DAC for HiFi and gaming and another for living room use

[80sAudioFan]

Hello there,

I am reading hours and hours the last few days and I still don't know what to buy. And in addition I don't know if I am correct here to put my question to get buying advices.

Lastly my ASIO sound card of my (old) gaming rig died and I went investigating how to replace it with state of the art HiFi Audio to run that on my computer with headphones.
And doing this I want to renew my living room audio as well. I have an old Toshiba 42" Flatscreen which has no SPDIF or Toslink out so I bought a cheap china device to put between two HDMI cables to extract Audio from the HDMI stream which works ok but obviously the audio quality is not that good but okay for watching the news. I guess I will replace this device with this one. The goal here is to archive with an HDMI Switch to connect up to 4 hdmi sources and extract and convert audio to my analogue stereo. I have a china aptx Audio bluetooth receiver as well which I plan to replace for my living room.

So what I wish for for the gaming/office or using profile:

• DAC/Headphone amplifier
• linear between 20 to 20kHz
• CD/Flac playback
• (still) no MQA material, but used ASIO before for high quality music playback - so may be able to do that
• some stereo gaming but no need for EAX or something
• Connect with usb or maybe with Toslink/spdif
• USB alimentation if possible, if not, not a big deal

So what I wish for my living room:

• high quality dac to convert all (mostly pcm) signals to my analogue stereo.
• Bluetooth receiver with at least APTX or anything better than SBC.
• auto power on and use last used source when power is given after power shut-off.
• may connecting some cd/audio player in future with the DAC to get get audio on my stereo the best quality possible.
• remote control
• => excellent audio conversion with any bluetooth or hdmi connected device to my stereo with maybe some reserve for the future.

I was investigating a lot of SMSL devices and I almost got the descision to buy one when somebody told me that (most of) the smsl devices are not auto-powering on.
So before I start to investigate for Topping devices I decided to put my question here.
I am looking for cheap and good solutions and I am not afraid to buy used devices.
The whole operation I would be able to buy some 300€ in new and some 200€ in used if that helps. So that won't be the most expesiest Topping or SMSL devices.

What I could get some kind of cheap and used at the moment are the following:

• SMSL M500 180€
• Topping DX1 75€
• Topping DX3 Pro+ 125€
• Topping D50 III 170€
• SMSL SU-1 55€
• Topping D50s 105€
• SMSL SU-6 120€
• SMSL M300SE 90€
• SMSL PS200 85€
• Topping E30 100€
• SMSL D-6 125€
• SMSL DO 100 155€

For my pc use: Which one does maybe support MQA or ASIO on Windows 10/11 and does not mention it in the comments?
For the living room use: Which one does auto boot and turn on on the last used source?

Thanks folks in advance.

 

[Pouyoux]

all SMSL DAC I've tried remain in the last state (on or off) after powering them off and on.

for your gaming setup I'd advice SMSL C200 (which includes an headphone AMP)

for the living room SMSL D0100 or Topping D50 III (to have a DSP on the USB input which is a great feature to have).

 

[80sAudioFan]

all SMSL DAC I've tried remain in the last state (on or off) after powering them off and on.

for your gaming setup I'd advice SMSL C200 (which includes an headphone AMP)

for the living room SMSL D0100 or Topping D50 III (to have a DSP on the USB input which is a great feature to have).

Thank you for the advice and sorry to respond that late, had to travel for work.

USB Input for living room is not needed. Would just be a nice to have.

What you said about the on-off behaviour is somehow surprising me. What I need to have is that it auto powers on after external power shut-off (when last state was power on).
Because I turn on/off my stereo and tv with one switch.
Can anybody confirm or deny it?

 

[Drain.pipe]

You're going to want to connect via HDMI with CRC compatible equipment. Enough functionality but also other functions that are usually controlled by the remote.
LDAC can only be properly be enabled when the Bluetooth device is connected. If the device is disconnected it will not retain the LDAC setting in the settings switch.
Usually LDAC devices come with their own software to force(?) enable the LDAC I have a pair of nothing ear phones & Sony, and they both have their own software. But it's not required.
Also sometimes it's possible to change the default codec that's negotiated first with the BT device.. check your manuals to see if that's an option....