Are you just running with a talking point or what I measured in the review?
I'm basing it on what you measured in the review. Of course my interpretation may be off, but
@solderdude shares my assessment and he has a ton of experience in this realm.
I clearly showed that USB noise bleeds into the analog output of the DAC. Even if you are not using the DAC itself! Such noise is frequently seen by users as they hear it when there is no music playing, or during quiet parts. I have never seen this in any Topping product. Or SMSL. Or plenty of other competitors to this product.
Yes, and with the measurements you obtained with your rig I'd say the noise will not be heard. You mention that your measurements might be close to a best case scenario because you use a hub. I alluded to the fact that this noise could be a problem in two earlier posts before the one you took issue with:
#14
Amir's "YMMV" warning about potentially higher noise than tested notwithstanding,
# 17
Though Amir has a point that with poor isolation, it could be worse on someone else's setup than it was here.
But of course if someone has noticeable noise, they can install an isolator. I believe most people won't and are better off not having to pay for the part pre-emptively.
Transparency per peer reviewed research requires performance well above what the Magni produces. I am talking about real psychoacoustic analysis of such things as noise relative to payback level. Not hand waiving that everything is transparent.
I agree to an extent, though it's a slippery concept. There's "transparent" as in, indistinguishable to all people in all situations all of the time. There's "transparent" in "my 50-year old ears can't hear the difference." My happy medium is "transparent to people of good hearing while simultaneously transparent to me and to anyone who will conceivably hear my system and care." Anything beyond that is pointless to the buyer other than for people who prize engineering for engineering's sake. And there's nothing wrong with that!
I'm not in love with the interpretation of the research that prevails here, certainly not the -120dB threshold you suggest in one of the threads on this topic. Given all the other peer-reviewed research (see Tom Nousaine's archives) on how people are unable to differentiate level-matched amps at 1% THD+N. I'm willing to concede that there are circumstances/people where < 1% can be distinguished, but there's a galaxy between 40dB SINAD and 120dB SINAD, and for all practical purposes 80dB isn't holding anyone back.
But we're not talking about SINAD here, so maybe I've gone far afield. I already discussed the USB noise bleed issue. Lets discuss the IMD, which as far as I can tell are the only other "objectionable" measurements you found.
I also showed distortion in IMD at low level playback. Crank up the volume on some softly recorded music and you may also hear that as well.
I admit I don't have any experience dealing with this, nor do I know the effect this would have. My intuition tells me this is a nothing-burger, but perhaps I'm wrong. What kind of tracks are you considering? How cranked up are you talking about? For me, it's *exceedingly* rare for me to do something like this. Mostly because if a signal approaching 0dBFS came along, I'd blow my eardrums out. And I use ReplayGain for my personal collection and light loudness normalization on Spotify.
The closest I have come is playing Ry Cooder's and VM Bhatt's Isa Lei quite loud before I enabled ReplayGain. It's a very quiet track due to a very restrained performance and Kavichandran Alexander's idiosyncratic (though superlative) recording technique. RMS is -36dBFS with the peak at -14dB. It sounds very good played loud. Obviously this is a job for ReplayGain, but I *have* listened to it super loud without ReplayGain before, for music pleasure and not for proving a point on the Internet. So going with that example (I am open to better ones), how loud would I have to play it before peer reviewed research says I'd be able to hear a difference? Bonus points for linking to the research.
I have found Schiit products which readily produce hum due to improper grounding. I have documented how to fix it. See this:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...otunheim-headphone-amplifier.3733/#post-89406
If this is a response to anything I said, I don't understand how. I'm certainly not accusing you of singling Schiit out. I'm not really accusing you of anything. I just think this forum as a whole prizes measurements well beyond their auditory significance. Which is totally fine, but then they couch it in terms of sound quality rather than enjoyment of having an exceptionally well-made product.
You would hand waive this as also being transparent, yes?
This is not the DUT, but since you ask I don't know. First, I don't know how to characterize the hum. Maybe you can help me, is it better characterized as noise or distortion? It's not *harmonic* distortion since it has nothing to do with the tone. But is it noise in the same sense as when you tell us to ignore the noise floor on those SINAD charts because the AP uses math to artificially lower the noise floor? I have no clue.
If that hump is rightly interpreted as -90dBFS at 60Hz, I'd say that it's transparent to almost everyone almost all the time, but I'm not sure if I'd call it transparent full stop. If we were listening to the rare piece of music that might benefit from a full 125dB of headroom, maybe someone could hear a stereo turned up that way? I don't know.
So for heaven's sake, don't give them permission to do much worse than they could be doing. It comes at no expense to you to get Topping class performance from them.
My headphone setup is a Topping D10S -> L30 II, which is a little more expensive than what we see here, and was almost certainly manufactured for far less. Anecdotally, neither company has covered itself in glory on the reliability and customer service fronts. The L30 II came out quickly after the OG L30 because the L30 I *destroyed headphones*. The L30 II is SOTA, the D10S not so much but certainly better than shown here. I'm under no illusions that I could hear the difference between my rig and the DUT, but there's little price premium and I too enjoy excellent engineering. But for one setup to be "5 stars! Such amaze!" And for the other to split votes between "poor," and "not terrible," when the sonic differences are going to be nonexistent in almost all circumstances and possibly de minimis for a couple people strikes me as strange and misguided.
