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Topping E50 Review (Balanced DAC)

bogi

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When E50 is running via ASIO on Win10 I can't control its volume on Windows, only by the software which is controlling the E50 - Foobar2000 in this case.
That's the right point where to do it. Foobar2000 is doing calculations in 64bit floating point resolution. You can even switch your E50 to DAC mode, then it will show sample rate instead of volume level.
 

bogi

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I was just going to peel the sticker off but now I'm considering returning the E50. I bet MQA is part of the reason this isn't implemented. Similar to Khadas Tone Boards. Hardware volume control implemented on the first one but not the 2nd that supports MQA. For Khadas they were looking at updating through firmware but as far as I know this didn't happen.
1. There is no point in using lossy MQA against true lossless audio. Things like "as artist intended" are only a propaganda. MQA is attempt of recording labels to get better control over music distribution. The way how they attempt to do it (they made every usual DSP problematic with MQA) is not in interest of us music consumers.

2. Above I attempted to explain that hardware volume control in DAC has no advantage over software volume control in player. I pointed also to other thread where it is discussed more in detail. If it was not enough, look here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ttenuation-before-power-amp.5844/#post-131431 That posts ends with: "Digital volume control on DAC is not particularly useful due to the inability to handle floating point induced clipping, just use the floating point capable internal volume control on playback software, and optionally analog volume control on preamp or speakers for safety and convenience. A simple DAC with fixed output is perfectly fine."
 
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bud947

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I just got the E50 and tried to hook it up to my Sony 900h tv through Toslink. I either get static if the tv is set to multi-channel or silence if it is set to PCM. I'd like to get this working. I don't actually know what the issue is with the D90SE.
I have the same setup and it works! Look at your settings.
 

Ninjastar

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I have considered buying the E50 over the holidays with the 15% price decrease, but I am not sure I will notice any difference over my current Schiit Modi 3 (non-plus). The E50 measures better but how much of that is actually audible?

I don't really need any extra features, just a pure DAC, and my integrated amplifier does not have balanced inputs, so what would I really be gaining over the Modi 3?
 

usern

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I have considered buying the E50 over the holidays with the 15% price decrease, but I am not sure I will notice any difference over my current Schiit Modi 3 (non-plus). The E50 measures better but how much of that is actually audible?

I don't really need any extra features, just a pure DAC, and my integrated amplifier does not have balanced inputs, so what would I really be gaining over the Modi 3?
Sounds like you answered all your questions yourself. You don't need to upgrade.
 

Ninjastar

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Sounds like you answered all your questions yourself. You don't need to upgrade.
Very sensible response to my inquiry. There is a near certainty I won't notice a sonic difference.

But I'll probably buy it anyway :facepalm:.

Gotta have that 120+ SINAD, baby. :cool:

Actually another reason I want it is to be able to use the digital volume control. The reason is my amp's analog volume control is annoying in that it makes huge jumps by using the remote control so it is difficult to dial in a precise volume setting without having to go all the way to the unit and manually adjusting it.

Are there any cons to using the DAC's digital volume control vs the volume knob on an integrated amp? And what is the optimal volume position I should set my integrated amps volume at if I were to use the E50 for volume control?

Sorry if these are dumb questions.
 

Walter

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Are there any cons to using the DAC's digital volume control vs the volume knob on an integrated amp? And what is the optimal volume position I should set my integrated amps volume at if I were to use the E50 for volume control?

Sorry if these are dumb questions.
Not dumb at all. I think there is still some debate about whether using a digital volume control is best, but there are definitely some good arguments that it is just fine. I would not hesitate. For setting the volume, I just answered the same question in the PA5 review thread: One technique that is often used is to set the volume on the preamp to max with the amp turned down low, then raise the volume on the amp to slightly more than the loudest you can ever imagine wanting it to go. You then leave the amp volume at that position and adjust from the preamp from then on so that you get to use the full range of the remote control. Usually, the amp has the most noise of any component before the speakers, so you want to keep the gain on the amp as low as possible. The PA5 is an unusually quiet amp. Depending on your amp, rather than setting the amp volume to slightly higher than you ever expect to want, you might instead want to set it to the loudest level you will want on a regular basis, and manually turn it up on the rare occasions when you need more power for a party, Telarc cannons, or whatever.
 

kchap

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I was just going to peel the sticker off but now I'm considering returning the E50. I bet MQA is part of the reason this isn't implemented. Similar to Khadas Tone Boards. Hardware volume control implemented on the first one but not the 2nd that supports MQA. For Khadas they were looking at updating through firmware but as far as I know this didn't happen.
The lack of hardware Volume control via USB is not an issue in this instance however for future purchases I will be steering clear of MQA.
 

bogi

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DAC volume control is useful if you are playing from a fixed level source, such as SPDIF output of a CD player and if you don't have other possibility to alter volume, for example by remote of an integrated amplifier.

With most of DACs there is no way to avoid intersample overflows during their internal oversampling when playing recordings mastered up to 0dB. The way to safely avoid them is software volume control of a software player, which you can use in exactly the same way as DAC digital volume control.

You can also use fixed setting -3dB or -6dB in your software player and then for convenience to adjust volume on E50 remote. That also avoids intersample overflows. The only disadvantage over using only software volume control is then you have one digital processing step more and every digital processing step adds some level of distortion. May be not audible though.

If your setup contains an analog preamp or an integraded amplifier, usual approach is to set volume in software player for example to -3dB or -6dB to avoid intersample overflows in DAC and then to use analog preamp or integrated amp for volume control.
 
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kchap

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DAC volume control is useful if you are playing from a fixed level (line out) source, such as CD player without volume control and if you don't have other possibility to alter volume, for example by remote of an integrated amplifier.

With most of DACs there is no way to avoid intersample overflows during their internal oversampling when playing recordings mastered up to 0dB. The way to safely avoid them is software volume control of a software player, which you can use in exactly the same way as DAC digital volume control.

You can also use fixed setting -3dB or -6dB in your software player and then for convenience to adjust volume on E50 remote. That also avoids intersample overflows. The only disadvantage over using only software volume control is then you have one digital processing step more and every digital processing step adds some level of distortion. May be not audible though.

If your setup contains an analog preamp or an integraded amplifier, usual approach is to set volume in software player for example to -3dB or -6dB to avoid intersample overflows in DAC and then to use analog preamp or integrated amp for volume control.
Yes, totally agree. I won't bore you with details, I've mentioned it in in other threads, but when I rip my CDs l make sure I have at least 3.5 dB of headroom. And when Volumio 3.xx becomes official I will move to the SW Volume Control for my main system.
 

ceausuc

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I have considered buying the E50 over the holidays with the 15% price decrease, but I am not sure I will notice any difference over my current Schiit Modi 3 (non-plus). The E50 measures better but how much of that is actually audible?

I don't really need any extra features, just a pure DAC, and my integrated amplifier does not have balanced inputs, so what would I really be gaining over the Modi 3?

I know that there is only one way to find out: open your wallet :)
Then, of course, hope that you won't hear any difference, because if you do... you know what will happen' next :)
 

hyperknot

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Can someone report on how does volume control work on this DAC under macOS? Does macOS go into software volume control mode, or it simply disables volume control altogether?
 

Ulrich

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Hello.
Whatever bitrate I feed E50 with, either 48/96 from Apple music or 320kb from Spotify, display shows always '96': is it regular? is it the same for all of you?
 

bud947

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I just learned about intersample clipping and I would like to know if it affects my topping coax and toslink inputs.
I have a sony x900h providing TV sound on the toslink input and chromecast/airplay streamer on the coax input. I use my topping as a preamp and I'm sending 100% volume of both tv and streamer optical outputs to the topping E50. Should I lower the optical output on the tv and streamer ??
 

bogi

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Should I lower the optical output on the tv and streamer ??
Volume level is about audio data content itself and not about particular transport interface used to transfer data. So yes, the topic is common for USB, SPDIF and other interfaces.

I don't have such a possibility to lower optical out volume on my Samsung TV - it is fixed. Of course, it does not mean that every TV program is containing sounds on levels causing intersample overflows. And I also don't care so much about TV sound quality than when I am listening to music albums.

But if you have such a possibility, why not to use it? By lowering digital volume by only few dB down you loose nothing.
 

bud947

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Volume level is about audio data content itself and not about particular transport interface used to transfer data. So yes, the topic is common for USB, SPDIF and other interfaces.

I don't have such a possibility to lower optical out volume on my Samsung TV - it is fixed. Of course, it does not mean that every TV program is containing sounds on levels causing intersample overflows. And I also don't care so much about TV sound quality than when I am listening to music albums.

But if you have such a possibility, why not to use it? By lowering digital volume by only few dB down you loose nothing.
Thank you for your reply.
If I understand correctly intersample overflows comes from the source level, and the DAC preamp can't affect it. Also Topping E50 doesn't have internal headroom to deal with intersample overflows.
 

bogi

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If I understand correctly intersample overflows comes from the source level, and the DAC preamp can't affect it. Also Topping E50 doesn't have internal headroom to deal with intersample overflows.
It comes from combination of 2 things:
1. Source audio content mastered up to 0dB level
2. DAC hardware oversampling as a basic functionality needed for delta sigma DACs to work. Every source content is oversampled up to about 10 MHz sample rate, on such a rate it is processed by delta sigma modulator and the modulator output (no more PCM) is filtered to get analog audio. Very simplified but that's the principle. So that hardware oversampling, which is mathematically an interpolation, is causing intersample overflows from the simple thing that new samples are added between existing ones and sometimes the counted value correctly goes over 0dB. But fixed point format of PCM data cannot represent values greater than 0dB. All counted values above 0 remain as 0 and that's causing distortion.

I don't know about any headroom in ESS DAC chips and I also don't know about any headroom as part of Topping DACs implementation. An example of DACs which specially implement such headroom are Benchmark DACs and they also advertise that enough loudly.
 
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