class B.

I'm not as sure about this as I used to be, but I'm sure you you can still have a biasing diode or transistor - to minimise the Xover distortion - and still call it class B. Just as long as both the main output devices are biased symmetrically, to minimise the quiescent dissipation.

 

[ryanmh1]

Sincerely interested here!
Would you be able to link to a page describing a DIY amp like you mentioned? It could help us better understand what kinds of designs have achieved this level of performance. Thanks.

Search TPC, TMC, or OITPC and "amplifier" and "diyaudio" together in a string. Keep you busy for weeks. To really simplify the explanation, you're changing the the open loop gain curve so you can shovel on a lot more feedback at 20kHz. Single pole compensation amps run out of available loop gain to apply enough feedback at higher frequencies. Which is why you see amps that can have .0005% THD at 1kHz and .2% at 20kHz. You need to be able to pile on feedback at high frequencies, which simple amps don't do. Topping might have done that here, might have done something more complicated. Same result.

 

[F1308]

Astoundingly outstanding.

Very well fandango.

Ole, ole y olé.

Yupiiii.

Now, what am I doing with my still
functioning top-notch PA-5 ?

 

[DWPress]

Why this over something similarly powered and transparent that costs $250?

Please share a link to that amp but only if it is as distortion free and clean above 1Khz as this one is.