Topping D90SE Review (Balanced DAC)

[nhs]

Does any one consider the thermal aspect of the d90se?

 

[Deleted member 31709]

If it were "just" upsampled music, which you can easily recognise with a sound editor because all frequencies are under a certain frequency and everything else above is absent. But you can even find something like this:

View attachment 136020

This is a horrible example from a commercial 96/24bit download. There is actually no content above 24Khz, what you see is a very strong image of the original signal below the 48khz frequency (the nyquist frequency corresponding to a 96khz sampling rate), I wonder how this can happen. The sound must have been played through a very bad NOS DAC and then re-recorded. Perhaps to do mixing in the analog domain? This is just a hypothesis, and quite an unlikely one, to be honest, but overall I cannot see how they could generate such a monster. Any idea?

Fact it, it does sound better just decimated down to a 48K sampling rate... and it occupies less disc space!

It's very easy to replicate such fake Hi-Res tracks. That is by up-sampling . Not to be confused with oversampling ( up-sampling followed by digital LPF).
So from 48K to 96K which 2x upsampling, we would introduce (n-1) that is 1 zero value samples between every original samples. This would increase the bandwidth 2x but also introduce aliasing above original Nyquist limits. The resultant file would also be 6dB softer though.
Using sox :
sox -t wav original.wav -r 96000 -t wav target.wav upsample 2

 

[amirm]

I have personally never liked Topping's stock ESS based implementations (purely from sound quality perspective). But that's my subjective opinion. They seem to chase 5 leading 0s THD+N more than pleasing tonality.

We don't entertain audiophile myths here and certainly not in review threads.

 

[Deleted member 31709]

We don't entertain audiophile myths here and certainly not in review threads.

@amirm , I don't get what part did you find offending or breaking forum rules?
I did explicitly quote the objective reasons for their shortcomings in ESS implementations.

 

[Veri]

I did explicitly quote the objective reasons for their shortcomings in ESS implementations.

What was objective about a bunch of statements with nothing backing them up, exactly?

 

[tmtomh]

@amirm , I don't get what part did you find offending or breaking forum rules?
I did explicitly quote the objective reasons for their shortcomings in ESS implementations.

I think what he's referring to is that you're claiming that pursuing low distortion is unrelated to achieving the best tonality - with the accompanying assumption that there's something called "tonality" in DACs that is not connected with maximum fidelity of reproduction of the source.

 

[Deleted member 31709]

What was objective about a bunch of statements with nothing backing them up, exactly?

Like usage of suboptimal parts in DAC I/V and LPF stages. Did you even make an effort to understand or just made a blunt reply?

 

[Zensō]

Like usage of suboptimal parts in DAC I/V and LPF stages. Did you even make an effort to understand or just made a blunt reply?

Just curious, where does that "tonality" show up in the measurements?

 

[Deleted member 31709]

I think what he's referring to is that you're claiming that pursuing low distortion is unrelated to achieving the best tonality - with the accompanying assumption that there's something called "tonality" in DACs that is not connected with maximum fidelity of reproduction of the source.

Got it. So I according made it amply clear about the tonality part being very subjective.

But my bigger concerns are about the parts chosen for DAC analog stages

 

[amirm]

Like usage of suboptimal parts in DAC I/V and LPF stages. Did you even make an effort to understand or just made a blunt reply?

I fully understood. If you want to make a statement about audibility, you have to be able to demonstrate it. Saying this or that part determines that is absolutely a myth. Set up a controlled test and show such audibility and then we can talk. Until then, it is unwelcome propagation of myths in audio design.

 

[amirm]

But my bigger concerns are about the parts chosen for DAC analog stages

Objective measurements show that absolutely right decisions were made in the design. That is what counts.

 

[Deleted member 31709]

I sincerely apologize.
Didn't realise the key tenets of the forum completely disregard how we humans were to perceive these changes and only consider analyzer as absolute.
Sorry again for the unnecessary unrest. Peace!

 

[Zensō]

I sincerely apologize.
Didn't realise the key tenets of the forum completely disregard how we humans were to perceive these changes and only consider analyzer as absolute.
Sorry again for the unnecessary unrest. Peace!

Human perception (particularly hearing) is shockingly fallible. The snake oil salesmen in audio know this quite well and take good advantage of it.

Perhaps this old classic would be helpful: http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-we-hear.html

Welcome to the forum!

 

[tmtomh]

I sincerely apologize.
Didn't realise the key tenets of the forum completely disregard how we humans were to perceive these changes and only consider analyzer as absolute.
Sorry again for the unnecessary unrest. Peace!

The tenets of the forum do not disregard how we humans perceive changes. The tenets of the forum do, however, ask that some offer of evidence be given to support a claim that there is in fact a change to begin with, and that a change makes a measurable difference that could plausibly be heard by humans. Relatedly, the tenets of the forum are based on the fact that quite a lot is known about how human hearing works, and that a lot of what is claimed for audiophile-level hearing is not actually to do with what we don't yet know. Instead, many audiophile hearing claims are about things that have already been amply tested and established (or disproven).

Just because you or I don't happen to know how much or how little phase matters in digital audio reproduction, doesn't mean it's not known to science (it makes surprisingly little difference). And just because you or I don't happen to know whether or not op-amp swapping produces any actual tonal difference doesn't mean no one has tested different op amps to see if they have any variance in frequency response (they don't).

 

[slamman]

Ok. Hifi guides. I wanted to go there to explain something but at that point the bias was already too much and no matter what I say there's no way to be beneficial. And there were a few people who are so ignorant yet so confident that's not even funny. (like simply add fuse, ESD is very basic etc) So I addressed the obvious. But that wasn't received very well. So I said to myself why bother then I left. If you have the time, I recommend go through the original L30 thread as much as possible to see what really happened. I hate to say it but I really shouldn't assume people are rational and logical everywhere else.
Same thing is happening to MQA too. It's not even funny. They dismiss everything on the other party without actually learning the fundamentals.
We are logical, rational, helpful. That's why you see most people here have the opinions that they do. We love facts and evidence.

i do not want to dwell on this. things could have been handled better by everyone. im not here to put you down i just thought its ok for people to be sketptical after some things that were said. end of story, people were very rude to you as well no doubt about it. zeos a90 RCA input is also dead, that happens with anything of course im not here to bash topping , im just saying just like schiit, people have the right to have some questions and there is no reason to get overly defensive about it or rude about it. anyways i wont comment further about this here. thanks for the replies either way.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

But my bigger concerns are about the parts chosen for DAC analog stages

What opamp would you use if it were your design? I'm always looking for better performing parts, sincerely.

 

[Deleted member 31709]

The tenets of the forum do not disregard how we humans perceive changes. The tenets of the forum do, however, ask that some offer of evidence be given to support a claim that there is in fact a change to begin with, and that a change makes a measurable difference that could plausibly be heard by humans. Relatedly, the tenets of the forum are based on the fact that quite a lot is known about how human hearing works, and that a lot of what is claimed for audiophile-level hearing is not actually to do with what we don't yet know. Instead, many audiophile hearing claims are about things that have already been amply tested and established (or disproven).

Just because you or I don't happen to know how much or how little phase matters in digital audio reproduction, doesn't mean it's not known to science (it makes surprisingly little difference). And just because you or I don't happen to know whether or not op-amp swapping produces any actual tonal difference doesn't mean no one has tested different op amps to see if they have any variance in frequency response (they don't).

Guys, like I said I realised I am in the wrong forum.
I certainly, for one, don't encourage audiophile fuses, cable burn in etc. But to say all opamps or parts sounds the same and have no difference just because the FR looks same clearly fortifies me being a wrong fit amongst you good people.
I would gracefully now withdraw from this conversation; happy to agree to disagree with what Amir, you or alikes have to opine on this matter.

 

[tmtomh]

Guys, like I said I realised I am in the wrong forum.
I certainly, for one, don't encourage audiophile fuses, cable burn in etc. But to say all opamps or parts sounds the same and have no difference just because the FR looks same clearly fortifies me being a wrong fit amongst you good people.
I would gracefully now withdraw from this conversation; happy to agree to disagree with what Amir, you or alikes have to opine on this matter.

I would encourage you to stay - or at least not to leave unless you think you will not enjoy discussion here.

To be clear, I am not saying that all op amps sound the same. I cannot make that claim. But I can say that Amir has swapped multiple sets of different op amps in a couple of different pieces of equipment that have socketed op amps, and has tested the devices' outputs in the usual ways (frequency response, noise, distortion, and so on), and found basically no differences (differences, if I recall correctly, were so small as to be within the margin of run-to-run differences when measuring analogue signals even with the same configuration).

That does not definitively mean there are no audible differences between any op amps in any situation with any device. But it very much does mean that one cannot simply proceed, absent any evidence at all, from the assumption that there are clearly audible differences in op amp tonality, and that the only role of our investigation is to swap op amps to find out which ones sound better and which ones sound worse.

 

[Mario Sanchez]

Guys, like I said I realised I am in the wrong forum.
I certainly, for one, don't encourage audiophile fuses, cable burn in etc. But to say all opamps or parts sounds the same and have no difference just because the FR looks same clearly fortifies me being a wrong fit amongst you good people.
I would gracefully now withdraw from this conversation; happy to agree to disagree with what Amir, you or alikes have to opine on this matter.

Well, please don't leave just yet after leaving an interesting statement! If op-amps do sound different despite displaying measured performance numbers that are highly similar where test is conducted, then it must be the measurement that is missing some critical aspect where op-amp performance differs. If you can kindly indicate what type of measurement methodology reveals this model-to-model difference, I believe we have much to gain from this new measurement, as it may well open our eyes to some previously unspotted scam/subpar products! An important part about science is, after all, creating new theories and modifying old ones such that it better fits reality, in this case what we hear. Data and hearing are not two discrete things but rather closely connected, and when the data fails to show something, we should collect more data to try and see if the failure could be explained, instead of just pointing to it and saying “Told ya it won't work!”
I'm sure Topping would like to know too!

 

[sq225917]

Opamps put it circuits designed for different opamps can sound different, but it's very easy to make good opamps sound identical, by eliminating variance in distortion in the right circuit.

For the record my gustard a18 now has opa1612 in the iv and lowpass and I'm happier that way, but can make no claim for audibility as there's no way to a/b test it. So even though I think it sounds different, I can't prove it does. I might just be fooling myself.