Practical Question Regarding Newer Topping Amps


I've been trying to decide on a preamp for my chain. The Topping Pre90 was originally high on my list, but I kept reading about how the remote on it (as well as the original A90 and the A90 Discrete) are hard to use due to the amp itself having a narrow reception range. This has dissuaded me from purchasing one of them. I am only now realizing that those are older products and that Topping has since released the A90 Pro as well as L70 amps in a newer design with equal or better performance to the older models. Does anyone have experience with the A90 Pro and/or L70 that can let me know how their experience is using the included remote? Does the amp still require the user to have military sniper aim for it to receive the IR signal from the remote?

Or should I just forget all this Topping headphone amp nonsense and just buy the darn Schiit Kara already? 🤣

-Ed

eddnog

Can you stretch to a used Rogue RP1? That should be better than schiit and will come in around $1,000 used. 

Interesting, I currently have eight pieces of Schiit gear (used in three different systems) and have owned three or four other pieces of theirs which I've sold. I've never had a problem with any of them and love the way they sound for the money. And, the two or three times I've emailed Schiit with questions I've heard back within a day or two.  Sorry you've had problems with the stuff you've bought.

@mlsstl  In comparing the Kara’s active mode versus the Freya+’s SS buffered mode, would you say that the Kara performs better? I’m trying to figure out whether or not I’d be giving something up in SS mode if I chose a Freya+ over Kara to experiment with tube mode.

-Ed

I don't have either a Kara (Schiit's newest preamp) nor a Freya+, but if I were buying one or the other I'd go with the Kara.