Topping E70 Velvet / L70 Stack

The L70's balanced outputs are the stack's headline: two benches measured about 7 W into 32 Ω and about 1 W into 300 Ω, and reviewers drove everything from the HD 650 to the notoriously insensitive Dan Clark Expanse without running out of volume. The single-ended jack is rated at roughly a third of the balanced power. The dissent is at the extremes: with low-impedance planars driven hard or EQ'd, the amp's protection can trip and cut the audio, and TechPowerUp felt it lacked some impact on demanding headphones.

“In high gain, it blows the doors open with 1 watt of power.”

Audio Science Review

“Lots of clean driving power”

Headfonics

“The amp will go into safe mode and cut out audio when the volume is turned up beyond the 70 range.”

Amazon owner (Audeze LCD-S20)

Quiet on both boxes. The L70's noise-limited SINAD sits near the top of ASR's chart and reviewers heard no hiss with most sensitive IEMs, helped by its relay volume's perfect channel matching at low levels. The caveat is the lack of a negative gain setting: ASR noted it keeps the amp off the very top of the chart, and TechPowerUp heard some hiss with its most sensitive multi-BA IEMs. The E70 Velvet's own noise floor measured at about 127 dB SNR.

“even with very sensitive IEMs there seems to be an absence of hiss”

Headfonics

“I did have some hissing with the Orchestra Lite and some Campfire Audio IEMs”

TechPowerUp

“the only thing keeping it from topping the charts completely is the fact that there is no negative gain setting”

Audio Science Review

Sources split three ways, in the classic electronics debate. Every bench shows both boxes far below audibility, and the largest camp hears exactly that — a clean, neutral chain that adds nothing. A second camp hears the E70 Velvet (and, for one reviewer, the L70) as smoother, richer and more 'analog' than typical ESS-based Toppings. A smaller third group hears a character they don't like — sharper and more clinical to one reviewer, veiled or muffled to some owners. Reviewers who compared the Velvet with the ESS E70 mostly heard a small difference, not a large one.

Generous for the price: the DAC has USB, coaxial, optical and LDAC Bluetooth inputs, simultaneous RCA and XLR outputs, a preamp mode and channel balance; the amp adds three headphone jacks, balanced and RCA inputs and outputs, a ground-lift switch, 12 V triggers and eight memory presets that store volume and gain per input/output combination. The gaps are DSD (one fixed filter, and no true DSD bypass despite claims to the contrary), no MQA, no TRS outputs on the DAC and USB-B rather than USB-C.

“These eight settings can have their individual volume and gain levels memorized onboard”

TechPowerUp

“But it isn't bringing out the maximum performance of which the AKM chip is capable.”

MLGrado (EuphonicReview) · Head-Fi

“Topping themselves confirmed that this specific DAC does not do this, so it is not actually taking advantage of the AK4499EX/4191EQ's DSD bypass function”

Edward Ng · Head-Fi

Mixed, with a clear pattern. The large white displays are easy to read across a room, and the L70's relay volume steps cleanly with perfect channel matching. But almost every source complains about the setup: key settings live in a menu reached by holding the knob while flipping the rear power switch, shown as letter codes you need the manual to decode, and the stack comes with two separate remotes. TNT-Audio also found the remote's off-axis range short.

“can sometimes feel unintuitive, somewhat cumbersome and hard to remember”

TNT-Audio

“it still feels like quite the chore”

Audio Discourse

“There's something about those relays clicking each time you turn the L70's volume knob which makes me want to use it over the remote control itself!”

TechPowerUp

Sources split along who paid for the unit. Every reviewer praises the CNC aluminium chassis, solid sockets and finish, and Amir drove the L70 into clipping repeatedly without harm. Owner threads tell a less tidy story: a handful of dead-on-arrival or failed E70 Velvets in 2023, a flickering display, sporadic r3/r5 protection errors on the L70 reported by at least eight ASR members (cleared by a power cycle), one L70 bricked by a failed capacitor, and buyers frustrated with Topping's direct-store returns. Several two- and three-year owners report no problems at all.

Sources split on the premium. Most reviewers call the E70 Velvet one of the best DACs under $500 and the stack a strong buy against pricier rivals. The pushback is that it costs more than the near-identical ESS E70 for a difference some can't hear, that the L70's power is overkill for most headphones, and that cheaper boxes measure transparent too. Prices have dropped since launch — from $798 for the pair to about $553 — which softens the strongest objections.