Review and Measurements of Topping DX3Pro DAC and Headphone Amp

[noel_fs]

anyone else having their order stuck in awaiting to be shipped? bought it on aoshida as it seems to be the most realible store of aliexpress

 

[mejobloggs]

Probably more my headphones breaking or my ears being annoying, but is there any reason why DX3 Pro would be making vocals sound very left-ear?

Everything else sounds more balanced... Or maybe just much more noticeable with vocal imbalance

Any settings or anything? I installed the Topping Drivers and updated to latest firmware

 

[Toku]

anyone else having their order stuck in awaiting to be shipped? bought it on aoshida as it seems to be the most realible store of aliexpress

I bought DX3 Pro from Aoshida at 11.11.
But it took 39 days from order to delivery. It's an incredible number of days!

 

[noel_fs]

Probably more my headphones breaking or my ears being annoying, but is there any reason why DX3 Pro would be making vocals sound very left-ear?

Everything else sounds more balanced... Or maybe just much more noticeable with vocal imbalance

Any settings or anything? I installed the Topping Drivers and updated to latest firmware

Its most probably your ears and you started to notice it with dx3. Im betting you didnt have a quality gear before dx3. if it isnt the case i still think taht if its only the vocals you have something wrong with your ears+channel imbalance thats why you notice it alot in the vocals.

I have the same issue as you, vocals leaning to left and i dont have dx3 . I already have appointment with the otolaryngologist.

 

[Toku]

Probably more my headphones breaking or my ears being annoying, but is there any reason why DX3 Pro would be making vocals sound very left-ear?

Everything else sounds more balanced... Or maybe just much more noticeable with vocal imbalance

Any settings or anything? I installed the Topping Drivers and updated to latest firmware

Is the plug of the headphone inserted deeply? The last 1 mm is very hard and has to push hard strongly! .

 

[noel_fs]

I bought DX3 Pro from Aoshida at 11.11.
But it took 39 days from order to delivery. It's an incredible number of days!

How much did they take to ship it?

 

[mejobloggs]

Its most probably your ears and you started to notice it with dx3. Im betting you didnt have a quality gear before dx3. if it isnt the case i still think taht if its only the vocals you have something wrong with your ears+channel imbalance thats why you notice it alot in the vocals.

I have the same issue as you, vocals leaning to left and i dont have dx3 . I already have appointment with the otolaryngologist.

Yeah maybe. I'm new to audio gadgets and whatnot.

I've got AKG K612 Pro headphones and Topping DX3 Pro.

I'm just playing music with Spotify, and whatever default settings Topping comes with (I just plugged and played).

Is that going to be good enough? Or is there settings I should be fiddling with, or downloading flac music or something. Clueless Spotify user, but thought I'd try out some new audio gear

 

[noel_fs]

Yeah maybe. I'm new to audio gadgets and whatnot.

I've got AKG K612 Pro headphones and Topping DX3 Pro.

I'm just playing music with Spotify, and whatever default settings Topping comes with (I just plugged and played).

Is that going to be good enough? Or is there settings I should be fiddling with, or downloading flac music or something. Clueless Spotify user, but thought I'd try out some new audio gear

Just get foobar and install wasapi component. Get flacs, its pretty easy with deezer, thats all i can say . Rutracker is good too. And yes, to be specific the amount of details you lose with spotify+windows mixer is huge, from just details to straight up veiled instruments
Get an apointment with the doctor to check your ears as soon as possible or you will regret it not doing it before. Talking from my own experience.

You can confirm by yourself reversing the headphones, if you still get vocals leaning to left its definetly your ears. Good luck!

 

[mikehoopes]

Just get foobar and install wasapi component. Get flacs, its pretty easy with deezer, thats all i can say . Rutracker is good too. And yes, to be specific the amount of details you lose with spotify+windows mixer is huge, from just details to straight up veiled instruments
Get an apointment with the doctor to check your ears as soon as possible or you will regret it not doing it before. Talking from my own experience.

You can confirm by yourself reversing the headphones, if you still get vocals leaning to left its definetly your ears. Good luck!

I went to my local Kaiser medical office for a cleaning of suspected impacted earwax last week. Made a much bigger difference than any gear I’ve ever purchased.

 

[noel_fs]

I went to my local Kaiser medical office for a cleaning of suspected impacted earwax last week. Made a much bigger difference than any gear I’ve ever purchased.

Unfournatly for me its not wax, ive been keeping and cleaning my ears for many months already.. I hope when i get diagnosed i can still recover the hearing loss, never had any pain on my ears. I just used to listen music really loud due to bad headphones and me trying to get those details they couldnt reproduce with lower volume levels, stupid me. Also have had a bad habit of plugging my nose when sneezing. Considering those things i guess its pretty obvious what happened and i cannot complain of my own stupidity. Which is interesting is that my left ear is pretty much perfectly fine i would say, so i still have hope.

 

[Veri]

Just get foobar and install wasapi component. Get flacs, its pretty easy with deezer, thats all i can say . Rutracker is good too. And yes, to be specific the amount of details you lose with spotify+windows mixer is huge, from just details to straight up veiled instruments.

Gosh, no. FLAC is pointless 99% of the time, Windows mixer at 100% volume has little chance to 'destroy' or veil anything..

High bitrate AAC and/or Vorbis is just about as transparent as it gets, shy of lossless.

 

[lucadoc]

I wish I knew. I followed Topping's instructions and installed components. Then changed output from WASAPI to Asio.
Tried playing the file, it exploded with full blust of speaker, when I turned down the sound nothing played.

Ended up, converting the files to 24/88.2 FLAC, using foobar settings of double check with 30kHz filter. The gain is probably - 6db, but amping output automatically can lead to clipping.

Do we have any experts on the dsf, sacd, dsd64 playback and conversion?

I'm trying to follow this tutorial https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com/digital/pc-software/foobar-2000-for-dummies/

 

[noel_fs]

Gosh, no. FLAC is pointless 99% of the time, Windows mixer at 100% volume has little chance to 'destroy' or veil anything..

High bitrate AAC and/or Vorbis is just about as transparent as it gets, shy of lossless.

LUL

 

[Veri]

LUL

LUL right back at you, "Get flacs" is just ridiculous advice when 320kbps streaming services exist. I'm all for archiving CDs in FLAC for obvious reasons but you are deluding yourself if you hear a significant difference. Perhaps with music you are incredibly familiar with, but for general listening high bitrate streaming is fine.....

You have 14 posts, how about trying to prove your anecdotal advice rather than behaving like a child.

 

[dropbear]

I was wondering, am I in a full control of what output is active in general with DX3, so that I can always manually choose if I want to use line-outs or HP output? From what I saw on a product page I should be able to have the switching completely manual if I keep switching between Line-out and HP icon buttons. Is that correct? And if I then click the big bad button in the middle of D-pad section, it will switch to automatic output switching, will it not, or is it really like full-fledged dual output aka "I came to blow up all your transducers"?

I have quite a phobia of devices which have auto-output switching...call me old-school-ish, but I like having that control and not to risk my speakers blow up when I had a very pover hungry headphones plugged in before. And I have been really eager to find a DAC/AMP unit with manual output switching + remote (a dream? a wet one? well, maybe a bit) as well.

 

[Yuno]

I was wondering, am I in a full control of what output is active in general with DX3, so that I can always manually choose if I want to use line-outs or HP output? From what I saw on a product page I should be able to have the switching completely manual if I keep switching between Line-out and HP icon buttons. Is that correct? And if I then click the big bad button in the middle of D-pad section, it will switch to automatic output switching, will it not, or is it really like full-fledged dual output aka "I came to blow up all your transducers"?

I have quite a phobia of devices which have auto-output switching...call me old-school-ish, but I like having that control and not to risk my speakers blow up when I had a very pover hungry headphones plugged in before. And I have been really eager to find a DAC/AMP unit with manual output switching + remote (a dream? a wet one? well, maybe a bit) as well.

I don't think there is automatic switching. You can output to headphones+lineout volume controled (middle button), headphones (hp button), line out volume controlled (line out button) and line out fixed (line out button, second click). Volume control is shared between headphones and line out so if you have -5 db on headphones, after switching to line out volume controled (first click) it will still be -5db, second click will be 0db (line out fixed).
If you are worried about this, you can add something like ol switcher into the chain, between line out and speakers, to lower volume of the line out.

 

[dropbear]

I mean I would probably have the +- volume levels for each of the output so I could adjust it before I switch it.

Thank you, I have just wanted to make sure. I really appreciate Topping's approach, I feel numb really when I see all the time devices without some sort of a manual output switching as I can just see myself on the evening after listening ending it in all leasureliness, unplugging headphones and BANG I have just lost my hearing and woken up half the city.

Oh, one more thing, what about mute, if I mute the sound, when I start adjusting volume, will it automatically unmute the sound of keep it muted until I click the button?

 

[Yuno]

Unmutes automatically.

 

[chrisliuboy]

I think that I am also really a strange machine.
Even if an error occurs, operation will return to normal if various operations are performed.
D50 DX7s also places a strange phenomenon.


It is not related to the firmware version. The same trouble occurred before updating and after updating.

Yesterday I used as DAC for the first time and while YT is playing in the background, I opened Overwatch, the unit just went silent. I closed both and opened FB2K and still silent. Switching back to headphone + line out mode fixed the problem. Yep, seems the driver is not robust.

 

[slazyel]

Hi guys,

I'm new to this and i would like to know if this Topping DX3 Pro would be a good combination to my Beyerdynamic T1 gen 1.
I've heard people say it is best to go with a Schiit Magni 3 + Modi 3 or even a DAC X6 instead. But i would like to know your opinions as well, is the Topping DX3 Pro worth it for a Beyerdynamic T1 gen 1?