Topping D90 Balanced USB DAC Review

[Jimbob54]

Quite right...

If it were me, and I found results that would seem to be 'newsworthy,' I'd find a volunteer for the required assistance, and repeat the test, with a lot of documentation, then depending on THOSE results, I would go from there.

But Im intrigued now!!!

 

[Martin]

Dare I suggest that this is precisely the kind of claim that this site could (and should) be investigating?

Does finding an answer to this question not pique your interest?

I would love to know why they did not work. They seemed a much more elegant solution. I still have the pair of Sescom attentuators if anyone has the means to determine why they did not work. (They've been listed on Ebay for months.) I recall they introduced some weird feedback loop. Both sets of attenuators were unlistenable.

Martin

 

[Harmonie]

I tried two different 10db inline attenuators between the preamp and amp in my setup and both introduced clearly audible and very bizarre noise artifacts into my system. These are the attenuators that each lasted less than 20 seconds in my setup:

https://www.parts-express.com/in-line-xlr-attenuator-pad-10db--240-412
and
https://m.markertek.com/product/ses-il-10db/sescom-ses-il-10db-3-pin-xlr-male-to-3-pin-xlr-female-inline-attenuator-10db

I replaced them with a relay based attenuator that works perfectly: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32997802910.html

Martin

Interesting experience of yours.
I did also lurke at the this solution https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32997802910.html if only it had an IR remote as well ...

 

[EchoChamber]

The Schiit preamps will give you the remote functionality with a step ladder and look more elegant to my trained designer eyes. Schiit does well in the product design front IMO.

 

[rebbiputzmaker]

And what do you believe, at a fundamental physical level, to be the difference between resistors in an XLR-shaped can and resistors in a very nicely-made box with XLR sockets on the back and a knob on the front?

More than likely the connector creates an issue in someway.

 

[UCrazyKid]

Not trying to restart an MQA discussion, I think I understand the pros and cons.

I bought a D90 MQA, not because I use MQA, but because I thought having the XMOS XU216 chip would be a good idea for possible future updates, file types, buffer short comings of my "long in the tooth" early 2015 MacBook Air. I also had a delusion that having MQA may be a bonus if going to resell the unit in the future as it could appeal to more buyers. After reading through all the other postings regarding the how MQA seems to limit the capabilities of the D90 MQA with other file formats. Namely blocking 32 bit signals (all are processed at 24 bit). As I said I am running it from a Mac and have updated to FW_v1.23.

My question, am I foolish to think there are future (yet to be announced, released or invented) formats (through firmware upgrades) that will benefit from the XMOS XU216? Or are all the differences between the D90 and D90 MQA just supportive and applicable to MQA?

As I said, since I am not interested in Tidal/MQA, should I return the unit for a standard D90? I am still within the 30 day return policy. I do like the DAC very much and it has bested my old DAC in versatility and performance.

Do I keep the D90 MQA or change to the D90? Please be kind, keep it civil. As I said, there is no need to hash out the MQA format pros and cons.

Thanks!

 

[Martin]

Interesting experience of yours.
I did also lurke at the this solution https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32997802910.html if only it had an IR remote as well ...

A remote would be nice. My need was for a "set it and forget it" attenuation so I really don't need one. I am balancing two sets of monoblock amplifiers I use to biamplify my speakers. (I know, heresy around these parts.) The amps on the lower frequencies were about 10db hotter than those on the upper frequencies. I wish the attenuators had worked. I theorize that some impedance mismatches may have been at play but don't know enough to say that was the culprit.

Martin

 

[EchoChamber]

Not trying to restart an MQA discussion, I think I understand the pros and cons.

I bought a D90 MQA, not because I use MQA, but because I thought having the XMOS XU216 chip would be a good idea for possible future updates, file types, buffer short comings of my "long in the tooth" early 2015 MacBook Air. I also had a delusion that having MQA may be a bonus if going to resell the unit in the future as it could appeal to more buyers. After reading through all the other postings regarding the how MQA seems to limit the capabilities of the D90 MQA with other file formats. Namely blocking 32 bit signals (all are processed at 24 bit). As I said I am running it from a Mac and have updated to FW_v1.23.

My question, am I foolish to think there are future (yet to be announced, released or invented) formats (through firmware upgrades) that will benefit from the XMOS XU216? Or are all the differences between the D90 and D90 MQA just supportive and applicable to MQA?

As I said, since I am not interested in Tidal/MQA, should I return the unit for a standard D90? I am still within the 30 day return policy. I do like the DAC very much and it has bested my old DAC in versatility and performance.

Do I keep the D90 MQA or change to the D90? Please be kind, keep it civil. As I said, there is no need to hash out the MQA format pros and cons.

Thanks!

Not sure if my opinion matters because I use the MQA feature with Tidal. I think the differences between 24 and 32 bits could only be an issue if you listen to a lot of 32 bit files. But both are high res. Is a higher bit depth beyond 24 bits something we can distinguish? I don’t know, maybe... maybe my teenager son could, but he doesn’t care, he just wants to listen to his music on his AirPods.

Did anyone actually compare the D90 with and without MQA and was able to say one sounded better than the other? I’d be curious to test it myself but I won’t go out and get a second D90.

I actually really like Tidal master files on this DAC. Did you try Tidal? It might be worth it.

I’d keep it, I think your initial rationale was logical and practical. No need to double guess yourself.

 

[UCrazyKid]

Not sure if my opinion matters because I use the MQA feature with Tidal. I think the differences between 24 and 32 bits could only be an issue if you listen to a lot of 32 bit files. But both are high res. Is a higher bit depth beyond 24 bits something we can distinguish? I don’t know, maybe... maybe my teenager son could, but he doesn’t care, he just wants to listen to his music on his AirPods.

Did anyone actually compare the D90 with and without MQA and was able to say one sounded better than the other? I’d be curious to test it myself but I won’t go out and get a second D90.

I actually really like Tidal master files on this DAC. Did you try Tidal? It might be worth it.

I’d keep it, I think your initial rationale was logical and practical. No need to double guess yourself.

Thanks @EchoChamber, we are an "Apple" product family so we subscribe to the Apple Music platform. This is great for my wife, kids, and when I want background music. But when I sit down with my high end rig I'm all about the "tangible". I still like to spin CDs and I like when I can download files and keep them as opposed to streaming. Old fashioned I guess. It took me a long time to get used to "buying" movies from iTunes instead of having a rack of Bluray's and DVD's to flip through at home. The portability certainly is nice. But for video material, tangible media certainly is dead. That was most obvious to me when the undisputed leader in video disk playback (Oppo Digital) withdrew from the market when they were at the top of their game.
I and coming up on 50 and I hear you about even being able to discern differences. When choosing a digital filter setting for the D90 MQA, I asked my 11 yo daughter to pick one that sounded most like an acoustic instrument, as she could clearly hear differences, and I could hear none at all...Getting old sucks. When will we be injecting stem cells into our ears to renew our hearing and make up for all the abuse we give them when young?

 

[dixter]

MQA .... this is a little off track but could actually affect the D90 MQA.... so for the last week or so there has been quite a bit of tuning the newly released fiio DAPs ... mainly the M11 M11Pro and M15, all using the AKM DAC chips and all having the MQA option... while watching fiio and UAPP both working out kinks to the MQA unfolding it seems UAPP has tuned their playback software quite well and I have demonstrated a full X8 unfold of MQA files via TIDAL Streaming... that with the fiio M11Pro... it sounds fantastic and is very noticeable as to the sound quality of a fully unfolded MQA file.... fiio themselves released two patches, FW 0604 and FW 0610 and their efforts resulted in x4 unfolding of the MQA and claim that TIDAL for some reason is converting MQA files down to 16 bit... and fiio claims they have alerted TIDAL of the issue and asking TIDAL for a fix...

So how does this relate to the D90 MQA ??? Not sure yet, it may or may not matter... just letting everyone know there are some players having issues with the TIDAL MQA... again... the playback software UAPP seems to have it fixed and it sounds great... I'm keeping my D90MQA

 

[Veri]

My take, MQA seems like one buggy mess.

 

[Harmonie]

A remote would be nice. My need was for a "set it and forget it" attenuation so I really don't need one. I am balancing two sets of monoblock amplifiers I use to biamplify my speakers. (I know, heresy around these parts.) The amps on the lower frequencies were about 10db hotter than those on the upper frequencies. I wish the attenuators had worked. I theorize that some impedance mismatches may have been at play but don't know enough to say that was the culprit.

Martin

Funny, same here !
My old Dac is attenuated by 2 DIY attenuators enclosed. Each one directly plugged into 2 monoblocks to bi-amp my speakers

Picture is really bad and distorted.

 

[Cut-Throat]

A remote would be nice. My need was for a "set it and forget it" attenuation so I really don't need one. I am balancing two sets of monoblock amplifiers I use to biamplify my speakers. (I know, heresy around these parts.) The amps on the lower frequencies were about 10db hotter than those on the upper frequencies. I wish the attenuators had worked. I theorize that some impedance mismatches may have been at play but don't know enough to say that was the culprit.

Martin

I didn't know that Bi-Amping was Heresy here. I don't have much choice as my Oris Horn Speakers were designed for Bi-Amping. I have 45 amps at 1.8 watts per channel on the 115db Oris Horns and 500 Watt per channel Hypex Amps on my Klipschorn Bass Bins. Best Speaker system I've ever owned. Both the 45 Amps and Hypex Amps are Monoblocks.

 

[Martin]

Funny, same here !
My old Dac is attenuated by 2 DIY attenuators enclosed. Each one directly plugged into 2 monoblocks to bi-amp my speakers

Picture is really bad and distorted.

I didn't know that Bi-Amping was Heresy here. I don't have much choice as my Oris Horn Speakers were designed for Bi-Amping. I have 45 amps at 1.8 watts per channel on the 115db Oris Horns and 500 Watt per channel Hypex Amps on my Klipschorn Bass Bins. Best Speaker system I've ever owned. Both the 45 Amps and Hypex Amps are Monoblocks.View attachment 70541

LOL... I don't know that they're heresy here but setups like ours are probably not the best measuring. I am working to dial mine in with REW. I have DIY 1000W per channel ICEpower monoblocks on the bottom modules and 17W 300b PSET monoblocks on the top modules of my Von Schweikert VR-4 Gen III HSE speakers. I'll echo your sentiment, best speakers I have ever owned, and my system sounds amazing to me. That's what counts. We like the sound and we're going in with our eyes open.

Martin

 

[EchoChamber]

Thanks @EchoChamber, we are an "Apple" product family so we subscribe to the Apple Music platform. This is great for my wife, kids, and when I want background music. But when I sit down with my high end rig I'm all about the "tangible". I still like to spin CDs and I like when I can download files and keep them as opposed to streaming. Old fashioned I guess. It took me a long time to get used to "buying" movies from iTunes instead of having a rack of Bluray's and DVD's to flip through at home. The portability certainly is nice. But for video material, tangible media certainly is dead. That was most obvious to me when the undisputed leader in video disk playback (Oppo Digital) withdrew from the market when they were at the top of their game.
I and coming up on 50 and I hear you about even being able to discern differences. When choosing a digital filter setting for the D90 MQA, I asked my 11 yo daughter to pick one that sounded most like an acoustic instrument, as she could clearly hear differences, and I could hear none at all...Getting old sucks. When will we be injecting stem cells into our ears to renew our hearing and make up for all the abuse we give them when young?

I'm not that different, but I ripped all my CD collection a while back to lossless formats (when computers still had CD/DVD players built in), I have them in my music server which Roon nicely serves me when I'm at my desk or (home) office. It was a good thing I did this because some of my CDs never made to the streaming services. I'm also a "little" compulsive with streaming services and subscribe to a few (almost all actually if you include TV streaming, lol), and flip flop all the time, but Tidal has been almost constant, I also like Amazon HD. But I find my ripped CDs to sound better than Tidal except when there's an MQA version.

So, tell me, what filter did your daughter choose? I couldn't hear much of a difference myself so left in 3. I'm still waiting for that rejuvenation hearing treatment... ;-)

 

[EchoChamber]

I didn't know that Bi-Amping was Heresy here. I don't have much choice as my Oris Horn Speakers were designed for Bi-Amping. I have 45 amps at 1.8 watts per channel on the 115db Oris Horns and 500 Watt per channel Hypex Amps on my Klipschorn Bass Bins. Best Speaker system I've ever owned. Both the 45 Amps and Hypex Amps are Monoblocks.View attachment 70545

Beautiful setup, I can hear the warmth of your system by just looking at it...

 

[Cut-Throat]

Beautiful setup, I can hear the warmth of your system by just looking at it...

Thanks Man !!

 

[UCrazyKid]

I'm not that different, but I ripped all my CD collection a while back to lossless formats (when computers still had CD/DVD players built in), I have them in my music server which Roon nicely serves me when I'm at my desk or (home) office. It was a good thing I did this because some of my CDs never made to the streaming services. I'm also a "little" compulsive with streaming services and subscribe to a few (almost all actually if you include TV streaming, lol), and flip flop all the time, but Tidal has been almost constant, I also like Amazon HD. But I find my ripped CDs to sound better than Tidal except when there's an MQA version.

So, tell me, what filter did your daughter choose? I couldn't hear much of a difference myself so left in 3. I'm still waiting for that rejuvenation hearing treatment... ;-)

Filter “Mode 2” slow roll off

 

[Rover]

My take, MQA seems like one buggy mess.

You are as in most cases absolutely right!

 

[Rover]

I didn't know that Bi-Amping was Heresy here. I don't have much choice as my Oris Horn Speakers were designed for Bi-Amping. I have 45 amps at 1.8 watts per channel on the 115db Oris Horns and 500 Watt per channel Hypex Amps on my Klipschorn Bass Bins. Best Speaker system I've ever owned. Both the 45 Amps and Hypex Amps are Monoblocks.View attachment 70545

You are cool!