Topping E50 Review (Balanced DAC)

[BDWoody]

Decent for the money,

obviously you get more @ a little more than double the price

Either way, good for the money , just not quite as transparent as the better upscale units..

not a bleeding edge pencil in the ear tiring sound either and we're not talking 4 or 5 figures. A very good budget product.

Something tells me it was doomed from before the start since it wasn't very expensive.

There's a lot of damning with faint praise there. Seems that someone has convinced you that price and performance in the hifi world go together. Hint: They don't.

 

[Big White]

Hello, I want to buy the E50 to connect to the wiim mini streamer via toslink, but there are comments on the forum saying that the optical input causes interruption, if I buy the E50, will I have problems when I use the optical input with the wiim mini?

 

[Zeliya]

Hello, I want to buy the E50 to connect to the wiim mini streamer via toslink, but there are comments on the forum saying that the optical input causes interruption, if I buy the E50, will I have problems when I use the optical input with the wiim mini?

wiim mini is itself troubel. U mast have real streeming transport, not a toy.

 

[Big White]

Right now with e30 192khz 24 bit tracks are playing smoothly, no problem at all, and the sound quality is better than rpi4.

 

[Jimbob54]

wiim mini is itself troubel. U mast have real streeming transport, not a toy.

Why? How does the "real" streamer (I assume you mean expensive) send better data down the pipe than the WiiM?

Isn't the key how the streamer integrates with the various streaming services and /or locally stored content?

 

[Big White]

Hello, I want to buy the E50 to connect to the wiim mini streamer via toslink, but there are comments on the forum saying that the optical input causes interruption, if I buy the E50, will I have problems when I use the optical input with the wiim mini?

 

[Leva]

Hello, I want to buy the E50 to connect to the wiim mini streamer via toslink, but there are comments on the forum saying that the optical input causes interruption, if I buy the E50, will I have problems when I use the optical input with the wiim mini?

I would recomend you to buy SMSL DO100 for almost the same price, which has DPLL setting for SPDIF jitter accuracy if you will have dropouts via toslink. Also it has built in power supply, Bluetooth, knob and full size XLR connectors

 

[Jimbob54]

You, as a seller, should know that this toy is self-sufficient.
Attaching other devices to it is pointless.

What? What? And what?

 

[Big White]

I would recomend you to buy SMSL DO100 for almost the same price, which has DPLL setting for SPDIF jitter accuracy if you will have dropouts via toslink. Also it has built in power supply, Bluetooth, knob and full size XLR connectors

Thanks for your advice, does the jitter at the toslink output of the Wiim mini affect the quality of the Topping E50 or the Dac you recommend ? or , Is it only the jitter at the toslink input of the Dac that is important here?

BTW : The reason I prefer Topping E50 is because I have Shanti LPS.

 

[Zeliya]

What? What? And what?

What?

 

[Jimbob54]

What?

1. I'm not a seller
2. Yes, it can act as a standalone dac/ streamer but that isnt it's killer feature, which is...
3. It can pass the digital stream bit perfect to a "proper" DAC of ones choice- so there very much is a point to attaching it to other devices.

 

[Anderlfs]

Use the the kinds that comes with phone like iPhone, samsung, huawei, oneplus etc. The quality of those phone chargers are better than those LPS or higher priced audiophile SMPS.

The biggest problem is that nowadays the phone chargers from these good brands all come with multi output voltage for faster charging. And we have been warned here to prefer single 5V output voltage ones due to some chargers were not reverting to lower voltage when disconnected from higher voltage electronics. Suddenly what was supposed to be an easy task to the consumer becomes tricky to find a good trusty 5V charger still available.

 

[mrmojo]

I'm getting no sound output on the E50 I bought. I'm using windows, and the E50 is connected to a single speaker (just testing it out with one speaker) using an XLR to TRS cable. Windows detects the DAC, but there's no sound coming out no matter how much I play around with the DAC settings using the remote control. I installed the topping driver. The speakers work fine. There's either something wrong with the DAC, or I have something setup wrong. Help?

 

[inu912]

why doesn't amir do the multitone and other tests for the single ended out? we have no idea how the single ended circuitry performs in this thing

 

[MiloTheFirst]

I'm getting no sound output on the E50 I bought. I'm using windows, and the E50 is connected to a single speaker (just testing it out with one speaker) using an XLR to TRS cable. Windows detects the DAC, but there's no sound coming out no matter how much I play around with the DAC settings using the remote control. I installed the topping driver. The speakers work fine. There's either something wrong with the DAC, or I have something setup wrong. Help?

it could be one of many different things in the chain, from the device not being properly set up in windows to your XLR adapter having wrong polarity or being broken. it could be difficult to trouble shoot without screen sharing in a call. for the time being the easy way to trouble shoot is to remove elements out of the equation one at the time.

my advice is to start by taking out the TRS cable and try the RCA output, then make sure the E50 is configured to output through RCA and use your selected input line. if there is still no sound then try using a different input source such as a phone or a computer with minimal driver intervention (no topping drivers, equalizer apo, don't select exclusive or ASIO mode etc) just set the E50 as main device and play a YouTube video or something.

if it works then I will continue to explore what is wrong in the TRS line

 

[Sokel]

I'm getting no sound output on the E50 I bought. I'm using windows, and the E50 is connected to a single speaker (just testing it out with one speaker) using an XLR to TRS cable. Windows detects the DAC, but there's no sound coming out no matter how much I play around with the DAC settings using the remote control. I installed the topping driver. The speakers work fine. There's either something wrong with the DAC, or I have something setup wrong. Help?

Does the windows sound panel showing it working in shared mode (green VUs beside the description moving)?

 

[zanlation]

I have started getting a crackling/pop sound from my E50 that's about 1 year old.

My chain is: Apple TV -> HDMI -> Sony TV -> Optical out -> E50 -> RCA out -> Yamaha S-A501. and
Coreelec on a Odroid N2+ -> USB -> E50 -> RCA out -> Yamaha S-A501

The sound will occur in several different ways:

1. If the E50 is turned off before the Yamaha I get a loud pop/crackle
2. If I play a MQA song from Tidal via Coreelec I will get a crackle sound at the start of the song
3. If the input switches bitrate I get a crackle on the start and end of the change
4. If I switch input I will get a crackle.

I have unplugged the USB or Optical with the same results. If I plug the Optical into the Yamaha, I don't get any crackling. It returns if I introduce the E50 back into the chain.

Note that the Apple TV, Odroid N2+ and the E50 are plugged into a quality UPS.

I am getting disappointed in Toppings products. I had to return a PA5 twice before getting the Yamaha as a replacement. Now the E50 too.

 

[MiloTheFirst]

I have started getting a crackling/pop sound from my E50 that's about 1 year old.

My chain is: Apple TV -> HDMI -> Sony TV -> Optical out -> E50 -> RCA out -> Yamaha S-A501. and
Coreelec on a Odroid N2+ -> USB -> E50 -> RCA out -> Yamaha S-A501

The sound will occur in several different ways:

1. If the E50 is turned off before the Yamaha I get a loud pop/crackle
2. If I play a MQA song from Tidal via Coreelec I will get a crackle sound at the start of the song
3. If the input switches bitrate I get a crackle on the start and end of the change
4. If I switch input I will get a crackle.

I have unplugged the USB or Optical with the same results. If I plug the Optical into the Yamaha, I don't get any crackling. It returns if I introduce the E50 back into the chain.

Note that the Apple TV, Odroid N2+ and the E50 are plugged into a quality UPS.

I am getting disappointed in Toppings products. I had to return a PA5 twice before getting the Yamaha as a replacement. Now the E50 too.

that pop/crackle is a normal response to an element on the audio chain losing power, as for your point number one, that one is on you, speakers are the first thing you should power off in a chain (and last one you power on too).

regarding point 2 - 4 . what you describe seems to be a case of the device stuttering when changing sample rate. me and a lot of people had this exact problem with the tempotec sonata hd pro, while trying to play bit perfect mode/asio, and for most of us it was fixed by a firmware update. what I don't quite figure out is why it started happening to you after a year instead of from the beginning.

did you change something in your system near the time when you started noticing this? for instance the power source for the E50, or maybe could you have changed something in the settings of the signal source device which had an effect on the behavior of the sampling rate (you might have been resampling everything until now, and recently start forcing the device to atempt bit perfect playback)


it seems to me as if your issue is related to MQA playback or its software, I figure this because you mention you don't get this issue when you plug the optical directly into the yamaha (I think optical will not send true MQA, so the Yamaha should always request a resampled stream and only take that), plus the correlation between the fact that I have never encountered this issue on my E50 and that I have never tried to play a MQA file

my advice is to try to turn off the auto stand by setting, to see if that helps . if it doesn't try to execute a factory reset, the instructions are near the end of the user manual

 

[zanlation]

Thanks. Nothing changed in the audio chain when the crackling started. I have also tried switching to a different PSU for the E50. I'll give the factory reset a go. I also updated the firmware too.

 

[fluxcapacitor]

Thanks. Nothing changed in the audio chain when the crackling started. I have also tried switching to a different PSU for the E50. I'll give the factory reset a go. I also updated the firmware too.

i sold 5 Topping E50 dacs and now using one of them. None of them had this issue,,,actually i never had any issue with these dacs.