Review and Measurements of Topping D50 DAC

[Michael Guntsche]

hi, I was about to write a lenghty post of the top of my head (since I am not in front of my machine right now) but then I found a nice writeup regarding DSD support here

https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.co...-part-3-new-experimental-sacd-plugin-v-0-9-x/

in short asioproxy is the old old old way to get DSD out of foobar so it is possible that there are bugs in it. Can you please try above mentioned methods 1.) and 2.) and see if you can reproduce the issue?

 

[Michael Guntsche]

As for native linux support, can someone post an lspci output with the D50 attached so we can quickly check if it should have native support, otherwise quirks.c needs to be modified.

 

[Toku]

Noise generation varies depending on how to switch songs.

Switching DSD <> DSD Noise generation
Switching DSD <> WAV / FLAC No noise

During playback> Select another song> Noise occurs when playing immediately.
If you change the operation as follows
During playback> Stop> Select another song> Play operation normally.

Noise is generated only when you move to a song of the same bit rate by manual operation.
Noise is not generated when playing multiple songs such as an album consecutively and manually sending the song backwards and returning.

2.8 MHz <> 2.8 MHz Noise generation
5.6 MHz <> 5.6 MHz Noise generation
11.2 MHz <> 11.2 MHz Noise generation

Switching songs between different bit rates
11.2 MHz <> 5.6 MHz Good
11.2 MHz <> 2.8 MHz Good
5.6 MHz <> 2.8 MHz Good

I found out the relationship beyond examination.
But connecting a USB cable from D50 to D10 will work perfectly.
Now I am very confused by this trouble.
I think the most suspicious thing is in USB drivers downloaded from Topping.

I am not good at English, so I'm worried whether I can convey what I want to say well.

The FB2K I installed is as follows.

FB2K Ver 1.3.17 Down load from foobar 2000 HP
ASIO Proxy 0.7.2 Down load from Topping HP

 

[dwalme]

The FB2K I installed is as follows.

FB2K Ver 1.3.17 Down load from foobar 2000 HP
ASIO Proxy 0.7.2 Down load from Topping HP

The Windows drivers for the D50 do some dynamic latency adjustment depending on source signal. I wonder if that is working properly when sending from ASIO Proxy. I don't use Foobar or ASIO proxy where I use my D50, but from my experience with ASIO proxy it's not difficult to get into a situation where you'll have issues.

Can you test from an application that can send to the native ASIO Topping driver directly? Roon and JRiver both do it. Both cost money, but both have trial periods.

I'm using the Topping Driver v4.14.0.39649 dated 2018-01-08 and the device works perfectly. No noise at DSD512 and no noises when switching between different DSD rates or between PCM & DSD. But that is when playing to the ASIO driver natively from Roon or JRiver.

 

[Michael Guntsche]

The FB2K I installed is as follows.

FB2K Ver 1.3.17 Down load from foobar 2000 HP
ASIO Proxy 0.7.2 Down load from Topping HP

See https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...ts-of-topping-d50-dac.2403/page-24#post-74155 for an alternative driver setup with foobar otherwise test it with Roon or JRiver like dwalme said.

 

[Krunok]

hi, I was about to write a lenghty post of the top of my head (since I am not in front of my machine right now) but then I found a nice writeup regarding DSD support here

https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.co...-part-3-new-experimental-sacd-plugin-v-0-9-x/

in short asioproxy is the old old old way to get DSD out of foobar so it is possible that there are bugs in it. Can you please try above mentioned methods 1.) and 2.) and see if you can reproduce the issue?

Heh.. And what would be the point of that when he already tried DSD Native mode with 5 different players?

Btw, method 1 gives you DoP which he claims is working anyway. Method 2 gives you Native DSD but DSD Transcoder is not really a very stable product - for me it stopped working after few days and now I cannot get it back to work whatever I do.

 

[Michael Guntsche]

Heh.. And what would be the point of that when he already tried DSD Native mode with 5 different players?

Btw, method 1 gives you DoP which he claims is working anyway. Method 2 gives you Native DSD but DSD Transcoder is not really a very stable product - for me it stopped working after few days and now I cannot get it back to work whatever I do.

To rule out a driver issue with foobar (or better extension issue).

 

[Krunok]

Guys, he already said he tried it with Sound it! Pro and that is a serious piece of software which supports DSD Native playback and recording, so I really see no point for him in installing Roon and/or Jriver.

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/sound-it-8-pro-for-windows-by-internet-co-ltd

 

[Krunok]

To rule out a driver issue with foobar (or better extension issue).

He said that all 5 players he tried are behaving the same.

 

[dwalme]

He said that all 5 players he tried are behaving the same.

Has anyone confirmed that they can play to their D50 with any of the 5 players that he mentioned?

Until we have confirmation of that it's hard to narrow down where his issues are. We have two apps that have been confirmed to work that haven't been tested on a computer that's having issues.

Either test the non-working apps on a working system to verify they work or test the known working apps on the non-working system. In either case we learn more about the situation.

If I have some time this evening I'll test foobar with ASIO proxy on my D50.

 

[Krunok]

Has anyone confirmed that they can play to their D50 with any of the 5 players that he mentioned?

Until we have confirmation of that it's hard to narrow down where his issues are. We have two apps that have been confirmed to work that haven't been tested on a computer that's having issues.

Either test the non-working apps on a working system to verify they work or test the known working apps on the non-working system. In either case we learn more about the situation.

If I have some time this evening I'll test foobar with ASIO proxy on my D50.

He has tested on mutliple computers and got the same result.

ASIO proxy is obsolete, in order to get DSD Native with foobar you need to use DSD Transcoder, as described here in Section I, Mode 2: https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.co...-part-3-new-experimental-sacd-plugin-v-0-9-x/

 

[amirm]

I am trying to test its ASIO interface with Roon but with the dropbox drivers I found, Roon complains it can't initialize the device. Is there another set of drivers? If I can replicate the problem with Roon, I can contact Topping and add my voice for them to fix this.

This happens when I try to enable "ASIO for Generic USB Device" which is what pops up when I connect the D50 with the asio driver package installed.

Toku-san, do you have a link to where you got your asio driver package?

 

[Veri]

@Toku your hands-on experience would be appreciated, are you on Windows or OS X by the way?

 

[rikm]

I am trying to test its ASIO interface with Roon but with the dropbox drivers I found, Roon complains it can't initialize the device. Is there another set of drivers? If I can replicate the problem with Roon, I can contact Topping and add my voice for them to fix this.

...talking to Topping would be good amirm, and if you can mention the linux issue that would the best way to get to the kernel maintainers...requests from hardware manufacturers are usually welcomed by those who look after the various bits and pieces of the kernel and it would speed the process

As I mentioned a couple of pages back, the D50 is seen by the kernel as a USB device but is seems to mask the Xmos chip. The USB ID is below and it may just be a matter of adding a line to quirks.c, the piece of code where such misbehaving USB audio devices are listed

...and from the issues that Toku-san reports for his other Topping devices, we may want to see if those have the same or different ID strings and mention those to Topping as well


=======

For instance, the line in quirks.c that covers the Gustard X12 is:
>>>---> case USB_ID(0x20b1, 0x000a): /* Gustard DAC-X20U */


and the one for the LKS D4 is:
>>>---> case USB_ID(0x16d0, 0x071a): /* Amanero - Combo384 */



--- usb info for Topping D50 ---

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 152a:8750 Thesycon Systemsoftware & Consulting GmbH
Device Descriptor:
bLength 18
bDescriptorType 1
bcdUSB 2.00
bDeviceClass 239 Miscellaneous Device
bDeviceSubClass 2
bDeviceProtocol 1 Interface Association
bMaxPacketSize0 64
idVendor 0x152a Thesycon Systemsoftware & Consulting GmbH
idProduct 0x8750
bcdDevice 6.f2
iManufacturer 1 Topping
iProduct 3 D50
iSerial 0
bNumConfigurations 2

---

 

[Michael Guntsche]

...talking to Topping would be good amirm, and if you can mention the linux issue that would the best way to get to the kernel maintainers...requests from hardware manufacturers are usually welcomed by those who look after the various bits and pieces of the kernel and it would speed the process

As I mentioned a couple of pages back, the D50 is seen by the kernel as a USB device but is seems to mask the Xmos chip. The USB ID is below and it may just be a matter of adding a line to quirks.c, the piece of code where such misbehaving USB audio devices are listed

...and from the issues that Toku-san reports for his other Topping devices, we may want to see if those have the same or different ID strings and mention those to Topping as well


=======

For instance, the line in quirks.c that covers the Gustard X12 is:
>>>---> case USB_ID(0x20b1, 0x000a): /* Gustard DAC-X20U */


and the one for the LKS D4 is:
>>>---> case USB_ID(0x16d0, 0x071a): /* Amanero - Combo384 */



--- usb info for Topping D50 ---

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 152a:8750 Thesycon Systemsoftware & Consulting GmbH
Device Descriptor:
bLength 18
bDescriptorType 1
bcdUSB 2.00
bDeviceClass 239 Miscellaneous Device
bDeviceSubClass 2
bDeviceProtocol 1 Interface Association
bMaxPacketSize0 64
idVendor 0x152a Thesycon Systemsoftware & Consulting GmbH
idProduct 0x8750
bcdDevice 6.f2
iManufacturer 1 Topping
iProduct 3 D50
iSerial 0
bNumConfigurations 2

---

In this case it is not so much about missbehaving. Out of the box native DSD is only enabled if a drive is mentioned in this file.
Ropieee is for example adding DACs this way ... https://github.com/RoPieee/ropieee-kernel/blob/master/usb-dsd-quirks.patch or
https://github.com/lintweaker/xmos-native-dsd/tree/master/SRPMS/patches/kernel

Normally it should be enough just to add a line to quirks.c yourself and it should work since a XMOS chip is used.

 

[lotse888]

The FB2K I installed is as follows.

FB2K Ver 1.3.17 Down load from foobar 2000 HP
ASIO Proxy 0.7.2 Down load from Topping HP

Hi, Toku-san

Are there any special reasons that you are using ASIO Proxy 0.7.2? In this link quoted by others:
https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.co...-part-3-new-experimental-sacd-plugin-v-0-9-x/

It was mentioned that the 0.9.4 version is strongly recommended. Also, are you using the SACD plugin version 1.0.9?

Regards,

He has tested on mutliple computers and got the same result.

ASIO proxy is obsolete, in order to get DSD Native with foobar you need to use DSD Transcoder, as described here in Section I, Mode 2: https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.co...-part-3-new-experimental-sacd-plugin-v-0-9-x/

Well, I don't think ASIO Proxy is obsolete. I am using it with a genric es9018s DAC now (with the Amanero USB receiver) and it is working fine (with FB2K version 1.3.15).
For some reason, the DSD Transcoder did not work for me either. I downloaded and installed it without problem but just cannot select it in the menu during set up. May be it was something I did wrong but I did not explore further. Similarly, I have installed the DSD Processor plugin and did not encounter any error in setting up. But I do not think it is working either. I do all the upsampling settings under ASIO Proxy 0.9.4 using the Amanero driver as the ASIO device.

Regards,

 

[dwalme]

I am trying to test its ASIO interface with Roon but with the dropbox drivers I found, Roon complains it can't initialize the device. Is there another set of drivers? If I can replicate the problem with Roon, I can contact Topping and add my voice for them to fix this.


This happens when I try to enable "ASIO for Generic USB Device" which is what pops up when I connect the D50 with the asio driver package installed.

That is not the correct device. The ASIO device for the D50 is called "Topping USB Audio Device". The WASAPI device is called "TOPPING USB DAC".

ASIO for Generic USB Device may be associated with a Realtek driver for onboard audio.

 

[Toku]

Did I understand correctly that DSD in DoP mode works well on D50 and DX7s even with Topping ASIO driver?

D10, D50, and DX7s, the DOP playback by Topping ASIO driver works perfectly.

 

[Toku]

Hi, Toku-san

Are there any special reasons that you are using ASIO Proxy 0.7.2? In this link quoted by others:
https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.co...-part-3-new-experimental-sacd-plugin-v-0-9-x/

It was mentioned that the 0.9.4 version is strongly recommended. Also, are you using the SACD plugin version 1.0.9?

Regards,


Well, I don't think ASIO Proxy is obsolete. I am using it with a genric es9018s DAC now (with the Amanero USB receiver) and it is working fine (with FB2K version 1.3.15).
For some reason, the DSD Transcoder did not work for me either. I downloaded and installed it without problem but just cannot select it in the menu during set up. May be it was something I did wrong but I did not explore further. Similarly, I have installed the DSD Processor plugin and did not encounter any error in setting up. But I do not think it is working either. I do all the upsampling settings under ASIO Proxy 0.9.4 using the Amanero driver as the ASIO device.

Regards,

I have acquired and installed the Driver of D50 all from Topping's HP in the next step. Is the driver provided by Topping wrong?

Topping HP >> SUPPORT >> D50 drivers for Windows 7 or above >> Download from dropbox >> D50 Manual and Driver.zip

 

[Toku]

@Toku your hands-on experience would be appreciated, are you on Windows or OS X by the way?

All three PCs I tested are Windows 10 Pro x64 Ver 1709.

It seems that we will receive reply mail from Topping today and look it up also at Topping. I sent additional detailed information.