Topping TP21

As Logitech have decided to pull the plug on Squeezeboxes I thought I had better get a Touch before they all disappear from the shops.

It arrived the other day and I decided to put it into the bedroom instead of the Boom. Why? Well I usually listen in the bedroom using headphones while Jane watches TV.

The Touch does have a headphone socket but I thought I would try and find a mini hi fi amp with a headphone out. Thus a bit of Googling brought me to the Topping range of amps from China. They get very good reviews for build quality etc but more importantly audiophile level sound quality.

I only needed one set of inputs so opted for the Topping TP21 Class T Digital Mini Amplifier with Headphone 25 WPC -£50 or thereabouts from Amazon – and have supplemented this with a pair of Wharfedale Modus Cube Speakers (Black) which I got from Superfi at about £35. I have a pair of these in the office and although they lack a bit in bass they are perfectly adequate for low level listening. Anyway as I said most of the time I shall be listening to the bedroom Touch/TP21 via a pair of AKG headphones.

The Cubes haven’t arrived yet but the Topping turned up today so I have hooked up the Touch and the AKGs and now I am listening to some Miles Davis in bed while Jane is watching I Am A Celebrity. The improvement in sound quality over the Boom’s headphone out is quite significant.

I am looking forward to hooking up some speakers to the TP21 to see how it drives them. have some big Mission 77s in the loft I must get them down and try this little amp with them.

The TP21 is a tiny device not much bigger than say 4 CDs stacked on top of each other and therefore perfect for the bedside.

The Touch is an interesting bit of kit. As it is much smaller than an SB3 it sits alongside the TP21 quite nicely. Strange thing is I am unlikely to use the touchscreen as I control my Squeezeboxes with iPeng on my iPhone all the time.

 

Logitech what have you done?

I have commented before that my all time favourite gadget is the Logitech Squeezebox 3 or Classic as it is also known.

Basically it’s a networked media player that connects to your hi fi and allows you to stream music from a server or from Logitech’s cloud based radio service.

The software on the server used to be called Squeezecenter then Squeezebox Server but has only relatively recently become Logitech Media Server and in my case it resides on a 4 disk raid 5 QNAP TS-419P.

The Squeezebox range of players really has only one serious competitor – Sonos – which is quite a bit more expensive and quirky in some ways.
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