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Topping E30 DAC Review

Jimmy

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I believe that shipments from China are more or less subsidized, that's why they are so cheap, but shipping things back is another story.

I try to buy from local sellers when possible, specially for expensive items, it saves a lot of trouble if things go wrong.


When I reported the abnormal operation of my E30 to Topping, I received the following email.
However, it states that I have to pay for shipping to China. While shipping costs from China to Japan are kept low by the International Postal Union, conversely, you need to pay several times the cost of shipping from Japan to China. It's ridiculous to pay another $ 30 for returning a $ 130 item.
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Thank you for contacting TOPPING support.We are happy to assist.

For your situation, we think the unit was defective and need to be sent back to China for repair.Would you mind sending back to China for repairing?

Let me tell you the process first.You need to provide the serial number for us to open a case.The you can send out the package at your convenience. (Just send the unit itself would be ok.) When you made the shipment, pls let us know the tracking # .After we repair, we will return it to you.

Since it is under warranty, each shipment cost should be paid by the sender.

Pls let us know your comments.

Best Regards,
-------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------
 

Vantavimeow

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I have the D50s, D90, and NX4 DSD. No issues. All work great.
I had huge issues with my EL DAC which I replaced with a D10 for 1/4 the price and the same performance, super stocked with my D50S upgrade too, I it's just stigma from people who haven't had real world experience or simply user error. That being said, Topping seems to have a much better reputation than SMSL.
 

Veri

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There were no import charges. I believe it's covered as it was shipped by 4PX in China then handed over to Hermes and when it was delivered it had a Hermes UK Shipping label.
I noticed this too. Smart retailers are using Hermes who are still doing swift airport transfers over China :)
 

yejun

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My first post. I just got mine last night, so far I am really happy with this little device.
I ordered from Apos last Sunday then it shipped on Tuesday from China, and I received it on Friday in California. I don't hear any pop between songs with a passive preamp. Only when I manually switch songs in the middle of playing there is a very faint pop. I don't think it happens during normal playback.

I like the auto-on/off feature a lot. It will switch to the device playing audio during power on. USB is always connected, it will only turn on when audio playing which is intuitive. Sometime I am lazy to pickup remote, I will just stop one device for one minute then start playing from another device.

A very minute complaint for DAC mode, it is still possible to change PCM volume on USB device, but DSD is always at max. I understand that the chip only has DSD volume bypass.
 

AndyLu

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christ how bad smsl and toppings reliability is. you know its true.

You seem to know it is true. I don't. I have very good experiences with Topping. Also you seem to draw that conclusion because one or two people posted an anecdotal example. All brands have a percentage of f*ups. If you look on any Apple/Samsung/HP/NAD/Shiit etc. etc. forum you also find people who receive DOA's. I personally received a pre-amp of Emotiva which was dead right out of the box. Did I draw the conclusion that Emotiva's reliability is bad? Of course not.

Just stating that SMSL and Topping have bad reliability based on one or two posts you read is nonsense. You can't draw any conclusions without knowing real facts and percentages.
 
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PolkFan

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For just $130 how on earth can they make such a great DAC? I mean this defeats like 99% of the market.

Want to grab the new Element 2 but man this thing is amazing.
 

PolkFan

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Question if i did buy this and a Atom AMP can i just use the Atom for volume and leave the DAC at default? Would it be easy to setup doing that?
 

Eetu

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Question if i did buy this and a Atom AMP can i just use the Atom for volume and leave the DAC at default? Would it be easy to setup doing that?

Yeah, should work fine. You would just set the E30 to pure dac mode and you could use the Atom to control headphone/active speakers/power amp volume.
 

AndyLu

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Question if i did buy this and a Atom AMP can i just use the Atom for volume and leave the DAC at default? Would it be easy to setup doing that?

Eetu was right before me with an answer :).

But since I already typed my answer, here goes:

It would be fairly easy. You can set the E30 in 2 modes: Pre (pre amp) mode or in pure DAC mode. In Pre-amp mode you can adjust the volume level on the E30. In pure DAC mode you can not adjust the volume (because the whole volume section is bypassed). DAC mode is preferable for your usage with the Atom.
 

Daverz

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Just got mine, ordered from Hifigo on March 30. With the E30 directly connected to the unbalanced inputs of the Bryston 3B-SST (23 dB gain setting), I hear a hum when I put my ear up to the woofer (88 dB sensitivity).

Streamer is an RPi4 connected via USB. Setup with piCorePlayer was just a matter of removing the old squeezelite output setting, saving that, then selecting "hw:CARD=E30,DEV=0" and saving again.

I wasn't prepared for how tiny it is. Hard for my old eyes to read the display across the room.

As for the pop issue, there's a slight pop on LMS pause/play and muting with the remote, but nothing really bothersome. No noise on track transitions or LMS skip forward/backward.
 

Morpheus85

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Eetu was right before me with an answer :).

But since I already typed my answer, here goes:

It would be fairly easy. You can set the E30 in 2 modes: Pre (pre amp) mode or in pure DAC mode. In Pre-amp mode you can adjust the volume level on the E30. In pure DAC mode you can not adjust the volume (because the whole volume section is bypassed). DAC mode is preferable for your usage with the Atom.

how can I switch on the DAC mode?
 

AndyLu

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how can I switch on the DAC mode?

That is explained in the manual. You can download the manual from the Topping site:

http://www.tpdz.net/newsinfo/379406.html

1586638377484.png
 

Swoof

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let me know how the return process goes as I myself bought a D50S from Apos 2 weeks ago and the tracking has yet to update again except for it saying it’s registered and in Hong Kong. They told me I can’t cancel my order and they can’t even give me any definitive date on when I’ll be getting my DAC. Regardless I am pretty sure I want to return the D50S and buy this new E30....


what’s weird is.. they said if I purchase an E30 right now they will upgrade the shipping speed on both the E30 and my D50S, as if they know it’s lost already and they are going to ship me a new one, yet I can’t cancel the order and they can’t tell me when I’ll receive it or why my tracking information has not yet updated since March 28th.... I hope they don’t give me a hassle with returning the D50S....
Turns out this was all user error. I think I had had too many beers while setting it up. I just needed to switch the input on my amp.

There was still a terrible buzzing noise while using optical out of my TV. I had been using power source from TV, I'm going to try the wall instead to see if that changes things. My TV isn't a good source, as it's a TCL Roku TV.
 

Daverz

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I switched to using RCA to XLR cables into my Bryston 3B-SST, and that greatly reduced the hum I was hearing when putting my ear to the woofers. The hum from the right speaker is greatly reduced, while I don't hear any hum at all from the left speaker.

Also, I spoke too soon about the pop issue. I do find the "pop-pop" that I get when queuing up an album in LMS to be annoying. I hope this is something Topping can fix in firmware.
 
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