New driver software for Topping DACs

[Ashley Salmond]

Hi Jason, thank for your help. I check with Amirm and downloads only help with the downloading of music. The drivers or downloads don't go into the dac.its just about comparability. As I tried foobar there was no mention of coaxial. You wouldn't believe what Topping had me doing. It sounds like whoever I was dealing with didn't know what he was talking about. I n the end he said it was the coaxial cable. That is the problem with products from that part of the world, is the lack of responsibility for there products,they will tell you anything. It's a form of phycolgicaly torcher . In the end you will give up. That's how they put you off.

I also bought a Gustardx16 and had problems with the coaxial and optical, which I sent proof of to Amirm. Whilst sorting out these problems, once more offered utter bullshit, I realised. My cheap Aniyo 5.1decoder sounded just as good if not better. The fact that Smirk does rate these dacs, once they getout of the green rating,

 

[Ashley Salmond]

I also bought a Gustardx16 and had problems with the coaxial and optical, which I sent proof of to Amirm. Whilst sorting out these problems, once more offered utter bullshit, I realised. My cheap Aniyo 5.1decoder sounded just as good if not better. The fact that Smirk does rate these dacs, once they getout of the green rating,

They I feel become snake oil. As Smirk say as long as you are around the minus115db you are good. So super low noise dads are expensive snake oil, just like the audioquest cables, you are wasting g your money. I also feel the Amirm with this rating system is inadvertently selling and promoteing snake oil.

 

[JasonC331]

Back to my question, for any of you that have a D10s is this grey out? My Coax output works fine their control app is just greyed

 

[Ashley Salmond]

The driver provides an ASIO interface for the DAC. People use them if they want to avoid routing their audio though the standard Windows audio stack (or maybe to do other processing that ASIO allows). The driver allows you to connect a player application (Foobar2000, MusciBee, etc.) directly to the DAC. There are several threads on ASR discussing why you may, or may not want to do this.

The driver is installed on Windows and is for USB connections, it's not going to fix a faulty co-axial input on a DAC.

What DAC do you have and what are you trying to connect it to?

 

[Ashley Salmond]

Hi, I was watching a video called the Audiophile Man, where he raid the point about the topping D50s,where there is a issue with coaxial. Although his did begin to work after some trial and error. He also received word from topping that there is a problem with the CS chip. I have the topping D 50 and I can tell you that all the trial and error and cable change has not fixed the coaxial. Smirk has mentioned a problem with the topping D30pro ,which uses the same chip. The main problem seem to be the dad chip. The AKM chip factory was destroyed by fire which has resorted topping to use the CS chip.

 

[JohnYang1997]

Hi, I was watching a video called the Audiophile Man, where he raid the point about the topping D50s,where there is a issue with coaxial. Although his did begin to work after some trial and error. He also received word from topping that there is a problem with the CS chip. I have the topping D 50 and I can tell you that all the trial and error and cable change has not fixed the coaxial. Smirk has mentioned a problem with the topping D30pro ,which uses the same chip. The main problem seem to be the dad chip. The AKM chip factory was destroyed by fire which has resorted topping to use the CS chip.

This has nothing to do with d50/d50s. D50/D50s use ESS's integrated digital receiver. D30pro uses CS8416. Same XMOS as receiver which is used by many professional audio interface and fiio. They work fine with good quality spdif signal but not very well with poorer quality signal. Most CD players are pretty horrible in this. The issue is not so simple and not too complicated. D90se uses LC89091 which doesn't have the same issue. And we are trying other chips to see if there's issue.

 

[acetogen]

This has nothing to do with d50/d50s. D50/D50s use ESS's integrated digital receiver. D30pro uses CS8416. Same XMOS as receiver which is used by many professional audio interface and fiio. They work fine with good quality spdif signal but not very well with poorer quality signal. Most CD players are pretty horrible in this. The issue is not so simple and not too complicated. D90se uses LC89091 which doesn't have the same issue. And we are trying other chips to see if there's issue.

I also watched the video. The Audiophile Man got that response from Topping sans the blaming it on the CD player. What is surprising is that he didn't figure out what the problem was and only after several days of powering off and on the topping d50s would work with all his CD players, regardless of the coaxial cable, which he initially thought was the issue. Moreover as you stated the XMOS is used for other audio interfaces but only the d50s has the problem, that several users have reported.

 

[JohnYang1997]

I also watched the video. The Audiophile Man got that response from Topping sans the blaming it on the CD player. What is surprising is that he didn't figure out what the problem was and only after several days of powering off and on the topping d50s would work with all his CD players, regardless of the coaxial cable, which he initially thought was the issue. Moreover as you stated the XMOS is used for other audio interfaces but only the d50s has the problem, that several users have reported.

Fiio k5pro is much worse in our testing as it uses XMOS as spdif receiver.
This just doesn't have anything to do with D50/D50s as these two use ESS dac chip's spdif receiver while D30pro uses cs8416.
What this shows is this is a wide spread issue among many devices.

 

[acetogen]

Fiio k5pro is much worse in our testing as it uses XMOS as spdif receiver.
This just doesn't have anything to do with D50/D50s as these two use ESS dac chip's spdif receiver while D30pro uses cs8416.
What this shows is this is a wide spread issue among many devices.

So if I am correct you are saying that the Audiophile man is wrong and there are no issues with the D50s coaxial, even though it has been observed by many users? Is Topping wrong in blaming the coaxial issue on the ESS chips, again with the D50s? One more point, if the problem with the D50/D50s is with poor CD players then Topping would have to state so in their website, would you not agree?

 

[JohnYang1997]

So if I am correct you are saying that the Audiophile man is wrong and there are no issues with the D50s coaxial, even though it has been observed by many users? Is Topping wrong in blaming the coaxial issue on the ESS chips, again with the D50s? One more point, if the problem with the D50/D50s is with poor CD players then Topping would have to state so in their website, would you not agree?

The issue being discussed that is related to CS(8416) is the issue related to D30pro. Both d30pro and d50s do have similar compatibility issue with spdif but they are not related in any way, not the same implementation, not the same cause.

 

[acetogen]

The issue being discussed that is related to CS(8416) is the issue related to D30pro. Both d30pro and d50s do have similar compatibility issue with spdif but they are not related in any way, not the same implementation, not the same cause.

So you would not address the issue with the D50s, fine. I am pasting here what Paul wrote in his website. Keep in mind he did not find out a problem with "compatibility with spdif" as you wrote:

After a raft of email exchanges with Topping, Electromod has issued this statement based upon information issued to it via Topping itself,

“As the UK distributor of many brands, we take product issues very seriously. Since Paul alerted us to the Topping DAC issue, we emailed Topping Audio to try and find out more. Unfortunately, Topping has said that that it cannot resolve the issue. Reportedly, the audio problems heard with the D50s DAC are caused by the Cirrus Logic receiver chip. According to Topping, this chip will struggle to work efficiently if faced with an unstable or irregular signals also called Jitter. This audio issue effects all Topping DACS featuring the Cirrus Logic receiver chip which including the D50s, DX7pro, D30Pro and the new batch of the E30 DACs. According to our tests, this audio drop out issue does not affect other inputs, only the coaxial input. If you have purchased a Topping DAC through Electromod and are having any issues, please call/email us to discuss it further.”

 

[JohnYang1997]

So you would not address the issue with the D50s, fine. I am pasting here what Paul wrote in his website. Keep in mind he did not find out a problem with "compatibility with spdif" as you wrote:

After a raft of email exchanges with Topping, Electromod has issued this statement based upon information issued to it via Topping itself,

“As the UK distributor of many brands, we take product issues very seriously. Since Paul alerted us to the Topping DAC issue, we emailed Topping Audio to try and find out more. Unfortunately, Topping has said that that it cannot resolve the issue. Reportedly, the audio problems heard with the D50s DAC are caused by the Cirrus Logic receiver chip. According to Topping, this chip will struggle to work efficiently if faced with an unstable or irregular signals also called Jitter. This audio issue effects all Topping DACS featuring the Cirrus Logic receiver chip which including the D50s, DX7pro, D30Pro and the new batch of the E30 DACs. According to our tests, this audio drop out issue does not affect other inputs, only the coaxial input. If you have purchased a Topping DAC through Electromod and are having any issues, please call/email us to discuss it further.”

D50s does not have Cirrus Logic chip. Simple enough?

 

[acetogen]

D50s does not have Cirrus Logic chip. Simple enough?

Not really, you are evading the question with the problems with this dac, regardless of whatever chip you chose to drop in the case. This is in addition to the D30 Pro spdif issues, the E30 polarity problems, L30 fires for lack of DC protection and so on. Simple enough is to avoid Topping and SMSL.

 

[JohnYang1997]

Not really, you are evading the question with the problems with this dac, regardless of whatever chip you chose to drop in the case. This is in addition to the D30 Pro spdif issues, the E30 polarity problems, L30 fires for lack of DC protection and so on. Simple enough is to avoid Topping and SMSL.

Ehh? E30 doesn't have the issue since like forever.
L30 has units with issue recalled. All units since SN2012 (December 2020) don't have issue. People who fried their headphones that contact us got the compensation.

Spdif issue is a common issue you just didn't know. Just look around everyone who uses Cirrus logic chip or ESS dac's receiver or XMOS as spdif receiver will have the similar compatibility issue. It's not limited to Topping.

Also how does this have anything to do with SMSL.

 

[JohnYang1997]

Not really, you are evading the question with the problems with this dac, regardless of whatever chip you chose to drop in the case. This is in addition to the D30 Pro spdif issues, the E30 polarity problems, L30 fires for lack of DC protection and so on. Simple enough is to avoid Topping and SMSL.

And look who else has DC protection. We are the one who actually doing this. Not until recently the IEMagni, JDS, Schiit didn't have any DC protection.
Only THX did the protection very well. L30 had the protection circuit but it had issue to function. But again, the issue is solved. All current topping headphone amplifiers have better protections than others now.

 

[acetogen]

And look who else has DC protection. We are the one who actually doing this. Not until recently the IEMagni, JDS, Schiit didn't have any DC protection.
Only THX did the protection very well. L30 had the protection circuit but it had issue to function. But again, the issue is solved. All current topping headphone amplifiers have better protections than others now.

Thanks. At this point I am only considering a single function DAC, no headphone amps and maybe bluetooth. I like the E30 because of the large display + remote. I would think that DC protection would have been a requirement for certification, but then I am not an engineer.

 

[Moderate Dionysianism]

[UPDATE:] Got it to work via the USB2.0 port, Windows recognized it and installed the driver. Still won't cooperate with any of the USB3.0 ports though, which was not the case with NX4DSD, D10 or Tone2Pro

Anyone else having trouble hooking up the D70s to a Win7 machine via USB? It was plug&play with my work laptop (Win8) - the DAC was recognized immediately. I didn't bother with installing the Thesycon driver as I don't play any DSD. All works fine.

With my Win7 laptop (Samsung RF711) however, I can't get it to work, it goes to 'driver installation failure' popup literally the moment I plug it in. Windows doesn't even do the 'searching for drivers' bit (scanning Windows Update etc.). Just throws the failure message right away. I can't find any trace of it in the Device Manager too (no unrecognized USB devices). I'm using the same cable to connect to both PCs.

Installed the v4.86 driver from Topping, but it didn't help. The Topping Control Panel shows no devices, and Windows keeps giving me the same error. The latest driver seems to have no compatibility with Win7 whatsoever:

Am I missing some obvious step? I have used an NX4DSD, a D10, and a Khadas Tone2Pro so far with the same Win7 machine, never encountered this problem.

 

[Pluto]

I have a D70 (not fundamentally different from an interfacing perspective) hooked up to a Win7 machine without fuss.

First, remove all the DAC drivers you have knocking about on the system and see if the device is seen (probably "unknown device" or words to that effect) by device manager.

That's your prerequisite. If the device is not being seen correctly there's no hope of it working.

 

[Moderate Dionysianism]

I have a D70 (not fundamentally different from an interfacing perspective) hooked up to a Win7 machine without fuss.

First, remove all the DAC drivers you have knocking about on the system and see if the device is seen (probably "unknown device" or words to that effect) by device manager.

That's your prerequisite. If the device is not being seen correctly there's no hope of it working.

Tried that several times, it's not recognized at all when connected to a USB3.0 port of the Samsung. No 'unknown devices', nothing. It was recognized when connected to USB2.0 and works fine with this connection. Won't cooperate with the 3.0 ports though (those are the ones that my cable can reach). Works via USB3.0 with the newer PC... baffling

 

[Pluto]

OK – at least that tells you not to bother messing about with drivers. Until the USB subsystem can fundamentally recognise the presence of something, there is little point in going further.

From what you describe, it sounds more like a hardware incompatibility than anything to do with the Windows version. I take it you have tried an assortment of different cables…