This is a review and detailed measurements of the Lake People G109-S headphone amplifier. It is on kind loan from a member. It costs USD $520 as of this writing but I see it has been offered on Massdrop for lower price.
Lake People is located in Germany and designs and builds its products there. Alas, the industrial design is ordinary and doesn't impart what I associate with German engineering:
I saw the anniversary edition (?) with gold letter and larger feet and that looked better. I know enclosures are expensive but over $500, I like to see a more professionally designed writing, logos, etc.
The volume control is analog but has notches in it. There are two headphone out jacks but they are identical (unlike some others where one is lower gain). I would have wished one was 3.5mm to accommodate IEMs without adapters.
Missing from the unit is any kind of external gain control. If you open the unit which requires removing four screws front and back, and the volume control knob and shaft bolt, you find a jumper for three setting. I started my testing with the middle setting but seeing how there was not sufficient gain, I moved it over to the highest. I call the former "middle" and the latter "high" gain. I forget what the third low setting was but I think it was negative gain (?). Anyone buying an expensive amplifier like this would have multiple headphones with different sensitivities and impedances and having an external gain control would be a necessity.
On the back, I was disappointed to see only RCA inputs and no XLRs:
There is a version with XLR inputs but that costs even more money. In desktop products, once you go north of $300, I think XLR connections should be mandatory.
There is built-in power supply which is nice. When testing though, I found large amounts of mains 60 Hz leakage. It easily dwarfed the distortion products of the unit. I read the documentation and it said there is a jumper to make the ground floating. I changed the jumper so that it was grounded and that bought me a few more dBs of SINAD. If we had balanced outputs, the rest would have been taken care of also. Back to the jumper, I guess it is nice to have the option of making the outputs floating in case one gets into having ground loops/hum/buzz.
I may do a teardown later but for now, the insides look very nice -- much better than the outside! The design is an op-amp driving discrete output stage with pretty high voltages (+- 25 volt?). That can give the unit very high levels of output with high impedance headphones.
I am pleased to see what looks to be proper regulatory marking which I consider very important when the power supply is internal as is the case here.
Measurements
As usual, we start our testing with unity gain (input and output voltages the same):
On the FFT we see that the second and third harmonics are both down 120 dB. Unfortunately the mains input noise rises well above them, dominating the SINAD rating at 105 dB. Since our hearing sensitivity is much lower in lower frequencies than 1 to 5 kHz, this is not an audible concern but does impact measurements. Rules are rules so I have to go with what I have:
Signal to noise ratio at full level is excellent:
The much reduced 50 millivolt output does degrade the situation a lot at 81 dB:
Here is the intermodulation distortion relative to output voltage/power:
We start in the same class as our top performing DACs but then distortion starts to rise. The output is a lot higher though at this 300 ohm load.
Measuring power directly at the same impedance we get:
There is no clipping so if the input is raised even more, you get more power (seems like the input stage is designed for the XLR input). As it is, we have a lot more power than single ended output of the Massdrop THX AAA 789. Assuming your DAC has good output levels, you should not have any problems with high impedance headphones.
Switching to 33 ohm load which emphasizes current delivery versus voltage for 300 ohm load we get:
We are not doing as well here. Distortion rises quickly above 300 millivolts and we have hard clipping due to insufficient amount of current at the limit. I initially ran this in the medium gain setting and noise level dropped to very close to Massdrop THX amp so it is good that way. It also did not clip then but then again didn't produce max power either.
Here is the channel balance:
The variations become quite large at lower volume settings but I am not concerned since you have the option of lower gain settings. Then again if you have to leave it at high gain due to need to drive different headphones, then it will be a concern.
Output impedance is comfortably low as to not be an issue at all:
Listening Tests
I started my testing with Sennheiser HD-650. There was plenty of power here, creating sensation of physical bass at exceedingly high output level.
Switching to Hifiman HE-400i, there was a lot of power here too but I could get the unit to get distorted at the extreme limit.
Overally, the subjective results are excellent for everyday listening.
Conclusions
The physical appearance of the Lake People G109-S doesn't do much for me. For all the money you are spending, you are not going to get a case that "looks pretty just sitting there." It is what I expect to see in a $150 box.
The engineering and design though, appears to be excellent. I could find no fault with it. Good use of discrete output stage produces high voltage swings making the unit very good fit for high impedance headphones. Performance is still very good at low impedance but perhaps a bit worse.
The G109-S unfortunately faces stiff competition against the JDS Labs Atom which would match or beat its performance at just USD $99. The feel of the volume control is better than the Atom and the metal enclosure and inclusion of power supply are small pluses. But lack of gain switch is a big turn off.
For its price, the G109-S competes against Massdrop THX AAA 789 which costs nearly half as much. It has external gain switches, XLR output and much nicer looking enclosure. Alas, availability is poor as of this writing.
For people in the EU who want to buy locally, the Lake People G109-S is a very nice performer and would be a good option, perhaps better than any other alternatives of the units I have tested.
I will marginally recommend the Lake People G109-S considering that the value is not there. Nor the looks.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Jeff Bezos' wife just finalized her divorce and with Amazon shares she now owns, she is the 14th richest person in the world. I like to see if I can pass her with your donations so please contribute using:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
Lake People is located in Germany and designs and builds its products there. Alas, the industrial design is ordinary and doesn't impart what I associate with German engineering:
I saw the anniversary edition (?) with gold letter and larger feet and that looked better. I know enclosures are expensive but over $500, I like to see a more professionally designed writing, logos, etc.
The volume control is analog but has notches in it. There are two headphone out jacks but they are identical (unlike some others where one is lower gain). I would have wished one was 3.5mm to accommodate IEMs without adapters.
Missing from the unit is any kind of external gain control. If you open the unit which requires removing four screws front and back, and the volume control knob and shaft bolt, you find a jumper for three setting. I started my testing with the middle setting but seeing how there was not sufficient gain, I moved it over to the highest. I call the former "middle" and the latter "high" gain. I forget what the third low setting was but I think it was negative gain (?). Anyone buying an expensive amplifier like this would have multiple headphones with different sensitivities and impedances and having an external gain control would be a necessity.
On the back, I was disappointed to see only RCA inputs and no XLRs:
There is a version with XLR inputs but that costs even more money. In desktop products, once you go north of $300, I think XLR connections should be mandatory.
There is built-in power supply which is nice. When testing though, I found large amounts of mains 60 Hz leakage. It easily dwarfed the distortion products of the unit. I read the documentation and it said there is a jumper to make the ground floating. I changed the jumper so that it was grounded and that bought me a few more dBs of SINAD. If we had balanced outputs, the rest would have been taken care of also. Back to the jumper, I guess it is nice to have the option of making the outputs floating in case one gets into having ground loops/hum/buzz.
I may do a teardown later but for now, the insides look very nice -- much better than the outside! The design is an op-amp driving discrete output stage with pretty high voltages (+- 25 volt?). That can give the unit very high levels of output with high impedance headphones.
I am pleased to see what looks to be proper regulatory marking which I consider very important when the power supply is internal as is the case here.
Measurements
As usual, we start our testing with unity gain (input and output voltages the same):
On the FFT we see that the second and third harmonics are both down 120 dB. Unfortunately the mains input noise rises well above them, dominating the SINAD rating at 105 dB. Since our hearing sensitivity is much lower in lower frequencies than 1 to 5 kHz, this is not an audible concern but does impact measurements. Rules are rules so I have to go with what I have:
Signal to noise ratio at full level is excellent:
The much reduced 50 millivolt output does degrade the situation a lot at 81 dB:
Here is the intermodulation distortion relative to output voltage/power:
We start in the same class as our top performing DACs but then distortion starts to rise. The output is a lot higher though at this 300 ohm load.
Measuring power directly at the same impedance we get:
There is no clipping so if the input is raised even more, you get more power (seems like the input stage is designed for the XLR input). As it is, we have a lot more power than single ended output of the Massdrop THX AAA 789. Assuming your DAC has good output levels, you should not have any problems with high impedance headphones.
Switching to 33 ohm load which emphasizes current delivery versus voltage for 300 ohm load we get:
We are not doing as well here. Distortion rises quickly above 300 millivolts and we have hard clipping due to insufficient amount of current at the limit. I initially ran this in the medium gain setting and noise level dropped to very close to Massdrop THX amp so it is good that way. It also did not clip then but then again didn't produce max power either.
Here is the channel balance:
The variations become quite large at lower volume settings but I am not concerned since you have the option of lower gain settings. Then again if you have to leave it at high gain due to need to drive different headphones, then it will be a concern.
Output impedance is comfortably low as to not be an issue at all:
Listening Tests
I started my testing with Sennheiser HD-650. There was plenty of power here, creating sensation of physical bass at exceedingly high output level.
Switching to Hifiman HE-400i, there was a lot of power here too but I could get the unit to get distorted at the extreme limit.
Overally, the subjective results are excellent for everyday listening.
Conclusions
The physical appearance of the Lake People G109-S doesn't do much for me. For all the money you are spending, you are not going to get a case that "looks pretty just sitting there." It is what I expect to see in a $150 box.
The engineering and design though, appears to be excellent. I could find no fault with it. Good use of discrete output stage produces high voltage swings making the unit very good fit for high impedance headphones. Performance is still very good at low impedance but perhaps a bit worse.
The G109-S unfortunately faces stiff competition against the JDS Labs Atom which would match or beat its performance at just USD $99. The feel of the volume control is better than the Atom and the metal enclosure and inclusion of power supply are small pluses. But lack of gain switch is a big turn off.
For its price, the G109-S competes against Massdrop THX AAA 789 which costs nearly half as much. It has external gain switches, XLR output and much nicer looking enclosure. Alas, availability is poor as of this writing.
For people in the EU who want to buy locally, the Lake People G109-S is a very nice performer and would be a good option, perhaps better than any other alternatives of the units I have tested.
I will marginally recommend the Lake People G109-S considering that the value is not there. Nor the looks.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Jeff Bezos' wife just finalized her divorce and with Amazon shares she now owns, she is the 14th richest person in the world. I like to see if I can pass her with your donations so please contribute using:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).