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My weird Topping stack is driving me insane. (D10B / L50 / PA3s)

Totallyjaded

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I recently replaced my old Topping AIO DAC / headphone amp / speaker amp with a somewhat unusual Topping stack.

So right now, I'm running a D10 Balanced DAC, L50 headphone amp, and PA3s speaker amp, with balanced connections from the DAC to the L50, and from the L50 to the PA3s.

For whatever reason, my speakers click every time the DAC sleeps and wakes up, but my headphones don't. The headphones are Shure SRH 1540's and the speakers are Klipsch RP-600M Reference, so I would expect the headphones to pick up any anomalies about as well as the speakers. Just to rule out something funky with the L50 pass-through, I connected the D10B to the PA3s directly, and still get the click.

At this point, I'm stumped. Is the clicking really coming from the PA3s, or the D10B? Is it a power-saving function of the PA3s to go into standby if it isn't getting input? I'm well within the return period on all of the components, so I don't mind switching out a component if it's potentially bad -- or the entire stack, if someone has a better suggestion in a similar price range.
 

solderdude

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Left and right have the same amount of click ?

Headphones do not click when the volume control of the L50 is wide open with the volume control of D10, or digital volume control turned down ?
 
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Totallyjaded

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Left and right have the same amount of click ?

Headphones do not click when the volume control of the L50 is wide open with the volume control of D10, or digital volume control turned down ?
You know... the noise was so prominent on the speakers that I didn't think to give that a try.

Sure enough, with the volume and gain maxed on the L50 and the digital volume on the source down to 4/100, there is a faint click there, too, Both channels, with what sounds like the same amount to my ears.

This seems to correlate with the auto-mute on the D10, but I'm surprised that people haven't seemed to complain about it. Or, maybe I got a bad D10B.
 

solderdude

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Clearly something in the D10.

Have you tried setting the volume control of the PA3 a lot lower, maybe down to the level you don't hear the click or it isn't at a bothersome level ?
 
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Totallyjaded

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Yeah, the problem I run into there is that my preference is to control the volume from my computer. Ideally, that puts the PA3 around 50 - 60% and the computer around 20% nominal.

So my inclination would be to return the D10 and get a different balanced DAC. But since that means the E50 if I stick with Topping the price difference would have me considering something different altogether. Possibly some blend of SMSL components.
 
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