Every time I see news of a new TOPPING product release, I can't help but wonder which older TOPPING product, or current ones from the competition, just turned redundant. TOPPING is in a growth period where it is putting out more new products than I can count on the fingers of my hands, and almost always to rave reviews. There have been a few hiccups along the way, and one such issue with the L30 no doubt put more eyes on the newer L50 than before. TOPPING had to come out with a winner here, and it has done just that. The L50 at $230 is a fantastic buy, almost rivaling the likes of the JDS Labs Atom Amp+ we saw recently in terms of the feature set for the money. It is a definite update over the plastic Atom Amp+ as it has four anodized aluminium finishes to choose from, additional outputs/pass-through, balanced input, different gain options, and of course the humongous increase in power output to drive pretty much everything in the headphone world today.

The TOPPING E50 was designed with the L50 in mind, so much so that the two stack up very nicely. The design language is nearly identical, and having four color options further adds to the customization, making this stack easily identifiable or stealthily hidden as desired. The red trim on the L50 and orange display on the E50 somewhat take away from the stealthy nature with the black stack though, but the display at least turns off after a minute of inactivity. The E50 costs more, and part of this no doubt has to do with the specific ESS Sabre and XMOS chipset combination which supports extremely high bitrate playback, but also MQA rendering on the device itself. TOPPING has recently trialed MQA and non-MQA versions of the same DAC, at least on the higher-end of its product lineup, so I would have personally liked to see a non-MQA E50 for less, however unlikely. If it does, it is because TOPPING is clearly positioning the E50 as a very important entry to its product line, especially with the new PA5 power amplifier based on the E50 design language and positioned to be used with it. In fact, I am already seeing some E50/PA5 stacks on offer, in addition to E50/L50/PA5 triple stack combos for those who want it all.

It's not often I am left equally impressed with a DAC/amp stack at over twice the price of the first impressive set, but I do feel that the upgrades you get with the Topping E50/L50 stack are worth the increase in price over the JDS Labs Atom DAC+/Amp+ stack. Of course, you need to be sure the feature set is for you, as there is a lot on offer here many will not need. But such is the world of consumer audio that needs are often replaced by wants, and I can certainly see many wanting this TOPPING stack to future-proof the audio chain.