Review and Measurements of New Topping D50s DAC

[Veri]

I just hooked it up and woow, so much depth and dynamic range, the bass, and that's with my ****** headphones (buying some soon). It blows my Denon M40 internal DAC out of the water.
For now I'm using a 5V 850mA wall charger, do you recommend something better, more power to spare?
Also I can't seem to be able to output 384Khz from the DAC sound properties, it shows 24bit 192Khz max, I'm on Win7, might this be an OS limitation? or should I install ASIO?

-5V charger is fine
-Windows setting will resample everything with Windows internal resampler, it's much better to select 44 or 48kHz and let the DAC do filtering. Windows is not a particularly good resampler...
-You can however use ASIO or WASAPI plug-in to let any app take direct control and select any compatible sample rate (like 384kHz). Foobar2000 and others can do this.

 

[Dogway]

I was worried that being below 1A the DAC would underperform. I will try installing ASIO, didn't see a sampling rate in LAVfilters but will investigate that.

 

[Veri]

I was worried that being below 1A the DAC would underperform. I will try installing ASIO, didn't see a sampling rate in LAVfilters but will investigate that.

What's controlling LAVfilters? I know mpc-hc for example has 'exclusive mode' for audio under settings.

 

[Dogway]

LAVaudio is the decoder, yes there's exclusive mode under mpc-hc, maybe I can set the resampler in ASIO settings? Was checking ASIO4ALL settings but didn't see a resampler option. From this post it seems it's the renderer task to do so, for mpc-hc I only know the internal Windows audio renderer in contrast to video renderers where there are more options like madvr, an advanced third party renderer.

 

[Veri]

LAVaudio is the decoder, yes there's exclusive mode under mpc-hc, maybe I can set the resampler in ASIO settings? Was checking ASIO4ALL settings but didn't see a resampler option. From this post it seems it's the renderer task to do so, for mpc-hc I only know the internal Windows audio renderer in contrast to video renderers where there are more options like madvr, an advanced third party renderer.

Don't think there is an option there no. My point was that you can feed 44kHz via Windows and let LAV push 48kHz in case of video. Your DAC will oversample to a very high rate in any case.

 

[jules]

I just hooked it up and woow, so much depth and dynamic range, the bass, and that's with my ****** headphones (buying some soon). It blows my Denon M40 internal DAC out of the water.
For now I'm using a 5V 850mA wall charger, do you recommend something better, more power to spare?
Also I can't seem to be able to output 384Khz from the DAC sound properties, it shows 24bit 192Khz max, I'm on Win7, might this be an OS limitation? or should I install ASIO?

Hi could you please tell us how you did the level-matching, switching, and double-blinding controls that are the basics for valid listening comparisons?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Dogway]

Hi could you please tell us how you did the level-matching, switching, and double-blinding controls that are the basics for valid listening comparisons?

Thanks in advance.

Hi, could you level-match, switch and double check your speech qualities for a basic informal dialog?

Thank you.

 

[jules]

Hi, could you level-match, switch and double check your speech qualities for a basic informal dialog?

Thank you.

Ha ha, yes I was having a jest with you . I was basically passing on the same question that had been asked of me when I posted an 'ears only' review recently:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-battle-of-schiit-audio-dacs.5487/post-311528

 

[Gradius]

I just got my D50s few hours ago (from Drop), so far no issues.

The only thing I couldn't managed was to get DSD512 working on foobar2000.

I'm getting this error:
Unrecoverable playback error: Sample rate of 1411200 Hz not supported by this device

I could play from 44.1kHz until 768kHz @ 32-bit (PCM), without problem.

DSD64, DSD128 and DSD256, no problem (all in native DSD format).

My problem is just with DSD512.

Of course, I'm using the last foobar2000 (v1.5.1), SACD plugin (v1.1.9), and ASIO Proxy (v.0.9.4).

 

[Gradius]

I managed to play native DSD512 with HQ Player Desktop:
https://www.signalyst.com/consumer.html

However I still want to use foobar2000.

 

[Toku]

I use the same version of foobar2000 on Windows 10 (1909) as instructed by Topping, but I can play native up to DSD512.

>> Of course, I'm using the last foobar2000 (v1.5.1), SACD plugin (v1.1.9), and ASIO Proxy (v.0.9.4).

I also tried this setting. The result was the same as you.
I couldn't understand the cause, so I returned to the original Topping settings.

 

[Gradius]

I also tried this setting. The result was the same as you.
I couldn't understand the cause, so I returned to the original Topping settings.

Thanks for the input.

I have found the problem.

It lies on SACD plugin v1.1.9, is rendering as DoP this is why I couldn't playback DSD512 as the max it supports is DoP256, and this is why I could playback DSD256 just fine.

I'll contact the SACD plugin author and reporting this bug to him.

 

[Gradius]

Confirmed.

Until version v0.8.4 (https://sourceforge.net/projects/sacddecoder/files/foo_input_sacd/foo_input_sacd-0.8.4.zip/download) it works fine!

Bug reported:
https://sourceforge.net/p/sacddecoder/bugs/126/

 

[Gradius]

About the #126 bug.

Is a pitty, but SACD plugin from foobar2000 converts DSD into DoP on-the-fly, so you NEED to have DSD transcoder plugin installed (and in use), if you want to have the last SACD version.

I see absolutely no point on that as it losses quality. :/

By other hand HQPlayer doesn't do that, this is why probably many says it sounds better. THIS IS THE REASON.

 

[Blur]

Many of you may notice that the D50s DAC shows signs of EMI. I swapped my RCA cables with shielded RCA cables and that does not fix the problem. I'm talking about the little bleep-bloop sounds that sound like motherboard or mouse electrical noise. For me the only fix was to move the D50s away from my wi-fi router...which was literally 6 inches away!

Moved it 2 feet away and now the D50s is silent even trying to find the noise using high gain on an amp.

 

[Gradius]

Well, 6" isn't that far at all honestly.

This might be due the whole chassis is made out of aluminum block.

That block is also used as heat sink directly to the components (yes, I opened and checked).

Also, it have flux on connectors, I cleaned that too. I don't think I have that EMI problem, I'm using a dedicated (regulated) power supply.

I'll do tests with my speakers now, lets see if I hear any noises.

 

[Gradius]

Many of you may notice that the D50s DAC shows signs of EMI. I swapped my RCA cables with shielded RCA cables and that does not fix the problem. I'm talking about the little bleep-bloop sounds that sound like motherboard or mouse electrical noise. For me the only fix was to move the D50s away from my wi-fi router...which was literally 6 inches away!

My unit is DEAD silent. I did put it 6" away from my g/ac WiFi router too. No problems.

So you have a ground loop. Yeah, those are evil.

 

[Blur]

I guess it's magic that moving the D50s away from the router fixed it if it was a ground loop eh? All other connections are the same.

 

[Gradius]

Since no one post the photos/pics from D50s yet (on Internet), I'll post them here.

Main stuff:

3 OPAMPs: 1x LME49720NA, 2x TI OPA1612A

USB: XMOS U30870C10 (XU208)

SPI: AT25SF041 (4Mbit)

Processor: STM8S005C6

DAC: 2x ESS ES9038Q2M

I cleanead the flux (dry cleaning) as you can see on the photos.

There is no space to install bigger OPAMPs at all. The max it will accept is a Burson v5i (for example), unless you mod the chassis or make a new one.

PCB: v1.3[ZJD] (manufactured in 07/25/2019)

 

[Jarrett]

Thank you! I have looked this up several times and gave up. Is the board much different from the original D50?