Topping D70s MQA Review (DAC)

[Jimbob54]

Dang. I purchased a MQA-spiced version of Patricia Barber's "Clique!" on CD from Elusive Disc last week to see if the D70s could detect MQA in the SPDIF stream from a CD player. It cannot. I imagine I'd have to use USB for that, but there was palpable disappointment. The CD over 44.1K PCM still sounds great, but nothing extra there for having MQA encoding on this disc.

I think every device in the chain has to pay the MQA tax unless (like a PC/ phone) it is running software that takes care of it (Tidal app/Roon/ UAPP etc) . I think MQA CD needs an MQA badged player

EDIT- actually no I am incorrect - regular CD player via optical or coax to MQA decoding DAC should work- unless the D70 only does MQA over USB which is the case for some of the DACs I have encountered.

Im sceptical about the 1st scenario mentioned in the link- regular CD player outputting analog playing an MQA CD :

"Regular CD Player​

As a result of the MQA encoding process, MQA-CDs benefit from increased timing precision and de-blurring when played on any device."

MQA-CD Playback | Experience the best sound with MQA | MQA

What is MQA-CD? MQA-CD delivers a more detailed, nuanced playback. Pair it with an MQA decoder to unveil the full master quality recording. Learn more now.

www.mqa.co.uk

EDIT 2- yes, MQA into D70 is only via USB (maybe i2S too) - from Hifigo listing :

"Features:-​

>High-performance dual DAC chipset(2xAK4497).

>Full MQA decoding(USB Input)."

 

[DHT 845]

I would prefere 32/384 upsampling via tidal connect with no MQA. But this is volumio issue. On tidal connet it streams 16/44 PCM. On volumio app the same records can be upsampled, but volumio app suck in comparison to IOS app and tidal connect.

 

[Angsty]

I think every device in the chain has to pay the MQA tax unless (like a PC/ phone) it is running software that takes care of it (Tidal app/Roon/ UAPP etc) . I think MQA CD needs an MQA badged player

EDIT- actually no I am incorrect - regular CD player via optical or coax to MQA decoding DAC should work- unless the D70 only does MQA over USB which is the case for some of the DACs I have encountered.

Im sceptical about the 1st scenario mentioned in the link- regular CD player outputting analog playing an MQA CD :

"Regular CD Player​

As a result of the MQA encoding process, MQA-CDs benefit from increased timing precision and de-blurring when played on any device."

MQA-CD Playback | Experience the best sound with MQA | MQA

What is MQA-CD? MQA-CD delivers a more detailed, nuanced playback. Pair it with an MQA decoder to unveil the full master quality recording. Learn more now.

www.mqa.co.uk

EDIT 2- yes, MQA into D70 is only via USB (maybe i2S too) - from Hifigo listing :

"Features:-​

>High-performance dual DAC chipset(2xAK4497).

>Full MQA decoding(USB Input)."

Yes - I can see now that the D90SE supports MQA in all inputs, but the D70s does not.

 

[ThomasMac]

How does one check what firmware version is currently on my d70s? I can't seem to find a way.

 

[digicidal]

Im sceptical about the 1st scenario mentioned in the link- regular CD player outputting analog playing an MQA CD :

"Regular CD Player​

As a result of the MQA encoding process, MQA-CDs benefit from increased timing precision and de-blurring when played on any device."

MQA-CD Playback | Experience the best sound with MQA | MQA

What is MQA-CD? MQA-CD delivers a more detailed, nuanced playback. Pair it with an MQA decoder to unveil the full master quality recording. Learn more now.

www.mqa.co.uk

Don't be skeptical... I'm sure it does everything they claim it does... because MAGIC!

 

[Angsty]

I did buy a MQA encoded CD to try it out, but found out it would not work through my CD player since the D70s only accepts MQA on the USB input. Still plays like a regular CD though, but no MQA.

 

[Peternz]

I did buy a MQA encoded CD to try it out, but found out it would not work through my CD player since the D70s only accepts MQA on the USB input. Still plays like a regular CD though, but no MQA.

Ummm... Why would you want MQA with a CD? The purpose of MQA is to compress files to make it easier to stream them.

 

[Veri]

Ummm... Why would you want MQA with a CD? The purpose of MQA is to compress files to make it easier to stream them.

Tell that to the people who invented MQA CDs?

 

[Peternz]

Tell that to the people who invented MQA CDs?

A bit late for that now, since both of those technologies are obsolete.

 

[Angsty]

Ummm... Why would you want MQA with a CD? The purpose of MQA is to compress files to make it easier to stream them.

The point would be to get higher resolution from the CD format, without streaming. There are still millions of CD players out there with digital coax out. The D70S is designed to decode MQA with streaming services. The D90LE can handle MQA across all digital inputs. You can imagine an incentive by DAC makers and CD producers to find incremental demand with this method. The CD was not notably more expensive than a regular CD and the DAC is cheaper than many SACD players.

 

[caught gesture]

You can imagine an incentive by DAC makers and CD producers to find incremental demand

by appealing to cognitive biases and on no scientifically measurable benefit.

 

[Angsty]

by appealing to cognitive biases and on no scientifically measurable benefit.

But, isn’t that what MQA is all about anyway?

For me, it was cheap to try and I like the CD at normal resolution, to boot.

 

[DHT 845]

I remember hdcd decoding on CD's. The idea did not survived. The same would be with MQA, especially that hdcd theoretically gave 20 bit on cd, MQA would gives nothing exept saving some space. For what?

 

[Angsty]

I remember hdcd decoding on CD's. The idea did not survived. The same would be with MQA, especially that hdcd theoretically gave 20 bit on cd, MQA would gives nothing exept saving some space. For what?

I liked my HDCDs, but Microsoft killed the tech when they bought the producer.

 

[HD MOVIE SOURCE]

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:

View attachment 101297

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:
View attachment 101298

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:

View attachment 101299

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:
View attachment 101300

Zooming in, we see that a hair separates the top 10:

View attachment 101301

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:

View attachment 101303

And a sweep to see how the performance varies with output level:

View attachment 101304

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:

View attachment 101305

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:
View attachment 101306

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:

View attachment 101307

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:

View attachment 101308

Like the high level of attenuation out of some of the DAC filters:

View attachment 101309

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:
View attachment 101310

Linearity was textbook perfect:
View attachment 101311

Finally multitone test resembling "music" is drool-worthy:

View attachment 101312

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/

Just wondering, about the DAC roll-off image. Which color is the roll-off for MQA? I've always wondered how the MQA filter rolls off. Thanks.

EDIT: Just been reading some comments above about why the need for MQA-CDs. The reason for it is to introduce high-resolution music, in the cheapest way possible on Physical Media. Currently, you could use DVD Audio which nobody uses anymore. You could use Blu-ray which is way, way more expensive to produce or go above that to 4K Discs. You could use SACDs but it's (for the most part) a dead format. CDs are cheap and they are still very popular, I think it's an excellent way of bringing high-res music to Physical Media, and at an incredibly good price. MQA-CDs on Physical Media sound absolutely incredible.

 

[DeepSpace57]

Got a few questions below( thanx in advance):

- how to update D70s for mac users?

- any suggestion (from real users) on which input can be better for bass production ?

 

[navin]

Hello! I just got my SMSL SD-9 streamer recently and plugged it into my D70s via I2S, but it only works when I'm playing Hi-Res files. When I play 44.1khz FLAC files, there's no sound. USB works fine though. Is this a known issue with D70s?

Did this get fixed yet? Thanks.

 

[Jimster480]

Got a few questions below( thanx in advance):

- how to update D70s for mac users?

- any suggestion (from real users) on which input can be better for bass production ?

This review shows that the USB mode is the best (at least compared to Toslink).

The point would be to get higher resolution from the CD format, without streaming. There are still millions of CD players out there with digital coax out. The D70S is designed to decode MQA with streaming services. The D90LE can handle MQA across all digital inputs. You can imagine an incentive by DAC makers and CD producers to find incremental demand with this method. The CD was not notably more expensive than a regular CD and the DAC is cheaper than many SACD players.

Are there plans for this? It would be cool I think. Finally a real upgrade in sound quality for a popular format.

 

[Grooved]

Just wondering, about the DAC roll-off image. Which color is the roll-off for MQA? I've always wondered how the MQA filter rolls off. Thanks.

EDIT: Just been reading some comments above about why the need for MQA-CDs. The reason for it is to introduce high-resolution music, in the cheapest way possible on Physical Media. Currently, you could use DVD Audio which nobody uses anymore. You could use Blu-ray which is way, way more expensive to produce or go above that to 4K Discs. You could use SACDs but it's (for the most part) a dead format. CDs are cheap and they are still very popular, I think it's an excellent way of bringing high-res music to Physical Media, and at an incredibly good price. MQA-CDs on Physical Media sound absolutely incredible.

SACD also had the possibility to be hybrid with a "CD" layer. It was almost the same than a MQA-CD that can be play on a standard CD player.
And at least, the Cd layer brought the real CD resolution.
With MQA-CD, you can't really talk about high-resolution, because, first, they are not using 24bit like in streaming. It's 16bit MQA, that can be read as a standard FLAC (but with less resolution) or decoded. The decoding with 16bit MQA won't bring new information (opposed to 24bit MQA), just upsample it to 88.2kHz.

There is no reason for MQA-CD on physical media to sound better than a 16bit MQA file sent bit-perfect to an MQA decoder-renderer DAC

And the word "better" is too much use for any comparaison. "Different" (on tracks you can hear it) is what I would use, better or not is a matter of taste, or often, is link the discover of a new version.
I can take any master from a song that people know, change the M/S EQ, add a bit of distorsion or transient exciter, change a bit the stereo width, and I bet that half of people hearing this new version will at first say "oh, I like it better" because people tend to like discovering new things, and some people simply like distorsion added (they can, but they're wrong if they think they're listening something closer to the original).

 

[Jimster480]

In my experiences over the last couple weeks with mqa on Tidal shows that mqa Masters have more dynamic range and better sound stage. You cannot always hear it's easily in every single song; but it is quite obvious in many tracks especially those from classical musicians. The ability to capture string instruments is specifically the most noticeable in my opinion.
There is also the addition of more depth to certain vocals but not all.
However they have to be played straight to an mqa capable device. Using tidal for the first unfold does not result in better audio quality. Comparing Tidal versus Spotify extreme quality shows no difference unless using an mqa Master through an MQA DAC.
I spent a couple of hours of critical listening on some of the most complex and hard to reproduce tracks that I know of which I know are also masterfully recorded.
The difference is apparant on Tidal MQA through my Topping EX5. Makes no difference on the DX7 with Tidal first unfold. However the quality wasn't worse than that of Spotify extreme quality. Which is OGG VBR 384kbps Q10 encoding from my past inspections (through desktop client).
Tidal "hifi" was worse than Spotify extreme in 2 tracks in specific parts, so I would say it is pretty comparable.
To me this makes MQA the first real SQ upgrade I've seen in 5 years since I got my nice high end headphones and DAC+Amp setup.
Now I know there is Qobuz which supposedly has high nitrate Flac streaming; but their library is much smaller... In my limited testing with my friends DAP; I couldn't say the songs I picked are as good as Spotify Extreme... However it's not a true apples to apples as I didn't have Qobuz on my workstation the way I do with Tidal and Spotify.