Audio science review Topping A90 Discrete balanced pre/ head amplifier
This is a review and detailed measurements of the new Topping A90 Discrete balanced preamplifier and headphone amplifier.
Conclusions
I must confess that I got a bit worried when Topping told me about the A90 Discrete. I worried that they were making a discrete version just to appease audiophiles but with much loss in noise and distortion metrics. Happily Topping approaches everything with extreme focus on performance and they managed to get the A90 discrete within a split hair of the op-amp version. But then innovated with stepped ladder volume control, trigger support and major step up in class/look of the unit. I happily take these as a trade off for that 1 dB of SINAD.
From design point of view, this is another watershed audio/engineering event brought to us by Topping. Who would have thought that this company would keep breaking new ground instead of all the major/usual names we know in hi-fi.
It is my pleasure to add Topping A90 Discrete headphone amplifier/pre-amplifier to my recommended list. My challenge is to figure out if it goes in my main system or desktop!
