This is a review of the recently released Topping D10 DAC. I purchased mine from massdrop for just $75 including shipping. I see it online from Aliexpress for $89. I must say, this is one of the most handsome budget DACs I have seen with a nice retro amber/orange 7-segment LED display:
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Despite its very low price, the unit is solidly built out of thick aluminum and has good bit of heft to it. As a result, the cables connected to it stay put.
The only on the input is USB.
Outputs are of course analog unbalanced RCA but also Toslink and S/PDIF coax:
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Format support is excellent as indicated on the front panel and more detail at Topping website:
http://www.tpdz.net/en/products/d10/index.htm
Unlike vast majority of audio hardware out there, Topping has full FCC/CE regulatory emissions certification together with that of "high-res audio" the certificate of which is included in the box! That certification is apparently done in Japan. The regulator emissions certification is useful for those of you who sweat traditions from your gear.
The USB interface is class 2 compliant meaning no driver was necessary to use it in my Roon player using exclusive mode, WASAPI in Windows 10 Creators Edition. Auto-detected formats by Roon are:
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I know most of you are anxious to see how it measures. So let's get into that. As usual, if you are not familiar with what these graphs are, refer to my tutorial on understanding audio measurements:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/understanding-audio-measurements.2351/
Measurements
Because this is a USB only DAC, I can only run a subset of my usual measurements. For this review, I compared the Topping D10 to my previously recommended Behringer UMC204HD. The Behringer is a good DAC but has anemic output which means it can't drive some amplifiers to full output. It also looks more like a pro piece of equipment and not an expensive one at that. The Topping D10 remedies all of these but let's see how it compares specifically, starting with jitter and noise:
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The Behringer is in yellow and Topping D10 in red. As we see, the topping D10 has some jitter sidebands around our main tone of 12 kHz. So in that regard it is worse than Behringer. However, if you look at the amplitude of our tone, you see that the output of the Behringer is lower. Compensated, the signal to noise ratio of Behringer is worse than Topping D10 and the jitter spikes would be barely visible. Regardless, the jitter components are at a whopping -130 dB and lower which are absolutely not an audible concern.
As a bonus and to show how good these measurements are, I have also shown a preview of the measurements of the Schiit Fulla which retails for $99 (but has a headphone amp) in green. As you see, its signal to noise ratio is much worse.
If you want perfection here, then you would need to step up to Topping D50 ($250) which has the same noise floor but no jitter spikes to speak of.
Next let's look at linearity or how well the DAC produces the output voltages that we instruct it to, from digital domain:
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Very respectable performance from both DACs. Even when we start to see deviations from perfect zero dB line, nothing goes wild all the way up to -120 dB (20 bits). The Topping D10 though pulls ahead a bit but sticking to zero line more perfectly than the Behringer. This is no doubt due to its higher output.
We can see a confirmation of that in a much clearer picture as we look at the ability of the DAC to reproduce a -90 dB sine wave (at the limit of 16 bit audio):
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The picture speaks for itself. The Topping D10 produces excellent output that resembles a nice sine wave whereas the Behringer UMC204HD has too low of an output and a noisier one at that.
Let's look at harmonic distortion where the Behringer has been an excellent champion at:
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Ah, we discover something interesting. The Behringer doesn't show a lot of harmonic distortion because its noise floor is much higher. The Behringer beats it by as much as 25 db. By doing so, its harmonic distortion is visible but they are all lower than what the Behringer produces (note: this noise is the combination of the DAC and my analyzer). Net, net the Topping D10 has far better performance even though its graph looks more "busy."
Edit: forgot to post the frequency response/channel matching:
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Measured output voltage was 2.113 volts (RMS) on one channel and 2.108 on the other so very excellent (0.021 dB difference). Response is essentially ruler flat to 20 kHz.
Conclusions
The Topping D10 is a delightful audio DAC. It looks very "cute" and masculine at the same time. I cannot fathom how it can be built and shipped at such incredibly low prices. Combine that with proper manufacturing that includes regulatory certification and such and the value you get is just amazing.
Measured performance is excellent and just shy of its more expensive brothers like the Topping D50. With its much higher output vs Behringer UMC204HD (1.5 volt RMS vs 1.1 volt) it is suitable to drive any and all amplifiers.
For an entry level DAC without headphone output I cannot recommend the Topping D10 enough! Another job well done by Topping.
EDIT: Updated measurements using new analyzer here:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...surements-of-topping-d10-dac.2470/post-157302
As always, questions, comments, corrections, jokes, etc. are all welcome!
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