Band: opinion spread · Dot: weighted average
Enormous from the balanced outputs, ordinary from the single-ended one — and almost every disagreement about drive traces to which jack the reviewer used. Audio Science Review measured 5.9 watts into 33 ohms from the balanced output and annotated it "sensational", against 1.8 watts from the 6.35 mm jack on the same load; into 300 ohms the split is 1 watt versus a quarter of a watt. That balanced figure essentially matches what Topping claims, and reviewers running planars, high-impedance dynamics and sensitive in-ears all report the same thing: headroom to spare on the 4.4 mm and XLR outs, with low gain enough for most IEMs. The dissent is narrow and consistent. Audiophile-Heaven, which lists limited drive as its only criticism, found HIFIMAN Susvara Unveiled a struggle and the high-impedance Sivga Peng slightly beyond comfortable, and describes an unusual behaviour where the unit sounds quieter than its power figures suggest. A Head-Fi owner running planars found the single-ended jack short of what they wanted — which the 1.8 W measurement predicts exactly.
“It is amazing to see so much power coming out of this little box.”
Amir · Audio Science Review
“It has heaps of headroom ready at your disposal. For this price, the available power is remarkable.”
Yagiz · Headfonia
“The DX5 II produces just around the same amount of power as Topping’s L70 separate headphone amplifier, which is rated at 7.6W maximum, which is considerable for the price tag and the size of the DX5 II.”
Louis · Headfonics
“This is more than enough power to drive even the most demanding headphones on the market, from high-impedance studio monitors to power-hungry planar magnetic designs.”
Jerome O'Flaherty · Pragmatic Audio
“Not the highest driving power out there for headphones, even for the balanced headphone output”
Audiophile-Heaven
“since i use planars i find the power output for that port a bit lacking”
gvainola · Head-Fi
Measured
Audio Science Review, on an Audio Precision analyzer: 5.9 W into a 33 Ω load from the balanced output and 1.8 W from the single-ended output; 1 W balanced and 0.25 W single-ended into 300 Ω; distortion stays clean down to a 12 Ω load. Topping claims 6400 mW x2 into 32 Ω and 990 mW x2 into 300 Ω balanced, 2200 mW and 250 mW single-ended, with output impedance below 0.10 Ω and two gain settings (balanced 14.6 dB low, 24.7 dB high). The measured 300 Ω figures land on the claimed ones almost exactly; the 33 Ω reading is a fraction under the 32 Ω claim, as the heavier load predicts.
vs. listeners — One reviewer of the nine describes the DX5 II as drawing more current before it raises voltage, so that it plays quieter than its wattage implies and cannot drive the hardest loads. Nothing in the published gain structure or the measured output supports a mechanism like that, and no other source reports it — but the underlying observation, that the single-ended jack is roughly a third the power of the balanced one, is real and measured.