I haven't compared but would be nice to have the most neutral going on all the time. So, which one is it?
I believe filter 3 is the best based on something Amir said in one of his videos,
Thank you, looks it has a greater impact when you are doing eq on device itself. I definetely can hear difference in clarity of high notes. Or maybe it is just self lie.
These measurements have 1 big limit: they don't measure phase shift or transient response (in the case of linear filters). The audible difference can be quite severe: songs that hit much differently or in poor decimator filters (I'm sure these aren't) you can have phase rotations even lower than 10kHz you do hear that stuff quite a lot, and its effect is song dependent, since with songs with a lot of stereo information you could fairly easily throw them out of phase in that frequency range, causing information loss.
The one that affects the signal the least. I don't know these filters, but looking at ripple or frequency response is not enough, just like it's not enough the delay figure coming from the ESS spec sheet without visualizing *how* the filter rings and not only how long. Having a filter that slightly shaves away 0.x db after 15khz in frequency response is tolerable if then the filter is very clean in behavior, having a perfect linear response in the audible range and very steep cutoff just to then have massive phase rotations in the audible range or a lot of pre-ringing makes no sense even if on paper on these graphs such filter would look perfect.
Hey everyone, update here on this, so I talked to Shenzhenaudio and they figured it might be packaging material that got stuck to the metal on the chassis, and suggested using alcohol soaked cotton to remove it. I was skeptical but sure enough, they were right! I couldn't remove them with my fingers, they looked exactly like scratches, felt like scratches, but dissolved completely with the isopropyl alcohol pads and now it looks perfect. Very happy with this outcome. If yours looks awful, try cleaning them off with alcohol pads!
It's nice that the problem was solved so easily; in the picture it really did look like scratches.
It does so nicely, balanced as well as unbalanced. More power than needed in both cases.
I should actually get my DX5 II today -- perfect timing with the new FW update.
I hope that most of the issues people have experienced are fixed, and don't stop reporting any new issues to Topping!
Ask mix or mastering engineers if ringing and phase distortion are not that big of a deal. It’s a massive deal. Now I’m not sure the average listen can even spot either, especially without having as mental reference the appropriate sound, also I don’t think (at least I hope) neither are too bad in the case of the topping filters. Most likely they’re all decent and with some trade-offs among them. Also I invite you to spot a +- 0.3db difference at 20kHz, heck even a 1db difference. It’s not practically relevant. Now the same way add or remove a phase rotation that starts at 1kHz in something like a rock or metal song, and I’d argue even the average bear would hear a difference. I’d trade-off a bit of linearity in the frequency domain for phase linearity and clean transient any day.
