Topping E70 Stereo DAC Review

[pickyAudiophile]

I do not remember but please correct me.
Did John Yang ever said it himself that 'all Topping DAC' s measuring the same or reasonably similar will have the same audible effect on sound' ?!!?
Don't get me wrong, I am not contesting anything, just curious on this particular.

That would mean revealing business secrets.
Leading you "to the next best thing" from a marketing point of view is just reasonable.

 

[Overseas]

That would mean revealing business secrets.
Leading you "to the next best thing" from a marketing point of view is just reasonable.

Ouch. Then such strong opinion of the biggest forum supporters is not backed by No. 1 Topping contributor?! This is the worst irony ever.

 

[MAB]

who are u to judge?.

i am fascinated by the replies of some of you in regard to my subjective opinion. You're all like ''i am the allmighty dac experienced boss around here''. Have a nice day

I didn't see that you had an opinion, subjective or otherwise. Just that you were trolling. Do you have something to add about the technical or subjective merit of this device?

 

[Endibol]

This is nonsense. An objectiveist can also play with audio systems. Why not?
People on ASR - not all of course - still forget about many different things.

Of course, but for what reason? These “near perfection” products should all sound the same for the true objectivist. If not, then one or more of the products is not perfect or the objectivist is more subjective than he thinks..

 

[ex audiophile]

The fun will be over? For who? And we speak only about DACs. A lot of people won't even look at Toppings, S.M.S.L and other Chinese DACs. As far as I know, the biggest room for improvement is in the case of speakers.

With regard to speakers my automatic response is yes, of course, that is where we still have distortion and speakers of different type and quality are readily distinguished. But are they? I saw an older video from Andrew Robinson the other day, describing his experience with the Harman blind testing facility. He was stunned that he could not distinguish very different speakers from each other in a truly blinded and controlled setting. It made me wonder if we should be applying the same mind set to speakers that we apply to DACs and amps. We all read Amir's impression after listening to speakers and we give (at least I do) a great deal of credence to what he hears. Same for Erin at his Audio Corner, but they are the exceptions with regards to skilled listeners. I don't think I could tell the difference between towers or bookshelf speakers if all other factors were taken into account. Just food for thought...

 

[Endibol]

Thank God - then we can focus just (and only) on listening to music


But actually - it will be a long time before we can get to the same level of perfection on transducers, and room effects.

Transducers? Yes! Room effects? Not sure.. can we perfect those? I think we can only try to compensate them. On second thought, why would one try to compensate them? Suppose you would have a real double bass playing in your room.. then the sound would also be influenced by room effects..

 

[pickyAudiophile]

These well measuring DACs should "sound" the same. Don't forget about output and input impedance. Parts of the frequency spectrum might be slightly obscured if input impedance is too low for the source.
To give you an example, some of these less powerful dongle DACs (while measuring e/g glorious 107 dB) almost collapse with bass response when you hook up hard to drive headphones to them.
But - hey presto - once you hook these dongles up to an amplifier suddenly plenty of them appear as perfectly linear, down to the lowest bass notes.

 

[jaraheel]

holy moly. This performance for under $350!!

 

[gvl]

Does it default to a safe output level if it loses all settings or is reset?

 

[solderdude]

That's why I switched to headphones

And even these have a poor noise floor so these too will not be able to give you that dynamic range nor are there any recordings that can ever have such a dynamic range.

 

[Saponetto]

So did they finally put out an hassle-free version of the D30 Pro?

 

[hutt132]

Low end multitone performance on this E70 is ~15db WORSE than the E30 II DAC.

 

[hoppy IPA]

A couple questions about the E70:

-Does it offer any type of tone controls or filters?
-How could you incorporate an active sub with it, do the RCA's & XLR's output simultaneously?

 

[Madlop26]

Nobody knows, because, sadly, the mindless followers on ASR don't care how something sounds. They will buy based on a simple FR plot.

They also don't care about ergonomics, functionality, build quality, usability, or reliability. A pity, because that is what actually determines high fidelity gear from cheap rubbish.

I really want to stop to be a "mindless ASR follower" , so tell us John your methodology to assess how a devices sounds so we can learn from it.
The rest of what you mentioned is quite important too, and I have always considered them in all my purchases and I suspect the same is for most ASR people here.

 

[gvl]

Join the beta program by purchasing one.

OR, start the DAC first always, and check the volume output before turning the power amp on.

Could see how this could be a bigger issue with that TRIGGER though.

My personal solution is to never hook a DAC directly to a power amp.

Thanks, but this is not answering my question.

 

[TNT]

1 - Jitter has nothing to do with USB. USB does not suffer from jitter artefacts.
2 - Impact of jitter is independent of signal frequency. It will have the same impact on 10Hz, 1kHz or 20kHz.

And what do you mean by frequency resolution about the test tone being poor?

1) I just quoted the text associated with the usual Jitter measurement - not my words but Amirs. But you are correct - as no clocks are passed, no jitter can be induced. So why measure it one my ask? Because the galvanic interface may inject disturbances that could make a weak design in the receiver increase jitter in the used clocks.
2) Jitter has a frequency distribution. It is evident if you think about how large or small the timing error is - if that varies, it will effect different frequencies of the D/A conversion where the jittered clock is used. So you are misinformed about this.

//

 

[pickyAudiophile]

A couple questions about the E70:

-Does it offer any type of tone controls or filters?
-How could you incorporate an active sub with it, do the RCA's & XLR's output simultaneously?

According to manual (https://www.topping.audio/newsinfo/769032.html) 7 PCM filters and no tone control, as usual (E1DA would offer that, maybe better wait for that upcoming Cosmos DAC?). Output channel seems like either-or. Manual refers to "switching" only.
From my point of view - we waited so long for that Cosmos DAC's release. And we're quite close I guess. Why buying any other DAC in before?

 

[Grooved]

No MQA just becasue of you bunch!! Just because of your influence , now manufacturers shying away from MQA . I said this would happen!! And its already started! remember this community is influential. With great power comes great responsibility!!!

It's not the first time I see you writing this, so I will start to think you obviously don't understand the whole thing of MQA, and try to make an answer as short as possible .
If you think that it's because of some people here that there's no MQA in some DACs, you're completely wrong.
The main problem with MQA has always be claiming things that are actually not present in 99.9% of the MQA tracks because it's not used the way they say it's used, and this problem go back to more than 5 years and have been said by a lot of people working in the music industry on every parts of the business, way before we talk about it here.

Don't get me wrong, one of my DACs has MQA, one of the service I use has MQA, but if it disappears, it won't be a drama in my life. And this DAC, by streaming a FLAC, is making you listening closer to the source that if using MQA as the final file was not created while listening through MQA equipement.
How is that so hard to understand? Because you believe that every files were created like on L2 label who got a converter provided by MQA and think everybody producing music gets it ?

 

[oscar_dziki]

instead of the switch on the back?

Not necessarily. Such a touch button on the front as is is very easy to trigger when you regulate volume on a nearby amp, or while doing anything else on your desk. I own E30 with identical button and I tell you that happens way to often.

 

[pseudoid]

Thank You @amirm,
For those who are interested (or amused) with real-XLR outputs from a DAC, this is a worthy consideration.
But I have a question that has not been asked yet:
For a desktop "mini" system, what would be a matching/complimentary powerAmp (ClassD @60W/ch) which will readily accept real-XLR inputs (such as those from the E70)? << Equivalent 'Form/Fit/Function/Funds'
I did a few brief searches (and tickled my brain) but haven't come up with a reasonable answer yet!
Please help!