Pepperjack
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I love this now says deleted member. Really nice back and forth with a worthy punchline. Sorry to continue the off topic, was just too funny...
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Topping D70s MQA Review (DAC)
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
Is the display using OLED? If so, may I ask a nitpicking question about the typeface? I’ve noticed that many Chinese products use a rather ugly (in my eyes at least) typeface with narrow stems and wide serifs. Coming from a culture with a long and proud history of calligraphy, that choice has always puzzled me. I would prefer a sans-serif typeface as used by almost all “Western” designs.
What is the question?
Sorry, it’s the implicit “why use such an ugly typeface when calligraphy is one of your high arts?”
There has been a tendency lately for review threads to get badly derailed, so there is going to be more active moderation in those threads to try to keep them from turning into shit shows.
A bit more context here:
https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/new-rules-for-review-threads.18744/
What's the typeface's relation with Oled ?
It's purely a taste matter.
But true, I like the one of the Okto . But I won't change my D90 for that reason.
Could you please help explaining what he meant? I couldn't really understand what precisely he was talking about.
As far as I understood he meant the shape of the fonts, the style of the writing.
NO relation to the material; just the artwork.
Again, that's how I understood it.
you can use an optical non-contact rotary control, which are not much more costly than up/down buttons and doesn’t break down with use.
Funny, the display design is something that bugs me as well. UI design is hard, no two ways about that, and it often needs the input of someone who has specific expertise. This is never an electronic design engineer. Which is why we end up with such awful designs. It seems that there are a few OLED display units that get used in many of these devices, and somehow, almost all of the devices that use them end up with similar awful designs. Perhaps there is a simple programming library that includes the dreadful font.
My other constant criticism is the way so many of these cheap display designs emulate even cheaper displays. Why oh why does everyone feel the need to visually mimic a seven segment display for numbers? It makes exactly no sense. One has the ability to render a well formed number, and somehow thinks it is cool to make the numbers look like they are on a cheap calculator from the 1980's when that was the best display technology there was.
Actually it looks as if the desire is to make the display look like a custom LCD display. So it has all the disadvantages of such a display, and none of the advantages of crisp outlines and nicely formed graphics. Compared to the DX3 Pro, all of the OLED based displays look cheap and present a much worse user experience. They are slow, hard to read, and look like a hobby kit project rather than a professional product. A proper pixel based display provides a very different design space, but sadly few manufacturers seem to be up to the task of taking advantage of that space. You would never see Sony deliver such a poor design, even in the cheapest of products.
My other constant criticism is the way so many of these cheap display designs emulate even cheaper displays. Why oh why does everyone feel the need to visually mimic a seven segment display for numbers? It makes exactly no sense. One has the ability to render a well formed number, and somehow thinks it is cool to make the numbers look like they are on a cheap calculator from the 1980's when that was the best display technology there was.
Actually it looks as if the desire is to make the display look like a custom LCD display. So it has all the disadvantages of such a display, and none of the advantages of crisp outlines and nicely formed graphics. Compared to the DX3 Pro, all of the OLED based displays look cheap and present a much worse user experience. They are slow, hard to read, and look like a hobby kit project rather than a professional product. A proper pixel based display provides a very different design space, but sadly few manufacturers seem to be up to the task of taking advantage of that space. You would never see Sony deliver such a poor design, even in the cheapest of products.
I think many manufacturers will disagree with that. An optical encoder when used correctly is a very precise device. In fact they are generally more precise than a potentiometer. Having no moving parts other than a single ballbearing, they are also much, much more durable than up/down switches.
16 dollars a piece? Are you kidding me?
Hi John, I somehow feels that a stepped attenuator or a alps blue pot at the output stage would be a nicer idea, depending on the target price bracket. I know the motorised option is not cheap but when approaching the high end segment I believe a lot of us are willing to pick the upgrade, or at least make it a built to order fashion? Ease with remote or number of steps here in a dac product seems less of an issue as usually the amp part have a volume option also, so rough steps are ok and the merit of a analogue volume control which attenuate the noise together with signal will be a plus. When one needs digital volume maybe windows could make that minor change
Not really.16 dollars a piece? Are you kidding me?
You are competing with devices that cost order of magnitude more than yours. You already matched or superseded their specs, shouldn’t you be aiming to supersede their functionality next?
Well. Sure.
Why with this use case in mind would you want analog volume control on the DAC at all? Maybe I'm old, but to me, analog preamps still have a definitive value in an audio chain (and topping seems to be doing a great one), There will always be limitations in asking the DAC, to fullfill this task. some don't like the digital volume control, some don't like the lowish output voltage. Yes, for those who don't use any analog source, a full fledge DAC + Preamp are smart devices, but then we shouldn't hope to be priced a few bucks more than the DAC, it's a DAC, and a preamp, in one box. DACs, even tough they have some volume control, are not evaluated and measured here as preamps anyway. It's ok to keep asking more from manufacturers, but we are not "approaching the high end segment " with these pricing, nowhere near. We are approching Topping flagship DAC segment, which arguably, when talking of desktop dacs, performs as well as anything high end, but it's unreasonable to ask for the feature set of a full fledge preamp, unless we want to pay twice as much or more, but it could be a daring proposition for a brand like Topping to start offering 1500$ Equipment. They haven't done that, I think they like to focus on releasing various single use device at attractive price.
Just adding to the display design, contrast the graphics on the MiniDSP SDH with the D70s. These are products that pretty much sitting in the same quality space. Yet one looks slick, is very legible, and looks reasonably modern. The other is blocky, looks dated, and looks cheap. Yet they may well be using the same part. The additional mess of inconsistent and useless labelling on the D70s is also obvious. (We don't actually need to see the technical specification on the front panel. That again is the sort of thing one associates with cheap designs that some how need to show off.)
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