I'm not saying it's a scientific study, nor will one be conducted of course. I have not seen another company with such a high reported failure rate on its products in my time reading audio forums. It would worry me to own such a product given that it's an electronic device, but each person is free to assume his own level of risk.
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Topping LA90 Review (Integrated Amplifier)
- Thread starter amirm
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You switch continiously from objective to subjective and at the end back to objective. Nice try but to obvious for me.
Ok. Enjoy your amp.
manisandher
Addicted to Fun and Learning
No.
manisandher
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Wrong again.
Are you aware that this thread concerns the original (IC version) LA90? Name me a single incident of a failure.
Yes, those stats are for the LA90D, not the LA90 A/B version as you mention. Also, it does seem like the A/B version is solid at least in what I can find. In that regard, congratulations. It seems the company may have been putting out a decent product at one point, so you may have a solid product. That would help explain how the buzz started with this company in the first place.
Given the products they've been putting out lately, and the way customers have had to work to get refunded, I would neither trust them nor want their products in my house.
As said, enjoy your amp.
manisandher
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Both the original LA90 and the newer LA90D are class AB amps. The "D" denotes the use of discrete components, as opposed to an IC.
In hobby communities, issues get talked about a lot more than big corporate - people just return their things and don't complain a lot - I think probably because they know they're up against a big machine and it's extremely unlikely that anything they say will have an effect at all on future product quality. Often large corporations don't even consider incorporating a design change or feature that would make their product much better or easier to use - they made it, it's made, it sells, it's bringing in money, it's enough money, keep it rolling!
I'd like to you consider that there is no reason for Topping's products to break any earlier than other Chinese manufacturers. The boards they use are all made professionally, the parts that populate them are the same as everyone else, and their designs... clearly they know what they're doing - more so than WAY better funded and longer established businesses.
There is public relations and reputation management that companies do to foster a positive customer experience. In the same way but on the opposite side of that - when companies with evil leaders (psychpaths, narcissists: both more common than you think) are threatened or slighted or someone might be releasing a product that, if sold unhindered, would plunge the immoral company's potential profits- they go on the offensive. They'll leave bad reviews. They'll sabotage. They'll have teams to sabotage. I'm sure you've seen those fraud call centers in India? Minions aren't hard to come by. Like a private intelligence agency for the private corporation (remember we're talking companies worth millions (eg. 30,000,000) to billions (eg. 3,000,000,000 )of dollars here... These people do intellectual property theft and outright fraud - they're very morally compromised. One way to sabotage would be Company A buying up a bunch of Company B's products to have them messed with (eg. screw up a solder joint or two in every third so there's early failure especially around release). These are things that can and do happen...
Topping has exposed so many DAC and headphone amplifier manufacturers (and now even stereo amplifier manufacturers) for the fools they obviously are... They've had DECADES to make something like the LA90... It's actually really sad! I'm not saying the broken Topping products were broken by someone else - espionage is just something that happens too commonly and is an interesting topic I delved into which is a possibility but not likely IMO (the most likely espionage would be other companies or affiliates of associated companies making accounts on forums with only one post - saying they bought a Topping X, and it broke!).
Personally I think there aren't nearly as many broken Topping products as you think there are (or as it might look there are).
I have something I want you to think about and then give me your thoughts on:
Why would Topping's devices have much higher failure rates compared to similar devices made by other, similar, companies, when
- they all make boards the same way,
- attach components the same way,
- and get parts from the same suppliers.
And package and ship their components the same (Topping's packaging is actually really good and might be better than most)
Which was reviewed here?
Is the one with discrete components any better? The one I have coming was just called LA90...
ICs are just multiple discrete components in a single package... Unless there's cross talk, as long as the IC is good, the product is good, right?
Aren't ICs usually chosen to simplify things because the transistors are matched?
Cursory glance shows THD+n is within 1dB. I'm going to look more thoroughly, but do you know why one might choose one over the other?
Edit: crosstalk is better on the IC version?!
That's a surprise. Not all ICs are bad...
I think they're usually chosen because they're matched pairs.
I guess there's no reason there should be any more cross-talk than completely discrete components
edit2: I see Discrete makes 70W instead of 56 into 4 ohms
staticV3
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The LA90D is $100 cheaper and officially supports 4Ω loads in Mono mode, whereas the LA90 only supported 8Ω in Mono.
As far as I can tell, the LA90 is also no longer being produced.
I'd be happy with either! Distortion looks a few dB (5-8?) lower on the fully discrete version in the upper frequencies (10kHz+).
I guess the "D" version is superior.. The only way the original was better is the 32 tone multitone test resolution: D was 21 bits, while the original? 22!
Review and Measurements of Benchmark AHB2 Amp
This is a review and detailed measurements of the Benchmark AHB2 Amplifier using THX technology to reduce distortion. I was going to request one for testing due to membership demand but to my pleasant surprise, the company volunteered to contact me and send not one, but two units! I requested...
www.audiosciencereview.com
Do you know if the above is the only ASR review of the Benchmark AHB2? I was hoping to compare the multi-frequency distortion graph 20Hz, ..., ..., 250Hz, 500Hz, 1kHz, ..., ..., 20kHz to compare with the LA90, but I don't see it!
The review looks surprisingly... Sparse?
staticV3
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It's an old review from 2019. Since then, Amir's methodology has improved and new tests have been added.
Here are back-to-back measurements of the LA90 and AHB2 to compare to each other:
https://www.l7audiolab.com/f/topping-la90/
https://www.l7audiolab.com/f/benchmark-ahb2/
4Ω:
8Ω:
Nice. It's also nice to see that the lowest distortion is at 10W, where the louder transients would be when [properly] listening to the amplifier near its loudest. Although I'm sure at this level of performance it'd be impossible to tell if 10W had the same percentage distortion as 1W, it's still nice knowing that the louder parts -the ones most easily heard- are also the clearest!
Sometimes it's good how revealing audio equipment is, but lately especially, I've been finding that sometimes, it's not...
My best speakers (acquired a few years ago-- "vanishingly low levels of distortion"), I've finally driven them with a VERY capable source: my Topping G5 headphone amplifier/DAC combo (very new). I settled on it after looking for a portable-ish combination DAC and headphone amp - something that could drive both my high and low impedance cans and possibly even drive my speakers directly for lower-level extremely high-fidelity. The G5 was everything - the review here showed power output/voltage and distortion all the way down to 12 ohms, (...24, 20, 16, 12 ohms) which illustrated a clear trend with no reason to think the good news was going to change (especially since, as expected, peak voltage just dropped a bit with each decrease in impedance. With this and the extremely low output impedance for a headphone amplifier of just 0.1 ohms, I hooked things up with great expectations
My o-scope, monitoring the G5's output as it drove the speakers, showed 10-13V peak to peak / 1-1.3VRMS with the ZZ Top Eliminator album. No clipping, just nice waves. Very powerful for a headphone amp!
Aside: Earlier in life, I thought Eliminator was recorded pretty well - better than average for 1983. Not an audiophile recording, but a recording done right-obviously in a studio with good equipment. No distortion, levels of everything were always good, they didn't use any bad equipment like microphones with horrible high frequency response, the drums were good, and tape hiss? Only audible during the last bit of the fade out of a song or really quiet parts.
Well was I wrong about Eliminator! Not all of it, generally they did a good job. Just somehow, the entire album is distorted! It's hard to describe because the distortion is not typical clipping you migh expect it to be, being on everything. It's the entire signal apart from maybe the vocals, I can't say for sure but the vocals sound pretty clean. Anyway, the best way I can put it is low level electric guitar distortion is on everything ... This was not obvious even with an Audigy 2 and Audigy 2 ZS notebook + AKG K240s, or any of my mid-fi systems I had in life up 'til now, cars, friends mid-fi systems up 'til now...
With really REALLY good and low distortion equipment, things are going to be revealed to you in the music you love, and you might not be able to enjoy it as much afterwards, because once you've heard a problem, you know what it is and what to listen for, and from that point on it becomes really obvious even through other systems. Not to other people - if they didn't hear what you heard through your system the first time they won't pick up on it even if you describe it.
Maybe it's a bigger deal to me compared to others because in addition to loving music, sound reproduction is almost as important to me
You better look for used LA90 instead all that theory.
I think Topping is having much higher failure rates due to their own quality control issues. Going off the reported issues from many members here, the failures are real.
This is a quote from @MAB in another Topping thread:
"p.s. My A30Pro broke after 9 months, I took it apart and it was riddled with cold-solder and partial-solder joints, had not been cleaned of residue after the board was manufactured, and had incredibly sloppy thermal grease application. So perhaps there are more issues than just the encapsulation."
Topping is to blame for their own problems. If they want to turn things around, then they need to make a more reliable product.
If you think about the market Topping is targeting, it's not bottom-barrel. If you think about what they're asking their engineers to design, it's not bottom-barrel. They seem like they're trying to make good things... Slapping stuff together haphazardly doesn't fit with the rest of what they're doing...
Assembling a DAC isn't highly skilled labour. It's a bit skilled, and in China, people capable of it are literally everywhere. If for some reason this was someone's first electronics assembly gig, after basic training, even someone pretty incapable would become capable enough pretty quick... Repetition for 8+ hours a day every day tends to do that. If they were found to be challenged (inspections of work go bad/QC complains), they'd be reassigned to picking up garbage, or fired.
The problem you're referencing sounds like something was made by an employee in training and then fixed by someone who shouldn't be a supervisor...
People who could (and happily would) do that job right, are extremely common in China.
I'll put it another way too- why would anyone design something so well (as good as anything great and better than the rest), put together everything needed for assembly, order quality components, hire people, and then... in the last 5 minutes... have them crap all over everything, before sending it out? They wouldn't! They're in the business to make money making good things, not return money to customers, pay labour to "refurbish" new products, and sabotage their own reputation!
Their obvious company mission - making really good things for very reasonable prices, is completely contrary to sending out garbage.
Also important to consider: New companies have growing pains. In fact, a lot of them fail. So, when one of them is trying to bring you the products that you want... the products that should be being sold by the existing mega-manufacturers, but the mega-manufacturers aren't selling those products because instead of reinvesting a tiny bit of the money you give them (for their inferior products) into R&D like they should be to make better products for you in the future, they just pocket everything instead and possibly set some aside to fund anti-competitive actions, what you do... what you do is: you buy their products!!! Why? Because they're good, they're warrantied, and the company seems like if you got a visibly defective product and didn't know it until after the warranty period was up, they'd replace it for you.
And this: Most of their DACs for $300-500, you could sell your car and use all the proceeds to buy something from a "well respected" brand and it wouldn't perform as well. Those brands are the brands that should be losing respect and being talked bad about - not the new place trying their best to bring you the best for a reasonable price because they're so new they've yet to purge all their crappy employees.
50% broken at one year is a gross exaggeration. Name one thing as bad
What do you mean?
In my post I was talking about new details I heard in a recording I'm very familiar with when using my G5 to drive my really low distortion speakers.
I was making the point that the recording (specifically it was the album Eliminator by ZZ Top) wasn't done as well as I thought it was. Even after all this time and through so much different equipment and combinations of equipment, I was still missing big chunk of the auditory information it contained. Now that I'm aware, my enjoyment of it (even through other audio systems lacking what I can only assume is enough transparency to make the distortion present in the recording apparent) it is slightly reduced.
I made this point because it is a caveat to having ultra-transparent audio equipment that I would have like to know (so others might also? probably). Especially with how many recordings I previously thought were good or very good that aren't actually all that good - it's a lot of them! And not just old stuff either... I don't personally think anyone who reads it will change their buying decisions, but... it's still something to know.
A lot of the problems with new music are hidden with compression. It does a decent job of it, too. It's just been overused though since the early 90s, so much that quality of music has suffered. I'm not saying all new music sucks, far from it. But a lot of stuff that could've been great is only good
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