Review and Measurements of Topping D50 DAC

[PorchSong]

I'd be surprised I think they were only designing it to be balanced!

Yeah, I might have been confused on the AKM and Khadas--although it would be nice. I do know they are doing balanced though.

 

[Viper Necklampy]

Damn unfortunately after lot of try, the D50 with the Atom miss some Energy that should have in the treble, too bass centric, highs feels underpowered, not so happy about that sound, i mean.. It have good sound stage, imaging, great microdetails, very clean, for sure, but the rolled off highs even on Mode 5, Pha-3 is worse in all that, but the sound is way better, well the bass isn't that powerful but is better.. Tell me if you find that in d50 Too! Or if you find something not good in sound signature.. Topping Nx4 instead is doing better, good sound and decent treble, still rolled off under 20hz but np, up to 20khz is rolled off but hey, is still a 180€ great value

 

[daftcombo]

Damn unfortunately after lot of try, the D50 with the Atom miss some Energy that should have in the treble, too bass centric, highs feels underpowered, not so happy about that sound, i mean.. It have good sound stage, imaging, great microdetails, very clean, for sure, but the rolled off highs even on Mode 5, Pha-3 is worse in all that, but the sound is way better, well the bass isn't that powerful but is better.. Tell me if you find that in d50 Too! Or if you find something not good in sound signature.. Topping Nx4 instead is doing better, good sound and decent treble, still rolled off under 20hz but np, up to 20khz is rolled off but hey, is still a 180€ great value

What headphones do you use?

 

[Viper Necklampy]

What headphones do you use?

Audeze El8 Titaniums

 

[daftcombo]

I don't know about those phones, but they seem to have a lot of distortion in the highs:
https://www.innerfidelity.com/images/AudezeEL8Closed.pdf
Check also if you can explain what you feel, looking to the RF graph of those phones and those of the DACs you name.

 

[DuxServit]

Damn unfortunately after lot of try, the D50 with the Atom miss some Energy that should have in the treble, too bass centric, highs feels underpowered, not so happy about that sound, i mean..

Not sure if a DAC is intended to effect “energy”; maybe you need to use a different headphone

In my case, the D50 and AAA 789 is driving the old Senn HD650. Very good matching to my ears.

 

[soundwave76]

So some weird Coax experiments here with my new unit. The connection was breaking all the time with a 75ohm Coax cable, but as with one other member here, the problem was solved with a standard audio RCA cable. However, it only works 44kHz sample rates, if I try to listen to for example Tidal MQA tracks, the connection starts to break again. I am using PC->Matrix XSPDIF->D50.

EDIT: Nop, the connection still seems to break every now and then with the audio RCA cable.

 

[AresHarvest]

I had the same issue on my PC which has a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK motherboard. I fixed it by disabling ErP support in BIOS. Ironically, disabling this option means that USB ports will be powered even if your PC is shut off. Nevertheless, once I did this, my D50 correctly recognized that there was no signal being sent and turned itself off after a minute.

Thanks, I'll have to give that a try. Since it's a laptop, they severely limit what you have access to in BIOS (can't undervolt through BIOS, for example) so I'll have a look and see if your solution is possible on my machine.

 

[Snafu]

Haven't had any problems with coax, i have played D50 with cd player, 96kHz, br player 192kHz and lap top Tidal 44/96kHz.
Cable is chinese cheapo : https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-2-3-5-...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

 

[Viper Necklampy]

I don't know about those phones, but they seem to have a lot of distortion in the highs:
https://www.innerfidelity.com/images/AudezeEL8Closed.pdf
Check also if you can explain what you feel, looking to the RF graph of those phones and those of the DACs you name.

About el8 titanium headphones, that graph of innerfidelity looks broken in the treble, it might maybe be the old driver of 2015 version of el8 closed
The measurements of el8 titanium from https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com/headphones/measurements/audeze/el-8-titanium/ looks very nice in distortion department, treble looks clean, that 2% distortion in the low bass is usal to most headphones, maybe only something like lcd2 classic goes to a very low under0, 5% even on bass, how much cost the item to measure headphone distortion, cheaper ones, for home usage? ... But I don't understand why after 15khz the distortion is not shown, i always been curious about that, i might ask the owner of the site @solderdude
Anyway i bought this headphone used one months ago, without box, scratched exterior and unfortunately, it seems to have little broken driver, it seems to have some distortion in some frequencies (I don't know which ones, if you know how to properly test frequencies please tell me..)

Well about that i feel that d50 is missing that good treble.. I don't know.. Anyway..

 

[Viper Necklampy]

Not sure if a DAC is intended to effect “energy”; maybe you need to use a different headphone

In my case, the D50 and AAA 789 is driving the old Senn HD650. Very good matching to my ears.

The AAA 789 is known to have some brightness in the treble and be a little 'dry', so i don't know, maybe with d50 is a good pairing, with my atom the sound to me lacks in the treble, on pha-3 is way better, it could be even the cable as someone disagree they make a difference, anyway ever can't solve a treble signature at all .. Anyway, i'm not really sure what is about that 'energy in treble' in sound , but i see that is a common terms used for reviewing audio equipment sound signature, so np.. When i will have the TA-ZH1ES i will probably not miss nothing for some years
Someone here might think i will missing €€€€ in my pocket ahah

 

[Kiko1974]

Hello to all forum members. I'm new here and this is my first post.
I got here looking for information on the Topping D50 which I've had for two weeks, I previously owned the Topping D30 but I sold it to get the D50.
The main reason I got the Topping D50 was to have native DSD playing, I get this by getting all my SACD collection ripped to ISO and then extracting the individual tracks with ISO2DSD. I then do DSDoverPCM files out of my DSD files with dBPoweramp which has the option to convert DSD to PCM or do these DoP files, either as wav or FLAC. These can be played by any device that plays wav or FLAC, if it outputs the files at its actual resolution without any tampering, the D50 will recognize them as DSD 64. But I have a problem that I already reported to Topping. As DoP files are wav of FLAC files with a resolution of 176.4/24 with the actual DSD data stream embbeded on it (like they did back in the 90's with DTS CD's, a DTS data stream containing up to 5.1 channels was formatted as PCM, plain CD players by their analogue outputs played random noise, an A/V receiver played 5.1 DTS),but the Topping D50 seems to take too long (a second or so) to recognize the incoming data as real 176.4/24 PCM or DSD so during this process there's a "click" that sometimes is loud enough and may hurt one's speakers, tweeters most of all.
Did I get a faulty unit or other forum members that play DSD over PCM via digital coaxial have also experienced this problem?
The device I use to play my music files is Sony's UBP X-800 UHD BD player, the cable is an Amazon Basics 80 cm. (I think, it doesn't get to 1 meter) that has never given me any problems with the D30 and I'm powering the Topping D50 with an EC Technology 22400 powerbank that has a solid output of 5 Volts, 2 Amps.
Thanks in advance for your input.

 

[solderdude]

I don't understand why after 15khz the distortion is not shown, i always been curious about that, i might ask the owner of the site @solderdude

The reason is simple... 2nd harmonic of 15kHz = 30kHz.
30kHz is the limit of the sweep.
3rd harmonic of 10kHz = 30kHz so 10kHz is the limit of the 3rd harmonics.
4th harm of 7.5kHz = 30kHz etc.

Tyll derives the THD (all harmonics + noise) with a different method. It cannot distinguish between harmonics which is an important factor for the audibility.


Have you checked for hairs touching the membrane or bigger dust particles in/on/touching the driver ?

I have measured headphones with different cables and different 'flat' amps and never found any hint of 'roll-off' in the treble unless the amp measures rolled-off in the audible range already.

 

[Triplefun]

Hello to all forum members. I'm new here and this is my first post.
I got here looking for information on the Topping D50 which I've had for two weeks, I previously owned the Topping D30 but I sold it to get the D50.
The main reason I got the Topping D50 was to have native DSD playing, I get this by getting all my SACD collection ripped to ISO and then extracting the individual tracks with ISO2DSD. I then do DSDoverPCM files out of my DSD files with dBPoweramp which has the option to convert DSD to PCM or do these DoP files, either as wav or FLAC. These can be played by any device that plays wav or FLAC, if it outputs the files at its actual resolution without any tampering, the D50 will recognize them as DSD 64. But I have a problem that I already reported to Topping. As DoP files are wav of FLAC files with a resolution of 176.4/24 with the actual DSD data stream embbeded on it (like they did back in the 90's with DTS CD's, a DTS data stream containing up to 5.1 channels was formatted as PCM, plain CD players by their analogue outputs played random noise, an A/V receiver played 5.1 DTS),but the Topping D50 seems to take too long (a second or so) to recognize the incoming data as real 176.4/24 PCM or DSD so during this process there's a "click" that sometimes is loud enough and may hurt one's speakers, tweeters most of all.
Did I get a faulty unit or other forum members that play DSD over PCM via digital coaxial have also experienced this problem?
The device I use to play my music files is Sony's UBP X-800 UHD BD player, the cable is an Amazon Basics 80 cm. (I think, it doesn't get to 1 meter) that has never given me any problems with the D30 and I'm powering the Topping D50 with an EC Technology 22400 powerbank that has a solid output of 5 Volts, 2 Amps.
Thanks in advance for your input.

Do you have access to a player that supports native dad over USB?

 

[Kiko1974]

Do you have access to a player that supports native dad over USB?

You mean a computer like a Windows 10 laptop.

 

[Triplefun]

You mean a computer like a Windows 10 laptop.

Yes. You could load something like daphile from usb to ram without disturbing your notebook windows install. Daphile is easy to configure and execute and will let you realise the true value of your dac. It supports native dad playback of the topping without the need to load additional drivers. You could also use the windows notebook to check you have the latest topping firmware - see http://en.tpdz.net/support.html

 

[Kiko1974]

Do you have access to a player that supports native dad over USB?

You mean a computer like a Windows 10 laptop.

Yes. You could load something like daphile from usb to ram without disturbing your notebook windows install. Daphile is easy to configure and execute and will let you realise the true value of your dac. It supports native dad playback of the topping without the need to load additional drivers. You could also use the windows notebook to check you have the latest topping firmware - see http://en.tpdz.net/support.html

I had a Topping D30 that for me sounded great but I got the D50 as I don't want to use a computer to play music, I just want my Sony UBP X-800 to play DSD files as DSD over PCM, and it does it, with the clicking noise at the start of each track. The same happens if I connect my FiiO X-3 MK II to the Topping D50 set to output DSD as DoP, a clicking noise when I start playing an album or skip a track, so the Sony UBP X-800 is not to blame.
In a week I'll get a Panasonic UB 420 UHD BD player (I'm keeping the Sony X-800 for SACD playback) and I'm afraid I'll have the same problem with it and the Topping D50.
All in all, the Topping D50 sounds outstanding for the price.

 

[Roen]

Hello to all forum members. I'm new here and this is my first post.
I got here looking for information on the Topping D50 which I've had for two weeks, I previously owned the Topping D30 but I sold it to get the D50.
The main reason I got the Topping D50 was to have native DSD playing, I get this by getting all my SACD collection ripped to ISO and then extracting the individual tracks with ISO2DSD. I then do DSDoverPCM files out of my DSD files with dBPoweramp which has the option to convert DSD to PCM or do these DoP files, either as wav or FLAC. These can be played by any device that plays wav or FLAC, if it outputs the files at its actual resolution without any tampering, the D50 will recognize them as DSD 64. But I have a problem that I already reported to Topping. As DoP files are wav of FLAC files with a resolution of 176.4/24 with the actual DSD data stream embbeded on it (like they did back in the 90's with DTS CD's, a DTS data stream containing up to 5.1 channels was formatted as PCM, plain CD players by their analogue outputs played random noise, an A/V receiver played 5.1 DTS),but the Topping D50 seems to take too long (a second or so) to recognize the incoming data as real 176.4/24 PCM or DSD so during this process there's a "click" that sometimes is loud enough and may hurt one's speakers, tweeters most of all.
Did I get a faulty unit or other forum members that play DSD over PCM via digital coaxial have also experienced this problem?
The device I use to play my music files is Sony's UBP X-800 UHD BD player, the cable is an Amazon Basics 80 cm. (I think, it doesn't get to 1 meter) that has never given me any problems with the D30 and I'm powering the Topping D50 with an EC Technology 22400 powerbank that has a solid output of 5 Volts, 2 Amps.
Thanks in advance for your input.

Why not rip to DSF / DFF files? The D50 can do DoP or native DSD, without issue. Just make sure your source digital volume is set to max and control it with analog volume or the D50 attenuation.

 

[JohnYang1997]

The reason is simple... 2nd harmonic of 15kHz = 30kHz.
30kHz is the limit of the sweep.
3rd harmonic of 10kHz = 30kHz so 10kHz is the limit of the 3rd harmonics.
4th harm of 7.5kHz = 30kHz etc.

Tyll derives the THD (all harmonics + noise) with a different method. It cannot distinguish between harmonics which is an important factor for the audibility.


Have you checked for hairs touching the membrane or bigger dust particles in/on/touching the driver ?

I have measured headphones with different cables and different 'flat' amps and never found any hint of 'roll-off' in the treble unless the amp measures rolled-off in the audible range already.

Wasn't it 22k? So 10k is about the upper limit for 2nd harmonic and 7k for 3rd. Oh it's the other site you guys were talking about. My bad.

 

[solderdude]

most DIYers measure at 44k but I measure at 192k but the sweep stops at 30kHz because my mic. doesn't go higher.

should have mentioned it's about my plots but it was what Viper was talking about.