Review and Measurements of Topping D50 DAC

[Toku]

Received message from "Hi-Fi College Store" on Aliexpress, what's weird is that it does say there is plenty of stock I don't know what the problem is

HI
Thank you for your purchase.
Your order payment is successful.
But it needs to wait until April 20 before the goods are shipped.
For some of us we are very sorry.
Can you add more time?
Inconvenience to you, please forgive me.

 

[Toku]

It will not be a simple production delay. This is my imagination.

A big trouble has occurred in D50, and shipment is currently delayed.
Large noise appears in ASIO (Native) playback of DSD with D50.
I reviewed the noise that is occurring in my D50 on Japan's amazon.jp. We uploaded the video at the same time, so please check what kind of noise it is.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/custome...vw_btm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07BGTC664#wasThisHelpful

 

[amirm]

Very strange in the way the noise fades up. Will be interesting to see what the fix will be. I will try to duplicate when I get home. Does it happen with any DSD file?

 

[Netspirit]

D50 supports 7 filter modes (selectable when you press the power button):

1. Apodizing fast rolloff
2. Minimum phase slow rolloff
3. Minimum phase fast rolloff
4. Linear phase slow rolloff
5. Linear phase fast rolloff
6. Brick wall
7. Corrected minimum phase fast rolloff

Which filter would be preferable? I'd imagine it would be the one with the minimum amount of pre-ringing, considering that post-ringing is largely masked by our auditory perception?

 

[amirm]

Which filter would be preferable? I'd imagine it would be the one with the minimum amount of pre-ringing, considering that post-ringing is largely masked by our auditory perception?

Such ringing is mostly visible when the DAC is asked to reproduce an artificial signal with infinite bandwidth. Feed it band-limited material as the represents how music is encoded, and much of this ringing disappears.

As such, I personally prefer 'normal' reconstruction filters.

 

[Toku]

Very strange in the way the noise fades up. Will be interesting to see what the fix will be. I will try to duplicate when I get home. Does it happen with any DSD file?

This noise occurs in all DSD files when in ASIO (native) mode.
However, it is not 100% occurrence.
The USB driver was reinstalled several times from Topping's HP.
Switching the USB cable from the PC from D50 to D10 will work perfectly.
I am inquiring about this matter by e-mail to a Chinese dealer, but I have not yet solved it.

 

[Veri]

It will not be a simple production delay. This is my imagination.

A big trouble has occurred in D50, and shipment is currently delayed.
Large noise appears in ASIO (Native) playback of DSD with D50.
I reviewed the noise that is occurring in my D50 on Japan's amazon.jp. We uploaded the video at the same time, so please check what kind of noise it is.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/custome...vw_btm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07BGTC664#wasThisHelpful

Have you also reported your finding to Topping? Are they aware?

As such, I personally prefer 'normal' reconstruction filters.

Hi amir, what is an example of a 'normal' reconstruction filter? I intended on using the Brickwall filter is that one OK?

 

[Toku]

Have you also reported your finding to Topping? Are they aware?

I have not told the Topping about this matter yet.
I found other people who suffer from the same symptoms as I am, so I will report to Topping soon.
However, I also ordered DX 7s to AliExpress. So I also want to check the operation of DX 7s.

 

[mtmercer]

1st post. Thanks to Amir to the great info provided in all the reviews! I've ordered this DAC and I plan to pair it with the following linear power supply:

https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/hi-f...er-supply-usb-115v-to-5v-2a-25va-p-12581.html

 

[trl]

My 2 cents: I would choose the 5V/2A plug from rear instead of the 5V/3.5A from front, mostly because for the 5V/3.5A plug the PCB traces are getting from under the transformer (see pic here: https://www.audiophonics.fr/27327-t...noise-power-supply-usb-115v-to-5v-2a-25va.jpg).

 

[amirm]

1st post. Thanks to Amir to the great info provided in all the reviews! I've ordered this DAC and I plan to pair it with the following linear power supply:

https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/hi-f...er-supply-usb-115v-to-5v-2a-25va-p-12581.html

Thanks. That is pretty reasonable for a linear supply. Nice that it is made to provide USB out versus me having to make a cable for my dedicated lab supply.

 

[skrekk]

A big trouble has occurred in D50, and shipment is currently delayed.
Large noise appears in ASIO (Native) playback of DSD with D50.

The way it's been described it sounds like a thermal problem with the DAC. Given the pics I've seen of the D50 I wondered whether that might be an issue given that there's apparently no thermal pad to conduct heat directly from the chip to the case and the tight case is restricting airflow. Seems like there was some miscommunication between the PCB guy and the machinist on the case design. If that's what it is it'll be an easy fix.

An easy way to test this is to remove the board from the case and play the same DSD file while a fan is blowing on the board.

The case was obviously designed with both thermal conduction and EMI reduction in mind but unless there's an appropriate conduction pad (and properly sized metal stack to the case) it won't work well and will actually make localized thermal problems much worse due to the lack of airflow in the case. It's also possible that even if the ES9038 has an exposed thermal pad on the bottom that Topping didn't connect it to an appropriate power plane, but even if they did it might not be enough given the small size of the board. I suspect they might be trying to use the mounting screws to conduct heat between the ground plane and the case but that's not a very reliable technique.

I know that the thermally conductive silicone pads come in a wide range of thickness but people will be better off using a thin one and filling the gap with a chunk of aluminum and using JB Weld or something to adhere that to the case (or just have a thin pad on both ends and use some other technique to keep it in place).

When the board is mounted in the case how much of a gap is there between the case and the top of the ES9038? Given the small size of the ES9038, if there's enough room the simplest fix would be putting a flat head machine screw or hex bolt in the case directly above the chip. That way you could easily adjust the gap and the pressure on the silicone pad. If there's not enough room as is then you could drill or mill out part of the case in that region since the case looked pretty thick there, and there's enough room between both chips for 2 screws.

 

[dogged]

I bought the Topping D50 based on the reviews and measurements here. I received it yesterday and only had an hour to play with it. I have it connected to my desktop via usb, after installing the drivers for windows 10 and installing the relevant components and settings on foobar. Red book and hirez 96kh flacs were detected and played fine. I then loaded some sacd iso which played back through foobar at dsd64 stereo and it was fine. I then played the dsd64 5.1 tracks and the DAC would stutter occasionally. I then played a test dsd256 stereo file that i downloaded from 2L, and the DAC just started stuttering/spluttering immediately (i.e. as if the processor couldn't keep up with it). I was wondering whether anyone else had this problem or if I need to change settings on my computer? Thanks.

 

[amirm]

I plan to do some D50 DSD tests. Please stand by.

And oh, welcome to the forum!

 

[Blumlein 88]

RANT ON/

This isn't directed at any one company or any people, but this is what I dislike about the proliferation of formats and the idea higher sample rates and bit depths are automatically a benefit. Testing one of these devices thoroughly in every configuration with every possible issue with every format and sample rate is moving in the direction of AVR receivers. Has anyone ever tested every single sound format, channel number, sample rate and bit depth for every combination on a modern AVR? Could you do that before the design is replaced?

I'm okay with 24 bit and 192 khz max (actually we don't need more than 96 khz). We now have DACs that are 32 bit, 384 khz or increasingly 768 khz PCM (there aren't even any recordings in that last number and damn few in the 384 range). Is there any reason to think we won't see 1536 khz rates in a couple or three years? DSD if you can't do DSD512 and some are out with DSD1024 some will pass on a DAC. Again few recordings at DSD512 and very few (though there are a handful) at DSD1024. I'm sure DSD2048 will be the norm in less than 5 years. Here is a place upsampling to DSD2048 already. Is there any hardware to play this?

https://www.rootmastersound.com/rm/

Sorry for the off topic rant.

RANT OFF/

 

[dogged]

Hi Amirn and Blumlein,

@ Amirn, Ok Thanks, I will wait for your tests.
@Blumlein 88 , I know what you mean, especially when redbook is usually adequate for most consumer audio. I was just putting the D50 through its paces since its' advertisement made so much about being able to play all these formats, and to see if my unit was ok before leaving feedback on their website.

 

[zenki]

Hmm here's me 2c

I used foobar2k with the d50 and there're some driver issues. (I used latest drivers, not the one from Topping)
Initial driver (foo_dsd_asio)
Playing DSD file won't work but other music files (mp3, flac) will and they get converted to DSD512 (probably a waste of resources).

So use DSD Transcoder.
DSD file works but other music files no longer get converted to DSD (Not even sure that flac files should get converted to DSD either).

For the April issue, that's only for the silver colour AFAIK from Aliexpress dealer.
For thermal issue, it only runs warm, not even close to CPU hot.

Hope this helps

P.S. And yes d50 does make a difference in audio quality, coming from a Audigy ZS 2, especially for HQ music files.

 

[amirm]

So far, I am having no problem playing DSD files through Roon using WASAPI/DoP. Here is an example from Blue Coast Records playing DSD256 as I type this:

 

[skrekk]

For thermal issue, it only runs warm, not even close to CPU hot.

I presume you're referring to the case temp? The problem is that without good direct thermal conduction between the DAC and the case there's no easy way to tell how hot the chip is really getting under load.

The fact that the noise ramps up or down as one transitions between modes indicates a likely thermal problem. But I wonder if you're losing lock? If so that should be shown on the display, and if that's what's happening then it could be a Windows driver issue or a problem with the settings in Foobar.

 

[amirm]

DSD128 no problem with Sound Liaison sampler either: