This is a review and detailed measurements of the new Topping E50 balanced USB DAC. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $269. I just reviewed its companion headphone amplifier, the Topping L50.
The E50 takes my favorite orange LED display and makes it even nicer!
It is a gorgeous bright orange display. A single button turns the unit on and cycles through the inputs. You also get a remote control:
As you see, power is provided through a 5 volt barrel connector. Topping provides a USB to barrel cable adapter so you can use any USB power supply.
As with more recent Topping products, it uses TRS output for balanced output instead of XLR which takes up a lot more space.
Topping E50 Measurements
As usual we start without dashboard. Let's test the balanced output with USB input:
Another exemplary performance from Topping, landing it almost at top of all DACs ever tested:
RCA output is nearly as good:
Noise performance is excellent as well:
Linearity is as perfect as you can get:
IMD performance is excellent:
I see a hint of ESS dac chip IMD hump. I wonder if that is what powers it.
Multitone performance is superb with almost no frequency dependency:
Jitter over USB is perfect:
It degrades just a hair over Toslink/Coax:
There are three filers available:
They impact our THD+N vs frequency thusly:
Conclusions
What can I say but another star performance from Topping. Company is so focused on squeezing every bit of noise and distortion out of these products while providing them to us at bargain prices. And in this case, great looks as well. I wish I could complain about something but nothing comes to mind.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The E50 takes my favorite orange LED display and makes it even nicer!
It is a gorgeous bright orange display. A single button turns the unit on and cycles through the inputs. You also get a remote control:
As you see, power is provided through a 5 volt barrel connector. Topping provides a USB to barrel cable adapter so you can use any USB power supply.
As with more recent Topping products, it uses TRS output for balanced output instead of XLR which takes up a lot more space.
Topping E50 Measurements
As usual we start without dashboard. Let's test the balanced output with USB input:
Another exemplary performance from Topping, landing it almost at top of all DACs ever tested:
RCA output is nearly as good:
Noise performance is excellent as well:
Linearity is as perfect as you can get:
IMD performance is excellent:
I see a hint of ESS dac chip IMD hump. I wonder if that is what powers it.
Multitone performance is superb with almost no frequency dependency:
Jitter over USB is perfect:
It degrades just a hair over Toslink/Coax:
There are three filers available:
They impact our THD+N vs frequency thusly:
Conclusions
What can I say but another star performance from Topping. Company is so focused on squeezing every bit of noise and distortion out of these products while providing them to us at bargain prices. And in this case, great looks as well. I wish I could complain about something but nothing comes to mind.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
