Rhodes54
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- Oct 23, 2019
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Let me start by saying that English is not my native language and I’ll do my best to write something that make sense.
So, here we go. This has been on my mind for a while and I think it's time to share my findings of a listening test with the Topping D90 and Benchmark DAC3 HGC I did a few months back.
I have been listening to the Benchmark DAC3 (HGC) for a long time at work, where it’s driving a pair of active ATC SCM110A Pro monitors.
I was in the need of something not too expensive to use on smaller, active studio monitors at home and after reading lots of reviews I purchased the Topping D90. Later I bought the A90 to drive my headphone and have a decent volume control available (Please Topping, do something about that volume control of the D90). The A90 was not used for the comparision.
Of course I wanted to test the D90 on the best reference I have available: The SCM110A monitors.
The setup:
Digital Source(s) (streamer/USB/CD Player) -> S/PDIF & USB -> Mutec MC3+ USB, externally clocked to the Mutec REF10 -> S/PDIF -> DAC (DAC3 & D90) -> Balanced Out (XLR) -> ATC SCM110's
Output levels of both DAC's where matched on a AP we have at work.
As the thread title already reveals, the results where not what I expected. In short: The DAC3 beats the D90 in terms of sound quality, which with contradicts the measurements we can find on this website.
I want to avoid hifi-ish blabla so i'll to give a short description of their sound signatures:
- The Benchmark DAC3 is warm, rounder in the low end, natural, tight and open.
- The D90 is clean and fast over the whole audiospectrum, no coloration, no fun. What you see is what you get, I think is the best description here.
Despite the clean and fast sound of the D90, also something else is audible: it's by far not that dynamic as the DAC3. It lacks depth, drive, the overal stereo image is smaller (Although all phase information seems better on the D90). The D90 just sucked out life of the ATC’s. Furthermore the D90 sounds somewhat 'grainy'.
Although the low-end of the DAC3 is warmer, it is also tighter and has more drive. The low-end of the D90 is less pronounced but also not as tight, it’s a bit muddy and lacks dynamics. While higher up in the audio spectrum the D90 seems tighter, and the DAC3 becomes more ‘fuzzy’.
But it is the grainy sound of the D90 that worries me a bit. That should not be present and indicates that something is not as it should be. It can of course be the source as well that is grainy, but I am sure it’s not. A third converter endorsed my findings: There’s nothing wrong with the source. I also bypassed the Mutec setup by connecting the D90 directly to the source(s), both USB as well as AES/EBU, but that made things even worse.
That third converter (which is still in developement, so I can’t say much about it) also has a very clean and fast sound, just like the D90. But this one didn’t suck out all life. For me that was the confirmation that a very clean sound doesn’t mean it will be ‘lifeless’, dull or less dynamic, on the contrary!
Over the last months I spoke to several people about this matter and one of the possible things that can cause this grain is an oscillator with a high phase noise in the audioband, especially in the lowest frequencies.
The Accullison datasheet shows that phase noise is -90dB at 10Hz, which is good, but could be better. Looking at the PCB of the D90, the oscillators are not really close to the AKM DAC chip, plus they are located next to the mains transformer(!). I wonder if the clocksignal is still up to spec once it reaches the 4499 DAC chip. Maybe there is some room for improvement here?
Based on my experiences a few questions raise:
1. If the measurement results of both coverters are (far) below the human hearing range, why is it that the differences are so easy to distinguish? And I am not talking small differences here.
2. If you can hear it, you should be able to measure it, right? What other things can possibly be measured in order to get more reliable results?
A last thing I would like to say is that the large ATC monitors work like a magnifying glass, revealing all kinds of details, also the ones you don't want to hear.
On smaller speakers and most headphones these differences are smaller, if audible at all. In my situation, the D90 is even the better choice of the two because the clean sound compensates the acoustic problems I have in my room. Also for my Sennheiser HD650 the D90 (+ A90) is the better choice of the two because I do quite some audio restauration work the great transient response makes it easier for me to spot irregularities in the audio. So, if you ask me: am I happy with my D90 (and A90), yes very happy.
So, here we go. This has been on my mind for a while and I think it's time to share my findings of a listening test with the Topping D90 and Benchmark DAC3 HGC I did a few months back.
I have been listening to the Benchmark DAC3 (HGC) for a long time at work, where it’s driving a pair of active ATC SCM110A Pro monitors.
I was in the need of something not too expensive to use on smaller, active studio monitors at home and after reading lots of reviews I purchased the Topping D90. Later I bought the A90 to drive my headphone and have a decent volume control available (Please Topping, do something about that volume control of the D90). The A90 was not used for the comparision.
Of course I wanted to test the D90 on the best reference I have available: The SCM110A monitors.
The setup:
Digital Source(s) (streamer/USB/CD Player) -> S/PDIF & USB -> Mutec MC3+ USB, externally clocked to the Mutec REF10 -> S/PDIF -> DAC (DAC3 & D90) -> Balanced Out (XLR) -> ATC SCM110's
Output levels of both DAC's where matched on a AP we have at work.
As the thread title already reveals, the results where not what I expected. In short: The DAC3 beats the D90 in terms of sound quality, which with contradicts the measurements we can find on this website.
I want to avoid hifi-ish blabla so i'll to give a short description of their sound signatures:
- The Benchmark DAC3 is warm, rounder in the low end, natural, tight and open.
- The D90 is clean and fast over the whole audiospectrum, no coloration, no fun. What you see is what you get, I think is the best description here.
Despite the clean and fast sound of the D90, also something else is audible: it's by far not that dynamic as the DAC3. It lacks depth, drive, the overal stereo image is smaller (Although all phase information seems better on the D90). The D90 just sucked out life of the ATC’s. Furthermore the D90 sounds somewhat 'grainy'.
Although the low-end of the DAC3 is warmer, it is also tighter and has more drive. The low-end of the D90 is less pronounced but also not as tight, it’s a bit muddy and lacks dynamics. While higher up in the audio spectrum the D90 seems tighter, and the DAC3 becomes more ‘fuzzy’.
But it is the grainy sound of the D90 that worries me a bit. That should not be present and indicates that something is not as it should be. It can of course be the source as well that is grainy, but I am sure it’s not. A third converter endorsed my findings: There’s nothing wrong with the source. I also bypassed the Mutec setup by connecting the D90 directly to the source(s), both USB as well as AES/EBU, but that made things even worse.
That third converter (which is still in developement, so I can’t say much about it) also has a very clean and fast sound, just like the D90. But this one didn’t suck out all life. For me that was the confirmation that a very clean sound doesn’t mean it will be ‘lifeless’, dull or less dynamic, on the contrary!
Over the last months I spoke to several people about this matter and one of the possible things that can cause this grain is an oscillator with a high phase noise in the audioband, especially in the lowest frequencies.
The Accullison datasheet shows that phase noise is -90dB at 10Hz, which is good, but could be better. Looking at the PCB of the D90, the oscillators are not really close to the AKM DAC chip, plus they are located next to the mains transformer(!). I wonder if the clocksignal is still up to spec once it reaches the 4499 DAC chip. Maybe there is some room for improvement here?
Based on my experiences a few questions raise:
1. If the measurement results of both coverters are (far) below the human hearing range, why is it that the differences are so easy to distinguish? And I am not talking small differences here.
2. If you can hear it, you should be able to measure it, right? What other things can possibly be measured in order to get more reliable results?
A last thing I would like to say is that the large ATC monitors work like a magnifying glass, revealing all kinds of details, also the ones you don't want to hear.
On smaller speakers and most headphones these differences are smaller, if audible at all. In my situation, the D90 is even the better choice of the two because the clean sound compensates the acoustic problems I have in my room. Also for my Sennheiser HD650 the D90 (+ A90) is the better choice of the two because I do quite some audio restauration work the great transient response makes it easier for me to spot irregularities in the audio. So, if you ask me: am I happy with my D90 (and A90), yes very happy.
