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Topping D10 2019 or D30
- Thread starter La!$
- Start date
- Tags audioengine audioengine speakers d10 dac dac review flac topping topping d10 dac topping d30
Can a good RCA cable make up for the SQ decrease of not being able to use an optical cable? Or an RCA cable is just as good as optical? If so, recommend me a good cable under $50. How about the QED cables? Also, which should I upgrade first. The RCA or the speaker wire? Currently using the stock audioengine a5+ speaker wires.
Last edited:
D10 (I chose this)
My choice was to go for simplicity (USB powered) and that fancy D10 screen
When connecting to a Pi check your power supply: according to specs the Topping D10 will use about 0.5A out of the USB port... I hear the "official" wall-wart is a little under-powered! This also depends on your Pi generation, e.g. v4 likes more juice more than v3, which in turn drinks more than v2.
- PRO: easy PC connection with only USB, no power-cord
- PRO: up to DSD256 and up to PCM 384kHz/32bits, so unlikely that any useful audio format won't play
- PRO: more "modern" ESStech ES9018k2m chip (ES9018 is from 2010/2011, the k2m from 2013)
- CON: no other digital inputs
- CON(maybe): no detailed information on how DSD is handled
- PRO: power switch + separate power supply if you want to power it with something special
- PRO: coax and toslink inputs
- PRO: can do DSD direct, i.e. bypass all processing (DSD volume + 50kHz filtereing optional)
- CON: massively older CirrusLogic CS4398 chip (2003)
- CON: no 32bit PCM, i.e. digital attenuation is less accurate
My choice was to go for simplicity (USB powered) and that fancy D10 screen
When connecting to a Pi check your power supply: according to specs the Topping D10 will use about 0.5A out of the USB port... I hear the "official" wall-wart is a little under-powered! This also depends on your Pi generation, e.g. v4 likes more juice more than v3, which in turn drinks more than v2.
D10 (I chose this)
My choice was to go for simplicity (USB powered) and that fancy D10 screen
When connecting to a Pi check your power supply: according to specs the Topping D10 will use about 0.5A out of the USB port... I hear the "official" wall-wart is a little under-powered! This also depends on your Pi generation, e.g. v4 likes more juice more than v3, which in turn drinks more than v2.
- PRO: easy PC connection with only USB, no power-cord
- PRO: up to DSD256 and up to PCM 384kHz/32bits, so unlikely that any useful audio format won't play
- PRO: more "modern" ESStech ES9018k2m chip (ES9018 is from 2010/2011, the k2m from 2013)
- CON: no other digital inputs
- CON(maybe): no detailed information on how DSD is handled
- PRO: power switch + separate power supply if you want to power it with something special
- PRO: coax and toslink inputs
- PRO: can do DSD direct, i.e. bypass all processing (DSD volume + 50kHz filtereing optional)
- CON: massively older CirrusLogic CS4398 chip (2003)
- CON: no 32bit PCM, i.e. digital attenuation is less accurate
My choice was to go for simplicity (USB powered) and that fancy D10 screen
When connecting to a Pi check your power supply: according to specs the Topping D10 will use about 0.5A out of the USB port... I hear the "official" wall-wart is a little under-powered! This also depends on your Pi generation, e.g. v4 likes more juice more than v3, which in turn drinks more than v2.
Thanks for this info! ☺️
You would use optical only if you were trying to convert the usb to optical to feed another DAC, that may not have usb in, or some other reason. For your use, it is to actually convert the digital to analog, and generate the analog signal. That will always end up going through RCA. (Or xlr, but we aren't talking about that).
Optical or coax will likely be worse than USB, since you'll be connecting the clocks via PLL.
The great thing about USB is that you'll have a jitter-free connection using a $2 cable. The USB data connection is a twisted pair differential signal, and assuming a USB2.0 or better specced cable there will be very few lost bits in your lifetime.
You'll still need a pair of RCA cables for the analog signal - sorry, no recommendations from me. I often use two strands of a high-quality RGB video cable for this since I can't (subjectively) hear the difference with expensive "interlinks" and had these available.
PS: For digital coax I've always used the 3rd strand of that high quality RGB video cable (75 ohm), they're relatively cheap and very reliable - never any glitches. Toslink has the advantage of galvanic separation of source and destination, but that comes in play when you may have a ground loop.
The great thing about USB is that you'll have a jitter-free connection using a $2 cable. The USB data connection is a twisted pair differential signal, and assuming a USB2.0 or better specced cable there will be very few lost bits in your lifetime.
You'll still need a pair of RCA cables for the analog signal - sorry, no recommendations from me. I often use two strands of a high-quality RGB video cable for this since I can't (subjectively) hear the difference with expensive "interlinks" and had these available.
PS: For digital coax I've always used the 3rd strand of that high quality RGB video cable (75 ohm), they're relatively cheap and very reliable - never any glitches. Toslink has the advantage of galvanic separation of source and destination, but that comes in play when you may have a ground loop.
US $89.99 | 2019 NEW TOPPING D10 MINI USB DAC CSS XMOS XU208 ES9018K2M OPA2134 audio amplifier Decoder
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They will sound equally good. Both connect to your speakers by rca cables. The D10 also has spdif output but why would you need that? You are converting to the analogue rca inputs of your amplified speakers. I would go for the D30 because it also has an optical input which you can use to connect eg your television.
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