I having been using DX3 Pro for about half a week, and I encountered various issues:
1. Relay click noise when playing DSD over PCM, on the latest firmware. Some operating systems, such as Mac OS X, do not support native DSD. So DoP is the only option to play DSD on those systems. The clicking issue happens whenever you pause, seek, stop/start when using DoP, regardless of your player and operating system. It still happens when you use the same DSD sample rate. The click can drive you mad.
I don't think a mechanical relay is ever needed in DX3 Pro. There are better options, such as a Solid State Relay, which does not produce noise at all. There's also digital volume control, so the implementation can make use of it and produce a mute effect when sample rate changes. A mechanical relay is a really weird design choice.
Sometimes weird clicks happen:
2. It stops working frequently. I encountered two times of random stop today. The music is still playing in computer as it is still shown as a valid device in operating system, but the DX3 produces no music at all. Rebooting does not work. detaching from the power for some time could solve the issue so far. But this is very annoying!
Here's the video demonstration. First half of the video, the music player is playing, but headphone out produces no sound at all, even at max volume. Rebooting the device does not work. Second half of the video, a complete power off and power back on turn the DAC back to normal.
3. There's no way you can use SBC such as a Raspberry Pi playing hi-res with it. SBC's USB current is usually noisier than a computer. The noisy current will easily leak into DX3's analog portion, and create pop sound that you can actually hear whenever something is going on (such as disk reading). This problem is more pervasive when playing hi-res music. You can try a DSD512 music yourself and check (I know DSD512 is unrealistic for listening but since Topping support that it's worthwhile to check). If you want to use SBC as your streaming server, do not even consider DX3 Pro. Edit: This is a Linux kernel issue and not related to Topping. Basically USB Audio 2.0 is broken on all variants of Linux. But what I said is still true --- If you plan to use DX3 Pro with a Linux single board computer such as Raspberry Pi, don't!
Update - Jan 27: New issue --- I left the DX3 in standby mode for a night. This afternoon when I turn it on it can't produce sound for any DSD files (tried various files from http://2l.no/hires/). PCM files plays fine. DSD will be shown as PCM on DX3 screen and no sound come out while playing. This happens when I send either DoP or Native DSD data. (Normal DACs will produce loud noise when consuming dsd data as PCM data, but seems the issue DX3 was suffering was not related to this, as it was just dead silent while computer sending DSD data). Rebooting did not work. Unplugging/Replugging USB did not work. Unplugging/Replugging power supply finally made it working.
1. Relay click noise when playing DSD over PCM, on the latest firmware. Some operating systems, such as Mac OS X, do not support native DSD. So DoP is the only option to play DSD on those systems. The clicking issue happens whenever you pause, seek, stop/start when using DoP, regardless of your player and operating system. It still happens when you use the same DSD sample rate. The click can drive you mad.
I don't think a mechanical relay is ever needed in DX3 Pro. There are better options, such as a Solid State Relay, which does not produce noise at all. There's also digital volume control, so the implementation can make use of it and produce a mute effect when sample rate changes. A mechanical relay is a really weird design choice.
Sometimes weird clicks happen:
2. It stops working frequently. I encountered two times of random stop today. The music is still playing in computer as it is still shown as a valid device in operating system, but the DX3 produces no music at all. Rebooting does not work. detaching from the power for some time could solve the issue so far. But this is very annoying!
Here's the video demonstration. First half of the video, the music player is playing, but headphone out produces no sound at all, even at max volume. Rebooting the device does not work. Second half of the video, a complete power off and power back on turn the DAC back to normal.
Update - Jan 27: New issue --- I left the DX3 in standby mode for a night. This afternoon when I turn it on it can't produce sound for any DSD files (tried various files from http://2l.no/hires/). PCM files plays fine. DSD will be shown as PCM on DX3 screen and no sound come out while playing. This happens when I send either DoP or Native DSD data. (Normal DACs will produce loud noise when consuming dsd data as PCM data, but seems the issue DX3 was suffering was not related to this, as it was just dead silent while computer sending DSD data). Rebooting did not work. Unplugging/Replugging USB did not work. Unplugging/Replugging power supply finally made it working.
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