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Review and Measurements of Topping DX3Pro DAC and Headphone Amp

Bigsy

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Nope, I can assure you it happens on both OSX and linux, I have tested both. Probably refer back to previous posts around having apps holding the stream open.... for want of a better word.
 

Veri

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Nope, I can assure you it happens on both OSX and linux, I have tested both. Probably refer back to previous posts around having apps holding the stream open.
Fair enough. I have Slack, Skype, Chrome, Spotify ... open. So you're saying people should have more apps open is what? :D
 

Bigsy

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Fair enough. I have Slack, Skype, Chrome, Spotify ... open. So you're saying people should have more apps open is what? :D
Well its a temp solution, in work I use a linux laptop, no toslink and don't have an easy to setup equivalent to voicemeeter so I basically have spotify open all the time with a song paused. Otherwise, every 1 slack tick turns into 2 clicks.... not to mention all the others...

That stops me annoying my colleagues.... I keep telling them the people on audio science review forum on the interwebs says they shouldn't be annoyed by the clicking but they don't listen. :(
 
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Veri

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The AKM DACs have the velvet sound technology. I'm thinking the setting in AKM chip probably matches like this with DX3pro filters.
If someone thinks otherwise we can change it.
View attachment 18389

Must be too old but I can't hear any difference :facepalm: Think I'll leave it to 'Slow', IIRC that's what my EL Dac used, too.

EDIT: I was wrong, JDS defaults to 'natural' sound, filter number 5 on the DX3.
 
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maxxevv

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Must be too old but I can't hear any difference :facepalm:
Think I'll leave it to option two, 'Slow'. I think that's what my EL Dac used, too.

Its very subtle at best from what I have played with on the ES9038PRO. Not very obvious unless its a track you know very well.
Most of the time, it makes no discernible difference to me at all, though on some specific tracks such as delicate solo vocals or instruments, they can be discerned.

So you're not alone on this ! :p

Unless the AKM implementations are that dramatic, doubt it is obvious from casual listening though.
 

bennetng

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Unless the AKM implementations are that dramatic, doubt it is obvious from casual listening though.
image.jsp

"Super Slow Roll-off" mimics NOS. ESS doesn't have this in their 7 filters.
"Sharp Roll-off" resembles "typical" filters in other DACs.
So AKM is offering two extreme choices for both camps.
Low "dispertion" looks like intermediate phase, the older AK4490 doesn't offer this filter.

So it would be funny if @amirm plot the FFT and square wave response, the differences would be more dramatic than those 7 ESS filters, at least visually.
 

Veri

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Even compared to Super Slow, NOS roll-off is more extreme though :) not sure it's really meant to go as far as NOS. Verification would be nice though yes :D
 

pejakovic1

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The winding has burned out on the one channel allowing the voltage to rise to maximum. So that is "normal."

Do you have any headphones you can test that maybe have this problem too? Maybe all units are faulty on the right channel, as early adopters we can't be careless when it comes to these things.
 

Veri

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This is the shittiest day for working ever. The DX3 Pro sound is too detailed for its own good =p

I will stick to laptop output for when I need to focus in the future lol
 

Heals0911

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Do you have any headphones you can test that maybe have this problem too?

I'm not sure if it will help, but I just opened and plugged in a set of low impedance earbuds (Philips She3590), I was planning to let them play for a while to see if the right channel is affected at all.

In the meantime, I must say, the DX3 Pro is fantastic so far, loving the quality of sound and it drives everything in my signature on low gain so far...haven't tried to HE560 just yet, stay tuned.
 

pejakovic1

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I'm not sure if it will help, but I just opened and plugged in a set of low impedance earbuds (Philips She3590), I was planning to let them play for a while to see if the right channel is affected at all.

In the meantime, I must say, the DX3 Pro is fantastic so far, loving the quality of sound and it drives everything in my signature on low gain so far...haven't tried to HE560 just yet, stay tuned.

My hd660 still working fine after 10 hours of use... so let's see if @amirm can test this.
 

Veri

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In the meantime, I must say, the DX3 Pro is fantastic so far, loving the quality of sound and it drives everything in my signature on low gain so far...haven't tried to HE560 just yet, stay tuned.

I'm definitely intrigued if its high gain will be enough for the HE560. because at that point, why even consider a secondary amp :D
 

Heals0911

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I'm definitely intrigued if its high gain will be enough for the HE560. because at that point, why even consider a secondary amp :D

So, I know that volume is very subjective but using a well mastered track, at -15db on LOW gain, I'm listening at my everyday normal level. I cant get below -8db without starting to feel uncomfortable. I suspect most people will prefer high gain, but the good news is that the DX3 Pro drives them just fine for me, no need for any more power. :)
 

MattG

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Nope, I can assure you it happens on both OSX and linux, I have tested both. Probably refer back to previous posts around having apps holding the stream open.... for want of a better word.

Do you know how your Linux desktop audio is configured?

I used my DX3 Pro via USB to a Raspberry Pi, which is a dedicated MPD player. Audio config is minimal ALSA: in other words, which ever application is using the audio device gets exclusive control. This obviously makes sense for this particular environment, since the computer itself is dedicated exclusively to MPD. And with this config, I have only expected clicking, i.e. unit startup/shutdown, and changing music sample rates. Stop/start playing, pause, music seek, etc: no clicking.

I believe most Linux desktop distributions ship with PulseAudio. ALSA is still there, but it's the lowest layer (drivers, mixers, some other low-level stuff). PulseAudio is a daemon that is supposed to simplify the communication between applications and the actual audio hardware (i.e. ALSA). I personally don't like PulseAudio, and always make a point to go out of my way to disable it on any system where I want to be sure of "bit perfect" playback, as PulseAudio (at least by default) will potentially molest your audio stream in any way it sees fit.

So I suspect you get clicking under Linux for the same reasons you get clicking under Windows. That is, a bunch of different applications all trying to use the same audio device, and the "intermediary" (PulseAudio, Windows mixer, etc) doing it's part to make everyone "play nice".

Depending on how much time and effort you want to put into it, you might be able to change your Linux sound config in such a way to get the best of both worlds, i.e. no clicking but still the ability to share the audio device. It's been many years since I've done this, but I'm pretty sure ALSA has builtin functionality that allows applications to share the audio device. The problem is, ALSA config is (IMO) not intuitive and poorly documented. (And I think that was one of the big drivers for creating PulseAudio, but why didn't they just put their effort into making ALSA easier to use?)

There's also JACK (JACK Audio Connection Kit), a sound daemon that has similar functionality as PulseAudio. JACK is much older, and was originally designed for low-latency audio applications (i.e. studio work). I played with JACK a bit back in college (nearly 20 years ago), but haven't touched it since.

And I think OSS (open sound system) is still being maintained. That actually pre-dates ALSA!

There are almost certainly more options of which I'm not aware.

To be clear, this is largely conjecture, but based on the fact that Linux allows you to tweak everything to the nth degree, I'm willing to bet there's a viable workaround. The biggest caveat though, is that some applications are dropping support for everything except PulseAudio. IIRC, one of the big browsers (Chrome or Firefox) only supports PulseAudio. So maybe the first step is to just play with PulseAudio a bit and see if there's a quick/easy win.
 

jsmiller58

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Again, it depends on peoples use case. Let them decide if its a deal breaker for them or not.
I think you (and several others) should follow your own advice. You seem to be slapping down people who are not as rabidly upset as you are. You have made your point - quite forcefully, dramatically, and insistently. You don’t like your unit, it does not meet your expectations. Return it. Let others now make up their own minds. You have posted enough times here that people will take your input into consideration. Otherwise it seems that you only will be satisfied when everyone gets into lockstep behind you. Sorry, not going to happen. You are already hearing that some are ok with the unit for their use case. Be gracious and tell them that you are happy for them. We already know where you stand on this unit.
 

Bigsy

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Thing is I've not told anyone how they should feel about their unit, quite the opposite if you actually read what you quoted. I think the patreon fan bois need to get off their high horses and stop dragging up twisted quotes from days ago.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

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Thing is I've not told anyone how they should feel about their unit, quite the opposite if you actually read what you quoted. I think the patreon fan bois need to get off their high horses and stop dragging crap up from days ago.
You are seeing complaints about your posts in this thread, and I am getting it in private just the same. Read your posts before submitting them. If they are editorial, complaining, etc., don't post them. It is just annoying to wade through them. Your issues are noted and all you are doing now is making enemies for yourself. I was just out walking in the field and even the deer complained about your posts! :D
 

Bigsy

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In response to people attacking me.

Why don't you ask them to leave it? I've been trying to have a perfectly reasonable discussion this evening then jsmiller comes at me for no reason with a random quote from days back.
 

Bigsy

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Do you know how your Linux desktop audio is configured?

I used my DX3 Pro via USB to a Raspberry Pi, which is a dedicated MPD player. Audio config is minimal ALSA: in other words, which ever application is using the audio device gets exclusive control. This obviously makes sense for this particular environment, since the computer itself is dedicated exclusively to MPD. And with this config, I have only expected clicking, i.e. unit startup/shutdown, and changing music sample rates. Stop/start playing, pause, music seek, etc: no clicking.

I believe most Linux desktop distributions ship with PulseAudio. ALSA is still there, but it's the lowest layer (drivers, mixers, some other low-level stuff). PulseAudio is a daemon that is supposed to simplify the communication between applications and the actual audio hardware (i.e. ALSA). I personally don't like PulseAudio, and always make a point to go out of my way to disable it on any system where I want to be sure of "bit perfect" playback, as PulseAudio (at least by default) will potentially molest your audio stream in any way it sees fit.

So I suspect you get clicking under Linux for the same reasons you get clicking under Windows. That is, a bunch of different applications all trying to use the same audio device, and the "intermediary" (PulseAudio, Windows mixer, etc) doing it's part to make everyone "play nice".

Depending on how much time and effort you want to put into it, you might be able to change your Linux sound config in such a way to get the best of both worlds, i.e. no clicking but still the ability to share the audio device. It's been many years since I've done this, but I'm pretty sure ALSA has builtin functionality that allows applications to share the audio device. The problem is, ALSA config is (IMO) not intuitive and poorly documented. (And I think that was one of the big drivers for creating PulseAudio, but why didn't they just put their effort into making ALSA easier to use?)

There's also JACK (JACK Audio Connection Kit), a sound daemon that has similar functionality as PulseAudio. JACK is much older, and was originally designed for low-latency audio applications (i.e. studio work). I played with JACK a bit back in college (nearly 20 years ago), but haven't touched it since.

And I think OSS (open sound system) is still being maintained. That actually pre-dates ALSA!

There are almost certainly more options of which I'm not aware.

To be clear, this is largely conjecture, but based on the fact that Linux allows you to tweak everything to the nth degree, I'm willing to bet there's a viable workaround. The biggest caveat though, is that some applications are dropping support for everything except PulseAudio. IIRC, one of the big browsers (Chrome or Firefox) only supports PulseAudio. So maybe the first step is to just play with PulseAudio a bit and see if there's a quick/easy win.
I don't have my laptop in front of me but it does have both ALSA and pulseaudio on it, not sure what is active for the dac as I've not had a chance in work to delve too much, but it will be the default for phonon gstreamer, I suspect pulseaudio. But I think its working correctly, I am getting exclusive control and the clicks that go with it, its only when all streams stop the device will click and click again when it renegotiates the same sample rate.

The behaviour is identical to on windows and OSX when there is absolutely 100% nothing producing an output it will click.
 
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