Topping A90: power output and what it will drive

The Topping A90 is a desktop amplifier at $499. It delivers 2.0 W into 32Ω and 213 mW into 300Ω, which ranks it 46 of 280 for raw power among the sources in this database.

Measured at 100 dB SPL it has comfortable headroom on 564 of the 567 dynamic and planar headphones catalogued here, enough but not generous on 2 and only marginal on 1. Benchmark measurements. Transparent reference amp at mid-fi price.

The manufacturer publishes 2.0 W into 32Ω. Everything else in the table above is worked out from those figures, and this table says which is which.

The balanced output is rated separately: 4.0 W into 32Ω through the XLR4 + 4.4mm jack.

Derivation holds output voltage steady between and beyond the published loads rather than output power, because that is what an amplifier actually does. The full method is written up here.

Source: toppingaudio.com, headfonia.com, apos.audio.

Ordered from easiest to hardest to drive. Headroom is measured at 100 dB SPL, which is louder than almost anyone listens — a small negative number means the source still plays loud, just without reserve for peaks.

These figures come from each manufacturer's own sensitivity rating. A handful of planars — the HiFiMAN Susvara and the Abyss AB-1266 in particular — are widely reported to need far more than their published sensitivity implies, so treat a bare pass on those as optimistic rather than settled.

At 0.2 µV of output noise, here is where that noise lands in the five most revealing in-ears in the database.

Faint hiss with the most sensitive in-ears. Around 7 dB SPL in the worst case here — audible in a silent room, gone as soon as music plays.

At 0.1Ω output impedance this source satisfies the one-eighth rule with every headphone in the database, down to the 3Ω in-ears. Nothing here will have its frequency response shaped by the source.

The rule is a rule of thumb, not physics: a source impedance below one eighth of the headphone's keeps the interaction under about 1 dB. The checker works it out for any pair.

Of the 280 sources here, 2 do everything the Topping A90 does as a headphone output: reach 100 dB on every headphone it reaches, stay inside the one-eighth rule wherever it does and stay under the audible-hiss threshold wherever it does. The cheapest of them is the Topping L30 II at $149, against this one’s $499 — $350 less.

This counts a headphone output and nothing else. Inputs, converters, microphone preamps, balanced outputs, the volume control, the case and the warranty are all outside it, and any of them can be the reason to buy the dearer box. What the count does say is that the three numbers a maker can be held to do not separate them.

Worked out in advance against its closest rivals: vs Bottlehead Crack (OTL kit) · vs Schiit Valhalla 3 · vs SMSL SP400. Each of those pages lists the headphones that tell the two apart.

Or put any two side by side in the source comparison tool, or run your own headphones through the amplifier matcher. Or see every Topping source in the database, and how much of what this site says about them came from Topping’s own documents.