TotalDAC USB cable/filter - Teardown

[SIY]

I am ashamed to be an European citizen seeing this. Sorry rest of the world. My god my wife has a French car is it really that bad with French products.

Anecdote: Back in the mid-1990s, I invented the modern synthetic wine cork. As part of our market research, I knew better than to ask, "What do you think of plastic corks?" but instead asked, "Are corks and cork taint a problem for you?"

American winemakers: "It's a huge problem, we have about a 5% failure rate!"
French winemakers: "It's no big deal, maybe 5% failure rate. And it's not our problem, it's the customers' problem."

 

[mhardy6647]

Seriously... I don't want to be evil, but damn, it just seems so easy. I wonder how many people buy some of these things.

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Look at the "BYBEE Quantum Clarifier". It's literally a 2in block of wood with a magnet attached to it (as far as I can tell) for $100. Okay, according to this review, maybe there's some rocks in there too:

LMFAO!

Special crystals... as opposed to ordinary crystals.

For years, Jensen had a line of speaker drivers called Special Design. I don't know what was special about their design, especially as they were regular, and pretty ordinary, Jensen drivers.

 

[jschwender]

This week I received a TotalDAC USB cable/filter from a friend who was throwing it out. He was happy to let me have it to try out and take apart.
I tested the TotalDAC USB cable/filter with a Chord Mojo (data only), Schiit Fula (data + Power) and a Hidizs S8 (power+Data). I had my eldest son swap between the TotalDAC USB cable/filter and a plain cheap Rino USB cable from amazon. Sometimes he swapped the Rino out and the Rino back in and sometimes swapped in the TotalDAC USB cable/filter. All of this was blind to me. I could hear no difference and couldn't tell which cable was been used each time.

Getting in to the box was a pain due to the epoxy/resin on the screws. Once chipped out, it was easy with bench drill to drill out the screws.
The soldering looks pretty poorly done, with flux everywhere. Also the USB cable was damaged where it must have been crushed by the box.

More details of the USB cable/filter can be found at http://www.totaldac.com/cables-eng.htm cost is 360euros incl VAT in Europe.

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Nothing in there has ever any verifyable function. Overvoltage between cable cores do not occur in operation. Those are used to protect from damage in case of overload. 5V supply capacitors within the cable do nothing as there are enough capacitors on both ends of the transmission line. If these small black pills are ferrite beads, those are so tiny small that they have inductance close to zero, so no effect at all. Even if they were large enough: for common mode filtering they need to include ground, and this is not the case. This device sells based on the fact, that people don't understand digital transmission and why signal distortion on a digital transmission is a digital problem: As long as these distortions stay under a threshold level, the receiver can do 100% restauration. If it exceeds it, transmission gets interrupted.

 

[Tks]

AH yes, totalScam returns to us again.

Thanks for being a legend OP.

 

[JaMaSt]

Look at the "BYBEE Quantum Clarifier"

I really really really wish I didn't click that link to the BYBEE web site. That was a soul draining experience.....

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[antcollinet]

"The units do not draw a current" That is really seriously impressive technology. I wonder what the cord is for.

 

[wwenze]

Guess this and that black brick dissection video just prove one thing, in the arms race between scientific experimentation and complete spewing of BS, BS is just too easy to spew and create and there is too many of them.

 

[audio2design]

Hand soldering... always worse looking than machine reflow. But so what, if its functionally correct? Machine soldering... makes sense if your making many 1000's or millions. Very cheap. Building a couple hundred or less, not so.

Mass produced, could possibly do it for $10-20, but do you wanna drop $100k to have 10k made to try and make more than your money back? Hey, there's ASR out there!

What are you going on about?

If am doing more than a couple of anything we will manually place and "machine" solder. With the low number of components on this board that may make sense up to a 100 or so. Any more than that and you pay someone to assemble them especially with the markup on this.

The $100K number is ridiculous.

----------
Zeners are single junction devices. TVS are multijunction devices.

 

[audio2design]

If these small black pills are ferrite beads, those are so tiny small that they have inductance close to zero, so no effect at all.

Even if they were large enough: for common mode filtering they need to include ground, and this is not the case.

This device sells based on the fact, that people don't understand digital transmission

Ferrite beads are for high frequency i.e. 10-1000Mhz

The ground for common mode filtering is often a parasitic connection. You don't need a hard ground.

 

[JonP]

What are you going on about?

If am doing more than a couple of anything we will manually place and "machine" solder. With the low number of components on this board that may make sense up to a 100 or so. Any more than that and you pay someone to assemble them especially with the markup on this.

Sounds like what I was going on about.

Hand assembly makes sense for small batches, even though its costly Only when the numbers get large are you able to use fully automated assembly and get a large reduction in per unit cost. It's the overhead with the latter that you need to balance out with volume, is what I was saying.

 

[Frgirard]

Sounds like what I was going on about.

Hand assembly makes sense for small batches, even though its costly Only when the numbers get large are you able to use fully automated assembly and get a large reduction in per unit cost. It's the overhead with the latter that you need to balance out with volume, is what I was saying.

Small batches? The subcontractors can help you.

 

[mhardy6647]

Hmm...
Small batch audio componentry.
Like bourbon.

 

[Lambda]

Interesting Ambivalence in this forum:
The horrendously bad soldering in the Topping amp is ok Because only the Measured performance matters.

With this Small batch thing (that no one has measured?! ) now everyone complains about the soldering.

. I could hear no difference and couldn't tell which cable was been used each time.

This is like pouring water through a sieve and saying you taste no difference.

Topping E30 powersupply/USB noise

Hi everyone, I just want to expose a problem I have with my Topping E30, the way I temporary solved it and where I think I can get better. Plus I want to know your thoughts and opinions. Configuration: I plugged my DAC to 2 USB, obviously 1 for power and 1 for data, on a USB hub that has it's...

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Noisy USB ports are a thing and even <100€ DACs are not all immune to it or even isolated.
So if you can't reproduce it how can you test it?

One could Measure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scattering_parameters

Not saying this thing is "worth" what it costs or effektive but it is surely doping something*.
*also not saying what it dose is necessarily good.

 

[uwotm8]

French car

That's impossible, they only produce Citroens/Renaults/Peugeots. Real cars are produced by BMW and Porsche.

 

[uwotm8]

I tested the TotalDAC USB cable/filter with a Chord Mojo (data only), Schiit Fula (data + Power) and a Hidizs S8 (power+Data)

It requires 24 to 72 hours to burn-in and fit into system after reconnection.
Do you believe that such a respectable company would sell a snake oil?
Just burn it in (no refunds) lol

 

[voodooless]

It requires 24 to 72 hours to burn-in and fit into system after reconnection.

Are you serious ? What physical mechanism explains this burn-in?

Do you believe that such a respectable company would sell a snake oil?

Absolutely yes! We already proved they sell a 10 euro badly assembled product for 38x times as much. Not sure what else they are capable of…

 

[uwotm8]

What physical mechanism explains

JUST HEAR AND BELIEVE
I thought sarcasm was obvious

 

[uwotm8]

Not sure what else they are capable of…

Well now check old but gold 47labs amplifiers, Shigaraki as example (2000 euro)

I've heard a clone of their higher model, the Gaincard. Sounded like a garbage overall BUT pretty detailed/transparent in some areas. There definitely was a different sound compared to "normal" brand amp. No measurements sorry.

 

[voodooless]

JUST HEAR AND BELIEVE
I thought sarcasm was obvious

Not this time We’ve seen too many real ones. The typo of “lol” (now fixed) really sold it for me

 

[Killingbeans]

Interesting Ambivalence in this forum:
The horrendously bad soldering in the Topping amp is ok Because only the Measured performance matters.

With this Small batch thing (that no one has measured?! ) now everyone complains about the soldering.

What amp? The PA5? Had no idea the soldering was bad in those. Example?

But yeah, bad soldering is bad soldering. Can't imagine people would give Topping products a free pass.

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