Topping should recall all their DX3 Pros.

[yue]

Countless power amplifiers short out and do this. I know because I repaired countless ones in my younger years. A number of high-end amps have no protection circuit at all. We had a high-end DAC short out its output stage at work which immediately blew the driver out of the speaker testing with it.

Now if the equipment did that when fully working, that would be one thing. But not something that has broken.

No matter how high-end they are, this doesn't mean they are doing the correct thing. If they can blow out your speaker, they can blow out your eardrum. As long as customers are using them correctly, such issue is big enough to lead to the recall of all devices.

The world is not perfect place, and never will be. But people need to work hard to make it better.

 

[amirm]

In my view, the priority of a product is

1) safety
2) reliability
3) performance.

DX3 did none well :

1) when it's fully broken it could damage your expensive headphone/powered amplifier and your hearing.
2) it stopped working from time to time and many people reported that issue
3) Jitter, Linearity tests show a lot of issues

You are spreading misinformation. No safety issue has been identified whatsoever.

On reliability, you have no idea how many have shipped.

On performance, it is so good that I use it every day over countless others I have. Funny there that you purchased one if you thought performance was no good.

Your position and advocacy here is absurd. You already created a thread like this a few weeks. We covered the topic and you got to say what you wanted to say. Then you had a unit. Now you don't have one but decided this morning to get up and create another campaign?

As I said you are not doing anything here to help.

And it is not like you are always in favor of consumer here. When I reviewed the unit form your employer and I said it had gone backward in version 2, you were up in arms trying to defend the product:

That's not the real issue. what @amirm was trying to do is to
- condemn Google for not publishing their measurement. (which I think is ridiculous. reasons given above)
- condemn me for working for Google thus share Google's sin (which is even more ridiculous) even though I've never worked on the product.

I listed two public issues (which is strong enough to proof my point) and reserve the right of expressing my additional personal opinion (based on a classified data ).
I don't think I have anything to be blamed for.

What you said "If you turned this around ... he throws some mud ..." simply doesn't applies to Google's case at all --- Google does not question @amirm's study. I believe the company simply doesn't care about what he posted at all.

Now all of a sudden nothing is good enough here with respect to Topping?

 

[amirm]

No matter how high-end they are, this doesn't mean they are doing the correct thing. If they can blow out your speaker, they can blow out your eardrum.

No. I have yet to hear anyone's eardrum being blown, in this case or any other. You can create a worst situation by having your amp at full volume and turn the source on. And there is no defence against that.

As audiophiles we take on the tiny risk that exists when we play music. Here is a report for the audio dongle your employer makes:

Should there be a recall of them? Is someone's eardrum going to blow out?

 

[yue]

Now you don't have one but decided this morning to get up and create another campaign?

Because I see a safety issue here. some people says their unit output 10v dc after a transistor is blow up. And that's not just the reliability issue I was concerned about. It now upgrades to a safety issue.

You are spreading misinformation. No safety issue has been identified whatsoever.

That's your opinion. charge a headphone with 10VDC is big enough to impact human hearing.

And it is not like you are always in favor of consumer here. When I reviewed the unit form your employer and I said it had gone backward in version 2, you were up in arms trying to defend the product:

Because you don't even test it using the correct way, and you started a personal attack that because "I work for a company that didn't share the data you want I was part of the problem." See below

That may happen. The best antidote is to insist that manufacturers post full measurements of audio products. To the extent you work for a company who chooses not to do that, then I say you are part of the problem, not the solution. Go and speak to your teams to be more transparent with their customers. What are they worried about? That the truth cost them sales? If so the solution is to build better products. Not to come here with vague criticism that is not actionable.

With your theory, you are the VP who oversaw all audio products of Microsoft and you shared no data of what Microsoft manufactured during your tenure there. So you are the biggest problem of all?

 

[yue]

Should there be a recall of them? Is someone's eardrum going to blow out?

You know, there're a lot of lawyercats watching Google, Apple, Microsoft closely. If there is a safety issue, they are the first one agitated.
I don't represent my compnay at all but I would suggest those people find one and sue Google, and see what happens next.

 

[amirm]

That's your opinion. charge a headphone with 10VDC is big enough to impact human hearing.

No it isn't. Just hook up a battery to a cheap headphone. It will not at all generate loud sound. It will just tick and that is that. For a loud sound you need an AC waveform. DC just pushes or pulls the voice coil to max. A single movement doesn't generate sound.

 

[amirm]

You know, there're a lot of lawyercats watching Google, Apple, Microsoft closely. If there is a safety issue, they are the first one agitated.

There is no safety issue there just as there isn't one here. That was the point of the post. That if you are going to mischaracterize circuit failure as a safety issue, then your employer is putting out unsafe products. In reality none of this has anything to do with safety.

 

[yue]

That if you are going to mischaracterize circuit failure as a safety issue, then your employer is putting out unsafe products. In reality none of this has anything to do with safety.

that depends on what you are using. A in ear headphone may explode by a large voltage just like your speaker, because it was not designed to be run at 10v dc. A powered amplifier may explode as well because they are designed to accept input at 2vrms.
If sansumg recall their phones because of the battery explosion, Topping should as well. Sound wave may not be the only danger here.
Likewise Google's dongle and Topping's Amp is a different case.

Imagine you have an in ear headphone that explodes in your ear.

 

[noel_fs]

No. as long as Amir is still recommending DX3 Pro I can't stop bring more awareness to the forum member that it's a bad choice. Reason --- it's unsafe and unreliable.

I'm not ditching Amir. I'm not ditching Topping. I'm ditching the DX3 Pro only here.

I get your point, but at this point you are just getting annoying, dont take it as an offense. Its already a known fact that some units have been failing, you are doing no good ditching at the only affordable product out there. Instead of being negative try to figure out where the issue come and help everybody, if you dont have the knowledge to do so then just shut the fuck up like I do.

 

[yue]

you are doing no good ditching at the only affordable product out there.

I don't consider it the only affordable products. And it's brain washing to see it being recommended here.

Instead of being negative try to figure out where the issue come and help everybody, if you dont have the knowledge to do so then just shut the fuck up like I do.

I help people by telling them avoiding this product.

The manufacture does not deserve our help at all. You pay for the product, and they are responsible to deliver good and safe products. If they did a poor job, down voting the product is what customer should do.

 

[amirm]

that depends on what you are using. A in ear headphone may explode by a large voltage just like your speaker, because it was not designed to be run at 10v dc. A powered amplifier may explode as well because they are designed to be run at 2vrms.

How about my house? Can that blow up too?

No, there is not enough pistonic power to "blow up" a headphone. The winding in the voice coil gives up before the hard shell does.

 

[yue]

How about my house? Can that blow up too?

So you agreed that it may blow up your powered amplifier, and at the same time blow up your speaker?

No it isn't. Just hook up a battery to a cheap headphone. It will not at all generate loud sound. It will just tick and that is that. For a loud sound you need an AC waveform. DC just pushes or pulls the voice coil to max. A single movement doesn't generate sound.

back to science. Can a sudden increase from 0 to 10v creates a huge wave impulse that damage your ear? There're sufficient scientific evidence that huge impulse (such as a thundarstormm or a gunshot sound) cause permanent hearing damage. There's also report that "A Former NASA Scientist Almost Lost His Hearing Because of a Toilet Lid"
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evqagp/deaf-from-a-toilet-seat-physics
a sudden increase from 0v to 10v is strong enough.

 

[amirm]

So you agreed that it may blow up your powered amplifier, and at the same time blow up your speaker?

Not in the way you use the term. First of all, you are not hooking up the headphone out to a power amplifier. It is the RCA and that has inline resistors and we have no reports of it putting out DC. Second, that may damage the input stage but there will be nothing "blowing up" like you are using the term. The damaged input stage may not even look burned out let alone your house being on fire.

You are wasting our time with these lay assumptions about how electronics work.

 

[yue]

You are wasting our time with these lay assumptions about how electronics work.

You are just wasting my time by walking away from problem all the time.

If you want a meaningful discussion just answer the following question directly, with your evidence.

- can this damage a headphone?
- can this damage a powered amplifier?
- can this damage a speaker that hooked up with a powered amplifier connected to DX3.
- can a sudden increase from 0 to 10v creates a huge wave impulse that damage your ear?

If any of your answers to one of the four question is a yes, then this is a safety concern --- the product can damage a person's body or his/her belongings.

 

[amirm]

back to science. Can a sudden increase from 0 to 10v creates a huge wave impulse that damage your ear?

A "huge wave" requires something that can create it. Your headphones don't create such huge waves. Their voice coil gives out due to heat generated. If the current is not high enough to damage the voicecoil, then it will just make a popping sound.

 

[amirm]

You are just wasting my time by walking away from problem all the time.

If you want a meaningful discussion just answer the following question directly, with your evidence.

- can this damage a headphone?
- can this damage a powered amplifier?
- can this damage a speaker that hooked up with a powered amplifier connected to DX3.
- can a sudden increase from 0 to 10v creates a huge wave impulse that damage your ear?

If any of your answers to one of the four question is a yes, then this is a safety concern --- the product can damage a person's body or his/her belongings.

I have explained all of this. Multiple times. I even showed you a video where drivers were massively overdriven and not a single thing physically happen to be dangerous. You are not technical enough, nor have any relevant experience in the field to understand these explanations.

Keep up the rude remarks though and I will ban you from the thread.

 

[yue]

A "huge wave" requires something that can create it. Your headphones don't create such huge waves. Their voice coil gives out due to heat generated. If the current is not high enough to damage the voicecoil, then it will just make a popping sound.

So, as far as I understand from all your replies, we could have two situations by a sudden change from normal to 10V DC output:

Situation 1:
Your headphone can survive a 10V DC voltage and doesn't break.

I get it that constant 10VDC don't produce sound. But you forgot where you are coming from.
In this case an impulse (because of a sudden change in voltage from 0 to 10V DC) is generated if you are listening to it while transistor failed, and that caused the "popping sound" you described, but in fact it's a sudden air pressure change. There's no scientific study about it that's why I'm curious about its impact. Physically if you have a sudden strong air pressure blow into your ear, that will cause the movement of your eardrums. Theoretically it can tear your eardrum if the pressure is high enough.

Situation 2:
Your headphone give out, and it's broken because of the heat generated.

In either case I would call them a safety issue, because it cause loss of either your property (headphone in this case) or your hearing.

Keep up the rude remarks though and I will ban you from the thread.

Feel free. If that's all you can do to persuade me.

 

[Hugo9000]

A few thoughts from a random nobody (me):

Amir allows and encourages active discussion of all products as part of the thread where each of his reviews actually appears. He himself participates in the ensuing discussions, and often does followup tests or seeks input from the manufacturer where possible or where the product's manufacturer has a representative among the membership here.

Anyone who plans to purchase a product based on Amir's review on this site has easy and convenient access to any discussions of known or potential issues in the very thread that is supposedly influencing all these buyers to their peril. How can creating additional threads with increasingly hysterical/hyperbolic demands do anything useful? If someone is apt to be persuaded by a review to buy a product, the best place to warn anyone of a negative experience is within the thread that began with the actual review in question. The person who reads the review and wishes to buy the product may not ever see the additional threads, so the usefulness of warning others is questionable in my view. It starts to look more like someone trolling Amir or trying to embarrass him on his own site for recommending a product that others (we do not know what percentage of owners) have had a bad experience with.

If someone purchases the product on Massdrop, that person is free to warn others of a bad experience in the discussion section there, or even better, by posting a review there. Looking at this Topping product on Massdrop, I see that there are 10 reviews from verified purchasers, with 2 of those saying their unit died, one within 3 hour and one within 3 weeks, who said he returned it. In the discussion section there, several others have made comments about issues and at least one linked to the discussions here on ASR. Massdrop shows 239 units sold, 307 discussions, and 10 reviews, by the way.

So how do additional threads on this site serve a useful purpose, when Amir has not restricted any discussion, and his own original review thread amply covers his own experience with his unit, and the experiences of members?

 

[restorer-john]

This whole exchange is not in the spirit of ASR. We can do better.

 

[yue]

How can creating additional threads with increasingly hysterical/hyperbolic demands do anything useful? If someone is apt to be persuaded by a review to buy a product, the best place to warn anyone of a negative experience is within the thread that began with the actual review in question. The person who reads the review and wishes to buy the product may not ever see the additional threads, so the usefulness of warning others is questionable in my view. It starts to look more like someone trolling Amir or trying to embarrass him on his own site for recommending a product that others (we do not know what percentage of owners) have had a bad experience with.

I myself does not intend to ditch/trolling/embarassing ASR, Amir, or Topping at all.

If Amir put a notice on his DX3 Pro review to warn users about potential issues, given a lot of people experienced a lot of problems, I wouldn't start a thread to complain at all.

If Topping stops selling DX3 Pro given now that they know a lot of units are broken, I would believe they value their customers. But the same units without circuit improvements are still on sale on AliExpress and Amazon, and Massdrop today.


following up that thread won't help raise awareness as now that thread has 140+ pages and no one is willing to read from first to the last. Raising awareness in that thread alone is not helpful to user either.

Again my request is fairly simple --- I will stop complaining about it if Amir gives reader a warning on the first page of his DX3 Pro review. I asked him in various occassions to do that, but he's just reluctant to do so.

I believe Amir adding a warning to his DX3 Pro review is the most helpful thing he could do to help users make a good decision. But he refuses all the times to do so. Yes for something fixable by firmware upgrades he would do that. But for hardware failures why not? I would cast doubt on what his real intention is -- if he is that independent from manufacturers, why is he so reluctant to put a warning in his review?