That’s correct. PCM
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Topping E30 DAC Review
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
Right now convenience is king for me. Spotify Connect via a raspberry pi just works so well for my wife and I that it’s hard to do anything else. Gapless is a forthcoming update to librespot but my guess is that’s well after I ship the E30 back.
Genuine bummer as I’d love the money back in my pocket and love the E30 display.
poimandres
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Hmmm. I certainly don’t want to deal with pops between tracks. Perhaps I will return mine before I even open it. This is unfortunate if there is no remedy.
Are you running with speakers or headphones?
You should give it a listen. My setup might be exasperating the situation.
Setup is: Rapsberry Pi running Volumio set to hardware volume control. Spotify Connect plugin as source. To the dac via USB. From dac straight into a Linn Klout power amp to Linn Ninka speakers.
It is noteworthy that the Allo Boss has heinous pops between tracks in the same setup (I2S not USB) that I did NOT hear when using a Rega Brio integrated amp.
Alright. That's kind of the expected behaviour. As far as I know all AK based DACs have this. It will be practically free of pop if a preamp is used or pairing with headphones. Thanks for sharing.
Good to know. I really don't want to be scaring anyone off of this dac unnecessarily and might even consider keeping it for a different application knowing this. I don't have a dedicated headphone amp but am guessing that the "preamp pop-suppression logic" would extend to a headphone amplifier as well.
All these pretty plots are worthless if they can't catch bad behavior like this. Imagine a continuous piece of music with many access points playing back with a pop at each track switch. Intolerable.
EDIT: The E30 doesn't do that. I only hear pops when the sample rate changes.
EDIT: The E30 doesn't do that. I only hear pops when the sample rate changes.
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It's minimal pop which happened in many DACs from cs4398 to ak4497 all need anti-pop circuit to function properly. It's only a issue if you directly connect the output to a poweramp which you wouldn't do for older DACs. The power amp amplifies the small pop to a much larger signal hence the pop. It will never be heard if a preamp is used. Even then it's an acceptable level of small pop that's improved over D70 and some older DACs.
And it's easily measurable using oscilloscope. I'll try to measure the level of the pop and share here.
As the arse-hole who started this it's important that I second the comment about the pop being null if using a preamp. For minority of users who would encounter this the average listener the pop wouldn't matter, for the neurotic fellows on this forum (myself obviously included) it's noticable.
It's fine. This issue has been commented on for D70 countless time.
Yes. Completely.
Great. That's my planned set up.
poimandres
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From the e30 to a headphone amp it will still be slightly noticeable?
If won't unless you have the volume on headphone amp max and change the volume on E30.
poimandres
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Ok thanks. So with the volume on the amp max and no change in volume on the dac there should be no pop? Not that I think I would ever need to be at max.
With the dac volume at max, utilizing the amp’s pot for volume control there would be no pop as well?
With the dac volume at max, utilizing the amp’s pot for volume control there would be no pop as well?
The DX3Pro is AK based right? I hooked up my DX3Pro ldac version with the following chain
RPI4B running piCorePlayer 6.0 ----USB----> DX3Pro ----RCA----> Bryston 3B-SST power amp
DX3Pro is in line-out mode, I have the Bryston set to 2V sensitivity. I hear no pops on track changing, muting, track forward, etc.
As for it not happening with a pre-amp, this is ASR, where the consensus is that pre-amps are passé.
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