I have to add my 2 cents to this conversation, I just tried out a Topping DX5ii that I picked mainly to give me a remote control and to switch between sources one being a 75" TCL TV. The rest of the system uses XLR in and outs with an active xover dividing at 250Hz going to a set of Martin Logan Prodigy's powered by a Carver Sunfire 300w x2 amp on the panels and a QSC GX5 amp on woofers. I have bypassed the stock woofer xovers and they present a 2Ω load on the amp. When I used the Topping I had no choice but to use the optical toslink input (which I really didn't want to have to use but the topping doesn't offer any HDMI input). What I experienced while using that option was my TV turns off any processing that enhances the sound to clarify the dialogue. I'm not doing surround or playing movies but I wanted to enhance the sound for clarity and my system has exceptional sound while using a single source.
Since the TV output was no longer enhanced the sound was even worse than the TVs tiny speakers! I was kinda shocked that the sound was so muffled and had huge swings in vokume, I was reaching for the remote constantly and another issue was I had to use the TV remote to change channels and the volume was no longer controlled by the TV remote . Constantly needing to find both controls lasted about 3 hours before I removed it from my system but not before I did a bit of testing with music.
Here again the Topping has a built in DSP with 10 parametric settings and can do either L or R or Both for EQ ing. What happened was exactly what I noticed happen with each and every DSP I've tried so far, this was the 5th one and the results were a loss in realism and imaging disappeared. My system has always had a very prominent image that puts you tight there in the middle if the sound. You can almost see the band playing, sounds float in certain areas and I used a dual 31 band eq mainly to set the center perfectly for each album. The center shifts a tiny bit on each recording but once it's recentered at the start of the first song !it becomes a fully involved sound with depth and clarity that's far beyond anything I've heard from cone drivers and domes.
Engaging the eq destroyed the sound, it removes all those tiny fringe details that make things sound complete and real. I found this in every DSP I've tried, the software they use is pretty straight forward and made it simple to make adjustments and offered more than I needed . I only used 3 settings to compensate for the room modes and tests revealed a very flat output was easy to achieve within s few minutes, other DSPs took a week to set up. It does not offer any shelf or xover type divisions while it does have both XLR and RCA outputs that can be configured to use both or just one set. It would have been nice to be able to replace the active xover as well as the EQ, but I was not going to accept the loss in detail and the awful optical output from my TV no matter what the price was, the topping is going back.
I still needed a pre with a remote and visited the Emotiva Web site and thought I found something that would work but alas it lacked the HDMI input and they did not offer one in the price point I was comfortable paying. I did find a used model locally for $300 but no remote with it and it too had no HDMI. After much surfing I saw a link to an Arylic pre that had the HDMI and remote but only has RCA outs. I can live with that since I could convert to XLR easily already have cables made for it.
The Arylic has an adjustable sub out and a second set of RCAs that can be set to run either as a high pass or low pass or full range with high pass as well as the other running full range. The max xover point is 250Hz! This almost seems to be too perfect since I should be able to run the sub output directly to my QSC amp in mono and I can run the woofers like a sub running them in series to get 4Ω at the amp output. I have other amps I could run if need be. It's comes with an app to control a ton of different things within the pre and it has a dedicated remote.
The strange thing was when I found the link I just clicked on it but when I went directly to Arylics site I couldn't find the piece or anything about it. So I had to hunt down the link which was connected directly to their Web site, so I could take another look at at it. After reading everything I think I see what they're doing.
They came out with a new model 100 where the other is the 50, the 100 is $400 and the 50 is $99 out the door shipped. The 100 lacks the HDMI so it wasn't going to work for me. The 50 specs tell of a very slight degradation in S/N, it also has a MM and MC phono input which is 95 S/N and 111 S/N for the RCA outs,
The topping is rated at 135 S/N and it is dead silent, I doubt I'll hear anything from the Arylic if they're not lying too much on their specs. I noticed the Emotiva is only 95 S/N I was put off by that with a $350 price. The topping Bluetooth worked fine but the DSP once again became a huge obstacle and I noticed when I used my cheap Pyle sound interface with Bluetooth I was not experiencing the loss in sound quality at all.
I paid $25 for the pyle to be able to use it with a calibrated test mic that needed phantom power but it included Bluetooth as well as an XLR, TRS input, RCA stereo input, a stereo RCA and AUX output with volume controls on each input and output. It tested noise free and perfectly flat. It served it's purpose until I sold the test mic when I was fed up with struggling with my computers sound issues and went with a phone test mic and a brand new dedicated good phone (with a mic built in that's better than the new test mic), I know phone mics are subject to all conditions and lose quality quickly so I never use the phone for anything but testing and it's always covered up.
The loss in sound quality through the Topping was unacceptable to me. These are the things that make or break products in my eyes and these are the exact things that you can't see or hear while testing. I've concluded that DSP conversion is the reason for the loss and until they can up the bits to the next level they'll never be worth buying for anything close to audiophile sound no matter how well they SiNAD it will never tell the whole story of how things really sound. Another culprit may be the threshold that's set in the conversion. It naturally has to be set at some point that automatically cuts off quieter sounds couple that with a blocky bit rate and a lower processor and the way that the converter is configured to pick and choose what it can convert in the allowed time and you end up with very noticable loss in sound.
A good DA in a good DSP will cost a fortune and I will not be bothering with them until they're perfected which will never happen in my lifetime. Probably not in any of our lifetimes understanding the crowd that frequents here, possibly could be one but the cost will be a major factor once you consider the complexity that will go into design and research plus the parts will be a new manufacturing processes to achieve a close infinite bit rate needed along with the vast memory and high CPU speed needed to convert fast enough to minimize the delay, I would guess a $10k minimum price point to get to the next level of bit rate conversion. I know the Behringer DEQ and DQX (I think, it's been 5 years since I briefly struggled with both pieces, returned one and kept one and sold it in a few months) they were 24/96 if I'm remembering correctly and that was not even close to good. They both ran out of memory and CPU quickly with only a few settings. Mini DSP flat out changed the sound even when it was set to bypass, it made it an hour before I decided to send it back. Analog eq is dead quiet in my system, the xover is silent as well, the amps are quiet but the QSC can pick up a bit of noise when turned to max and has the xover sitting on top of it. But it puts out 750wpc x2 @ 4Ω! Luckily it only needs to be set to just over half way to keep up with the Sunfire.
I'll return with a review of the Arylic 50 Bluetooth pre in s few days, it's not yet in the states, oh yeah I forgot to finish up on the way I could only find that piece by a link, I think they don't want people to see the 50 and the 100 side by side since the 50 looks to be a fantastic value at $99 and the 100 is $400 with less inputs and not as flexible with less to offer in app control over the outputs, both can be configured to act as a Bluetooth sender or receiver.. So they removed the 50 from their main site, if I clicked on anything from within the links pages I couldn't return to the 50! I had to set the page as a fav so I didn't have to do a search for the ad to return to it. I'll bet they discontinue it for USA sales soon. I ordered it on Saturday night and it's been 4 days showing it's half way here after 2 days of shipping, it might arrive by this weekend.
