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Topping E70 Stereo DAC Review

Rate this DAC:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 8 2.1%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 8 2.1%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 45 11.9%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 317 83.9%

  • Total voters
    378

beefkabob

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I understand, like I said, I should have take a bit more time to make it look clearer:
- the "I tend to force me to not believe anything based on one side only" was about general life, should have made it clearer.
- the "(or one measurement only)" was about audio, and is clear: with one measurement, you can't be sure.
And I made it even clearer later in the post when saying:
"Measurement is good, and better, measurementS are great because if it's based on one measurement only, you can be wrong.
Imagine a 123dB SINAD DAC that has a faulty crosstalk: you look at SINAD and "Oh yeah, this one is good"; then you listen and find the sound stage a bit strange..."


It can't be clearer in this part: one measurement (one value, not one set of measurementS) is not enough. It's exactly the difference between what you thought I was thinking and what I was really thinking:
you thought I said something like "objectivists and subjectivists are extremes"
while in my mind, and in ly post, it was "objectivists looking at one number only, and subjectivists, are extremes", and I think it's correct.

Now, again, I should have made it clearer, I will certainly pay attention to that the next time, remembering how quickly you both jumped based on what you thought I was thinking (and from the first sentence of the post, not the whole post) instead of what I thought, or without asking "one part of what you said was not clear, can you explain or make it clearer?"
At least, I appreciate the answer of @MAB, but yours... just picking one sentence in my post... while you could quote the whole post and set in bold the part you want to highlight and was not clear enough ;)
You were the one attacking me based on what you thought I was thinking, but you were the one saying that I was attacking someone, isn't it funny?
And my posts were never harsh, but yours were and not based on what I wanted to say. You answered me talking about Amir providing several measurements, just under a post where I said that we have to look at several measurements and not one only, isn't it funny too?

If you can't admit you were harsh, it's your problem, not mine, and I know what measurements has to offer, or I wouldn't have done hundreds of measurements trying to help to fix/improve Multitone .
I did earlier respond to more of what you said. Harsh? Sure. Whatever. It's a big miscommunication. Honestly, IDGAF.
 
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antcollinet

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I understand, like I said, I should have take a bit more time to make it look clearer:
- the "I tend to force me to not believe anything based on one side only" was about general life, should have made it clearer.
- the "(or one measurement only)" was about audio, and is clear: with one measurement, you can't be sure.
And I made it even clearer later in the post when saying:
"Measurement is good, and better, measurementS are great because if it's based on one measurement only, you can be wrong.
Imagine a 123dB SINAD DAC that has a faulty crosstalk: you look at SINAD and "Oh yeah, this one is good"; then you listen and find the sound stage a bit strange..."


It can't be clearer in this part: one measurement (one value, not one set of measurementS) is not enough. It's exactly the difference between what you thought I was thinking and what I was really thinking:
you thought I said something like "objectivists and subjectivists are extremes"
while in my mind, and in ly post, it was "objectivists looking at one number only, and subjectivists, are extremes", and I think it's correct.

Now, again, I should have made it clearer, I will certainly pay attention to that the next time, remembering how quickly you both jumped based on what you thought I was thinking (and from the first sentence of the post, not the whole post) instead of what I thought, or without asking "one part of what you said was not clear, can you explain or make it clearer?"
At least, I appreciate the answer of @MAB, but yours... just picking one sentence in my post... while you could quote the whole post and set in bold the part you want to highlight and was not clear enough ;)
You were the one attacking me based on what you thought I was thinking, but you were the one saying that I was attacking someone, isn't it funny?
And my posts were never harsh, but yours were and not based on what I wanted to say. You answered me talking about Amir providing several measurements, just under a post where I said that we have to look at several measurements and not one only, isn't it funny too?

If you can't admit you were harsh, it's your problem, not mine, and I know what measurements has to offer, or I wouldn't have done hundreds of measurements trying to help to fix/improve Multitone .
Fair enough. I think the reason for the reaction to your post, is we get so many (people trolling) here, setting up the straw man that ASR is only interested in SINAD. ASR is a single measurement site etc.

You stating "only one measurement is bad", sounds like it is doing the same without a clear statement that you recognise that the measurements provided are not that.
 

Killingbeans

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Its the law. :cool:


judge-dredd-stallone.gif
 

Sokel

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Exactly - when there is a debate between someone talking objective, measureable facts, and another talking fantasy, the truth does not lie half way between them.
Agreed but often some (real world) measurement questions about performance get the oblivion card when they don't comply with the fixed standard bench tests.
Some even got hostile,even when the purpose is to get all the juice out of real world performance.
 

Ajax

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Oh, Okay!
If you are looking for desk top speakers with XLR inputs then check out the Adam TV5 active speakers, which got a big wrap from Amir and are only US$400 a pair.


Combined with the E70, and using your existing computer as your source, you are going to have all you need for excellent sound for only US$750.

My Adam A7s are 10 years old and are fed via a Benchmark DAC, with my MAC computer as a source. They haven't missed a beat (pardon the pun) in all that time. Simple, easy to use, excellent sound, build quality and reliability. Game over.
 

mediocrebutarrogant

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MQA or no MQA, apple's USB implementation is the best across all hardware segments in God's green earth. Now dont ask me if i double blind a/b d it. I can say its the case like i can say Speyside single malt gives a better high than Johnny red , black . you would definitely need Green/gold blue for a comparable high, but its different too. I installed ropieee on raspberry pi, and ran it as roon bridge, and i connected my iphone/ipad/mac with roon remote over usb to my trusty E50, ropieee on raspberry pi pretty much sucks, in compariosn to usb feed from apple hardware
 

MAB

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I understand, like I said, I should have take a bit more time to make it look clearer:
- the "I tend to force me to not believe anything based on one side only" was about general life, should have made it clearer.
- the "(or one measurement only)" was about audio, and is clear: with one measurement, you can't be sure.
And I made it even clearer later in the post when saying:
"Measurement is good, and better, measurementS are great because if it's based on one measurement only, you can be wrong.
Imagine a 123dB SINAD DAC that has a faulty crosstalk: you look at SINAD and "Oh yeah, this one is good"; then you listen and find the sound stage a bit strange..."


It can't be clearer in this part: one measurement (one value, not one set of measurementS) is not enough. It's exactly the difference between what you thought I was thinking and what I was really thinking:
you thought I said something like "objectivists and subjectivists are extremes"
while in my mind, and in ly post, it was "objectivists looking at one number only, and subjectivists, are extremes", and I think it's correct.

Now, again, I should have made it clearer, I will certainly pay attention to that the next time, remembering how quickly you both jumped based on what you thought I was thinking (and from the first sentence of the post, not the whole post) instead of what I thought, or without asking "one part of what you said was not clear, can you explain or make it clearer?"
At least, I appreciate the answer of @MAB, but yours... just picking one sentence in my post... while you could quote the whole post and set in bold the part you want to highlight and was not clear enough ;)
You were the one attacking me based on what you thought I was thinking, but you were the one saying that I was attacking someone, isn't it funny?
And my posts were never harsh, but yours were and not based on what I wanted to say. You answered me talking about Amir providing several measurements, just under a post where I said that we have to look at several measurements and not one only, isn't it funny too?

If you can't admit you were harsh, it's your problem, not mine, and I know what measurements has to offer, or I wouldn't have done hundreds of measurements trying to help to fix/improve Multitone .
I do think we need to be more precise and thoughtful in our comments.
It really took me too long to figure out what you were saying here. There are often multiple trolls on just about every review thread, so sentences like you wrote are difficult to filter for your intended meaning.
I was happy to get clarity on what you meant. ASR is about the ONLY place where objective discussions of audio reproduction happen, and it turns out there are true flat-earth crazies who come here to act out their insecurities. Recognize that your posts are going to be easily confused with this chaos unless you are clear on your point.
 

beefkabob

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Agreed but often some (real world) measurement questions about performance get the oblivion card when they don't comply with the fixed standard bench tests.
Some even got hostile,even when the purpose is to get all the juice out of real world performance.
Like what?
 

Mnyb

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So ...you're actually saying: as long as a dac measures very good or supurb and is fully transparent any will sufice?. Tell me then why you should buy , If price wouldn't matter , a dac that costs €100,- or a dac that costs €2000,- if they are somewhat equal in transparency and measurements?.

There is more to a product than the audio performance ( solved problem by now ) .
You have features or rather lack of features and build quality and service and looks and brand.
The more costlier local brands can have a presence and local service reps for warranty etc .

Sure you can build things at 10% of the usual price if you just dump them on the customers :) putting stuff in stores and have a far reaching networks caries costs.

But sure I also own a Topping D70 it performs quite well afaik so I took my chances there but buying from audiophonics in France seemed safe enough .
 

beefkabob

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MQA or no MQA, apple's USB implementation is the best across all hardware segments in God's green earth. Now dont ask me if i double blind a/b d it. I can say its the case like i can say Speyside single malt gives a better high than Johnny red , black . you would definitely need Green/gold blue for a comparable high, but its different too. I installed ropieee on raspberry pi, and ran it as roon bridge, and i connected my iphone/ipad/mac with roon remote over usb to my trusty E50, ropieee on raspberry pi pretty much sucks, in compariosn to usb feed from apple hardware
While it's certainly possible that there's something going wrong with the other implementations, there's nothing magical about mac usb.
 

Sokel

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Like what?
Like a nice multitone vs level so we get close to real world conditions.
It will only take a look to the screen of the device so any friend will know how close to this measurements wiil be according to his listening levels (if device's VC is used)
Or a 6.6KHz SINAD where H2 and H3 are well into the range of 20Hz-20Khz.
Do I need to say why.Ok,I will,2 or three points.

1.Music level average are already -18-12db down (in nice recordings).
2.In case the device is used as a preamp too,the level will go further down.
3.In case the device uses DSP correction (I'm writing that because I asked the same in MiniDSP thread and I got no answer) there will more global attenuation (to prevent clipping because of the corrections),some local and that without counting the impact (if any) of filters on noise and distortion.

There's more,but I'll stop here.
What penalty in the raw test-bench measurements would you think it would be fair to expect under the described conditions?
 

redstang

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Uh... Many devices don't have headphone jacks these days because of Apple courage. So given this reality, you're better off to decouple from the device anyway and have reliable performance you can use everywhere.

Ha! Where would we be without "Apple Courage™"?

I would have been more forgiving of the loss of the headphone jack if they'd have just been honest and said "it's slightly easier and cheaper to make it waterproof without it, all the kids use Bluetooth, and the average rube can't tell the difference anyway so now we can sell loads of Airpods".
 

JanesJr1

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Do you have a link to where that is claimed? About the roll off or distortion I mean. What I read suggests there is no roll off of frequencies in ldac, but a subdivision in max 16 audio bands. When using high res, bit depth is used at each band to achieve a level that is is transparent to human hearing. Cd quality through ldac should be the same after ldac, according to Sony.

For example 1source I found: https://www.androidauthority.com/sony-ldac-codec-790690/
You may be right. While my DAC is LDAC-capable, the PC it is linked to may not be .... I don't understand the details of all the layers of Bluetooth protocol, but I cannot see "LDAC" referred to on any of the settings and properties on the PC end.

I looked on the web briefly, and the article on LDAC/headphones referred-to the most is by the Soundguys at https://www.soundguys.com/ldac-ultimate-bluetooth-guide-20026/. This article shows almost level response to 20Hz on the bottom for LDAC, and rolloff only at the very high end. So maybe that's confirmation that my PC is connecting on a protocol that has a narrower frequency response than LDAC. (The LF dropoff is not subtle. I can toggle on my DAC between Bluetooth and USB and the lowest frequencies just drop away, and if there's a lot of signal at the crossover frequency it sounds very rough. My PC has "RFCOMM" and "L2DAC" references in the settings; I don't know if that deals with the same aspect of Bluetooth protocol as "LDAC".)

Other than that, I agree that Bluetooth (even my truncated version) sounds pretty good in the rest of the FR.

Sorry I posted without knowing the subject better. Dunning Kruger syndrome on my part for sure.
 

beefkabob

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Ha! Where would we be without "Apple Courage™"?

I would have been more forgiving of the loss of the headphone jack if they'd have just been honest and said "it's slightly easier and cheaper to make it waterproof without it, all the kids use Bluetooth, and the average rube can't tell the difference anyway so now we can sell loads of Airpods".
Only one part of all you said actually matters: the last six words.
 

beefkabob

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Like a nice multitone vs level so we get close to real world conditions.
It will only take a look to the screen of the device so any friend will know how close to this measurements wiil be according to his listening levels (if device's VC is used)
Or a 6.6KHz SINAD where H2 and H3 are well into the range of 20Hz-20Khz.
Do I need to say why.Ok,I will,2 or three points.

1.Music level average are already -18-12db down (in nice recordings).
2.In case the device is used as a preamp too,the level will go further down.
3.In case the device uses DSP correction (I'm writing that because I asked the same in MiniDSP thread and I got no answer) there will more global attenuation (to prevent clipping because of the corrections),some local and that without counting the impact (if any) of filters on noise and distortion.

There's more,but I'll stop here.
What penalty in the raw test-bench measurements would you think it would be fair to expect under the described conditions?
If you think you can devise tests that will improve understanding of the performance of a device, by all means, go ahead and perform them on a variety of DACs then discuss the results. Get criticized. Go and fix your mistakes. Come back for more. Then we can see how useful your idea is.

It does, however, seem like you're teaching your grandmother to suck eggs.
 

Sokel

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If you think you can devise tests that will improve understanding of the performance of a device, by all means, go ahead and perform them on a variety of DACs then discuss the results. Get criticized. Go and fix your mistakes. Come back for more. Then we can see how useful your idea is.

It does, however, seem like you're teaching your grandmother to suck eggs.
Fortunately the tests are already here,thanks to @pkane 's generosity.
Everyone is welcome to the thread (it's fun!) to test,help,propose new features (I'm one of them and fortunately people there bear with my newbieness).
I can only measure 2-3 dacs which I have in hand,but the value of it is that any friend with a decent ADC can test it by it's own and get a rough idea.

As an example of the above:


1669015243908.png


My old interface's SINAD at 1Khz.

Multitone vs level.PNG


That's the Multitone vs level.As we can see in the specific DAC and under the conditions of my poor measuring rig the fall is smooth and can be predicted (and it's absolutely repeatable).


As a bonus that's the SINAD at 6.6Khz I was talking about which in many cases it's a worst case scenario).

6.6Khz.PNG


So don't get me wrong,I'm all for measurements and I admire Amir's effort to clean things up.I just try to dig a little more into real-life performance and thankfully any friend can do too,Multitone analyzer is still free and one doesn't have to get an AP to get a rough idea of it's gear.
 
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