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Topping E30 DAC Review

Rottmannash

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I've been trying Filter 5 and it seems to lessen bass "boominess" to some extent. I am running a SONY amp that has bass enhancement, which I like to keep turned on but with some music it does overcompensate. Filter 5 appears to help with that but I need to do more testing.
Pretty sure the engineers on this site would laugh at these comments if they weren't busy designing DACs. The filters have no effect on bass or midrange for certain and only marginally in audible higher frequencies.
 

Rottmannash

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MOCKBA

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Do I need any driver if I am going to use E30 under Linux? I believe not, and it should work out the box, but since I see many post regarding drivers, just curious.
 

norcalscott

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Pretty sure the engineers on this site would laugh at these comments if they weren't busy designing DACs. The filters have no effect on bass or midrange for certain and only marginally in audible higher frequencies.
Good to know - as I mentioned, this was from a very quick test and anything I heard was very subtle and likely not related to the filter. I am a noob with DAC filters - this is the first external DAC I've owned that has filters.

edited to be more clear
 
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GianDi

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this simple tone generator, set the tone to 16000hz or higher depending on how good your hearing is atm, and play it fairly loudly so that you can clearly hear it. Then switch the filters. The fastest filters 1 and 3 will be the loudest (although the difference is incredibly slight), the slower filters will be quieter, and the super slow filter number 5 will sound like multiple tones, not a pure sine wave - this is presumably because it aliases frequencies above nyquist back into the audible range, thus producing audible information that was not in the original signal - needless to say, this is typically unwanted if we're talking about high fidelity reproduction of audio.
I will try. It's a double-blind-deaf test!
 

solderdude

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Do I need any driver if I am going to use E30 under Linux? I believe not, and it should work out the box, but since I see many post regarding drivers, just curious.

I am using the E30 with Linux Mint. Works fine out of the box. Did not need to install anything.
 

Balle Clorin

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It's minimal pop which happened in many DACs from cs4398 to ak4497 all need anti-pop circuit to function properly. It's only a issue if you directly connect the output to a poweramp which you wouldn't do for older DACs. The power amp amplifies the small pop to a much larger signal hence the pop. It will never be heard if a preamp is used. Even then it's an acceptable level of small pop that's improved over D70 and some older DACs.
And it's easily measurable using oscilloscope. I'll try to measure the level of the pop and share here.
So what DAC must I avoid then , wich ones are pop-less? I will run DaC directly to power amp and control the volume upstream of the DAC
 

companyja

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I dunno if it's been noted here but it seems like they silently revised the E30 from the AK 4118 reciever for SPDIF to a CS8416 chip. I assume there is a shortage of AKM chips that necessitated this change. I don't use SPDIF with my E30 but it might be of note to someone looking to buy it for this connection; I doubt the performance gets audibly worse or better but it probably does change the measurements on optical/coax some.
 
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half_dog

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I dunno if it's been noted here but it seems like they silently revised the E30 from the AK 4118 reciever for SPDIF to a CS8416 chip. I assume there is a shortage of AKM chips that necessitated this change. I don't use SPDIF with my E30 but it might be of note to someone looking to buy it for this connection; I doubt the performance gets audibly worse or better but it probably does change the measurements on optical/coax some.
Does it bring any side effect?
Any pic from newest products?
 

Sharur

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I was accidentally using filter 4 for some time and wasn't able to figure out what was "off." Once I noticed and switched back to filter 1, the air frequencies returned. Could be placebo, but just my two cents
 

Radioman55

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Does it bring any side effect?
Any pic from newest products?
Mine came in yesterday with series number 2102xxxx. looks exactly same as older one. However I experienced gain in DAC mode a bit lower (or might by my ears)...

May be someone can confirm if they have altered something in order to accomodate the CS8416.
Topping needs to rebrand it as E30 v2.
 

Pdxwayne

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I am seeing something odd with my E30.

I was using E30 as the source for my minidsp hd2x4 measurements. I measured E30 with my loopback chain and found pretty high level of second harmonic. Note that the capture peak is not at 0db. So not sure if this is expected.

E30:
matched_spectra_left_e30_minus6.6db_peak.PNG.png


I understand that my loopback chain can add harmonics, but Gustard x16 via same loopback chain looks much better in term of second harmonic.

X16:
matched_spectra_gustard.PNG.png
 

companyja

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I don't think you can find E30 PCB photos online since the display is glued in and people didn't want to destroy their units. You can be brave and post a picture of your own unit though if you really want to know that badly. Also it's a bit funny to ask for a pic of the PCB when the link on the topping website literally shows the Cirrus-Logic ship on the PCB of the E30.

Assuming nothing has changed aside from the SPDIF section, there will be no effect on the performance of the USB-Line out configuration. In terms of SPDIF it most likely changes the measurements. Only Amir or someone with an analyzer can tell us for sure what the difference in performance is as we're 99.9999% unable to actually hear it. The original measurements here don't even include SPDIF jitter, so it's not like we knew the relative performance anyway. What I don't like is that Topping as a company does these very silent revisions - they silently revised the DC circuitry of the L30 starting with batch 2011, they of course changed the DX3 Pro's output impedance (though I believe this was always labeled LDAC/v2 by resellers), and now the SPDIF receiver of the E30 - these are the ones I know off the top of my head, there might be more. It doesn't make me extremely confident in the uniformity of their products going forward.
 

half_dog

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I am seeing something odd with my E30.

I was using E30 as the source for my minidsp hd2x4 measurements. I measured E30 with my loopback chain and found pretty high level of second harmonic. Note that the capture peak is not at 0db. So not sure if this is expected.

E30:
View attachment 129329

I understand that my loopback chain can add harmonics, but Gustard x16 via same loopback chain looks much better in term of second harmonic.

X16:
View attachment 129330
That's quite high, I did some measurements with a US-366 which is not a example of clean an ADC and I was able to hit -110 dB THD with E30 and D10s.
 

liu

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I don't think you can find E30 PCB photos online since the display is glued in and people didn't want to destroy their units. You can be brave and post a picture of your own unit though if you really want to know that badly. Also it's a bit funny to ask for a pic of the PCB when the link on the topping website literally shows the Cirrus-Logic ship on the PCB of the E30.

LOL. It's super easy to teardown the display without destroying it. one just need to apply enough heat to melt the adhesives.


IMG_6967.jpg



> Cirrus-Logic ship on the PCB of the E30

that is used after there's a shortage of akm chip due to the fire. Previously it was an akm chip for spdif/coax, as is shown above.
 

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