This is a review and detailed measurements of the just announced Topping D70s MQA USB DAC with Bluetooth support. It was kindly sent to me by the company and costs US $649.99.
Style wise, the D70S naturally follows the rest of the Topping product line:
I must say I miss the rotary knob of the past Topping products for volume control. That said, when using a remote (included) then you only have up and down anyway so for non-desktop application, it is fine.
The back of the unit has what you expect:
Note that there is a mains voltage slider on the side. Be sure that is set to for the voltage in your country. Mine came set to 230 which caused a bit of head scratching to figure out why it was not coming on. Linear power supplies as used here are not universal so you have to live with a hard switch.
The D70s MQA is based on dual AKM AK4497. I asked another DAC company what the supply situation was given the fire at AKM factory in Japan. I was told parts were available but at much higher cost.
Topping D70s MQA Measurements
As usual we start with our dashboard using balanced out and USB input:
As you see, the max output nicely exceeds the nominal 4 volts that we measure at and used to be standard. This extra headroom comes in handy when you have room equalization or an amplifier that runs better at a lower gain. The sum of relative noise and distortion is superb:
Zooming in, we see that a hair separates the top 10:
We are talking about such low levels of noise here that just sitting there performance rankings can change. And some of noise is actually contributed by my audio analyzer.
Back to our dashboard, here is the RCA performance:
And a sweep to see how the performance varies with output level:
That little glitch down is the analyzer changing input scales and having its own performance suffer a bit, not something in the DAC. You can see that the unit can be comfortably used at top tier performance from 2.5 volts to 4 volts and beyond.
Dynamic range is of course exceptional:
You could play at 120 dBSPL and still have the noise floor be below threshold of hearing! One minute you are hearing nothing but silence and another, your life comes to an end on those 120 dBSPL peaks!
Jitter is excellent over USB:
Since AKM DAC chips don't have a resampler like ESS DACs do, performance suffers a bit with synchronous digital inputs like Coax and Toslink:
Levels are essentially at or below threshold of audibility so more of a bother for the eye and then the ear. And at any rate, hopefully you are using these legacy ports for secondary use (TV ARC and such) or in desperation (ground loop).
Intermodulation distortion vs level is stellar:
Like the high level of attenuation out of some of the DAC filters:
And that the MQA filter is not forced on PCM audio samples.
THD+N vs frequency as usual is a bit worse than ESS based DACs:
Linearity was textbook perfect:
Finally multitone test resembling "music" is drool-worthy:
Conclusions
Another stellar DAC is released by Topping in the form of D70s giving us another option to purchase. Instrument grade performance is provided. Yes, our tests are so good that even in best of the best we can expose a few tiny rough corners. But in the larger picture it is hard to hold back anything but top praise for this level of engineering.
It is my pleasure to highly recommend the Topping D70s.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Style wise, the D70S naturally follows the rest of the Topping product line:
I must say I miss the rotary knob of the past Topping products for volume control. That said, when using a remote (included) then you only have up and down anyway so for non-desktop application, it is fine.
The back of the unit has what you expect:
Note that there is a mains voltage slider on the side. Be sure that is set to for the voltage in your country. Mine came set to 230 which caused a bit of head scratching to figure out why it was not coming on. Linear power supplies as used here are not universal so you have to live with a hard switch.
The D70s MQA is based on dual AKM AK4497. I asked another DAC company what the supply situation was given the fire at AKM factory in Japan. I was told parts were available but at much higher cost.
Topping D70s MQA Measurements
As usual we start with our dashboard using balanced out and USB input:
As you see, the max output nicely exceeds the nominal 4 volts that we measure at and used to be standard. This extra headroom comes in handy when you have room equalization or an amplifier that runs better at a lower gain. The sum of relative noise and distortion is superb:
Zooming in, we see that a hair separates the top 10:
We are talking about such low levels of noise here that just sitting there performance rankings can change. And some of noise is actually contributed by my audio analyzer.
Back to our dashboard, here is the RCA performance:
And a sweep to see how the performance varies with output level:
That little glitch down is the analyzer changing input scales and having its own performance suffer a bit, not something in the DAC. You can see that the unit can be comfortably used at top tier performance from 2.5 volts to 4 volts and beyond.
Dynamic range is of course exceptional:
You could play at 120 dBSPL and still have the noise floor be below threshold of hearing! One minute you are hearing nothing but silence and another, your life comes to an end on those 120 dBSPL peaks!
Jitter is excellent over USB:
Since AKM DAC chips don't have a resampler like ESS DACs do, performance suffers a bit with synchronous digital inputs like Coax and Toslink:
Levels are essentially at or below threshold of audibility so more of a bother for the eye and then the ear. And at any rate, hopefully you are using these legacy ports for secondary use (TV ARC and such) or in desperation (ground loop).
Intermodulation distortion vs level is stellar:
Like the high level of attenuation out of some of the DAC filters:
And that the MQA filter is not forced on PCM audio samples.
THD+N vs frequency as usual is a bit worse than ESS based DACs:
Linearity was textbook perfect:
Finally multitone test resembling "music" is drool-worthy:
Conclusions
Another stellar DAC is released by Topping in the form of D70s giving us another option to purchase. Instrument grade performance is provided. Yes, our tests are so good that even in best of the best we can expose a few tiny rough corners. But in the larger picture it is hard to hold back anything but top praise for this level of engineering.
It is my pleasure to highly recommend the Topping D70s.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
? Some dot stays lit if the screen is set to be turned off after 30sec, I guess as the indicator that the device is actually turned on? Am I right or?
