Topping E30 II DAC Review

[Lukino]

I would love to see a blind/abx test of the DAVE vs. the Topping pair of E30 ll and L30 ll. They are both dac and headphone amp. I know that comparing a $300 dac/amp combo with a $14,000 DAVE sounds absurd on the face of it, but we know which measures better. I would love to know if in a blind test you would hear a $13,700 difference.

It's like a circular saw. Every saw and blade cuts with a certain precision. If even Amir or anyone wanted to find out the accuracy of the cut with the naked eye, it would be impossible. both cut exactly to the eye. Maybe under a microscope, mistakes will show up. In our case AP measurement. Yes Topping has a better cut. When listening with your ears, you get together with the brain of the placebo section. Believe that the microscope and in our case AP will give you relevant results. It's up to you whether you invest so much for such performance.

 

[Sukie]

Here’s the confirmation.

Fulfilled by Amazon - Amazon Customer Service

Items

www.amazon.co.uk

Product returns within the 30 day window. Not support regrading faults and warranty after 30 days, at least not for 3rd party sellers. I've had experience of this 1st hand!!!

 

[respice finem]

It's like a circular saw. Every saw and blade cuts with a certain precision. If even Amir or anyone wanted to find out the accuracy of the cut with the naked eye, it would be impossible. both cut exactly to the eye. Maybe under a microscope, mistakes will show up. In our case AP measurement. Yes Topping has a better cut. When listening with your ears, you get together with the brain of the placebo section. Believe that the microscope and in our case AP will give you relevant results. It's up to you whether you invest so much for such performance.

And like a circular saw, if it has the right parameters it doesn't even need to be blind tested (and to keep your hands also)

What measures perfectly cannot "sound" in any way, but just be "audibly transparent". Much more can be measured than heard. At least if you're 35+, your audiometry would likely give you a depression if you saw it. I know the audiophile "church" suggests otherwise, but despite decades of efforts and "poetry", nobody was able to provide any evidence in a properly conducted test. See Amir's videos about proper testing.

My own opinion as an old fart: If the difference I hear, or believe to hear (sometimes it's real, more often bias or error, like slightly different volume level) is so minimal, I need direct A/B testing to notice it, it hardly matters for everyday listening, without this direct comparison.

Does that mean that well made "mid-tier" gear is good enough? I think the answer is yes, for most of us. And it's a good thing. If we would really hear "the dust mites farting", life would be hell.

 

[nagster]

For its measured performance, features (like a remote) and connectivity along with a very low price, it's an excellent buy for many (most?). Topping do have to make a profit, after all.

Adding an unbalanced output to the D10 balanced while maintaining high performance may result in a higher price than the E30. It's difficult..

 

[Koeitje]

Let me explain a bit. The dreaded issue with spdif inputs on our D30pro, E30(later version) was due to the spdif chip we used, CS8416. Normally you don't get these drop outs if there's no compatibility issue with your other devices. We did used to use the chip without complaints in the past. But in the end using the chip to replace AK4118(was done for due to fire at AKM factory) is really not a good idea.

We have since dropped using CS8416 despite that we gathered a lot of stock during the shortage. There is still minor issues with the spdif input on D90se for example but it behaves much nicer with much better compatibility in our tests.

And because people always said they rather it working than having pretty jitter graph so we tried our best to make it as compatible as possible while not sacrificing performance too much this time with E30 II.

I haven't seen issues with USB input in general.

I was just giving a random example, I have no idea what the current complaints are about what models. Only thing I wanted to point out is that people should really be careful about drawing conclusions from the limited data they have available.

 

[Trell]

Adding an unbalanced output to the D10 balanced while maintaining high performance may result in a higher price than the E30. It's difficult..

You should read the posts again from the Topping HW designer. TL;DR it's too expensive given their previous sales, not technical difficult.

 

[Kevinfc]

I kinda agree with you. It's relatively easy just to make a good measuring product and just sell many units of them. I do really wish that the build quality and "quality control" can be measured in a such straightforward way. Someone said about stress testing, we have started doing that. But it will really take time to see the difference.

But I would say we didn't pushed measurements more than it should in the sense of sacrificing thermal performance or pushing beyond the part's limit etc. And we really do care about every component we use in our products. Even resistors are important and can make differences. Let alone the caps. However we do have to design new circuits, making new experiments and perhaps ways to prevent our own designs to be copied. And those processes may cause issues. But this is the way to go, a period/phase we have to go through.

I admire you for having the guts to come here and take fire for your companies problems while not being disagreeable. To some, the answers you’ve provided are not sufficient, but there‘s much to be said for having the courage to listen and honestly respond to criticism. I hope things improve at Topping, your voice is appreciated.

 

[Dogcoop]

It's like a circular saw. Every saw and blade cuts with a certain precision. If even Amir or anyone wanted to find out the accuracy of the cut with the naked eye, it would be impossible. both cut exactly to the eye. Maybe under a microscope, mistakes will show up. In our case AP measurement. Yes Topping has a better cut. When listening with your ears, you get together with the brain of the placebo section. Believe that the microscope and in our case AP will give you relevant results. It's up to you whether you invest so much for such performance.

Sorry, but I don’t understand your reply. All I was saying was (with tongue somewhat in cheek) that the golden rule for accuracy in listening tests is dependent on the quality of your blind/abx testing procedure. Since everyone asks for blind testing to confirm that one’s opinion is not affected by other inputs or bias’, it would be interesting to see if Amir could discern (with his trained ear) a difference. It might spur others to perform blind testing (if they don’t accept the measurements).

 

[nagster]

Hmm there's E50, I know it's a lot more expensive in comparison but that's probably the best that we can do. We give a lot of cuts to the authorized resellers so that can give you great customer service. And honestly, knowing some resellers give large resistance to the customers it is not making me very happy. Luckily there still are great ones like, Audiophonics, Addicted to audio, Apos for different parts of the world.

That may be the correct answer.
If the unbalanced connection of D10 balanced is a bottleneck, choosing E50 will solve it.
It's certainly expensive, but at about the same price as the D10 balanced + D10s, it adds an SE output, coaxial input, optical input, and remote control, and is powered by a USB port. And higher performance. It is a bargain than the D10 pair...

 

[Robbo99999]

These Topping DACS are getting better & better, so you can't complain about that......probably time for some added value features though, but what would they be, and you might not want them on an entry level DAC as you might not want to drive up the costs for something that is not required by some customers. Ability to apply PEQ at the DAC level maybe. Room EQ solutions.....etc. (AVR competitor products). I don't know, but either way good to see an improvement in the E30, and of course it's not like the original E30 was shabby, but good to see an improvement at around the same price points (allowing for inflation).

 

[sarumbear]

Product returns within the 30 day window. Not support regrading faults and warranty after 30 days, at least not for 3rd party sellers. I've had experience of this 1st hand!!!

It looks like they are hiding behind the following deceleration in the header. It’s confusing as they use the word offered not sold. It does however says seller is 3rd party. Legally it may mean they are not the warrantor. If I am going to buy such a product I will ask Amazon to clarify who is the legal warrantor.

Items "Fulfilled by Amazon" (FBA) are offered by a third-party seller, but packed and shipped to you from an Amazon Fulfillment Center.

@JohnYang1997 your comments please.

 

[Lukino]

Sorry, but I don’t understand your reply. All I was saying was (with tongue somewhat in cheek) that the golden rule for accuracy in listening tests is dependent on the quality of your blind/abx testing procedure. Since everyone asks for blind testing to confirm that one’s opinion is not affected by other inputs or bias’, it would be interesting to see if Amir could discern (with his trained ear) a difference. It might spur others to perform blind testing (if they don’t accept the measurements).

Maybe you could read the end of the Chord DAVE review... There you have it all...

 

[Dogcoop]

Maybe you could read the end of the Chord DAVE review... There you have it all...

Could you please quote what you are referring to.

 

[MAB]

I kinda agree with you. It's relatively easy just to make a good measuring product and just sell many units of them. I do really wish that the build quality and "quality control" can be measured in a such straightforward way. Someone said about stress testing, we have started doing that. But it will really take time to see the difference.

But I would say we didn't pushed measurements more than it should in the sense of sacrificing thermal performance or pushing beyond the part's limit etc. And we really do care about every component we use in our products. Even resistors are important and can make differences. Let alone the caps. However we do have to design new circuits, making new experiments and perhaps ways to prevent our own designs to be copied. And those processes may cause issues. But this is the way to go, a period/phase we have to go through.

Thanks John. And appreciate.
Topping is certainly making some fantastic devices with out of this world performance. Even the style is class leading IMO, controls, layout, etc. The A30/D30 Pro stack I have is a joy to listen and operate, despite the intermittent channel on the A30. I do think you have the fundamentals solid. The quality and reliability are earned over time, even fought for. I think stress testing, teardown analysis on manufacturing returns, and customer feedback are all parts of that journey. You acknowledge that here and I double-appreciate that.

 

[Jimster480]

I never said I had any numbers. I just said it's obvious that Topping products have a higher failure rate than other popular brands. If you fail to see that you must be turning the blind eye to all the reported problems.

Completely wrong IMHO. Outside of this one unit that failed; I've been on this forum for many years and have been reasonably active. When I come back I often read through many pages in the forum to see what people are talking about.
Sure there are more posts about topping, but also more volume of units sold. Check Amazon for an example when you see topping products with 4x the number of reviews of other brands...
If topping sold 1k units and 20 broke; that's a 2% failure rate. But let's say SMSL sold 50 units and 5 broke; that's a 10% failure rate.
So those 20 posts = more posts than SMSL so topping is now "worse"?
This is why sales volume matters.
Now please don't take the above numbers as anything other than an example. I'm not claiming a failure rate for a specific brand, I'm just saying that for each product it matters the number of sales.

 

[Jimster480]

ah yes... increasing the warranty period to the already EU minimum is such a nice gesture that shows great care for the customer... lol

and the only things they tried so far has been a failure to find the issue


i get it man. i totally do. i'm actually one of the, unfortunately, few who understand that for you (and Topping in general) "quality == how high does it score on Amir's AP test suite", and nothing more. no reliability, thermals, ergonomics/usability etc

that's why i totally believe you that Topping, a company that has only recently started doing stress tests, "has the most advanced QC in hifi"

i guess that's also why my 2nd PA5, barely over 2 months old but with mere hours of actual use (since it was "relegated" to my wife's office, and she started using it only last week after her pregnancy leave "expired") has already started to develop the same issue

that's what "the most advanced QC hifi" gets me, the customer, these days apparently... not the obviously lesser QC of my decades old Marantz amp that started being defective only after 20 (or more) years of daily use (including a couple of years of being left on [not just plugged in, but actually turned on] 24/7) and will be an easy repair for any local dude

You are basing your rage on a single product that has a design issue.
Things happen. I own companies and design and develop software. Not every product is always perfect. Some have much more issues than others.... Depends on how complex and the price you are trying to hit.

My DX7 is 5 years old in 3 weeks (or less) and it's been powered on most of the last 5 years... Over 10k hours listening time and it's fine.
If I had bought an RME for 4x the price 5 years ago; it would still be "outdated" today.

If you are worried about the highest quality then buy a higher end topping product where the overall production is smaller. However they are obviously trying to fix their problems.

 

[Swtoby]

Completely wrong IMHO. Outside of this one unit that failed; I've been on this forum for many years and have been reasonably active. When I come back I often read through many pages in the forum to see what people are talking about.
Sure there are more posts about topping, but also more volume of units sold. Check Amazon for an example when you see topping products with 4x the number of reviews of other brands...
If topping sold 1k units and 20 broke; that's a 2% failure rate. But let's say SMSL sold 50 units and 5 broke; that's a 10% failure rate.
So those 20 posts = more posts than SMSL so topping is now "worse"?
This is why sales volume matters.
Now please don't take the above numbers as anything other than an example. I'm not claiming a failure rate for a specific brand, I'm just saying that for each product it matters the number of sales.

I agree with goat76. It "seems" that Topping has a higher failure rate than others, based on discussions here and on other forums. The original L30, E30 and PA5 threads contain the unhappy experiences of users. Indeed Amir had a warning in red at one point alerting people to be aware of potential issues with the L30. Whether that is fair or not based on sales volume is hard to say, but the perception is there of higher failure rates.

 

[Jimster480]

I agree with goat76. It "seems" that Topping has a higher failure rate than others, based on discussions here and on other forums. The original L30, E30 and PA5 threads contain the unhappy experiences of users. Indeed Amir had a warning in red at one point alerting people to be aware of potential issues with the L30. Whether that is fair or not based on sales volume is hard to say, but the perception is there of higher failure rates.

Almost all of the issues related to those products is related to the spdif issues. Which as the engineer explained stem from the akm Factory fire. Since they had to replace their chips inside of their products with new Chips due to the shortage.
If you read through those threads you will find out that most people did not experience failure but instead experience issues with their spdif.
The original performance of my topping D30 from 5 years ago was significantly worse via spdif versus usb.
I remember that Schiit sold products that had broken USB for years.... at the end of the day if you want to use spdif primarily then you should do a little bit more research on any specific model you are looking at.

 

[Swtoby]

Almost all of the issues related to those products is related to the spdif issues. Which as the engineer explained stem from the akm Factory fire. Since they had to replace their chips inside of their products with new Chips due to the shortage.
If you read through those threads you will find out that most people did not experience failure but instead experience issues with their spdif.
The original performance of my topping D30 from 5 years ago was significantly worse via spdif versus usb.
I remember that Schiit sold products that had broken USB for years.... at the end of the day if you want to use spdif primarily then you should do a little bit more research on any specific model you are looking at.

Not the L30, apparently that destroyed some headphones. Besides, failure or issues with spdif amount to the same difference for the end user: it's not working. Schiit did have similar problems, also discussed here, but Schiit doesn't have the cult following here like Topping does. Which I assume accounts for the followers making excuses and readily laying blame at the feet of others for Topping's issues, AKM in the spdif case. Especially if that is what the designer himself is doing. Also not a good look for Topping.

 

[goat76]

Almost all of the issues related to those products is related to the spdif issues. Which as the engineer explained stem from the akm Factory fire. Since they had to replace their chips inside of their products with new Chips due to the shortage.
If you read through those threads you will find out that most people did not experience failure but instead experience issues with their spdif.
The original performance of my topping D30 from 5 years ago was significantly worse via spdif versus usb.
I remember that Schiit sold products that had broken USB for years.... at the end of the day if you want to use spdif primarily then you should do a little bit more research on any specific model you are looking at.

Failures, issues, not working as intended, I take all those things into account. The products should simply work without problems, but the threads about products from Topping are full of issues. Don't you see that???

Read this thread about a product from RME, take it from the end of the thread, and read back. Tell me when you first find someone complaining about a problem, then read back further until you find another one with technical issues. How many pages do you need to read to find 5 reported problems that can't be solved by a software update or similar?

RME ADI-2 FS Version 2 DAC and Headphone Amp Review

No, if you want to get that super chocolatey sound, with 3D/holographic sound stage, you need to buy a nice Woo Audio preamplifier and also a Rebel amp to complete the chain of synergy. If you need more information head on over to SBAF, they'll teach you all about getting the full potential out...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Now do the same with this thread about the Topping E30. And for the record, It doesn't matter if it's a problem with spdif or if it's a total failure, it still counts as a problem with the unit if it can't be solved by a software update. I don't think you need to read back that many pages for this one.

Topping E30 DAC Review

Yeah, maybe he should visit the irDAC thread? are your Viawave’s back lined with the lamb’s wool or the felt ? Satin

www.audiosciencereview.com