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Topping D10s USB DAC and Bridge Review

jmz

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The surface of the aluminum case of Chinese products is electrically insulated by an anodized coating.
And the aluminum case and the ground of the PC board are not connected. Therefore, the shielding effect is low against high frequencies.
In addition, Intel's NUC started to use more plastic for the case from the NUC8ix series, and the shielding effect became worse.

Thank you for the answer.

Is 3mm brass plate which I used good enough? What about stainless steel? I saw on internet that some people are covering inside side of this DAC with self adhesive copper film. Dose it make sense? From my point of view the problem is solved... but I'm happy to learn more for the future. As I said before... in the future I will separate them more. But for today it will have to stay this way.
 

Toku

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Thank you for the answer.

Is 3mm brass plate which I used good enough? What about stainless steel? I saw on internet that some people are covering inside side of this DAC with self adhesive copper film. Dose it make sense? From my point of view the problem is solved... but I'm happy to learn more for the future. As I said before... in the future I will separate them more. But for today it will have to stay this way.
The effect of electromagnetic waves is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. So the first thing to do is to separate the two.
I think your shelves are great. It's more than enough.
I don't think putting a copper sheet on the aluminum case will have any effect.
 

jmz

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The effect of electromagnetic waves is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. So the first thing to do is to separate the two.
I think your shelves are great. It's more than enough.
I don't think putting a copper sheet on the aluminum case will have any effect.

One more time... thank you for answer and help.
 

jmz

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Today I created final version of my stand for micro audio setup. Brass plates 150x150mm 2.5mm thick. No more interference between devices. It is my work/office sound system and space is very limited for it. In the future I should have more space to separate them in "normal" way. But I must say that I like my new stand a lot... so maybe it will stay this way ;-)
20210426_181025_1.jpg


Rest of the system: Elac Debut B6.2, Marantz PM6006 UK Edition. I must admit that it is my best so far sound at work ;-)
 
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jmz

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Hello! Toku-san. Thank you very much.

Since the stand is ready I can focus at media player. For now I'm using Kodi with WASAPI driver to play music from my flac files. I will try other player soon. I must admit that I'm more than happy with this cheap Topping DAC. Much better sound comparing to build in sound card in my Intel NUC NUC8I5BE.
 

Yorkshire Mouth

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As far as I can tell from Amir’s review, everything ‘wrong’ with this DAC is purely in the realms of measurement, with any ‘problems’ being below the level of audibility.

Is this an effectively ‘perfect’ DAC?

If not, what’s wrong with it that I’ve missed?
 

usern

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As far as I can tell from Amir’s review, everything ‘wrong’ with this DAC is purely in the realms of measurement, with any ‘problems’ being below the level of audibility.

Is this an effectively ‘perfect’ DAC?

If not, what’s wrong with it that I’ve missed?
I could hear "computer noise" when this dac was connected to A30pro. The amp had ground lift though and that eliminated this noise.
 

Veri

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As far as I can tell from Amir’s review, everything ‘wrong’ with this DAC is purely in the realms of measurement, with any ‘problems’ being below the level of audibility.

Is this an effectively ‘perfect’ DAC?

If not, what’s wrong with it that I’ve missed?
Imo the only 'weakness' of these ESS9038Q2M DACs is less thorough filtering as seen here:
index.php


The same shape always comes back. While with the 'Pro' ESS chips, the blue line is essentially flat with no artefacts. So unless you upsample x2 through something like SoX or even HQPlayer to 88kHz/96kHz it will be just shy of perfection in this regard :)
 

Yorkshire Mouth

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The astonishing here is comparison to other front ends.

In the U.K., this is £100. The absolute minimum you’d pay for an entry level ‘hi-fi’ turntable would be £100.
 

AnalogSteph

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The astonishing here is comparison to other front ends.

In the U.K., this is £100. The absolute minimum you’d pay for an entry level ‘hi-fi’ turntable would be £100.
It should be well-known by this point that digital audio has a much steeper diminishing returns curve than analog media. Precision mechanics only ever get cheap when they can be churned out by the bucket load with a high degree of automation, like harddrives. Assembly of a DAC ultimately is substantially less complex and more highly automated than that of a record player, and BOM cost is made up differently.
 

half_dog

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Imo the only 'weakness' of these ESS9038Q2M DACs is less thorough filtering as seen here:
index.php


The same shape always comes back. While with the 'Pro' ESS chips, the blue line is essentially flat with no artefacts. So unless you upsample x2 through something like SoX or even HQPlayer to 88kHz/96kHz it will be just shy of perfection in this regard :)

It's ugly indeed but don't bother with it. It's just an "outcome" from the apodizing filter that's default filter from this chip. This stills better than a slow filter or something similar. We could ask Topping to release a firmware update with other filters. I'm not sure but the filter with best THD+N x Freq from ESS is the fast linear phase filter - via SMSL M500
 
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Veri

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It's ugly indeed but don't bother with it. It's just an "outcome" from the apodizing filter that's default filter from this chip. This stills better than a slow filter or something similar. We could ask Topping to release a firmware update with other filters. I'm not sure but the filter with best THD+N x Freq from ESS is the fast linear phase filter - via SMSL M500
You're wrong though, yes there are worse filters but the fast filters are not any better in this regard, the weird THD+N shape always comes up on the 9038Q2M. It seems more like a processing/computation limit, or maybe an artificial weakness so the Pro chip has something it is much better at.
 

half_dog

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You're wrong though, yes there are worse filters but the fast filters are not any better in this regard, the weird THD+N shape always comes up on the 9038Q2M. It seems more like a processing/computation limit, or maybe an artificial weakness so the Pro chip has something it is much better at.
Huuum... Probably I am wrong although I was able to replicate a similar curve (but with a better noise floor) when I measured a M500 with apodizing filter -that's why I though this filter could be the "culprit". I was checking the 9038q2m DAC reviews and most of them were set up with this filter but D50s. This has a curve that I consider even worst but not so jagged like the others and it seems to be using another filter. Anyway, you have a valid point too and probably your point must be the right one.
 

FireLion

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"Almost ready". For the other point, D10B (balanced) will have much better noise immunity due to TRS jacks, digital outputs are transformer isolated. So all issues should be gone!

The single ended D10/D10s is prone to (USB) grounding noise issues but for the $100 you can't really expect real elaborate power filtering, IMHO.

I remember emailing topping about making a D10 balanced a year or so ago to compete with SDAC. I want one for my HPA-3B as it has similar design.

Glad to hear it's in the works. Perhaps you could make an A10B with 4.4 for IEMs.
 
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Yorkshire Mouth

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I remember emailing topping about making a D10 balanced a year or so ago to compete with SDAC. I want one for my HPA-3B as it has similar design.

Glad to hear it's in the works. Perhaps you could make an A10B with 4.4 for IEMs.

A D10b - a D10s with balanced out for how much? $150, maybe?

Do we have news on this?

How about an L30 with a balanced input to match?
 

half_dog

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Thanks.

Any update on a release date and/or price?

Oh, and on the ‘balanced outs only’. Are there not cables which convert balanced to unbalanced?
Well, you can connect one signal wire (usually the positive one) and the ground from a balanced cable in a unbalanced conection (leaving the other wire floating or connected to ground) but there are some problems that may occur. Firstly not all circuics accept this configuration, the output circuit may not be design to work under those conditions (floating or grounding the wire signal). Supposing it can, this practice may bring more noise than a setup with proper unbalanced signals. So there will not be any benefic using balanced outputs connected into unbalanced inputs.
 
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