The New King?

[JohnYang1997]

Sorry mate, I edited this!

Your post was fine.

 

[DeepSpace57]

Your post was fine.

I believe the Aliexpress summer sale will be started in the next week. is D90SE be ready for sale at that time or considered later?

 

[JohnYang1997]

I believe the Aliexpress summer sale will be started in the next week. is D90SE be ready for sale at that time or considered later?

I have no idea about Aliexpress summer sale. But it should be on around that time.

 

[DeepSpace57]

?
Perhaps just me but I don't see a price on the page you link to..

If it really is 999 USD... complete waste of money imho.
Same box with the same features but with the super extra price premium for the extra couple SINAD points one never notice anything about in real life use. Better spend half, or even less, of the amount of money on another competent transparent DAC and use the rest to buy some headphones or something that actually does make a noticable difference.

Yeah, the page was changed; how fast I am really shocked.

 

[Protomartyrdom]

Looking for a TOTL DAC and this seems interesting, but MQA support is an absolute deal breaker. Will there be a non-MQA version?

 

[NYfan2]

Looking for a TOTL DAC and this seems interesting, but MQA support is an absolute deal breaker.

Why is that? Even when the DAC supports MQA you are not bound to use it. I'm totally happy since I disabled MQA in Tidal.

 

[mocenigo]

Why is that? Even when the DAC supports MQA you are not bound to use it. I'm totally happy since I disabled MQA in Tidal.

Because money goes to MQA Ltd. anyway through the purchase of the product.

 

[nessism]

Please correct me if I'm wrong but high resolution audio feed via Tidal or similar basically doubles the price of the service. At what point is it worth it? Specifically, what level of headphones/speakers does it take to realize the difference?

 

[nhs]

It will never end. But currently I would say it's the best that can be achieved with current dac chip offerings for single chip implementation.

SINAD is not all for a DAC this day. The usability, a decent volume control and a decent output stage for driving a power amp is more important.

 

[pimy]

D90SE price in Europe € 899

https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/dac-...ro-32bit-768khz-dsd512-mqa-black-p-15419.html

 

[Martin]

D90SE price in Europe € 899

https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/dac-...ro-32bit-768khz-dsd512-mqa-black-p-15419.html

€749.17 without VAT.

 

[Celty]

I'll be quite interested in reading impressions of the D70s vs. the D90se.

 

[Lupin]

SINAD is not all for a DAC this day. The usability, a decent volume control and a decent output stage for driving a power amp is more important.

I agree but it is a (sad) fact that SINAD numbers sell.

You see that every day right here on the forum's. How many posts I have not seen where people trying to decide which DAC to buy and then completely write off one DAC because the SINAD score is like 3 points lower then the other.

 

[Lupin]

D90SE price in Europe € 899

https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/dac-...ro-32bit-768khz-dsd512-mqa-black-p-15419.html

Waaaaaaaayyy too expensive!
For less then half that price you can get a DAC that is already deep into transparency territory. Reading the product page and don't see any features that would justify paying the super price premium for me. Same box and the display still looks like it comes straight out of an Nintendo Gameboy.

But hey SINAD sells so it will most likely sell like hot cakes. All those people that need to "upgrade" now...

 

[JohnYang1997]

Waaaaaaaayyy too expensive!
For less then half that price you can get a DAC that is already deep into transparency territory.

Then don't buy it and call it a day.

 

[hmscott]

€749.17 without VAT.

Right now that converts to more than the US MSRP of $899:
€749.17 => $908.41 United States Dollars

I paid $799 for the D90 MQA, and I am very happy with it. Would it have been nice to offer the D90SE @ $799 and continue to offer the D90SE without MQA for $699 to make it more affordable, yup. But it looks like enough people bought the D90 MQA over the D90 and/or Topping decided to simplify their inventory to one D90SE model.

There are some other incremental improvements other than Sinad/SNR/%THD, I posted them here:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...d90-balanced-usb-dac-review.10519/post-817010

 

[gvl]

$899 on Apos. That is almost in the RME DAC territory, I think I'd trade a couple of meaningless SINAD points for more functionality and better brand recognition even if I had to pay a bit more. Heck, even the already excellent DX7 Pro based on the same converter is much cheaper, and it has a headphone amp. I don't quite get the price forming logic for this one.

 

[slamman]

we are starting to see a backfire on the companies that solely focus on measurements. why would anyone upgrade from their entry level model? amir claims they are transparent right? (i believe this but transparent and "sounds better" arent the same) other than MQA or balanced or a remote why would anyone ever upgrade? no moving parts and DACs dont get as much abuse as amps. i believe different DACs sound different. i can AB a bifrost 2 and entry level topping DAC. anyone can. or a denafrips is easy to pick out. maybe thats because the measurements are worse but it sounds better to me. so i think we have reached a point where they have added enough features in the 200-400 price range where the measurement people would be hypocrits to tell someone else to upgrade and the non measurement people will say the sound is even more clinical and dead and wont buy it. will be interesting if the product sells worse or people just see a higher number and buy it even if they dont believe DACs that are "transparent" make a difference. we will see.

 

[Eneko]

I may be wrong, but I think that the logic behind releasing this new DAC is filling the empty place the D90 left. If topping ever releases the matching power amps, they will stack nicely, and aesthetics is a thing when you have to put it in the middle of your living room. I’m a happy user of the D90/A90 combo and I don’t have any reason to (and I will not) update to the SE. But, if they release the power amps I may well buy any matching DAC available ;-)

 

[tifune]

So I'll preface my Q by saying I don't really know anything about running a business. I have to assume there's evidence of market demand on their side, although this is a somewhat unique situation given what happened with AKM.

But, at this point I'm struggling to understand the evolution of Toppings product lines. They seem to have literally set the new bar for price/performance value but are reiterating existing devices when there's so many other avenues where they could almost certainly compete within top tiers:

Meizu Hifi Pro replacement (moderate power at paperclip sizes)

Multi-channel DACs (Okto8's are still backordered 6+ weeks, even putting out something comparable and keeping it in stock would be huge)

Benchmark AHB/Purifi competition (rumored for some time to be on the way but still no previews that I'm aware of)

Qudelix/ES100 competitor (both good in their own right but some room for improvement)

MiniDSP in general (good stuff but always seem to fumble in weird ways in the last mile; DIRAC-enabled Topping has a nice ring to it)

ADC comparable to price/performance ratio of existing DACs

Having wirtten all that I'm not even sure what my Q is, I guess I'm just confused about why we're starting to see, basically, v2-v3's of already amazing, beyond audibly transparent gear instead of outward expansion.