This is a review and detailed measurements of the new Topping D70 balanced audio DAC. The company was kind enough to send me a sample for review. The D70 costs US $499 although their products frequently go on sale.
The D70 has a similar look and feel to other Topping products which is to say feels quite solid:
The display is now white OLED which gives the unit more of a professional look. Alas, even in its highest setting, it was not bright enough for my taste.
The back panel is what you expect with the addition of IIS port:
The D70 like the rest of the Topping products comes with full set of safety and emissions regulatory certificates which is important for a mains operated product. These certifications are expensive and add to the development time and hence the reason they are skipped in some other competing products.
The D70 comes with a new revision of their standard remote control and remedies some issues customers have had. Namely, it comes with a pair of separate AAA batteries instead of coin cells which had come missing in some of their other products. Along these lines, there is now a red LED that lights up when you push a button so you can easily tell if you have an issue with the remote or the main unit if you can't control it. They both worked well in my testing.
The D70 continues the trend of recent products from Topping to move away from ESS DAC chips to AKM. So while the D70 may look similar to Topping DX7s (sans headphone amplifier), it has a completely different architecture internally. So let's get into measurements and see how it does.
DAC Audio Measurements
As usual we start with our Dashboard. The input for all tests is USB. The first measurement is using the XLR balanced output:
The output voltage for both channels is identical which shows precision of implementation. As is right on the money frequency of 1 kHz tone.
The distortion+noise is very good but dashes my hope of it winning the crown of the best measured DAC:
RCA output is just a hair worse:
The D70 shows what it is made out of in stellar dynamic range performance:
Wow, this is exceptionally clean and better than DACs with higher SINAD ratings. This is one quiet DAC!
This superiority shows up in intermodulation distortion test which at low levels is dominated by noise:
We see that the D70 beats our best measuring DAC so far, the Okto DAC8 in this respect (sloping down part of the graph).
We can see why SINAD suffers a bit because once the levels get close to maximum, more distortion sets in than best of the best DACs. If you operate the DAC using its volume control you would avoid this and get all the benefits of the D70.
Of note, the D70 easily beats Topping's own DX3 Pro in noise performance and matches it in distortion. Very few DACs can accomplish this and hence the reason I have been using the DX3 Pro as a reference in this test.
The SMSL SU-8 is a direct budget competitor to Topping D70 so let's see how they compare on the same test:
The performance gap widens given the "ESS Hump" which causes distortion to rise in mid levels in SU-8.
It seems that ESS based DACs have more controlled distortion at the limit than these AKM products but otherwise, the AKM DACs pull ahead -- at least in this implementation.
Linearity is aced with ruler-perfect accuracy all the way up to -120 dB (20 bits of resolution):
This is as good as it gets and is better than Topping DX3 Pro.
Multitone looks excellent:
We have 120 dB separate between intermodulation distortion products and our peak signal which well exceeds our hearing dynamic range.
Wide-band THD+N shows somewhat degraded performance due to existence of a near 45 khz signal dependent spike (not shown):
There are six filter settings:
Default is mode 3 which is fine as it has the flattest in-band response and sharpest attenuation of out of band (distortion) products. Worst one in this regard is Filter mode 5 ("super slow roll off") in navy blue.
Conclusions
The Topping D70 came dangerously close to unseating every other DAC. Its full output distortion is a few dB worse than the best so it didn't get there. But in all other respects, the D70 produces exceptional measured performance. Its crown jewel is exceptionally quiet noise floor that creates one of the best dynamic ranges I have measured. Use of AKM chip takes advantage of that to produces exceptionally clean performance where your volume control normally would be.
Unless my memory is hazy, the D70 produces the best measured performance of any Topping DAC. So if you are a fan the brand and want the best DAC in their product line, the D70 is it.
Note that the D70 is a new product so I can't vouch for its reliability in the field as yet. My sample worked beautifully so no concerns from this one unit.
I am happy to recommend the Topping D70 for its solid engineering and great performance.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
I am getting tired of digging holes to plant our thousands of transplants. Have you all seen the robot suites in the movie Alien?
I like to purchase one of those to help with the digging. I hear they are expensive so please be generous with your donations:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
The D70 has a similar look and feel to other Topping products which is to say feels quite solid:
The display is now white OLED which gives the unit more of a professional look. Alas, even in its highest setting, it was not bright enough for my taste.
The back panel is what you expect with the addition of IIS port:
The D70 comes with a new revision of their standard remote control and remedies some issues customers have had. Namely, it comes with a pair of separate AAA batteries instead of coin cells which had come missing in some of their other products. Along these lines, there is now a red LED that lights up when you push a button so you can easily tell if you have an issue with the remote or the main unit if you can't control it. They both worked well in my testing.
The D70 continues the trend of recent products from Topping to move away from ESS DAC chips to AKM. So while the D70 may look similar to Topping DX7s (sans headphone amplifier), it has a completely different architecture internally. So let's get into measurements and see how it does.
DAC Audio Measurements
As usual we start with our Dashboard. The input for all tests is USB. The first measurement is using the XLR balanced output:
The output voltage for both channels is identical which shows precision of implementation. As is right on the money frequency of 1 kHz tone.
The distortion+noise is very good but dashes my hope of it winning the crown of the best measured DAC:
RCA output is just a hair worse:
The D70 shows what it is made out of in stellar dynamic range performance:
Wow, this is exceptionally clean and better than DACs with higher SINAD ratings. This is one quiet DAC!
This superiority shows up in intermodulation distortion test which at low levels is dominated by noise:
We see that the D70 beats our best measuring DAC so far, the Okto DAC8 in this respect (sloping down part of the graph).
We can see why SINAD suffers a bit because once the levels get close to maximum, more distortion sets in than best of the best DACs. If you operate the DAC using its volume control you would avoid this and get all the benefits of the D70.
Of note, the D70 easily beats Topping's own DX3 Pro in noise performance and matches it in distortion. Very few DACs can accomplish this and hence the reason I have been using the DX3 Pro as a reference in this test.
The SMSL SU-8 is a direct budget competitor to Topping D70 so let's see how they compare on the same test:
The performance gap widens given the "ESS Hump" which causes distortion to rise in mid levels in SU-8.
It seems that ESS based DACs have more controlled distortion at the limit than these AKM products but otherwise, the AKM DACs pull ahead -- at least in this implementation.
Linearity is aced with ruler-perfect accuracy all the way up to -120 dB (20 bits of resolution):
This is as good as it gets and is better than Topping DX3 Pro.
Multitone looks excellent:
We have 120 dB separate between intermodulation distortion products and our peak signal which well exceeds our hearing dynamic range.
Wide-band THD+N shows somewhat degraded performance due to existence of a near 45 khz signal dependent spike (not shown):
There are six filter settings:
Default is mode 3 which is fine as it has the flattest in-band response and sharpest attenuation of out of band (distortion) products. Worst one in this regard is Filter mode 5 ("super slow roll off") in navy blue.
Conclusions
The Topping D70 came dangerously close to unseating every other DAC. Its full output distortion is a few dB worse than the best so it didn't get there. But in all other respects, the D70 produces exceptional measured performance. Its crown jewel is exceptionally quiet noise floor that creates one of the best dynamic ranges I have measured. Use of AKM chip takes advantage of that to produces exceptionally clean performance where your volume control normally would be.
Unless my memory is hazy, the D70 produces the best measured performance of any Topping DAC. So if you are a fan the brand and want the best DAC in their product line, the D70 is it.
Note that the D70 is a new product so I can't vouch for its reliability in the field as yet. My sample worked beautifully so no concerns from this one unit.
I am happy to recommend the Topping D70 for its solid engineering and great performance.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
I am getting tired of digging holes to plant our thousands of transplants. Have you all seen the robot suites in the movie Alien?
I like to purchase one of those to help with the digging. I hear they are expensive so please be generous with your donations:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
