Well, I was about to pull the trigger on the D50, being really impressed thus far, but was waiting until I read the whole thread. Now, I'm very concerned about this unit, mainly because of the last few pages of this review. I know the R-channel kill has been recognized only very recently when the D50 is fed with a pink-noise or a sine-wave sweep with only the R-channel engaged (and not during normal music listening). But, I can't help thinking that this may very occasionally affect real stereo music listening at certain times when the left channel has low to no output. Moreover, I really became really concerned when, after all you good guys contacted Topping regarding this problem, and read: "OK now we sure ES9038Q2M or LPF has problems. Are your D50 in warranty? You can contact the seller for warranty if it is in warranty." -- apparently a response from Topping itself? (first received by LarsS). The D50 almost appears to be a No-Go at this point unless a firmware revision can resolve this problem (unless it really is trivial, but it doesn't seem so). Am I over-reacting? What are present owners' concerns at this point? I'm a little surprised Amirm hasn't chimed in on this as of yet, but I know he is probably swamped with a zillion other projects, and the D50 is now old news. Guys, I really wanted to get this DAC; recommended or not recommended at this point?
- john
