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Woo Audio WA11 Topaz Portable Headphone Amp/DAC Review

amirm

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This is a review and detailed measurements of the WA11 Topaz Portable (battery operated) headphone amplifier and USB-C DAC. It is on kind loan from a member. The WA11 costs US $1,400. No, that is not a typo. It really costs well over a thousand dollars.

The WA11 comes in a refreshing new form factor with nice Alcantera fabric covering on one side:

Woo Audio WA11 portable USB-C DAC and headphone amplifier audio review.jpg

There are separate USB-C connectors, one for charging and one for operating as a DAC/Amp.

There is a 1/4 inch unbalanced connector and a pentaconn 4.4mm balanced connector.

Despite its very large size and weight, the WA11 eats through its power charge quickly. I have never had to watch the battery on a unit while testing it but I had to here. It is rated to play for just 6 hours by the company. Inefficient class A amplification to blame for high power consumption that actually warms up the case.

The volume control has a very nice feel but as you rotate it, your skin gets caught on the sharp corners of the semicircle around it.

There is a loud pop on power up and short buzz before output is muted.

I must say while I like the packaging, I am not sure what the target application is. This thing is way heavier and larger than a phone to lug around. And with short battery life, it is not much good on the go anyway.

DAC Audio Measurements
Let's start with the DAC portion by setting the output to 2 volts using unbalanced out:

Woo Audio WA11 portable DAC and headphone amplifier audio measurements.png


Sorry, forgot to zero out the FFT spectrum on top right. Overall, this is decent performance with a SINAD of 100 dB:

best portable dac headphone amp.png


Signal to noise ratio is OK at 2 volts but disappointing at 50 millivolts to simulate the noise you may get with a sensitive IEM/headphone:

Woo Audio WA11 portable DAC and headphone amplifier SNR audio measurements.png


Most quiet hiss free headphone amplifier review.png


IMD versus level shows high level of noise but at max output, distortion is well controlled:
Woo Audio WA11 portable DAC and headphone amplifier IMD audio measurements.png


Jitter test showed the same high noise floor and some unwanted spikes:

Woo Audio WA11 portable DAC and headphone amplifier jitter audio measurements.png


Linearity test shows decent fidelity but not as good as a desktop amp/dac at 1/8 the price of WA11:

Woo Audio WA11 portable DAC and headphone amplifier Linearity audio measurements.png


Multitone test comprising of 32 tones to resemble "music" shows problematic distortion spikes at low frequencies:
Woo Audio WA11 portable DAC and headphone amplifier Multitone audio measurements.png


The normal trend is higher distortion at higher frequencies. Noise floor was also high again.

The worse showing was in distortion+noise versus frequency with a wide bandwidth of 90 kHz:

Woo Audio WA11 portable DAC and headphone amplifier THD+N vs Frequency audio measurements.png


To figure out what is going on, I ran a spectrum analysis of a 30 Hz and 1 kHz tones:

Woo Audio WA11 portable DAC and headphone amplifier FFT audio measurements.png


We can see that the harmonics of the 30 Hz tone (in blue) are clearly much higher than our 1 kHz tone harmonics (in red). So we do have a problem with low frequency reproduction (below 50 Hz).

We also have a noise shaping rise in noise that is usually caused by low cost DACs. This is why the flat portion of THD+N versus frequency is also high.

An ES9018 DAC IC is used here and implementation doesn't seem that great.

Headphone Amplifier Measurements
While still feeding the unit digital data, here is the performance with 1/4 inch unbalance output:

Woo Audio WA11 portable DAC and headphone amplifier power into 300 ohm audio measurements.png


Both low and high gain have excessive noise as we have seen in other measurements. High gain though as a strange sudden peak in distortion which then settles down. Output power is short of desktop products at much lower cost so not a good showing overall.

Measuring the balanced headphone out does produce good bit more power though:

Woo Audio WA11 portable DAC and headphone amplifier power into 300 ohm Balanced audio measurem...png


But sadly also magnifies the heck out of the distortion problems below 1 milliwatt. Combined with high noise floor, the WA11 is not something I would use with sensitive IEMs.

Switching to 33 ohm load in unbalanced mode we get:

Woo Audio WA11 portable DAC and headphone amplifier power into 33 ohm audio measurements.png


Strange to see the rise in distortion in low gain mode (red). Why is that different than high gain mode in that regard? Max power in high gain mode is again not competitive with desktop products at much lower cost.

Output impedance was comfortably low:

Best portable headphone amplifier output impedance measurements.png


Channel balance was poor:

Woo Audio WA11 portable DAC and headphone Channel Balance audio measurements.png


You get most of your gain and channel imbalance at the start of the range.

Headphone Listening Tests
I used my Sennheiser HD-650 in unbalanced mode with WA11. Sound was fine and fairly loud but short of skull shaking I like to see. :)

I then tested the balanced mode using my inefficient and low impedance Ether CX headphones. There was plenty of power here to generate a nice experience yet again.

So subjectively the WA11 is "fine."

Conclusions
I am unclear as to the target market for this device. With rather short battery life, it is going to find life mostly on your desk. If so, there are much cheaper and better options there.

At this price point, I get super grumpy if I see design issues and there are plenty of them. If $1,400 doesn't get you perfection as far as noise level, and distortion, I am not sure where the money has gone. The design needed to have been verified using the instrumentation I have and problems ironed out.

The subjective experience was good so I am not going to give it the bottom score. But I can't recommend it either.

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

The headless panther is asking me to take its head and get a haircut. I don't have the heart to tell him that his hair never grows so I am going to do that. Need some money for that so please donate what you can using : https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
 

StevenEleven

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It seems to me that with stuff like the RME ADI-2 DAC out there companies really have to deliver far beyond the basics at this price point. I think it’s just beyond a lot of companies to deliver what RME does at this price (or lower). The battery power seems superfluous here based on the review. :)
 

JDragon

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I wonder how much of the price is the enclosure. Woo Audio makes some pretty looking hardware.
 

pavuol

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Tks

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When you need that tube feels on the go.

The future is USB Type-C port. And WA11 Topaz has two of them - one for data, one for charging (USB 2.0 compliant). Separating the two allows the user to listen and recharge the internal battery simultaneously.
This I like to see in battery operated devices also for ability to not stress the battery from continuous full charge in desktop usage, extending its lifetime.

If companies had any sense, they could allow you some control over this, a simple setting/switch that lets you toggle to ~75% max-charge, or 100% for when you really want it full and intend to take it out somewhere.

Better yet, in this case, a simple bypass of charging the battery at all, instead simply running on AC power for example.
 

pavuol

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Not putting 3.5 mm connector on a portable device is the kind of face-palm design decisions only boutique manufacturers make. Or maybe they just really don't want anybody to connect an IEM to it.
Seems like they do:
"It is capable of driving the most demanding full-size headphones while maintaining an ultra-low noise floor for reference in-ear monitors. "
 

CJ Miller

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Well count me totally not surprised. Good power and gobs more than the dongles. Still $1,400 should have at-least yielded some major battery performance for this to be a winner on some level. Well in the event you get into a fight this is as good as carrying a roll of quarters.

Well im sure when i see youtube reviews folks will convince themselves this devices it's the ultimate on the go amp because of the price.
 

Jimster480

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Such poor battery performance for such a large price? No thanks.
This honestly doesn't have a SINAD higher than my G8 and doesn't have much more power on an unbalanced output either.
#majorfail
 

anmpr1

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The WA11 comes in a refreshing new form factor with nice Alcantera fabric covering on one side... I am unclear as to the target market for this device.

If your 911 has the optional Alcantara headliner, then this might be what you want next to your PC. Of course you won't get 911 performance from a WA11, so that's the downside. But it will have that nice tactile Porsche feel to it. Does WA11 offer an owner's experience package with a complimentary lunch at their cafeteria? And can you order it with badge deletion?
 

Penguino

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If you could get your hands on a Quloos QA390, I'd be very interested. For the same price, it claims some crazy performance in power and in distortion. The only review I've seen is from Zeos, and it'd be nice to see some measurements.
 

Xulonn

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Better yet, in this case, a simple bypass of charging the battery at all, instead simply running on AC power for example.

Silly man! How could you think that they could possibly afford to do that in a cheap, portable DAC/HeadphoneAmp than only costs $1,400???

And they don't even include a nice dog carrier harness with it? For shame! /snark

Dog Carrier.jpg
 
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Xulonn

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If you could get your hands on a Quloos QA390, I'd be very interested. For the same price, it claims some crazy performance in power and in distortion. The only review I've seen is from Zeos, and it'd be nice to see some measurements.

The Woo Audio WA11 looks like yet another piece of over-priced, under-performing boutique audio kit to me, but for the same price, the Quloos QA390 looks very promising - so much so, that I started a dedicated thread on it...LINK
 
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sejarzo

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IMO, after reading the review...I say get rid of the shrugging panther and OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!!!
 
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