Topping L30 xploding and taking headphones out

The entire premise of Topping brings to mind the same business strategy that Amstrad in the UK had regarding hifi gear: Make stuff that looks the part, but in reality is total garbage built to the lowest price possible to appeal to "the truck driver and his wife."

A mug's eyeful as Alan Sugar, founder of Amstrad used to say.

 

Looked it up for you, all new batches ship with 1A fuse installed. The -original- batch has 500mA fuse and could blow.

 

Here is the official "recall" notice on Topping's Facebook page. It is fairly slimy as it puts all the onus on the customer and is not clear at all about who is to foot the bill for shipping and broken headphones.

It is also implying that the issue has been rectified in newer revisions, despite reports from owners to the contrary and the fact that John Yang stated a few days ago that they were not sure at all what was causing the issue. How could have they fixed it a month ago if they still don't know what the underlying problem is?

They are also insinuating that only sensitive headphones and IEMs were affected, shifting the blame off their product to the user and their equipment again.

Ultimately, they do not seem to be taking the full responsibility for this fiasco and are attempting to shift blame and water down the issue to minimize the financial impact on the company.

 

With such shady business practices, what else can we expect? Humanity? Comprehension? Apologies? Nah, the statement, sadly, is pretty much in line with their tasteless marketing behavior (hiring a moron to unfairly poop over competitors' products while claiming Topping's "superiority").

I wish that, one day, they piss off the wrong company, someone with stupidly high resources and followers to completely destroy Topping online, such as B&W or Mcintosh, for example.

 

So, Topping admits that there was an issue with the L30 and that this issue caused damage to their user's headphones but remains silent in regards to any compensation (outside of a replacement L30)* to owners whose headphones got damaged because of an admittedly faulty L30. Topping basically said, "Tough shit" to those users. Wow.

As for their "apology," it amounts to the following with regards to the L30 users that I mentioned*:



*EDITS

 

Not an actual recall, they're just doing the bare minimum.

 

I owned the D90 too. Thought it wasn't actually all that bad...slightly more dynamic than the RME ADI-2 DAC. Unfortunately for Topping, the Modius came out and it was better.

 

Can y'all help me find a L30 replacement? I kind of felt forced into. The technical specs / price / actual ability to work at a level I feel acceptable with my TOTL gear (From Campfire Gold - a multi ba x-over-less super sensitive IEM all the way to my Enigmatic Paradox - a well dampened planar magnetic).

I don't think it leaves much on the table from a technical standpoint - now its flavor might not be for everyone. It wasn't for me with my full-size headphones, but it was a great treat for balanced armatures. Helped squeeze a little more dynamics & possibly resolution out of them.

I'm still surprised it went the route of the DAP instead of ever seeing a well accepted dedicated micro-driver amplifier

 

If you want a similar sounding amp, look into the monoprice 887.. (or the drop 789).

 

Not similar sounding. More like "features & price" + synergy with a wide range of sensitive micro-drivers that CAN resolve more than a DAP or what I'd consider a standard battery powered amp. Meaning - none of those stupid overpriced battery powered tube pieces of crap. The gain on almost every amp is just too high for sensitive headphones and nobody uses a transparent enough pot with great channel matching. The L30 is one of the few amps I've heard that are wall powered that could offer the level of black background I'd consider reference.

 

Well, every single design decision was made to get there, tons of feedback, ultra low input impedance(bad), ungrounded and unprotected custom potentiometer and more. much to its eventual demise.
I can only think of the THX stuff that has similar (but better) design philosophies. Might want to consider heresy(SE) and Modius(Bal), too. Can't think of much else. The portable mass produced THX gear like the Fiio stuff is much noisier so skip that.

 

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but since smoke and potential fire is involved the Consumer Product Safety Commission might be interested in hearing about this. That’s how most stuff gets recalled in the US.

I used this static standard for everything we built.

ESD - +\ - 18kV multiple strikes from every point on the product. Product must recover gracefully and meet all specs after test. Microprocessor resets are allowd but they must not require user intervention (power cycling) to resolve.

 

I dont know of a good replacement other than the THX 789 which I think can handle IEMs fairly well, though with balanced DAC connected it will be hard to get the volume low enough.

You might consider a less elegant option which is to pick up a passive preamp like the Schiit SYS/ JDS Labs Switcher which would allow you to cut the output of your dac a bit, which would give you more room to work with your amps volume pot. With one of those you could pick up something like the magni or even Asgard 3 in low gain which have low enough noise to not give you hiss. You could also get a DAC which has a premap/volume control or gain settings built in which would allow you to do the same thing. Lot more options out there if you go that route.

 

Really? I always took them to be kings of the barrel. I mean... there's so much worse out there.

 

Wow, the typical jackass AE seller's response, you would think this mentality will change once you go multimillionaire big BUT NO! it's the same f'ing mentality.

 

doesnt seem like it https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...e-amplifier-review.15226/page-149#post-636297

 

Design wise, the Geshelli Erish and JDS Atom along with the L30 are all nested amplifiers. I’ve only heard the Atom of the three, so no idea if they sound similar.