This is a review and detailed measurements of the TOPPING D90 III Sabre balanced stereo DAC. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $899.
As you can see, the design is what we have know about most of the Topping products. I do wish at this price that we had a high resolution display that showed VU meters and such. Usability would be better that way although the included remote is easy to use. Back panel is as you would expect:
Nice to see Topping continuing to provide trigger support for automatic turn on of the downstream amplifiers and such.
TOPPING D90 III Sabre Measurements
The DAC has two output setting modes. One that provides max of 5 volts nominal and one that is 4 volts. For fairness I tested using the latter. DAC was allowed to warm up which improved its performance by about 1 dB.
As usual, we start with our dashboard:
This is the best performance we have seen from Topping and is in a virtual tie with the previous king of DAC SINAD measurements:
RCA performance is still superb and fully transparent:
Dynamic range is exceptional as you would imagine as it is setting the SINAD:
Multitone shows the exceptionally low distortion:
As does 50 Hz response for compatibility with other sites using it:
Jitter could be a hair better given the performance elsewhere:
IMD performance is excellent:
Linearity is perfect:
We have the typical filters but I would stay with default (F3):
The filter selection impacts wideband THD+N measurements so I stayed with the default:
Story is told....
Conclusions
Topping aimed to capture the top spot in the rankings and it got there, besting every other DAC it has produced, albeit with very small margin. If the cost is not a concern and you are buying a new DAC, might as well opt for D90 III.
I am happy to recommend the TOPPING D90 III Sabre.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
As you can see, the design is what we have know about most of the Topping products. I do wish at this price that we had a high resolution display that showed VU meters and such. Usability would be better that way although the included remote is easy to use. Back panel is as you would expect:
Nice to see Topping continuing to provide trigger support for automatic turn on of the downstream amplifiers and such.
TOPPING D90 III Sabre Measurements
The DAC has two output setting modes. One that provides max of 5 volts nominal and one that is 4 volts. For fairness I tested using the latter. DAC was allowed to warm up which improved its performance by about 1 dB.
As usual, we start with our dashboard:
This is the best performance we have seen from Topping and is in a virtual tie with the previous king of DAC SINAD measurements:
RCA performance is still superb and fully transparent:
Dynamic range is exceptional as you would imagine as it is setting the SINAD:
Multitone shows the exceptionally low distortion:
As does 50 Hz response for compatibility with other sites using it:
Jitter could be a hair better given the performance elsewhere:
IMD performance is excellent:
Linearity is perfect:
We have the typical filters but I would stay with default (F3):
The filter selection impacts wideband THD+N measurements so I stayed with the default:
Story is told....
Conclusions
Topping aimed to capture the top spot in the rankings and it got there, besting every other DAC it has produced, albeit with very small margin. If the cost is not a concern and you are buying a new DAC, might as well opt for D90 III.
I am happy to recommend the TOPPING D90 III Sabre.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
