Topping Pre90 Review (preamplifier)

[Daverz]

Most recordings I find are not balanced properly. I think an awful lot of mastering "engineers" are partially deaf in one ear.

If your power amplifier has L/R level controls (like most decent ones do) that does the same job.

Volume levels on power amps are typically not designed for heavy day-to-day usage. They are meant for gain staging, and they often pots on the back of the amp.

At least I hope Topping doesn't think this is a good reason to not provide a balance control.

Luckily my Auralic Vega DAC does have a balance control that works in the digital domain, but that's also not common.

 

[restorer-john]

Volume levels on power amps are typically not designed for heavy day-to-day usage. They are meant for gain staging, and they often pots on the back of the amp.

A generalization that simply doesn't hold up I'm afraid.

The volume/level pots on my power amplifiers are all on the front except maybe a few. Most use Alps RK-xx pots and even the rear mounted ones use die-cast frame Noble conductive film or Alps RK-xx pots with proper knobs. They are designed for as much use as you want to give them.

My Pioneer M-90 power amp uses Alps RK-27xx dual gang, solid aluminium knob, driven by a aluminium shaft through a bearing all the way to the input board. Trust me, it's designed for every day usage and uses way better hardware than gear you see today.

Internet pic of M-90. Note the

And I know a ton of Chinese "pro" power amps use the crappiest PCB mount trimpots for input level you can find. But that's not the sort of gear anyone should be aspiring to, or comparing to. We can do better.

 

[Guerilla]

I am not an expert on the electronics but here is my understanding of it. This is for amps designed as guitar amps where you are intentionally trying to shape a limited range of sound not hi-fi equipment where you need to reproduce a wide range of sounds.

Tubes have this relatively wider non-linear behavior before clipping with increasing harmonics so you can get variable and easily controlled level of "warmth" for the "tone" that you prefer rather than a binary between clean and overdrive saturation/clipping. Different vendors select different tubes for what their overall envelope sounds are. By doing this in the builtin pre-amp stage and overdriving them but keeping the output level to power amps attenuated, tube guitar amps can get that overdrive compression tones without having to play at very loud volumes. Driving power amp tubes to overdrive compression would limit it to playing at relatively loud volumes (which is fine only if you were doing a live large stage event where they would still be miked even at close to max volume).

You can emulate this in solid state either by circuit design (the iconic Ibanez Tube Screamer that I have from the 80s being the perfect example) or with DSP (like the Digitech processors which I also use) to a reasonable extent. But before the development of the latter emulators/modelers, tube guitar amps were simple and easy for the tone preferred by guitar players. Even after they were available, professional guitarists have used a combination of effects units and tube amps to get their signature sounds. Whether it is Jimi Hendrix with the solid-state Electro-harmonix Big Muff feeding the amps or Dave Gilmour with different combinations of overdriven units before feeding to tube amps to get that unique and difficult combination of heavily sustained, fat/warm and sweetish distortion (no clipping distortion) tones for his solos. The amps themselves don't need to be driven to full saturation in this case.

Almost all real tubeamps also has tubes in the preamp sektion. I dont know if the sound of a tubeamps output tubes clipping has yet been emulated perfectly. To me it sounds great exept it mostly gets too loud. So called Powerbrakes can be put between amplifier and speaker so it will clip at lower volume. You can also make a tubeamp distort by feeding its input with a loud signal from your pedals. Some transistoramps has tubes in the preamp. Their sound is nothing like a real tubeamp. Solid state overdrive/distortionpedals can sound awesome in combination with a tubeamp. Now its modern to use amps with only 5, 1 or even 0,5 watts output to get real tubesound at low volume.

 

[Daverz]

A generalization that simply doesn't hold up I'm afraid.

Shows pic of unusual 30 year old gear.

 

[Vini darko]

At the other end of the 30 year old pioneer spectrum. With no gain adjust or fancy copper chassis.

Topping l30 drives both no problem.

 

[phoenixsong]

JBL-MPATCH2 - JBL Passive Stereo Controller & Switch Box
Hi, are there plans to measure this product from JBL?

 

[ElNino]

A generalization that simply doesn't hold up I'm afraid.

The volume/level pots on my power amplifiers are all on the front except maybe a few. Most use Alps RK-xx pots and even the rear mounted ones use die-cast frame Noble conductive film or Alps RK-xx pots with proper knobs. They are designed for as much use as you want to give them.

My Pioneer M-90 power amp uses Alps RK-27xx dual gang, solid aluminium knob, driven by a aluminium shaft through a bearing all the way to the input board. Trust me, it's designed for every day usage and uses way better hardware than gear you see today.

Internet pic of M-90. Note the
View attachment 99729

And I know a ton of Chinese "pro" power amps use the crappiest PCB mount trimpots for input level you can find. But that's not the sort of gear anyone should be aspiring to, or comparing to. We can do better.

I miss old Pioneer gear like that with a full internal copper chassis. At one point 20 years ago they made a DVD player (DV-AX10) with that design that weighed 53 pounds, more than a lot of classic era power amps.

(At current wholesale copper prices, just the internal chassis raw materials these days would run around $125 USD.)

 

[sound63]

Dear Sirs,
I'm not able to download the manual, the link doesn't work for me! I'd like to read it.

 

[Michal]

Does the Pre90 have a balance because I did not find any information in the manual.

 

[Dr Eas]

Forgive my lack of understanding, under what circumstances would you need / want to add a Pre 90? I think I understand if you were adding additional components (i.e., the input extender) but I'm not in that market. I have the Topping A90 and D90 MQA and am using it balanced with a few different headphones and IEMs. What benefit would the Pre 90 be? Thanks.

 

[win]

Forgive my lack of understanding, under what circumstances would you need / want to add a Pre 90? I think I understand if you were adding additional components (i.e., the input extender) but I'm not in that market. I have the Topping A90 and D90 MQA and am using it balanced with a few different headphones and IEMs. What benefit would the Pre 90 be? Thanks.

Analog volume control, analog source switching, remote control

 

[sunandmoon]

The standard mic preamp should have up to +70dB gain to work with for insensitive dynamic microphones and quiet environment. This preamp only has 10dB/16dB. And usually mic preamp has 1k input impedance and operation usually is single ended. This is not that.
So basically it wouldn't work well as it's not designed to have high gain. But at some point I plan to make some microphone preamps or AD converters even.

Hmmmm. Would very much like to see an ultra low noise mic preamp matched with an AD converter... something to match a Shure SM7B dynamic which is very gain thirsty. 80dB gain would be nice.

 

[battopi]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Topping Pre90 balanced and unbalanced preamplifier. It was kindly sent to me by the company. The base preamplifier with ability to switch between RCA and XLR inputs costs US $599. There is an extension that gives you four (4) more inputs (three balanced and one unbalanced) for another $250.

A bit of a practical question, how powerful is the remote/volume control. The remote/volume control on the Topping E30 is beyond terrible and I'm very hesitant to buy another Topping product because of it. Great DAC though, but I don't have the patience to hold the remote close and straight and pray that the DAC "sees" the remote....

 

[win]

A bit of a practical question, how powerful is the remote/volume control. The remote/volume control on the Topping E30 is beyond terrible and I'm very hesitant to buy another Topping product because of it. Great DAC though, but I don't have the patience to hold the remote close and straight and pray that the DAC "sees" the remote....

get an ir repeater

 

[Guerilla]

Does the Pre90 have a balance because I did not find any information in the manual.

It does not. Cheers!

 

[restorer-john]

Great DAC though, but I don't have the patience to hold the remote close and straight and pray that the DAC "sees" the remote....

Pull the remote apart and use a better IR LED/run it harder, and/or move the receiver in the DAC to align better.

Otherwise, pick up a quality older universal remote- they often use a bank of IR LEDs set at various angles behind the filter. I have some older universal remotes that can be used on any angle or bounced off the wall/hallway as they have much greater output.

 

[Michal]

It does not. Cheers!

Thank you for your response.

 

[battopi]

Matrix X-Sabre Pro MQA: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...bre-pro-mqa-best-audio-dac-in-the-world.8729/

When you say best audio dac in the world, are you suggesting that it has better sound than say the Topping E30? I thought the whole idea was that almost all transparent DACs sounded exactly the same.

 

[Phrangko]

Percentage and performance wise how would you rate the Pre90 and the D90's preamp?

 

[JohnYang1997]

Percentage and performance wise how would you rate the Pre90 and the D90's preamp?

You will know it when you need Pre90. Otherwise you don't.