Topping L30 II This is engineering at its ultimate best By Amir.
This is a review, detailed measurements and listening test of Topping L30 II. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $149.
It comes in a number of colors. Usability could not be better with positive clicking switches for power/pre and gains. Three gains are provided with the low gain being very negative (-14 dB?) which should be very useful to drive sensitive IEMs.
Power is provided through an AC transformer:
In use the unit ran warm but noting concerning. It survived my multiple overload tests.
Topping L30 II Measurements
As usual we start with our “unity gain” dashboard of 2 volts in/2 volts out which required using medium gain:
Wow, check out that distortion. We are talking -148 dB which is basically what the analyzer itself generates! Noise level is also very low:
Check out how low it is when I adjust the output to just 50 mv:
This shatters all previous records:
We are talking a 5 dB gain over the best before! Considering that the analyzer noise is also in there, this is a remarkable achievement. Translating, even at 50 mv output, your noise floor is well below that of CD’s 16 bit format!
Back to distortion, here is our multitone:
Frequency response is the flattest I have measured of any amplifier I think, extending to beyond 100 kHz!
Beyond noise, power is everything for a headphone amp so let’s see how much we have:
Am I seeing right? Nearly 0.6 watts into 300 ohm? Are you kidding me? All of you with high impedance headphones rejoice!!!
Power into 32 ohm is no slouch either:
There is plenty of drive for every load you throw at it:
Importantly there is no clipping at 300 ohm and higher meaning if you hear distortion, it is your headphone!
Finally, here is channel match:
There is an initial glitch with a deviation of 0.7 db but then things get better and you get plenty of attenuation.
Topping L30 II Listening Tests
I paired the L300 II with its companion E30II DAC for testing. I started with my difficult to drive Dan Clark Stealth headphone. In high gain, the L30 II had no trouble driving it to incredible volume and dynamics. Except in one rare case, I could not get the amp to produce anything but pure, clean distortion-free response with amazing detail.
Switching to Sennheiser HD300 meant there was more power than you ever wanted. In high gain, I could get the headphone to produce superb bass response that rattles your skull like you have your head in a drum set! 
I wanted to just sit there and listen to this. Alas, it is past 1:00am in the morning and I have to get this review out…
Conclusions
Just when I thought boredom was setting in in this class of headphone amplifier, here comes Topping raising the bar so much. Not only does it set new record as far as noise performance, but it delivers incredible amount of power. And does it for US $149!!! I mean lunch at McDonald’s for two is starting to get close to $30. And here we have an audio product that obsoletes even my made of phrase of “instrument grade!”
It is my pleasure to recommend Topping L30 II. This is engineering at its ultimate best.
