Topping Centaurus - teardown

[Vreek Fonq]

And what is this?

 

[BeeKay]

Either an electrical problem or simply some dirt?

 

[Sokel]

And what is this? View attachment 444474

Good eye!

Dirt probably but could be worse if it's solder residual.

 

[Vreek Fonq]

Being a photographer by trade, taking by the amount of reflection and highlight crush, I suspect it to be metallic in substance.

 

[NoteMakoti]

You made me read it one more time and I stillI don’t see any mention of the OS mode that was active at the time measurements were taken. What am I missing?

From the review:

With default filter, there is still some out of band noise to reduce performance but impact is low:

Go to "non-oversampling" mode and ultrasonic noise shoots through the noise, causing that off-the-charts green line. Best not to have a tweeter that attempts to go above 20 kHz!

 

[gvl]

That’s not what Golden Sound is complaining about.

 

[whydan]

Being a photographer by trade, taking by the amount of reflection and highlight crush, I suspect it to be metallic in substance.

You do have a really good eye!
I am trying to have my best shot with my old Canon 6D&100macro, that is a metallic.

 

[xanalog]

@whydan,
Before even reading the replies, I must commend you on your work: Excellent!
This is truly a "Teardowns 201" tutorial, for all to follow... in your footsteps.

 

[audiofun]

The CS43198 is used to render the FFT display, apparently: https://youtube.com/watch?v=myeVh77xedk&t=180

cs43198 does not have FFT functionality. It's there to generate the playback signal in full amplitude, which you cannot get from the DAC output as user may mute or use volume control.
The SYNWIT chip shown in the teardown is a display driver that has 12-bit ADC functionality. It gets signal from CS43198 analog output, and compute the FFT.
CS43198 is chosen as it's relatively easy to implement with low cost ($10). cheaper options may either need complex voltage regulation and output buffers (such as cheap AKM ones) which adds costs or does not have hi-res / DSD functionality (such as pcm5102A).

 

[egellings]

And what is this? View attachment 444474

Looks like a solder ball. That can happen if too much solder paste is laid down onto the PCB traces in the kiln-heated soldering process.

 

[staticV3]

Looks like a solder ball. That can happen if too much solder paste is laid down onto the PCB traces in the kiln-heated soldering process.

Better picture here:

Topping Centaurus - teardown

And what is this?

www.audiosciencereview.com

Looks more like a brass fragment, perhaps from a mounting screw?