Review and Measurements of Topping DX3Pro DAC and Headphone Amp

[Wolven]

Did you test your unit without using some form of exclusive mode?
Windows set to 32bit/44.1kHz, all exclusive mode options unticked, sound playing from any browser (youtube for instance). Does it click?

Incidentally I did what someone here suggested and connected via toslink. Now it's working properly. So the issue is specific to USB.

The toslink was my solution, although slightly different implementation than yours.
Just to recap. Windows 7pro, Foobar2000 1.4 beta 6, Topping WASAPI and USB drivers installed.

In order to get away from clicks and resampling but still be able to use the WASAPI driver when playing music.
I set my onboard Realtek as primary sound (as was suggested by Krunok). The Realtek is connected by optical to DX3pro which is now a communication device. Set shared mode to 24/96 on both Realtek and DX3pro, could set it to something else.
In order to get sound while browsing must turn DX3pro to optical. I can turn the sound on/off and pause, go from website to website - no clicks.
In order to get sound from Foobar must turn DX3pro to USB. Clikcs happen when changing rate which is normal. Also when pausing, not sure if that is normal. Switching of songs and seek bar - no click. I can browse internet at the same time without problems.

 

[Yuno]

The toslink was my solution, although slightly different implementation than yours.
Just to recap. Windows 7pro, Foobar2000 1.4 beta 6, Topping WASAPI and USB drivers installed.

In order to get away from clicks and resampling but still be able to use the WASAPI driver when playing music.
I set my onboard Realtek as primary sound (as was suggested by Krunok). The Realtek is connected by optical to DX3pro which is now a communication device. Set shared mode to 24/96 on both Realtek and DX3pro, could set it to something else.
In order to get sound while browsing must turn DX3pro to optical. I can turn the sound on/off and pause, go from website to website - no clicks.
In order to get sound from Foobar must turn DX3pro to USB. Clikcs happen when changing rate which is normal. Also when pausing, not sure if that is normal. Switching of songs and seek bar - no click. I can browse internet at the same time without problems.

Yep, I'm also testing toslink currently, and can confirm that this works well. Clicking is still there but it happens only when actual resampling is taking place. Basically if you open youtube it will resample to 192kHz and that sampling will be used until resampling needs to be performed again, which is in my case when I start playing music in foobar (resampling to 44.1 or 48).
On the other hand USB is resampling even if no resampling is needed, it's working completelly different than toslink implementation.

I can accept using toslink as temporary solution but eventually hope I will get USB implementation fixed.

 

[NDRQ]

I stopped doing that due all the excitement it creates. Using my old metric, we get about 15.5 bits. But do note as I said in the review that this is just noise so much more benign than non-linearity that I see in other DACs.

But this is some serious noise if affecting so much the linearity, right?
Or maybe not? When and how exactly matter this noise?

 

[bellyofthebizd]

What about installing only xmox universal drivers https://www.xmos.com/developer/software/usbaudio

Ive send email to topping with link to this thread, hopefully they ll have a quick fix

 

[MZKM]

They use a 16 bit J-test file. There, the harmonics of 250 Hz then becomes visible. What makes them different than the theoretical levels is distortions or spurious tones from the DAC (depending on the phase, some add and some subtract). I am not a fan of this measurement as it is hard to interpret. Best to run it at 24 bits so that anything that is visible, shouldn't be there (other than the main tone).

Here is the theoretical levels from the Wiki for a square wave:

View attachment 18276

Just look at the numbers in front of the sine(...). What is inside the sin() just indicates the harmonic (odd values). Graphically this is what they look like:

Is this what you were asking?

Yes, thanks! I saw that graph in your explanation of your measurements, but wasn’t sure it was the same, but now I know it is.

 

[shocker]

Could the bluetooth standard on this unit transmit audio data if i had my headphones plugged into a receiver?

Thank you

 

[bona998]

15.5bit in linearity test ? Why skipped in the review (if this was schiit or audio-gd there would be so much laughing) ? Why adding poor TOSLINK performance and coaxial later, buried somewhere between the posts instead of showing it in the review just below USB measurements ? ; / Can be a bit misleading for someone who just had a look at the review on the main page.

Now this USB which is great regarding jitter suppression but a lot of clicking/not needed resampling ? Maybe there's been some changes in the production units and they act differently than amir's engineering sample ?

 

[Bigsy]

Agree if someone were to read just the review its a no-brainer buy, if that's not going to be updated to be wholly representative lets just hope people will delve deeper into the thread.

 

[Wolven]

You guys are killing me, now I'm thinking of returning it. Although, that could just be OCD.
I'm suppose to remind the seller about sending me a replacement remote, today.

 

[ngs428]

You guys are killing me, now I'm thinking of returning it. Although, that could just be OCD.
I'm suppose to remind the seller about sending me a replacement remote, today.

Ha, wife ordered this for me for Chrismas, so a long wait as I read these posts I wonder... has it shipped yet. Who knows she ordered it.

Maybe I should have just went with my first option of the D10 and Atom amp.... ugh....

 

[Wolven]

Ha, wife ordered this for me for Chrismas, so a long wait as I read these posts I wonder... has it shipped yet. Who knows she ordered it.

Maybe I should have just went with my first option of the D10 and Atom amp.... ugh....

My first choice was D50, or going with Cambridge or TEAC. After reading the review I decided to go with DX3pro and bought it from china for the first time. Had to buy adapter, batteries for remote when didn't need them because I thought my battery was bad which it wasn't.

I think the clicking should be fixable with new firmware/drivers.
The sound quality in my opinion is good.

 

[peder2tm]

I don't own the device, but the manual mentions an automatic power-off/power-on feature, but this is not what is happening, right?

With automatic power-off I guess it should go to standby mode and turn off the screen or something like that?

 

[Bigsy]

I don't own the device, but the manual mentions an automatic power-off/power-on feature, but this is not what is happening, right?

With automatic power-off I guess it should go to standby mode and turn off the screen or something like that?

Correct, the auto power off is obvious and as you describe, the problem is more that the device keeps resampling to the same sample rate in USB when there is no need to.

 

[bleachershane]

Now that my unit has been dispatched I'm now really worried by all the talk of clicking.
I wanted to use in Foobar, I always tend to use ASIO with my dedicated audio interfaces and also get audio from Windows sounds (YouTube, browser playback).

The reason I bought this DAC was to have a unit capable of playing back my collection of various files of different sample and bitrates at their native resolution, without having to resample the output at any stage before it reaches the DAC. I don't want to have to set a single sample rate so that everything is downsampled before it reaches the DAC.

So just to clarify, is this 'clicking' a sound in the unit (like a relay) or is it a sound added to the audio like a glitch?

 

[Bigsy]

Now that my unit has been dispatched I'm now really worried by all the talk of clicking.
I wanted to use in Foobar, I always tend to use ASIO with my dedicated audio interfaces and also get audio from Windows sounds (YouTube, browser playback).

The reason I bought this DAC was to have a unit capable of playing back my collection of various files of different sample and bitrates at their native resolution, without having to resample the output at any stage before it reaches the DAC. I don't want to have to set a single sample rate so that everything is downsampled before it reaches the DAC.

So just to clarify, is this 'clicking' a sound in the unit (like a relay) or is it a sound added to the audio like a glitch?

It's the sound of the actual unit, like a relay as you put it.

 

[Wolven]

It's the sound of the actual unit, like a relay as you put it.

I would add that there are two different clicks. On pause it is very faint. On rate change it is mechanical sounding click.

 

[bleachershane]

It's the sound of the actual unit, like a relay as you put it.

Okay, that clears that up for me. So it sounds as though the DAC is trying to renegotiate the sample rate any time a change occurs (pause, seek, etc) and when it doesn't have to.

Surely this is an issue with the way the DAC is interfacing with the software used and surely a firmware or driver update should be able to address this? Everyone with the issue should be contacting Topping to force their hand on the matter to fix the problem.

 

[Bigsy]

That does seem to be the problem, it does seem like it would be fixable via firmware, and I emailed topping at [email protected] earlier today (no reply obv will post anything I get)

Edit to add though my problem seems a tiny bit different to others in that seek, play/pause etc seems fine. The unit operates correctly until nothing outputs to it then after about 10 seconds of silence it clicks for no reason, then when something plays again it will click again even if the thing it plays is identical sample rate to the last thing. Obviously if its just the odd windows notification bing every now again is really bloody annoying. Also, with all the clicks it never displays any sample rate change on the unit screen. It also behaves like this for me with the topping driver or standard windows one and on linux and OSX.

 

[Klenfo]

2 different clicks - relay on and relay off inside unit. If it is impossible to fix it with firmware or drivers, it may be just replace this relay with noiseless one...

 

[bleachershane]

2 different clicks - relay on and relay off inside unit. If it is impossible to fix it with firmware or drivers, it may be just replace this relay to noiseless one...

So when these clicks occur, say when you're using the seek bar, does the audio continue to play as you would expect?