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Review and Measurements of the Topping D70 DAC

kkeretic

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I would like to use XLR output with my HP amp that has only RCA input. RCA output from the D70 is already taken for the other amp. So, is it better to use RCA splitters or would it be better to use XLR to RCA adapters to drive both amps? I understand I will loose the benefit of balanced output, but I don't need it balanced anyway. If I use XLR to RCA adapter or cable, if I understand correctly, XLR pin 2 should be connected to the signal/tip on the RCA connector and both XLR pins 1 and 3 shorted to the ground (sleeve) on the RCA connector? Has anyone tried this on the D70? Is there anything I should know before trying? I can see some adapters have pin 1 and 3 left unshorted. What would be the right way to make XLR to RCA anyway?
 

Rhern213

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I would like to use XLR output with my HP amp that has only RCA input. RCA output from the D70 is already taken for the other amp. So, is it better to use RCA splitters or would it be better to use XLR to RCA adapters to drive both amps? I understand I will loose the benefit of balanced output, but I don't need it balanced anyway. If I use XLR to RCA adapter or cable, if I understand correctly, XLR pin 2 should be connected to the signal/tip on the RCA connector and both XLR pins 1 and 3 shorted to the ground (sleeve) on the RCA connector? Has anyone tried this on the D70? Is there anything I should know before trying? I can see some adapters have pin 1 and 3 left unshorted. What would be the right way to make XLR to RCA anyway?

I had the same issue a while back when adding a powered sub and decided to get one of these rca splitters:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjAAegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw0wPhP76JApouG2KDyU03ah

Why take the risk of damaging your amp or d70 by using rca-xlr? Unless you're making a custom cable where you know for sure the pins are correctly done I wouldn't trust any off the shelf cable. The XLR voltage output is different than RCA and you risk damage if the cables are not terminated correctly, while not having any benefit to sound quality. I'd just get an RCA splitter and be worry free.
 

kkeretic

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Why take the risk of damaging your amp or d70 by using rca-xlr? Unless you're making a custom cable where you know for sure the pins are correctly done I wouldn't trust any off the shelf cable. The XLR voltage output is different than RCA and you risk damage if the cables are not terminated correctly, while not having any benefit to sound quality. I'd just get an RCA splitter and be worry free.

As far as I found there should be no risk when pin 3 is left floating so the voltage from XLR (4V) should drop in half (2V)? By looking at the pictures of the D70 board, there seems to be just opamps behind XLR outputs and no transformer (?), so I guess it should work this way. Course I would make the custom cables or just purchase two demountable XLR->RCA adapters and check/fix the pins if needed. But I'll probably forget about all this and order another DAC :rolleyes:.
 

Veri

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As far as I found there should be no risk when pin 3 is left floating so the voltage from XLR (4V) should drop in half (2V)? By looking at the pictures of the D70 board, there seems to be just opamps behind XLR outputs and no transformer (?), so I guess it should work this way. Course I would make the custom cables or just purchase two demountable XLR->RCA adapters and check/fix the pins if needed.
Yeah that would be no problem. Worst thing than can happen is noise issues over RCA cable, if they are of long length for example.
 

kkeretic

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Yeah that would be no problem. Worst thing than can happen is noise issues over RCA cable, if they are of long length for example.

The cables I usually make for "active" use are never longer than 40-50cm and I still have a reel of Klotz LaGrange around. It is shielded like a tank and so far I have not had problems even with lengths over 3-5 meters where even some much more "audiophile" cables fell apart. But we'll see, just found out a nearby store finally opened yesterday after quarantine due to coronavirus and I see on their web they have all sorts of XLR->RCA stuff :). If I do something wrong, at least I'll have a reason to get a new DAC ;).
 

Veri

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But we'll see, just found out a nearby store finally opened yesterday after quarantine due to coronavirus and I see on their web they have all sorts of XLR->RCA stuff :). If I do something wrong, at least I'll have a reason to get a new DAC ;).
Interesting :) Do let us know how it goes :D
 

kkeretic

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Interesting :) Do let us know how it goes :D
Purchased two XLR to RCA adapters, cut bridge between pins 1 and 3, connected with the same cables as before and it works like a charm :cool:. I am going now to resolder the adapters with some serious wire and solder 'coz included wire looks like a joke :).

Edit: I gave up on this because of the pops on frequency changes. RCA is pops free. Will try with active RCA switch.
 
Last edited:

Veri

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Purchased two XLR to RCA adapters, cut bridge between pins 1 and 3, connected with the same cables as before and it works like a charm :cool:. I am going now to resolder the adapters with some serious wire and solder 'coz included wire looks like a joke :).
Excellent:cool:
 

BubbaJay

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I'm either getting the D70 or the SMSL M200 but still waiting to see the review on that.

Also, I don't get why they all have these roll off filters because they don't start to do anything tell you get to 20kHz or higher and humans obviously can't hear that high. I've tried to hear a difference with my D50s and used like 10 different headphones and I heard no change. I don't even know what setting I have it set at now because it doesn't matter. Anyone that says they can I just don't see how, unless they're part animal or something .
 

Veri

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I'm either getting the D70 or the SMSL M200 but still waiting to see the review on that.

Also, I don't get why they all have these roll off filters because they don't start to do anything tell you get to 20kHz or higher and humans obviously can't hear that high. I've tried to hear a difference with my D50s and used like 10 different headphones and I heard no change. I don't even know what setting I have it set at now because it doesn't matter. Anyone that says they can I just don't see how, unless they're part animal or something .
IMO there should only be a selection between minimum delay (minimum phase) and linear phase. All the rest are so similar... why have 6-7 at all.
 

pos

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I know this test is one year old, and the test unit is probably long gone, but I would love to see a jitter measurement with the coax input.
It might be buried somewhere in the 50+ pages of that thread, but I only managed to find the USB measurement in post #5.
The jitter was much higher on the coax vs the USB input in the D90 test, and I imagine the spdif implementation is pretty similar here, if not identical...

That D70 looks very interesting nonetheless, and the fact that the THD rises towards 0dBFS is quite natural and inconsequential IMHO.
4V in a +26dB amplifier is around 800W into 8 ohms, and I think this is fair to assume that DAC distortion will not be the prevalent problem at these levels... I personally much prefer having a DAC that "sacrifices" THD at 0dBFS in such a clean and predictable way rather than a DAC that insists on getting the best score at 0dBFS (for measurements...) while presenting strange and unpredictable behaviors on some less common tests...
 

Soundstage

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i have the following error on my DAC.
What should I do? I tried restarting it without success. As soon as it is plugged the error is there.
Thanks.
1591822126142.jpeg
 

Veri

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Can anyone explain the different filters on the D70?
Filters do veeery little. Don't obsess about it. They basically control pre-echo/ringing, phase correctness when oversampling to a higher rate. The default apodising or the linear 'fast' tend to be the most chosen filters. Barely anyone could A-B them, really. Set and forget.
 

MattG

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Anyone using the D70 via Bluetooth?

I posted a while ago about getting a Bluetooth D70, and BT not working. I worked with the seller, and got a replacement unit. It had the same problem. Again I worked with the seller, who acknowledged that Topping had some BT problem, and they sent me a third unit, and this one does have functioning Bluetooth...

...mostly. My main Bluetooth source is my PC, and when I use it with the D70, there is a slight but noticeable hiss riding along with playback. The hiss is masked if the music is loud enough, but my main use is quiet background music while I work from home. I tested with two different smart phones, and the hiss is not there. So you might be inclined to say it's my PC, but I used this same PC with the DX3Pro Bluetooth, and there was no hiss. So it's something subtle between the PC and D70 specifically. I even bought a Bluetooth USB dongle, and tried that instead of the PC's builtin Bluetooth - same thing. (Although my PC's builtin BT hangs off the USB bus, so maybe it's a USB problem? Though I would think the BT audio protocol would be immune to bus/power issues unless they were really bad.)

Just wondering if anyone's seen anything like this? The seller is ShenzhenAudio via Amazon, and they've been very helpful (only annoyance is the dreadfully long shipping times between USA and China). I haven't yet brought up the hiss with them, thought I'd check here before going down that road.

Thanks!
 

MattG

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My main Bluetooth source is my PC, and when I use it with the D70, there is a slight but noticeable hiss riding along with playback. The hiss is masked if the music is loud enough, but my main use is quiet background music while I work from home.

I think I have this solved. My PC runs Linux (Manjaro), and it appears that by default the Pulseaudio Bluetooth stack uses the original SBC (low-complexity subband codec) audio encoding. I do think there is something amiss with the D70 and using this codec, because there was no noticeable hiss in this config with the DX3 Pro. However, SBC is pretty lousy, and I can't imagine anyone would ever want to use it, definitely not with a modern DAC like the D70 (like letting a 16 year old drive your Ferrari). The more modern and capable codes are AptX, AptX-HD, and LDAC.

This blog post, Better Bluetooth sound quality on Linux gives an overview of Bluetooth codecs, and gave me enough technical info for my "ah ha" moment. It was just a matter of installing the additional Pulseaudio modules that provide additional codec support. On Manjaro, the needed packages are available in the AUR: pulseaudio-modules-bt-git and libldac. I installed, restarted Pulseaudio, and can see see that I'm now using LDAC as my Bluetooth Audio codec. And no more hiss!

Hopefully this comes in handy for anyone else with a similar use case.
 

typericey

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i have the following error on my DAC.
What should I do? I tried restarting it without success. As soon as it is plugged the error is there.
Thanks.

I'm sorry to see this but if you got this error out of the box, it's likely DOA. I would recommend to return/replace soonest. Let us know how it goes.
 

Rokker79

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Thank you very much for your kind advice. I also have other DACs like AUDIOLAB & Esoteric but neither of them has I2S input. I would like to experience I2S sound that is supposed to be better compared to other digital signals like Coxial, Optical, AES or even USB. I too have other source like PC to connect to USB input of the DAC and I've already tried the sound from USB audio output of X50D to USB input of Topping D70, however the sound that I feel is not as good as via I2S. I do not know why X50D sends the DSD signal and Topping receives properly but there is no sound. I would like to attach here with the I2S HDMI LVDS pin spec of X50D from Cocktail for any of your great help that I really appreciate. Best regards,
I have the x50d and fyi it runs the ps audio pin out.
This might be a late reply but i do have an D70 as well and can tell you and everyone else that topping doesn't have ps audio pin on their dsd setup only pcm in rev mode ..
Recently I purchased aune s8 and it works fine when you rebuild a hdmi cable ( switch place on 1<>3 and 5<>7 in one end ) or simply get a dac with ps audio pin setup, as for example audio gd ,matrix audio or ps audio ;-)
 

Rokker79

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I purchased X50D just to try the I2S sound but I feel a bit tired & disappointed with this unstandadized I2S connection. To the present, X50D can only sent out working DSD signal via USB Audio. However, once this USB Audio is used (plugged in), what a pity that other digital outputs like I2S, Optical, Coaxial are not functioned anymore (as per Cocktail's technician). If X50D I2S will never work with D70, I would like to seek your good idea or experience what DAC could receive DSD signal from X50D properly (I love sound from this I2s).

Thank you very much for your great share & knowledge, Toku. Best regards,

Audio gd , matrix audio , ps audio dacs with hdmi lvds will do the trick
 
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