Topping D90SE Review (Balanced DAC)

[Mikett]

Have you updated your motherboard's BIOS to the latest version? There have been many reports of USB dropouts with recent generations of the Ryzen platform, and have mostly been fixed with AGESA updates in recent BIOSes.

Thanks for this tip. I updated the hardware drivers as well as the BIOS. This appears to have solved the droput issue. I generally do not update unless it is causing an issue and since this MB is only about two years old or so and had been working fine I did not bother. It is a HTPC so is hardly loaded down with apps that might push it.

This only goes to show USB ports and how they are driven are not the same though they are supposed to be. Wonder how many DACs suffer from this when driven by a PC?

Now the MQA issue remains. I understand the MQA issue but why does it always show as MQA under all settings when one tries to decode as PCM?

 

[dsnyder0cnn]

Wonder how many DACs suffer from this when driven by a PC?

Amir my disagree, but I suspect most do to some degree. The D90SE is flawless (so far) with a VitOS transport. I'm a big fan of using small, dedicated low power transports with USB DACs vs PCs or Macs.

 

[jjnvdm]

I also received mine in the mail this Monday, and so far it is mostly fine.

But, like others have said, I am having issues with dropouts when using it with my LG OLED tv via optical. I was expecting this since people mentioned it, but I wasn't prepared for how frequent they are, typically like once a minute or so it drops out for a split second.

What I wasn't expecting was similar dropouts when using I2S out of my pi2aes board. They are much less frequent, but still present, like maybe once an hour or so.

The only dropout free input is the USB from the same raspberry pi 4 I have the pi2aes plugged into.

There is a pretty detailed explanation of the issue in this avforums thread, with very useful detail in this post. This mainly seems to be an issue with ESS DAC chips and the default setting of their jitter reconstruction filters. LG TVs apparently have a very noisy digital stream on their optical outputs. However, other optical sources that have very noisy digital streams may also cause this issue.

The good news is that there is a fix for the ESS DAC chip issue that can be implemented by DAC manufacturers. For example, Audiolab, Arcam, Cambride Audio and JDS Labs have all provided settings in their ESS-based DACs for relaxing the default DPLL bandwidth of the ESS DACs and it has been confirmed in the avforums thread by users that it fixes the issue.

I hope Topping is watching this thread and that they would be willing to address this issue by providing a setting for the DPLL jitter bandwidth in their DACs similar to what other ESS-based DAC manufacturers have done. Or if someone on this forum has a more direct line of communication to Topping to make them aware of this issue and the fix that would be even better!

@JohnYang1997 If you could spare a moment it would be great to get your response to this post

 

[gallantus]

There is a pretty detailed explanation of the issue in this avforums thread, with very useful detail in this post. This mainly seems to be an issue with ESS DAC chips and the default setting of their jitter reconstruction filters. LG TVs apparently have a very noisy digital stream on their optical outputs. However, other optical sources that have very noisy digital streams may also cause this issue.

The good news is that there is a fix for the ESS DAC chip issue that can be implemented by DAC manufacturers. For example, Audiolab, Arcam, Cambride Audio and JDS Labs have all provided settings in their ESS-based DACs for relaxing the default DPLL bandwidth of the ESS DACs and it has been confirmed in the avforums thread by users that it fixes the issue.

I hope Topping is watching this thread and that they would be willing to address this issue by providing a setting for the DPLL jitter bandwidth in their DACs similar to what other ESS-based DAC manufacturers have done. Or if someone on this forum has a more direct line of communication to Topping to make them aware of this issue and the fix that would be even better!

@JohnYang1997 If you could spare a moment it would be great to get your response to this post

Does anyone else know of any issues with the D90SE? I plan to get it, but I want to make sure I do my research on the known issues with it first.

 

[dsnyder0cnn]

Does anyone else know of any issues with the D90SE? I plan to get it, but I want to make sure I do my research on the known issues with it first.

I have not discovered any issues so far.

 

[Eddy H.]

I have not discovered any issues so far.

I haven't had any problems with USB, coax, or optical. It's a great dac.

 

[DawgSlaya]

Does anyone else know of any issues with the D90SE? I plan to get it, but I want to make sure I do my research on the known issues with it first.

I've had trouble with making it play DSD1024 through IIS, which the specs said it could do.
Topping support said they were working on it 2 months ago, haven't heard back since.
Hoping it'll get fixed with a firmware update.

It's not a big deal really. There are no DSD1024 content out there, and I was just testing its capabilities for curiosity.

You should not let that issue keep you from getting it.

 

[Rover]

All D90SE owners with audio interruption problems .The address of the TOOPING support service.
We write everything to the address [email protected]. and @JohnYang1997
Maybe they will fix it with a new firmware.

 

[dsnyder0cnn]

All D90SE owners with audio interruption problems .The address of the TOOPING support service.
We write everything to the address [email protected]. and @JohnYang1997
Maybe they will fix it with a new firmware.

Is it only MS Windows users who are experiencing these audio interruption problems? I've yet to reproduce anything like this from my Linux-based Roon endpoints. I've not tested the Topping with Windows (or macOS, for that matter), but I believe that @amirm uses a Windows PC for all of his measurements. Surprised that he did not encounter this issue.

 

[Eddy H.]

Is it only MS Windows users who are experiencing these audio interruption problems? I've yet to reproduce anything like this from my Linux-based Roon endpoints. I've not tested the Topping with Windows (or macOS, for that matter), but I believe that @amirm uses a Windows PC for all of his measurements. Surprised that he did not encounter this issue.

I don't have any problems with my old Toshiba laptop that came with windows 7 and is now on windows 10. My phone and Tab s7 works fine with USB also.

 

[Archimago]

Current state:

View attachment 154275

Wish I had the Topping A90 in the stack, but my old THX AAA 789 amp is not terrible.

Doing a bit of a bake-off between the D90SE and my Gustard X16. I have levels matched to within 0.01 dB or so.

View attachment 154277

(Ignore the shape of the plots. That's just the native response of my Focusrite Scarlett 2i2).

There's really not much between these two...as expected. The Topping struggles with some MQA albums, like Katy Perry's Smile (don't judge me). The Gustard had minor clicks during soft passages on DSD until I updated the MCU firmware (fixed on new X16 DACs). None of the DACs I've tried under $1k are perfect, but these two definitely sound amazing.

Both are XLR via short cables into the Topping Pre90/Ext90, so the load should be identical. I'm not a big fan of A/B tests, but I thought this would be fun.

I can share plots of the different filters (amplitude and impulse) tomorrow if anyone is interested.

Edit: transport is the iFi ZEN Stream, but I now suspect that the skipping I heard on Ms. Perry's album is wonkyness in the iFi when the USB and S/PDIF outputs are grouped into the same zone in Roon. I'll switch to a pair of RPi4s running VitOS to see if the problem goes away.

View attachment 154278

Nice @dsnyder0cnn. Suggest changing the Topping D90SE to Filter 5 "Fast-Roll Linear" (best IMO) to remove all that rippling in the frequency response from the apodizing filter (Filter 1).

 

[jjnvdm]

Is it only MS Windows users who are experiencing these audio interruption problems? I've yet to reproduce anything like this from my Linux-based Roon endpoints. I've not tested the Topping with Windows (or macOS, for that matter), but I believe that @amirm uses a Windows PC for all of his measurements. Surprised that he did not encounter this issue.

Please read the referenced avforums thread above. It is mostly users feeding their D90SE DACs from LG TVs using optical that are experiencing the dropout issue. Some users in this thread have reported dropouts when feeding the D90SE from a Bluesound Node 2i via optical/coax and another reporting dropouts from feeding it from the optical output from a Samsung TV.

 

[Rover]

So the issue happens when the TV or PS4 outputs to D90se. Got you.

However I can tell you how it is straightforward. E30 prior to SN2103 has AK4118 as SPDIF receiver. D90se has LC89091. It's an improvement from the CS8416 which was used in D30pro and newer E30 that have the issue too.

Question I have is, since I don't have Nintendo switch, do you know if you can connect your Nintendo to D90se? So that we can check both PS4 and switch.

Problem for you is that this to us is not a new issue and has been reported before. Although we are still gathering information for LC89091 implementation which we initially thought had no issue. So there's no way to improve the situation for the units being sold. If you are comfortable with the connections that don't have the issue then it's great, enjoy. If you feel it's too big of an inconvenience, you can make your decision to return the unit or not.

Another thing to notice is that the issue is not limited to us or the implementation. There are many devices that we have tested failed just as badly. The situation is suddenly worse now because the only chip that we know 100% doesn't have the issue is no longer available due to the AKM factory fire.

It is possible to solve this problem in the D90SE by providing a DPLL jitter band setting in their DACs, similar to what other ESS-based DAC manufacturers have done. SMSL,Audiolab, Arcam, Cambridge Audio and JDS Labs.....
Perhaps the qualifications of Topping engineers do not know how to do this?

 

[gallantus]

I've had trouble with making it play DSD1024 through IIS, which the specs said it could do.
Topping support said they were working on it 2 months ago, haven't heard back since.
Hoping it'll get fixed with a firmware update.

It's not a big deal really. There are no DSD1024 content out there, and I was just testing its capabilities for curiosity.

You should not let that issue keep you from getting it.

Does it work with DSD over I2S with lower sample rates? Up to what sample rates did DSD on I2S did it work till?

 

[DawgSlaya]

Does it work with DSD over I2S with lower sample rates? Up to what sample rates did DSD on I2S did it work till?

DSD512 and below work fine. As does all PCM formats.

 

[dsnyder0cnn]

Nice @dsnyder0cnn. Suggest changing the Topping D90SE to Filter 5 "Fast-Roll Linear" (best IMO) to remove all that rippling in the frequency response from the apodizing filter (Filter 1).

Thanks for the tip. I plan to measure the amplitude and time-domain behavior of all seven filters…perhaps this evening. I'll definitely share plots here once I have done so.

 

[rlwings]

Thanks for the tip. I plan to measure the amplitude and time-domain behavior of all seven filters…perhaps this evening. I'll definitely share plots here once I have don

Looking foreword to seeing your results!

 

[dsnyder0cnn]

Finally got around to measuring the Topping D90SE and Gustard X16 filters in the stack setup. Here's the amplitude response for the seven different Topping filters:

The colors that REW ended up picking are not great, but these are in order, from top to bottom:

• Mode 1 - Fast roll off apodizing
• Mode 2 - Slow roll off minimum
• Mode 3 - Fast roll off minimum (default)
• Mode 4 - Slow roll off linear
• Mode 5 - Fast roll off linear
• Mode 6 - Brick-wall
• Mode 7 - Fast roll off corrected minimum

Here's the same plot for the Gustard's three filter choices:

From the plots, it's clear that this is a proper subset of the Topping filter options:

• L-FAST (same as Mode 5 - Fast roll off linear)
• M-SLOW (same as Mode 2 - Slow roll off minimum)
• H-FAST (same as Mode 7 - Fast roll off corrected minimum)

I'll just compare the time-domain response of these three, but if you're interested in looking at the others, feel free to download my REW *.mdat file here.

Here's Topping vs. Gustard (in that order) for Fast roll off linear / L-FAST. I'm showing the step and impulse response. For these plots, I'm looking at the length and degree of pre/post-ringing:

Not identical, but pretty darn close. Here's the same for Slow roll off minimum / M-SLOW:

Finally, here's Fast roll off corrected minimum / H-FAST:

Not sure how audible any of this stuff is, but of the three, H-FAST (Mode 7 on the Topping) appears to have no pre-ringing, while post-ringing is not terrible. From what I understand humans tend to be more sensitive to pre-ringing (which does not occur in nature except on Star Trek) than post-ringing, so this seems like a reasonable tradeoff.

At the end of the day, you get to choose which you prefer if you have one of these DACs. Again, feel free to download my REW data file to see the rest of the Topping filters. If you want to use my limits settings to match the captures here, select "%" instead of "dBFS" on the "Impulse" tab and use these limit settings:

For the rest of my listening, I'll leave the Topping on Mode 7 and the Gustard on H-FAST. The amplitude response looks funky (when zoomed in), but I can't hear to 20 kHz anyway, so a half a dB of roll-off at 16 kHz doe not bother me in the least. Enjoy.

Edit: I've fixed the zip file containing my REW *.mdat file. Did this late last night and mistakenly used `gzip` instead of `zip`. Sorry. Also, I created these plots using the latest beta version of REW. I've not tested, but I would not be surprised if the production release of REW fails to open this file, which kind-of sucks. It only takes a few minutes to create an account on AV NIRVANA so that you can download the beta, but sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[RustyGates]

Outstanding! Many congratulations, John Yang !

On a more general note: I can't prevent admiring how China is surpassing us, Westerners. You guys have the future ! Go on doing cutting-edge job like this!

*Using a western DAC chip

Bleeding edge performance either way.

 

[rlwings]

Finally got around to measuring the Topping D90SE and Gustard X16 filters in the stack setup. Here's the amplitude response for the seven different Topping filters:

View attachment 155337

The colors that REW ended up picking are not great, but these are in order, from top to bottom:

• Mode 1 - Fast roll off apodizing
• Mode 2 - Slow roll off minimum
• Mode 3 - Fast roll off minimum (default)
• Mode 4 - Slow roll off linear
• Mode 5 - Fast roll off linear
• Mode 6 - Brick-wall
• Mode 7 - Fast roll off corrected minimum

Here's the same plot for the Gustard's three filter choices:

View attachment 155338

From the plots, it's clear that this is a proper subset of the Topping filter options:

• L-FAST (same as Mode 5 - Fast roll off linear)
• M-SLOW (same as Mode 2 - Slow roll off minimum)
• H-FAST (same as Mode 7 - Fast roll off corrected minimum)

I'll just compare the time-domain response of these three, but if you're interested in looking at the others, feel free to download my REW *.mdat file here.

Here's Topping vs. Gustard (in that order) for Fast roll off linear / L-FAST. I'm showing the step and impulse response. For these plots, I'm looking at the length and degree of pre/post-ringing:

View attachment 155339
View attachment 155340

Not identical, but pretty darn close. Here's the same for Slow roll off minimum / M-SLOW:

View attachment 155341
View attachment 155342

Finally, here's Fast roll off corrected minimum / H-FAST:

View attachment 155343
View attachment 155344

Not sure how audible any of this stuff is, but of the three, H-FAST (Mode 7 on the Topping) appears to have no pre-ringing, while post-ringing is not terrible. From what I understand humans tend to be more sensitive to pre-ringing (which does not occur in nature except on Star Trek) than post-ringing, so this seems like a reasonable tradeoff.

At the end of the day, you get to choose which you prefer if you have one of these DACs. Again, feel free to download my REW data file to see the rest of the Topping filters. If you want to use my limits settings to match the captures here, select "%" instead of "dBFS" on the "Impulse" tab and use these limit settings:
View attachment 155348
For the rest of my listening, I'll leave the Topping on Mode 7 and the Gustard on H-FAST. The amplitude response looks funky (when zoomed in), but I can't hear to 20 kHz anyway, so a half a dB of roll-off at 16 kHz doe not bother me in the least. Enjoy.

This is awesome! Thank you very much for doing it! - So for us less technical folk would you say that the best filter to use is #7 or am I missing something here? (John seems to say #3 is best).