Setup and Performance

Setup

Despite the smaller footprint of the two devices here, the added mass of both courtesy the aluminium alloy stack means that using RCA interconnects that do not have tight bending radii will still not result in the stack tipping over. Indeed, in the absence of TOPPING interconnects, I used the same JDS Labs ones as in the TOPPING E50/L50 as well as the Atom DAC+/Amp+ stacks. It's ideal to place the L30 II amp on top of the E30 II DAC not only for the convenience of having the headphone output and volume knob higher up and closer in reach of your hands, but also providing more room for heat dissipation from the amplifier which is obviously the more power-hungry of the two. I will also say that the inner heatsinks and aluminium chassis make for a setup without any heat-related issues, even over longer sessions.

Next comes connecting the two USB cables from the E30 II, as well as the AC power adapter feeding the L30 II. These three cables are the bare minimum for using the stack with a PC to drive headphones, and you may want to consider the pass-through options to use the stack as a preamp to powered desktop speakers, or even the coax or optical input of the E30 II. Using a mobile source is also possible if it supports USB OTG, given the E30 II can be powered off a USB power bank as well. The three cables used above can be cable-managed well enough, courtesy the thin cables, and powering the stack on now also shows the display of the E30 II in the same orange colored display as on the E50 itself. I am still not a fan of this given it clashes with all of the color options for the E50/L50 stack, and can be cumbersome at night or in low-lit environments. Regardless, this is where you find out how little the E30 II can do with that single button next to the display—it only cycles through the various inputs. The display turns itself off after a minute of inactivity, so that's something at least. Note that the -30 dB display corresponds to the volume control setting by default, which makes for a relatively quiet setup if the L30 II is also in low gain (-14 dB) mode. So don't be surprised if things are not audible to begin with as that's where the two volume controls on the E30 II (via remote) and L30 II in addition to the three gain modes on the L50 come into play. The display does come in handy to show the current input mode as well as playback rate, as seen above when manually set to 32-bit, 384 kHz PCM playback in Windows.


There is no need to install drivers for use with Windows 10 or 11. The TOPPING E30 II is recognized automatically and set up as a speaker output by default, even with nothing connected to the headphone jack. This allows for up to 32-bit 384 kHz PCM playback in Windows, as seen previously in the DAC's display. Of course, this is assuming your PC is a compatible UAC2 device. It's when used with consoles in particular that you need to rely on UAC1, and you may need a fallback UAC1 cable for that. If you use the coax or optical input, playback is limited to "only" 24-bit/192 kHz, with the respective mode shown on the display, and the playback setting shown for a moment, before defaulting back to the volume setting. The integrated USB encoder + microcontroller come in handy here too, as all your favorite players will recognize the device in WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) mode accordingly. There should be equivalent drivers pre-configured in newer macOS builds too, but I am not familiar enough to speak on this front.


Earlier Windows versions, including Win 7, which I know some people still prefer, do not have native XMOS decoding support, which would have you download the XMOS drivers, whose installer is found here. These drivers also come in handy if you have a device that doesn't accept UAC 2.0, or even if you simply want to try other options, The latest version at the time of testing was v5.27.0. Installation is trivial as seen above, and these drivers now allow you to make the most of the TOPPING E30 II DAC within the Windows OS.



What these drivers do after installation is create a new output device in Windows, also providing access to the TOPPING USB Audio Device Control Panel. These are re-skinned XMOS drivers that I've seen employed by others including FiiO, iFi, and YULONG, but they work well enough to leave it as-is rather than make your own drivers from scratch. Just be sure to set the format to your choosing and choose the ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) buffer size that suits your latency requirements—that's about it. With that done, go to your media player of choice. I demonstrated above with JRiver again and set the audio player to the same output. At this point, you can implement further tweaks, but those are player dependent. These drivers also provide 16- and 24-bit playback support, and you will have to change the device firmware for PCM 784 kHz/DSD512 playback as mentioned previously. My default setup was 32-bit audio over JRiver, with volume in Windows 10 set to ~95%, and I then set the sampling rate to an integer multiple of the source-file quality, as random issues may arise if it deviates from this integral multiplier. Many companies suggest as much; for example, use 192 kHz playback with 48/96/192 kHz audio files. The TOPPING E30 II brings with it DSD playback too, bypassing the delta-sigma modulator and working as a pure DAC at max output.

Audio Performance

Here is an example setup with the HIFIMAN HE1000se planar magnetic headphones as well as the Truthear x Crinacle ZERO IEMs connected to the TOPPING E30 II/L30 II stack via the 1/4" single-ended headphone output on the amplifier. The IEMs necessitated use of the provided 3.5 mm to 6.35 mm (1/4") adapter, but the two use cases help illustrate the broad application of this DAC/amp stack, given the vast difference in cost and power requirements. Indeed, the HE1000se costs 10x the asking price of this stack, and yet runs beautifully off the L30 II that can provide up to 3.5 W per channel at 16 Ω going down to 560 mW at 300 Ω. This is off the highest gain setting, and yet it's a lot more power than pretty much anyone considering this stack would really need for more demanding planar headphones as much as higher impedance dynamic driver headphones. Using low gain also helps with IEMs, given also the ultra-low output impedance as the volume knob has enough range of control here too. Where this might be found wanting is in more current-demanding scenarios, given the voltage amplification employed here. So planar headphones with lower impedance and even lower sensitivity may be better served elsewhere. Note also that the E30 II's remote control is almost a must here given you get -99 dB to 0 dB of volume control there. This enables more precise digital volume control and will help avoid clipping from running the amp in high gain/high volume knob setting. This is also the best way to control speaker volume when using the stack as a preamp.


As with most such linear amplifiers, the TOPPING L30 II amp is acoustically transparent. This means the sound signature of your headphones, IEMs, and speakers will not be changed when driven through the amplifier at least. Indeed, I dare say this is all you could ask from a headphone amplifier unless you are deliberately looking for a colored sound signature, and third-party measurements from ASR corroborate TOPPING's own impressive specs. The E30 II DAC is also very good, although not as flawless. Perhaps it's my brain getting used to predominantly ESS Sabre DACs, but I went in wanting something other than clean and sterile, especially when AKM markets its so-called Velvet Sound technology. As it turns out, it's just another way of describing the same principle, and TOPPING has perfected this formula now. I did notice that the bass response can come off ungainly if the stack is being pushed with more demanding headphones, but otherwise this is another of the same in terms of impressive specs and clean power, ultimately not doing anything new.

At the same time, those looking at the TOPPING E30 II/L30 II stack for purchase are typically going to buy their first standalone DAC/amp. In that regard this will be a massive improvement over onboard audio solution in laptop and PC motherboards as well as phone dongles. The power output is the obvious change here, but also there were obvious enhancements in comparison to my laptop's own Realtek ALC3266 chipset throughout the frequency range of all tested headphones and earphones, and this is before the speaker option with the preamp comes in. The E30 II/L30 II stack cleans up the sound output and provides for a great listening experience. With some higher-end motherboards that boast of specifically-engineered onboard audio, I was not able to discern a difference between the integrated audio circuit and TOPPING E30 II on most files, but orchestral music recorded in FLAC still showed an improvement up to 192 kHz PCM playback.