Reviews by Emarul
Preface:
To me topping propelled themselves into the market out of nowhere and claimed their place to the throne with the A90. From all the praise I heard about it to hearing it for myself and realizing why there was all the praise, it was exciting. You flick the switch on and it responds with a green LED light, or well orange depending on if you switch to pre-amp mode.
Tangibles:
The unit feels in a word: solid. Feels heavy when picked up and the rubber feet on the bottom don’t feel like they’ll move out of place or come off like on the schiit magni 2. The knob is smooth and gives a feeling of ease to turn. Speaking of turning volumes, you’ll get the full range here. From sensitive iems to full size behemoths like the Abyss 1266 phi TC, and it’ll all be driven well. That is something of no small feat.
Now finally on to the sound:
I wish I had a lot to say but I don’t. It’s clean, extended, exciting yet soft and ever so slightly mid-centric. It delivers a lot of detail and good air up top too while at it. But that all gets hard to determine because it’s just so damn transparent. It has those sonic qualities I talked about but it injects itself into your chain so subtly. It takes the characteristics of your DAC, source and just tends to disappear. You eventually forget you are listening to an a90. Highlighting all the other components in your chain. One thing I will say about it though is it’s best when used through the balanced jacks for harder to drive HPs or even higher end iems. The difference in overall impact and involvement of the sound will make you want to plug shut the single ended jack for good. I’d best recommend pairing a warmer or darker sounding DAC to go with the A90 for best results, otherwise if your DAC is strident or bright like a lot of DACs can be, the A90 will not hide it in the slightest. But depends on you if you like that or not really. For me personally, I prefer a smoother sound over a brighter one.
To me topping propelled themselves into the market out of nowhere and claimed their place to the throne with the A90. From all the praise I heard about it to hearing it for myself and realizing why there was all the praise, it was exciting. You flick the switch on and it responds with a green LED light, or well orange depending on if you switch to pre-amp mode.
Tangibles:
The unit feels in a word: solid. Feels heavy when picked up and the rubber feet on the bottom don’t feel like they’ll move out of place or come off like on the schiit magni 2. The knob is smooth and gives a feeling of ease to turn. Speaking of turning volumes, you’ll get the full range here. From sensitive iems to full size behemoths like the Abyss 1266 phi TC, and it’ll all be driven well. That is something of no small feat.
Now finally on to the sound:
I wish I had a lot to say but I don’t. It’s clean, extended, exciting yet soft and ever so slightly mid-centric. It delivers a lot of detail and good air up top too while at it. But that all gets hard to determine because it’s just so damn transparent. It has those sonic qualities I talked about but it injects itself into your chain so subtly. It takes the characteristics of your DAC, source and just tends to disappear. You eventually forget you are listening to an a90. Highlighting all the other components in your chain. One thing I will say about it though is it’s best when used through the balanced jacks for harder to drive HPs or even higher end iems. The difference in overall impact and involvement of the sound will make you want to plug shut the single ended jack for good. I’d best recommend pairing a warmer or darker sounding DAC to go with the A90 for best results, otherwise if your DAC is strident or bright like a lot of DACs can be, the A90 will not hide it in the slightest. But depends on you if you like that or not really. For me personally, I prefer a smoother sound over a brighter one.
