Topping B100 Brief Impressions

They’ve arrived! The quality seems to be another level with some components like the speaker binding posts being WAY nicer. Interesting to see the power supplies connect to the amplifier with aviation connectors, a change coming from all my experiences with amps from Douk and Fosi.

So I had an opportunity to play with gain settings on the B100s and then (re-)blend my subwoofer with them. I found that the Low setting on XLR input, which is +0dB, or unity gain, was not quite loud enough on some tracks when I use Passive mode on my preamp (Schiit Freya+) despite the balanced output of my streamer being rated 4Vrms. I switched it to the Medium setting, which is rated +10.4dB gain, and now I can get it loud enough even on my quietest tracks (examples include Carmen Fantasy (After Bizet) by All-Star Percussion Ensemble and Jazz at the Pawn Shop) on Passive mode. Again this is with medium sensitivity speakers (KEF LS50 Meta) plus SVS SB-3000 subwoofer.

Based on the listening time that I’ve been able to put in, as far as I can tell, the amplifier is as clean as Topping’s ratings indicate, even at higher (for me) volumes of ~70dB about 10 feet away and no hint of detectable distortion despite their Class-B topology. I am thoroughly satisfied with these, and plan to keep these in my chain over my Fosi amps (which I keep the pair of ZA3s as backups just in case anything should ever fail on these B100s). As far as overall tonality, I find these to sit in a happy middle ground between my pair of very smooth V3 Monos rolled with Sparkos SS3602s (which I gave my dad to drive his Magepan LES+) and extremely detailed and borderline analytical ZA3s rolled with Burson V7 Vivids that I just swapped out of for these.

-Ed