Planar headphones, Topping Pro 2x2 and latency in DAW.

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A couple of months ago I decided to replace my AT-M40X with Hifiman Edition XS and faced the problem that my Focusright Scarlett Solo audio interface was complete crap. It simply did not have enough output power to make the Hifiman sound like they should.

After a long search, I came across the Topping Pro 2x2 audio interface. And how everyone praises its output power for such a price. I watched various reviews on YouTube/comments, etc. and still bought Topping and enjoyed my new headphones for some time.

However... I preferred to take an audio interface instead of DAC/amp, because I am also a guitarist and record tracks. Here is the complete failure. At the moment of recording the next track, I re-recorded 400 fucking tracks to perfectly record the solo, but each time I looked through them I realized that I did not perfectly hit the grid, the rhythm. I'm out of sync. I was already completely burned out but at one point I decided to turn off the sound from the guitar plugin and try to record a solo with metronome without monitoring the guitar through DAW. I just listened to it unplugged. And... I recorded an almost perfect track.

As a result after an hour of investigation, it turned out that the fucking topping, although it has 2 instrument inputs, does not have normal ASIO drivers. No matter how low the buffer I set in the settings, I still hear big latency. I didn't hear it with my old Focusrite.

What should I do now? Can I buy and connect a separate amplifier to the Focusrite to get a good XS sound or is the Focusrite too bad? Maybe the amplifier in the chain will add even more latency? I am ready to buy another audio interface, but I can't find audio interfaces that could reveal the potential of planar headphones because all of them don't have enough output. Am I in deep shit?

Posted Jun 30, 2025, 3:02 AM UTC

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