MRC01
Major Contributor
It's a question of quality, reliability, flexibility and preferences. Personally, I've been burned with Topping and SMSL so I don't buy them anymore. Of course different people's experiences vary and some people swear by them. Regarding Jotunheim vs. Atom, if you don't mind having a couple of wall warts hogging your electrical outlets and always consuming energy even when the units are turned off, and having 2 separate units instead of just one, and you don't intend ever to own low sensitivity headphones that need the Jotunheim's extra power, nor having a power amp that might use its line level analog balanced outputs, then the Atom stack is the way to go. And even better, it's less expensive.What I was trying to get at is that if things like the Topping and JDS products TEST and MEASURE better than the Jotunheim, what are all of its features actually worth, in the auditory experience? It's balanced, yes, but what possible benefit does the balanced output bring, if the Topping and JDS are still measuring better than it? Balanced helps reduce noise, helps provide more gain, offers lower distortion, etc. etc., but the topping and JDS still measure better in all those criteria.
...
That is, until we talk small details and things that arguably don't matter, like a wall wart vs an internal power supply, two separate devices vs one, etc. I'm sure these little details and buying-points matter to some, but they don't to me. I'm just trying to get good sound.
Another difference is the volume knob. The Jotunheim's RK27 is a better part having better channel balance at low settings. I own the original Atom, the Atom 2, and the Jotunheim and have measured them. The original Atom's channel balance was slightly off at settings below 09:00, which I did use even on low gain, which was slightly annoying. The Atom 2's volume knob has better balance, nearly as good as the Jotunheim. But they all match well at volume settings above 9:00, no difference there.