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Review and Measurements of Topping D10 DAC

Repdetect

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Hi 1st post here. Been a lurker for a few months. Awesome site and forum.

Probably a pretty dumb question but I want to be certain on this.

I want to get a D10 as an upgrade the the DAC in my HT preamp - (emotiva umc-200) and send music files via just a hard drive, not laptop) .

Is there any way that I can hook up my hard drive via USB to the D10 and have control so I can play songs off of it?

I want to send the signal from the D10 to my HT preamp's SPDIF input for playback.

Will sending the D10's SPDIF output to the HT preamp's SPDIF input defeat the point of getting the D10?

My home theater preamp has room correction that I would like to preserve.

Hope this makes sense.

Thanks in advance.
 

sejarzo

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I want to get a D10 as an upgrade the the DAC in my HT preamp - (emotiva umc-200) and send music files via just a hard drive, not laptop) .

Is there any way that I can hook up my hard drive via USB to the D10 and have control so I can play songs off of it?

Regrettably, no. The software on a PC/Mac/Android/whatever must read the file you wish to play, then convert that .wav, .flac, .mp3 or whatever file format into "the language that the DAC understands" so to speak.

That's why devices such as network players exist.

Also, the SPDIF (digital) input of your Emotiva routes that input to the internal DAC, where it is converted to analog. If you want to bypass the Emotiva internal DAC, you must connect the analog output of an external DAC to an analog input on the Emotiva.
 

Repdetect

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Thanks Sejarzo, much appreciated.

Looks like I'm out of luck using room EQ from the Emotiva with the D50s..... ...or any DAC.
 

sejarzo

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Looks like I'm out of luck using room EQ from the Emotiva with the D50s..... ...or any DAC.

I may have misread, or partially misread, your question. If you want to use the D10 as a USB to SPDIF converter simply to interface between a computer and the Emotiva, that works, but that bypasses the DAC section of the D10.

A DAC must to be the last device in the chain between any digital processing/room correction and the analog input of amplification for its supposedly superior D-to-A function to be of any potential benefit. Otherwise, feeding its analog output into an AVR/preamp means that input is resampled by a A-to-D converter before that "new" digital signal is run through DSP.
 

capt.s

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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:

View attachment 11515

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:

View attachment 11516

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:

View attachment 11517

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:

View attachment 11526

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:

View attachment 11519

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):

View attachment 11520

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:

View attachment 11521

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:

View attachment 11576

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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Apologies if this is answered somewhere else in this thread.......
Is there measured performance of just the USB to spdif conversion function of the D10 anywhere? How does this compare to other converters such as the Audiophillio?
 

sejarzo

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Repdetect

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sejarzo
A DAC must to be the last device in the chain between any digital processing/room correction and the analog input of amplification for its supposedly superior D-to-A function to be of any potential benefit.


Understood. Thanks
sejarzo
 

escape2

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The other day, I noticed something was rattling inside my D10. I opened it up, and a little pin fell out (see pics). It's about 4mm long and the top can be pressed in, but it springs back. What is it, and should I be concerned that it fell off? So far, the D10 still appears to be working fine.

ISo2UtH.jpg


wyssc2n.jpg
 

somebodyelse

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They're known as pogo pins, and usually make contact with a gold plated pad on another PCB. In this case, judging by the solder, it would have been pointing out at the edge of the board to contact on one at right angles. I'd look around where the front panel and the main board meet.
 

digitalfrost

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So I'm using a Topping D10 -> Geshelli Archel2 Pro -> Beyerdynamic DT990 and I have dropouts when listening to music. I set the Topping drivers USB Streaming Mode to "Extra Safe" but it still happens.

When gaming for example, I don't hear any problems. I use foobar2000 as my player, same as with speakers. When using speakers, I have no problems, so I'm wondering what's causing this. It must be related to the Topping D10 IMHO, as my speaker soundcard is unaffected.

They happen rarely, but they're very audible when they do.
 

sejarzo

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Open Control Panel>Sound>Playback, click on the entry for the D10 to highlight it, click Properties, click the Advanced tab in the next dialog, and under Exclusive Mode, make sure both options are checked, then OK twice to get out of the Sound applet. Start Foobar2000, File>Preferences>Output, select the "WASAPI (event)" entry for the D10, then OK to get out of the dialog and see if that makes any difference. That way, no other apps should be able to interfere with the D10 when it's playing in Foobar.
 

sejarzo

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That assumes you have installed the WASAPI component in Foobar, I think? It's been so long ago that I am unsure if that has to be installed separately or if it's part of the standard Foobar installation in the latest version.
 
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Jarrett

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The new Topping driver (4.82) fixed an issue I was having with WASAPI Exclusive mode + Media Player BE. I used to get delayed looking video (remedied in Shared mode) and this driver fixed that. There wasn't an issue with audio, I think, but something has been fixed now.
 

sejarzo

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Just got an email from Drop that my D10 ordered in the last batch is shipping today from Shenzhen.
 

escape2

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The new Topping driver (4.82) fixed an issue I was having with WASAPI Exclusive mode + Media Player BE. I used to get delayed looking video (remedied in Shared mode) and this driver fixed that. There wasn't an issue with audio, I think, but something has been fixed now.
Thanks. Just installed it.

Still having issues when running Foobar in ASIO mode. When I have something in Foobar playing at a frequency different than 44.1kHz, then no other audio sources (eg. Youtube) will play audio concurrently with Foobar. I guess I need to use the shared mode instead for this to work, but then in shared mode, Foobar plays everything at 44.1 kHz, even if my audio files are something else (48 or 96 kHz, for example).
 
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Svperstar

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Thanks. Just installed it.

Still having issues when running Foobar in ASIO mode. When I have something in Foobar playing at a frequency different than 44.1kHz, then no other audio sources (eg. Youtube) will play audio concurrently with Foobar. I guess I need to use the shared mode instead for this to work, but then in shared mode, Foobar plays everything at 44.1 kHz, even if my audio files are something else (48 or 96 kHz, for example).

Just wanted to add I used to use Foobar and I switched to MusicBee.

It supports WASAPI out of the box with no extra downloads and it "just works". It of course still supports plugins but I find it far more usable then I ever found Foobar.
 

Toku

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Thanks. Just installed it.

Still having issues when running Foobar in ASIO mode. When I have something in Foobar playing at a frequency different than 44.1kHz, then no other audio sources (eg. Youtube) will play audio concurrently with Foobar. I guess I need to use the shared mode instead for this to work, but then in shared mode, Foobar plays everything at 44.1 kHz, even if my audio files are something else (48 or 96 kHz, for example).
All of its behavior is correct.

ASIO mode eliminates all audio output from other devices and outputs them exclusively. Therefore, the sound of YouTube etc. will not be output.

The reason why it is played at 44.1kHz in shared mode is that it is output via the Windows audio engine.
Open your Windows audio device and double-click Topping D10. Then, open the details tab, the set bit rate is displayed. The bit rate can be set from 44.1kHz to 384kHz. Windows audio engine resamples all files to the bit rate set here and outputs them.
 
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Toku

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Just got an email from Drop that my D10 ordered in the last batch is shipping today from Shenzhen.
Is D10 shipping by China Post? Or DHL, Fedex?
Currently China's delivery system is very confused and is experiencing significant delays.
The SMSL amplifier I ordered stays stopped at the airport.
 
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