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Aimpire AD10: Fake Topping D10 DAC?

BogdanR

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Again, this is a field that is usually filled in by Amazon. It is done so that you can click on it and get all products from Topping. Sometimes manufacturers create custom pages that come up when you click on it. But other times just a search list shows up, some of which makes sense, some of which does not.

That doesn’t explain the Amazon France listing where Aimpire AD10 is shown as an SMSL, not a Topping. There’s something else happening here.
 

JohnYang1997

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That doesn’t explain the Amazon France listing where Aimpire AD10 is shown as an SMSL, not a Topping. There’s something else happening here.
Anything wrong happening here is only coming from the corrupted Amazon and the guy behind Aimpiere. Remember the reason Topping stopped supplying is because Aimpiere's unfair competition. What I can say from personal stand point is if you find something fishy just avoid it and generally avoid Amazon if possible.
 

BogdanR

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How about this beauty of a listing? A Topping D10 by SMSL.

36056804-79D6-4517-B9BC-B1AEEF6EBDC7.png
 

BogdanR

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Anything wrong happening here is only coming from the corrupted Amazon and the guy behind Aimpiere. Remember the reason Topping stopped supplying is because Aimpiere's unfair competition. What I can say from personal stand point is if you find something fishy just avoid it and generally avoid Amazon if possible.

Amazon is way too big to really care about ANY of this. If this is a war between Topping and any of their distributors, the only resulting damaged party here will unfortunately be Topping as prospective customers will have to go thru extra hoops to get the original product and some will abandon the idea and buy something else. The vendors of knock-offs will eventually disappear and will be replaced by others. And so on. It is something other companies of popular products are facing, Seiko comes to mind among many others.

On the other hand, this means Topping has “made it” and there is perceived value in cloning their products.

Those are just some loose thoughts. I own a D50s (whose delivery wasn’t without its problems) which I like. A lot actually.
 

JEntwistle

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Amazon is way too big to really care about ANY of this. If this is a war between Topping and any of their distributors, the only resulting damaged party here will unfortunately be Topping as prospective customers will have to go thru extra hoops to get the original product and some will abandon the idea and buy something else. The vendors of knock-offs will eventually disappear and will be replaced by others. And so on. It is something other companies of popular products are facing, Seiko comes to mind among many others.

On the other hand, this means Topping has “made it” and there is perceived value in cloning their products.

Those are just some loose thoughts. I own a D50s (whose delivery wasn’t without its problems) which I like. A lot actually.

This is exactly right. All of these display issues are Amazon's doing. There are many reports of how the third party marketplace is rife with misrepresentation and fakes, and how Amazon has not been able to stop it. Here is one example from the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/tech...s-has-resulted-flea-market-fakes/?arc404=true

As for the ease of copying the physical product, I have seen the electronics markets in China where this could be easily done. And these are markets available to individuals; I am sure these Aimpire people have much more ability and resources to manufacture electronics. The fact that it looks like the Topping product is not surprising. It is also not surprising that the innards are close, but not exactly the same.

I have no relationship with or special insight into Topping, but it is clear that they are a victim as much as people shopping on Amazon are. There really is little they can do to combat this, other than notifying Amazon, which they have already done. It is unfortunate for people for whom Amazon is their only source of Topping products. You will just have to be careful and quickly return any products that are fakes. In the US, I know of Apos Audio as an alternate source.
 
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JEntwistle

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That doesn’t explain the Amazon France listing where Aimpire AD10 is shown as an SMSL, not a Topping. There’s something else happening here.

It is possible Aimpire is manipulating the listings, as well. The point is it is Aimpire who is misbehaving and it is Amazon who is not stopping them. Nothing to do with Topping.
 

BogdanR

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It is possible Aimpire is manipulating the listings, as well. The point is it is Aimpire who is misbehaving and it is Amazon who is not stopping them. Nothing to do with Topping.

Unfortunately it is Topping who’s left holding the short end of the stick. Aimpire will disappear, the people behind it will open other similar ventures and the cycle will repeat. The ONLY way for Topping to stay ahead is to do the same thing other Chinese manufacturers have done, like Monoprice for instance, by establishing and tightly controlling their distribution. In short, it is time for Topping to fully assume their role as a serious electronics manufacturer, warts and all.
Again, my two cents no one asked for here. Canadian cents, so even more worthless if I may say so.
 

majingotan

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L5730

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Thank you to @JohnYang1997 and @TP-Wong for clarifying the issue and setting us all straight. Of course, thanks to our host and the person who sent their blatant knock-off D10, the 'Aimpire AD10', to him to test.

It's a real shame that Amazon went down the ebay-style route, and then have done nothing much to properly police it. At least with 'fulfilled by' items it should be real easy to return them and let Amazon pay for the return shipping/charge it to the seller. However, tainting one's account with additional returns because of dodgy sellers isn't on.

@Moderators: If you'd like to close the other thread HERE to further replies, I think that might be a good move.
 

Veri

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I got to listen to one of these Aimpire AD10s. Honestly I didn't get any noise problems even with sensitive headphone or IEM. Maybe the noise is a bit overstated, or exceptionally bad in this unit here(?). BUT I would still highly recommend people to return them and source legitimate Topping D10.
For some unexplainable reason it did not sound "good" to me. bad parts or whatnot it sounds like there's something wrong with it.
 
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FireLion

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I wonder what the PCB looks like. I still have the of D10 and it's not bad at all.
 

Omar Cumming

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1581614020783.png

This is how Amazon US now lists it!Very misleading:mad:

Sheesh
 

pozz

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Thank you to @JohnYang1997 and @TP-Wong for clarifying the issue and setting us all straight. Of course, thanks to our host and the person who sent their blatant knock-off D10, the 'Aimpire AD10', to him to test.

It's a real shame that Amazon went down the ebay-style route, and then have done nothing much to properly police it. At least with 'fulfilled by' items it should be real easy to return them and let Amazon pay for the return shipping/charge it to the seller. However, tainting one's account with additional returns because of dodgy sellers isn't on.

@Moderators: If you'd like to close the other thread HERE to further replies, I think that might be a good move.
@Thomas savage See @L5730's request in the quote.
 

UCrazyKid

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I am just reading all this now. Ordered a D10 from Amazon yesterday. We’ll see what shows up. If it’s the fake, I’ll be ordering from Apos.
 

TP-Wong

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Thanks for taking the time to explain this unfortunate story.

While you're here, please can you make a DAC with HDMI input and output?

Thank you for your advise! We have discussed such products, probably extracting IIS from HDMI and decoding it. Unfortunately, it failed to pass the discussion of our product team, so it suspended.
 

TP-Wong

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I hope my P50/D50s is real. I bought it from Amazon.

I'm a loyal Topping customer. I'm going to need 3 more DACs in the next couple of months and will go out of my way to make sure they are real.

Mr. Wong, if you have advice on insuring purchasing a legitimate product, please share it.

Relax, there are no clones of these two products so far.
The reason why the cloners do this behavior is because the target product has good sales volume, so the cloned product can be divided into a part or even completely taken away. The sales volume is far more important to them than anything else.
Unfortunately, the D10 meets their requirements.
 

TP-Wong

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The chaos that you see in Amazon is because someone behind is using a higher-privilege account to operate (Some sellers call this Vendor Central account, but I can’t be sure). It is said that this account can easily change the picture, name, content, manufacturer of a amazon listing, and it can also directly supplied to Amazon, so you can see that AD10 is sold by Amazon.
More unfortunately, our authorized sellers and us do not have such an account, so we have no chance to change back.
 
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