Topping E50 Review (Balanced DAC)

[AudioArchitech]

If you had to buy a DAC tomorrow and you could choose between the E50 or the D50s ($80 less, barely used). Which would you pick?

 

[PhnomPenhPaul]

If you had to buy a DAC tomorrow and you could choose between the E50 or the D50s ($80 less, barely used). Which would you pick?

Look at the different feature sets of the two DAC's and see which best suits your requirements as they will in all likelihood sound the same. [I would choose the E50 as I'm not interested in B/T but do want balanced outputs but, of course, that's just me].

 

[gvl]

If you had to buy a DAC tomorrow and you could choose between the E50 or the D50s ($80 less, barely used). Which would you pick?

Wait until tomorrow, you may have a couple more new DACs to choose from.

 

[AudioArchitech]

Ya maybe it's worth waiting for the new F series coming out soon ; )

 

[amirm]

I wonder if we can get a higher quality version of the SINAD bar chart. Or at least, have a pictures including only great, only good, etc. As of now, the picture is practically too small to zoom in already.

I don't have a solution to this other than posting the zoomed version. The current graph is nearly 5000 pixels wide! If I turn it sideways it will go on for many pages. You can click on it by the way for a wider shot but still a pain to look at. If anyone has a solution that can be implemented in Excel, let me know.

 

[Labjr]

I don't have a solution to this other than posting the zoomed version. The current graph is nearly 5000 pixels wide! If I turn it sideways it will go on for many pages. You can click on it by the way for a wider shot but still a pain to look at. If anyone has a solution that can be implemented in Excel, let me know.

Maybe someone with experience in technical web site design can suggest an interactive solution. It's gotta be a pain to edit that chart for every review.

 

[Pdxwayne]

I don't have a solution to this other than posting the zoomed version. The current graph is nearly 5000 pixels wide! If I turn it sideways it will go on for many pages. You can click on it by the way for a wider shot but still a pain to look at. If anyone has a solution that can be implemented in Excel, let me know.

I would love to have two graphs if possible.

The one with everything like usual.

Another one with just the section it is in. For example, if it is in the "great" section, show one graph for just "great" section. Can you just select all the fields for "great" in Excel and create graph based on that selection?

 

[gvl]

I don't have a solution to this other than posting the zoomed version. The current graph is nearly 5000 pixels wide! If I turn it sideways it will go on for many pages. You can click on it by the way for a wider shot but still a pain to look at. If anyone has a solution that can be implemented in Excel, let me know.

Perhaps a link to a read-only Google sheet is all that's needed?

 

[carlosmante]

For the people asking why a brand would have so many good products that are hard to put apart and pick one… well, my opinion (and I may be completely wrong) is that it is about marketing. Having many products to pick from (of the same brand) puts you in the mental frame of which one to pick. You stop considering other brands since the decision is already hard enough considering only one brand (that you already trust).

"too much choice is making us feel unhappy and dissatisfied" Professor Mark Lepper at Stanford University.
In other words too much choice is promoting neurosis one item at a time.

 

[vco1]

It's good to have choice (to some extent), but the current line-up of Topping doesn't make much sense anymore. At least not to me. Besides, it's utterly confusing to customers: there's only a slight difference in features and performances between all the many devices. Finally, I can imagine dealers get annoyed too, by having to stock so many 'different' devices in order to offer the full product range for this brand.

I'd personally say that 3 or 4 product lines would be best: budget, mid-tier, and top.

Perhaps the next step for Topping is hiring a marketing manager, now the engineering part has been covered.

That being said, I'm aware most Chinese manufacturers take a different stance on this subject.

 

[jhaider]

If you had to buy a DAC tomorrow and you could choose between the E50 or the D50s ($80 less, barely used). Which would you pick?

Keep in mind first that most people don’t actually need to buy a separate DAC, tomorrow or ever. The one in whatever source, integrated, or AVR/P you use is generally fine. I guess I’m glad people buy them because volume lowers prices, but generally a DAC is kind of a dumb thing to buy as a separate box. The only systems that really need separate DACs are ones that require an go-between from a processor with digital outputs (e.g. miniDSP SHD Studio) to standard analog amplification.

As it happens, I’m building out a new such system now. I just ordered one of these, because it has the coax in and balanced outs I want (would prefer XLR but TRS is fine) and healthy output voltage at a reasonable price, with less feature creep (Bluetooth, etc) and no counterproductive controls such as volume knobs. That other one looks like a mislabeled preamp.

 

[Eneko]

"too much choice is making us feel unhappy and dissatisfied" Professor Mark Lepper at Stanford University.
In other words too much choice is promoting neurosis one item at a time.

Yes, absolutely, I think that I did not manage to explain myself properly. We all agree that too many can be negative. But “too many” is a relative term. If many options (and not too many) are offer from the same brand (distributor, store… whatever), you can consider that the decision (select a product) is already difficult enough inside of the opportunities that this brand is offering you to consider other brands (you may think that all your potential necessities are satisfied inside the brand, instead of considering first which are your necessities and then take a look at the different products in the market). I am a biomedical doctor, not a marketing expert, but I think that Apple is a good example of this behaviour. We may all agree that the old school approach of a clean offer looks more elegant. I don’t think that we can disagree when saying that they sell more devices now.
In a nutshell, you don’t want a “yes or no situation” (do you want to buy something from me, yes or no), but a “which one” (which product from my brand do you want to buy) one. If they are achieving it or not... I am afraid only they know their figures...

 

[Moosi]

Do I have to hate my E30 now for giving me only ~112db SINAD instead of 120db? Do I have to get the E50 for the sake of finally being able to hear the full unfolded/unwrapped MQA sound? Do I have to adjust myself to the notion of most probably not being able to hear anything below 115db and thus do I need to wrap my head around the concept, that there still might be nearly 3db for me to "chase" on my "route to perfection", so to speak ?

I wonder what DAC Amir in his private time listens and enjoys music to with all the knowledge and superior hearing he aquired. I wonder if there is such thing as an "enjoying Amir" anymore.

 

[ceausuc]

I review what gets sent to me from companies and members. And a few I buy myself. If you look at all the reviews I do, Topping is a small fraction. If you mean DACs and headphone amps, Topping sends me everything they build. Other companies do not to the same extent. So really nothing I have control over.

Are you sure?
I've seen posts from Sabaj that they sent you their new (at the time) dac(s), can't remember models - doesn't really matter.
And yet the new Topping dac gets a review already...

 

[virtua]

Do I have to hate my E30 now for giving me only ~112db SINAD instead of 120db? Do I have to get the E50 for the sake of finally being able to hear the full unfolded/unwrapped MQA sound? Do I have to adjust myself to the notion of most probably not being able to hear anything below 115db and thus do I need to wrap my head around the concept, that there still might be nearly 3db for me to "chase" on my "route to perfection", so to speak ?

I wonder what DAC Amir in his private time listens and enjoys music to with all the knowledge and superior hearing he aquired. I wonder if there is such thing as an "enjoying Amir" anymore.

Don't you know? every extra 1db of SINAD adds musicality and PRaT to the audio.

Jokes aside, I think the major benefit of these newer, better DACs and Amps coming out is someone fresh out of the gates who doesn't have any gear has more and better choices with more features at each price point than they did in the past. For people like us who already have more than perfectly usable gear with the features we needed/wanted, there's absolutely no reason to develop FOMO and get something like this. I don't think I've seen anyone here truly argue that the extra SINAD the devices which can pull 120db of really matters at this point. If you can get 16 bit of DR and SINAD out of your current DAC, you're likely good. Let alone a E30 which does a whole lot better than that. No need to rush out and buy stuff like this.

 

[sarumbear]

The limit for dynamic range these days is about 130 dB(A), which in fact does equate to 21 bits and change. This is sufficient to cover almost the entire dynamic range of a good LD condenser microphone in one piece. Composite ADC setups to cover as much as 142 dB(A) also exist (e.g. Sound Devices MixPre II series).

MixPre II series has a noise floor at -130dBV at 76dB gain, that is not their dynamic range. Their DR is much smaller, at 115dB. They are fantastic devices but they offer nowhere near the 21-bit range DR you mentioned.

 

[DACs_Lover]

I wish Topping starts selling power amps soon.

 

[Ron Texas]

The only thing left is to duplicate the functions of a miniDSP 2x4 HD with this kind of SINAD and at this price range. Thank you @amirm

 

[Labjr]

The only thing left is to duplicate the functions of a miniDSP 2x4 HD with this kind of SINAD and at this price range. Thank you @amirm

Need something capable of stereo four-way crossover and room correction.

 

[usern]

Do I have to hate my E30 now for giving me only ~112db SINAD instead of 120db? Do I have to get the E50 for the sake of finally being able to hear the full unfolded/unwrapped MQA sound? Do I have to adjust myself to the notion of most probably not being able to hear anything below 115db and thus do I need to wrap my head around the concept, that there still might be nearly 3db for me to "chase" on my "route to perfection", so to speak ?

They sound the same. You would choose between transparent DACs based on features (inputs, outputs, preamp, looks, etc), not based on sound quality.