Topping L30 Headphone Amplifier Review

[Jose Hidalgo]

*Drools with anticipation* This is me waiting for the blue/red colors to be available :

 

[Craig7700]

Can someone remind me why the L30 runs so hot? Which chip?

The case on my L30 was running 38 deg C. So we have a chip with heat sink, air gap then L30 case.
What is the junction temp of the chip?

 

[AndyLu]

Can someone remind me why the L30 runs so hot? Which chip?

The case on my L30 was running 38 deg C. So we have a chip with heat sink, air gap then L30 case.
What is the junction temp of the chip?

38c is slightly warmer than body temperature. Do you consider that hot?

 

[Craig7700]

38c is slightly warmer than body temperature. Do you consider that hot?

38c is not hot, but that is the case temp with an air gap to the chip heatsink.

I think the junction is running much warmer than most think.

 

[innerPeace]

Anyone here upgraded from Liquid Spark to L30 or own both?

Based on my research so far
Liquid Spark
- Adds 'warmth' to sound profile
- Two settings (high / low gain)
- Only power switch, no output switch
- Cheaper
- Been around longer (less likely to have undiscovered issue)
- Runs warm
- Slightly more power? (not that I need it any time soon)

L30
- Measure better (SINAD, etc.)
- Does not add much if any to sound profile (good thing imo)
- Three settings (-9, 0, 9)
- Output/power switch
- Runs warmer? might be based on ambient temperature
- Will match nicely with my D10s appearance wise

Another option is ifi Zen Can but that's even more expansive for balance output that I don't plan on using anytime soon.

I know people will mention Atom and Heresy but I rather not ship item from U.S. (shipping fee, import fee, and most importantly hassle to ship back in case I get a bad unit).

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

I don't own the L30. I do have the Liquid Spark and the Heresy. The LS is a great amp...yeah, it measures slightly worse than the Heresy (and the L30) in terms of distortion, but I've just been listening to it for the past 45 minutes and all my favorite tracks that I've listened to many times over the past few months on the Heresy sound every bit as good on the LS. I get volume levels on my 400i's at the mid-gain setting on the LS that equal the high gain setting on the Heresy. I'm almost positive as far as audibility goes the LS sounds EXACTLY the same as the Heresy...and by extension I'd bet it sounds exactly the same as the L30 - I don't buy the added warmth thing wrt the LS, it's flat and neutral. I'd say if you have money to blow and you want a new toy, get yourself an L30. But don't expect the sound to be any better...because all these amps including the Spark are essentially perfect performers.

 

[Gamemaker]

I don't own the L30. I do have the Liquid Spark and the Heresy. The LS is a great amp...yeah, it measures slightly worse than the Heresy (and the L30) in terms of distortion, but I've just been listening to it for the past 45 minutes and all my favorite tracks that I've listened to many times over the past few months on the Heresy sound every bit as good on the LS. I get volume levels on my 400i's at the mid-gain setting on the LS that equal the high gain setting on the Heresy. I'm almost positive as far as audibility goes the LS sounds EXACTLY the same as the Heresy...and by extension I'd bet it sounds exactly the same as the L30 - I don't buy the added warmth thing wrt the LS, it's flat and neutral. I'd say if you have money to blow and you want a new toy, get yourself an L30. But don't expect the sound to be any better...because all these amps including the Spark are essentially perfect performers.

Definitely agree with you. I have both the Liquid Spark and the Heresy as well. Both are great amps.

 

[raif71]

I don't think Atom works with 3V input in high gain.
Just checked on Atom spec sheet. The Atom takes 2.1Vrms max for high gain. More than that and you will get gain stage saturation/clipping.
L30 doesn't have this limitation. Not only L30 reaches higher voltage output overall, when you reduce volume it reduces the input signal so you don't get internal stage clipping. The gain is at the output stage. The design has so low distortion that you don't get any distortion in high gain which is not the case in any other amp I've seen.

I see. Are you telling me that what I heard was saturation/clipping? Maybe it wasn't that obvious.

 

[deafenears]

Turned unit off, went to store for 30 min. and came back. Turn unit on, plugged in headphones, BIG pop and bang into headphones.

Would plugging the headphones in while the unit is on be the cause of this? Or contribute to this? I always thought best practice was to plug/unplug things when amps are off (same goes with speakers and speaker amps).

 

[innerPeace]

I don't own the L30. I do have the Liquid Spark and the Heresy. The LS is a great amp...yeah, it measures slightly worse than the Heresy (and the L30) in terms of distortion, but I've just been listening to it for the past 45 minutes and all my favorite tracks that I've listened to many times over the past few months on the Heresy sound every bit as good on the LS. I get volume levels on my 400i's at the mid-gain setting on the LS that equal the high gain setting on the Heresy. I'm almost positive as far as audibility goes the LS sounds EXACTLY the same as the Heresy...and by extension I'd bet it sounds exactly the same as the L30 - I don't buy the added warmth thing wrt the LS, it's flat and neutral. I'd say if you have money to blow and you want a new toy, get yourself an L30. But don't expect the sound to be any better...because all these amps including the Spark are essentially perfect performers.

Definitely agree with you. I have both the Liquid Spark and the Heresy as well. Both are great amps.

Thanks for the info.
I actually don't have Liquid Spark. I have been using E10K for years.
I was going to get one of Liquid Spark, L30, ifi Zen CAN to compliment the D10s I got during Prime day sale.
I think I will get whichever is the cheapest during the upcoming holiday season.

 

[JohnYang1997]

38c is not hot, but that is the case temp with an air gap to the chip heatsink.

I think the junction is running much warmer than most think.

Half of the heat is coming from the LM317 337 and relays, digital section.

 

[JohnYang1997]

I see. Are you telling me that what I heard was saturation/clipping? Maybe it wasn't that obvious.

There may be some attenuation from your player and maybe the music is relatively quiet.

 

[MrPotatoHead]

Not in power but in distortion and noise performance.

Have you announced details of these new amps yet?

 

[LuckyLuke575]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the new Topping L30 headphone amplifier. It is a companion to their E30 DAC. I don't have official pricing on it but see it on some sites for US $130.

This is a compact unit but with nicely thought out controls:

View attachment 77390

There was a plastic cover in the front which had very clear labels on it. But once I pulled it off, I realized the real labels are not as easy to read. So you may want to leave that plastic on it. Then again there is not much to remember here to need the labels. The left switch controls whether the output is the headphone or line out in the back. And there are three useful gain modes: -9, 0 and +9 dB. The first one is super useful for very sensitive IEMs and headphones allowing the volume control to operate in its most accurate range.

The back panel is as you expect but there is a change in how the unit is powered:
View attachment 77391

Yes, it is a rather heavy, 15 volt AC transformer rated at 1 amp. Not a switching power supply. So be careful to get the unit rated for your country. AC transformers have a design benefit in that you can create both positive and negative DC supplies from them which is needed for amplification. With a single voltage switching power supply, you have to create a negative supply using DC to DC switching converters that creates a weak link.

In use, the L30 got a bit warm but nothing to be concerned about.

Headphone Amplifier Audio Measurements
As usual, I feed the amp a superbly high quality analog 1 kHz tone at 2 volts, set the volume/gain to output 2 volts ("unity gain") and see how much distortion and noise we get:

View attachment 77393

Wow, this is incredible. You can barely see a distortion spike at -150 dB, some of which is from the analyzer output. SINAD which is the some of noise and distortion, is now dominated by the noise of L30 and the analyzer itself, producing near limit of 121.4 dB. This lets the the L30 to reach the top of the ladder by a hair:


View attachment 77394

Quite an accomplishment!

Noise performance by itself is excellent:

View attachment 77395

The right side shows that even when we drastically reduce output to just 50 millivolts, we still have the full dynamic range of the CD, placing the L30 again at the top of the class:
View attachment 77396

Frequency response of course is exceptionally flat and wideband:
View attachment 77397

Multitone test resembling "music" proves how clean this amplifier is:

View attachment 77398

Most important test here is power so let's see what the L30 can do into 300 ohm (high) load:

View attachment 77399

Wow! There was a time when we thought the Drop THX AAA was the best we could do and here comes the L30, with so much lower noise and distortion. Note that this test for historical reasons does NOT use the lowest distortion mode of my analyzer. So actual distortion is limited by this test setup. The L30 is likely even better than what is seen.

Same beautiful dance is shown with opposite load of 33 ohm:

View attachment 77400

Channel balance was exceptionally good for an amplifier with analog controls:

View attachment 77401

If the other samples in the field are this good, this alone differentiates the L30 strongly from the competition for those of you with sensitive IEMs/headphones.

Headphone Amplifier Listening Tests
Measurements predicts that we have tons of absolutely clean power and that is what I heard. Even with my low impedance and very inefficient Ether CX headphone, I had no trouble getting clean sound to the limits of what I could tolerate. Ditto for HD-650 which produced exceptional detail and thundering bass which it can only deliver when pumped with authority.

Conclusions
The race toward perfection and beyond continues in headphone amplifiers at incredibly low prices. The L30 is the latest offering, firmly grabbing the top of the class and holding on to it. Its functionality is excellent and price is very reasonable.

I can't recommend the Topping L30 strongly enough. It is superb engineering in small package and low cost. Get one and thank yourself that you live in this era and not a few years ago.

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

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A few years ago guys were paying $400+ for a 789 THX and treating it like it descended from heaven lmao That's history. I'm glad that I didn't buy into the hype.

 

[Veri]

A few years ago guys were paying $400+ for a 789 THX and treating it like it descended from heaven lmao That's history. I'm glad that I didn't buy into the hype.

The 789 is not a bad amp though. I'm guilty of selling one for $400+ lol. It was pretty good, only disliked the quality of the knob is all.

 

[Viper Necklampy]

The 789 is not a bad amp though. I'm guilty of selling one for $400+ lol. It was pretty good, only disliked the quality of the knob is all.

And the fact that in a year or less the knob was defective, to lot of people too. SO better these amplifiers will hold the candle much better. 789 Sounded so good that i'm thinking to get one back instead of my L30.

 

[daniell92]

Do you guys think this amp for sennheiser hd 599 makes sense?
Now I use them with a dac / amp dongle that has an impedance output of 10ohm ... connecting L30 to the Dac I would have tangible improvements or for the impedance of 50ohm it makes no sense to buy this amp?

 

[3125b]

Just for the HD 599 you can get away much cheaper, the Apple dongle will have more than enough power and low output impedance.
But you could of corse keep using what you are using now and just EQ to taste.

 

[Jose Hidalgo]

On the other hand, the L30 is really cheap, plus it would survive a future headphone change, say if you want to upgrade your 599 for a higher impedance pair of headphones. Plus it has a nice volume knob which is always handy.

 

[daniell92]

I have no experience with headphone amp, having low impedance (hd599) how should i set the amp gain? -9db or leave it at zero?