It is a generalization. All Sabre based DACs aren't going to throw the same size of soundstage. Some do a smallish soundstage, some do bigger. But all the Sabre DACs I've listened to have that style of imaging that seems to be thrown out to the skin of a balloon to some degree. Some do it more pronounced than others. I'm able to hear the effect with my headphone setup using Audeze planar headphones. Good planar headphones have a neat ability to let you hear that style of imaging if it is happening.
Well maybe it's a headphone dac thing only. Try to explain to me how it would sound with speakers as I get a proper filled out and 3d center/front stage with my sabre (and other) dac(s).
You should listen to the SMSL M100, which is about $100. I found the sound practically the same as the Topping d50
What is also impressive to me is just how well the cheap Topping D10 DAC did on Amir's measurements. Even crazier is Amazon had it for a little over $70 a few weeks ago.
I'll have to respectfully disagree on generalizing the imaging to a single DAC chip. I have a NADAC and the center image, image depth and image location are all highly dependent on the recording and greatly vary with the recording. The vastly different recording techniques from Mercury to DG to Decca all sound very different and exactly how I would imagine them given their mic'ing techniques. I've recorded my friend's mom playing solo violin and with her string quartet in their house with vaulted ceilings and depending on their position, whether the thick curtains cover the large window or not, etc are all easily picked up on my DAC. It remains to this day the most transparent DAC I have heard for classical and jazz, I have not had the mega DACs like MSB and DCS for in home audition. What you are describing sounds like Pentatone Quad SACDs that are remixed to stereo. They often have that ultra-wide image with fuzzy center image.
What I really like about the Topping D50 is how it plays DSD, with the stereo track of The Film Music Of Jerry Goldsmisth which is native DSD recording it sounds very dinamic, with wide soundstage and very pleasing instruments timbre. This recording has one of the sharper and defined treble without being harsh or agressive and the Topping D50 is able to reproduce this at a bargain price, not an easy task at ANY price.
Chi-fi is a real thing. I dithered between a Topping and the SMSL SU8, which I ultimately bought through Amazon for $250. The first one was DOA and immediately replaced by Az. The second unit plays fine, at least as good as the Bimby I used to own for less than half the $$. It also has xlr outputs.
Asking for an opinion: I have a Topping D30, and I am thinking of getting a D70. Do you guys think I'll hear a big difference in the way in sounds?
I am interested as well in hearing if there is a difference in sound between different models, as they are using different chips for some models... @Doctor Fine : any feedback how your d50 sounds compared to your analog/vinyl setup? I have used several dacs so far (bel canto dac 3 at the moment) but returning to digital after a period of vinyl for me always sounds like a step back.
Great question. Digital has so many advantages over LP that I am thrilled to improve the quality CLOSER to LP. And the Topping finally lets me hear cymbals again. Yay! BUT. The difference I hear is like moving your stereo from a great sounding "open room" to a room that is claustrophobic and closed-in. Which the Topping does less of that than any DAC I have owned so far. When digital is this good it has advantages that easily make it competitive with LP, IMHO.
Well, I could not have described the difference between digital and analog any better than you just did, it is exactly what I experience when I get back to cd listening after lp's. Good thing that the Topping seems to be closing that gap a bit. Guess I'll just have to try the d70 and see how it compares....
Perhaps Sabre DAC filters play a role in what you are hearing? The D50 lets you shape the soundstage 7 different ways using 7 diifferent filter settings...
I wasn't familiar with the Merging NADAC. I had to find some reviews of it to find out what it was. It's an $8000+ DAC made by Merging Technologies and uses ESS Sabre chips and a RAVENNA ethernet interface (a good DAC with a built-in RAVENNA or Rednet interface is neat). Reviews say it doesn't sound like a Sabre. Given great engineering and design and money it would be possible to make a Sabre based DAC that doesn't sound like a Sabre. It's also a $8000+ DAC and way out of the price categories of the Sabre DACs I'm complaining about. I'm complaining about the $2000-ish Sabre DACs, $1000-ish Sabre DACs, and sub $1000 Sabre DACs. I've heard various Sabre DACs in those price ranges and all of them have had that sort of sound to some degree. Some more than others. Some very much more than others. DACs like the Oppo players, Oppo HA-1, Mytek's like the Brooklyn and 192, LH Labs, PonoPlayer, Ayre Codex, Chinese Sabre DACs, and others. What I'm describing is a style of imaging presentation. Not transparency. The Sabre sound I'm describing makes it easier to hear the ambiance of the hall but harder to hear the precise position of musicians in the center area. Harder to seem to be able to count the number of violins in an orchestra or individual voices in a choir or individual performers in any sort of well recorded music. I tend to prefer DACs that focus on being able to image in the center area very well even if that means the expanse of the hall sound is a little constrained. What I'm ultimately after (and likely out of my budget) is a DAC that does precise imaging in the center and the vast expanse of the hall. I like the Schiit multibits. They do good imaging in the center (you can hear which violin shuffled) but they do constrain the boundaries of the hall sound. The Sabre sound I'm describing does the opposite. The hall sound is out there and noticeable and the walls of your listening room (or headstage for headphone listening) disappear, but the imaging for the individual performers is more ghost-like and blob-like.
The filters do play a role. As an example, I have a LH Labs Geek Pulse XFi DAC and LPS. It's a Sabre DAC and has multiple filters (minimum phase, linear phase slow rolloff, streaming optimized, and femto clock optimized minimum phase). The design of the DAC does some special methods to bypass some of the Sabre on-chip processing and does that processing off-chip. It was supposed to sound less Sabre-like due to that design. And it does. But it still has the style of imaging I'm describing. The degree of that style of imaging changes with the different filters, but it is still there with all of the different filters.
Ham. Could it all just be YOUR system is picky and doesn't like Sabre DACS, period? I have listened for any loss of center fatness on MY setup and it just ain't there. If anything the Topping D50 seems a better balance across the soundstage than my Benchmark! What I DO hear is a decidedly WIDER presentation. And perhaps the individual volume outputs of instruments are even BETTER balanced across the left/right soundstage using the Topping! It untangles the somewhat chunky sound of my Benchmark in comparison side by side. Everything is less "punchy" and more "real" sounding. Smoother. The Topping will STAY. Sabre chips and ALL. It's not THIN. It's WIDE. Adds a lot to my STEREO separation! Gosh I love those reverb tails!
OK guys, here is an update on the Topping D-50 testing that has been going on over at Chez Fine. Firstly I am in awe of Ham Sandwich for being able to describe something I couldn't hear AT FIRST. There is indeed an "etched" quality about the little Topping D50 and it MAY well come from those Sabre DAC chips, like Hammy says. So now I have to "pick" on the little D50 after giving it a rave up initially. My complaint is MINOR---but SIGNIFICANT. An overly bright edge to everything that in one instance blotted out a flute and oboe that was trying to accompany the string section on Tchaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty." The imaging is right up to the edge of the soundfield and beyond BUT it is disassociated a TINY bit from the main image of the instrument. On all my systems I hear a nice center CHANNEL image so I don't quite agree with Hammy here...BUT any INSTRUMENT I listen to seems split into it's main "body" and an overlay of treble ON TOP of the instrument's fundamentals. My old classic Benchmark DAC1 NOW seems more correct than the Topping unit. The Benchmark keeps instruments all together and solid. It is also "heftier" and more "real sounding" (3D!) than the Topping D50. My guess is the Topping has a less advanced analog amplification output stage with cheaper parts and cheaper design than the Benchmark (which by the way costs WAAAAY more than the Topping). And Hammy says the Sabre DAC chipset is the culprit and who am I to argue with Hammy? But what I HAVE also learned is how solid and dependable the USB implementation is on the Topping. I had been "upgrading" the 15 year old Benchmark to USB by running a Schiit EITR USB/SPDIF converter and this Schiit only works on ONE of my four brand new Windows 10 computers. It was enough to make me hate Windows 10 AND hate USB in general (and wonder about Schitt...). The other three crash within minutes when running the Schiit! Nothing I have tried from Schiit's support team has solved this dilemma. Thankfully I need the Schiit converter on the one computer that DOES run with it. Meanwhile I now own FOUR Topping products. Two of these are little D10s which I am using to upgrade other vintage DACS I own that don't come with USB inputs and can't work on Windows 10 without a converter---which is what the D10 can do cheaper even than the Schiit EITR. Since nothing throws off the USB pipeline running Toppings their cheapest little D10 has a USB converter plug built in and it DOES work AND is even cheaper than the EITR. And the Topping USB conversion ALWAYS WORKS, NEVER CRASHES. This has been a fascinating adventure finding out how far DACS have come and how good OLD "expensive" DACS can sound once you upgrade them to USB. One of my two Topping D50 will probably get sold to my best buddy symphony conductor friend who just had his digital front end die and needs a piece of kit to get running again (he's on a fixed income). By the way that conductor buddy heard all these nuances without being prompted. That's why I'm helping him with gear and time-0--he is a music warrior who deserves a break. Plus he needs to hear detail to check recordings for flaws in how the orchestras are reading the score! The Topping will work a treat for that purpose! And in general I am still impressed, amazed and happy how good the D50 IS for the money. I'm keeping one of them as a spare and putting it in my emergency repair kit for house calls. But I put it in my big rig finally and immediately began to hear shortcomings, so there you go. Anyway, it's been great fun and I can now tell you what else has happened since my first finding out about the Topping company!
The skin of a balloon style imaging I describe could be something that is a headphone listening artifact. Headphones do present imaging differently than speakers. I don't have a good proper speaker setup with proper imaging to test that on speakers. I do have good headphone setups to test that with headphones. It's also something that happens when Sabre chips try to do a 3D sound rather than the more conventional flatter style of sound. Sabre based DACs can be designed to do a 3D style presentation or the more conventional 2D style. I don't know which style the D50 tries to do. The Schiit Eitr should work fine with the latest Windows 10. The latest Windows 10 includes the USB Class 2 audio drivers as part of the OS. Like Macs and Linux have done for years. With the latest version of Windows 10 you don't need to install a Schiit supplied driver to use the Eitr. I have the Eitr running on a Windows 10 laptop that got a fresh clean install of Windows 1903 and then updated to 1906. Never installed a Schiit supplied driver on it. Yet the Eitr and Gungnir and Modi Multibit are all working with that laptop. I just plugged them in and they worked.
Nope. Won't work on my other three brand new computers. Same version of Windows! Schiit USB is not as good as Toppping USB. I'll state this as a FACT until the next FACT shows up.
Headphone or not, you brought up a flaw I didn't hear for a couple weeks! So much of what we "audiophile' guys hear takes a while to sink in. You heard something I didn't. That alone ruined my entire week (only KIDDING).
Point is. I was beginning to wonder why I wasn't grooving to my "little" desktop control room setup. Now I figured out I need the Benchmark to get it "all together." Thank you, Hammy.
But are those audio drivers an update or have they been on Windows 10 since its first release? By the way,Microsoft wake up, it's been over 5 years since you released Wondows 10! When are you releasing a new Windows OS?
Regarding the overly bright edge, has anybody that has noticed it try changing to filters 2, 4 or 7? I use mainly 2 and 7 for overly bright recording with good results (that new 2 CD set for the Stargate soundtrack released by La La Land ). But with filter 5 I don't notice the "overly bright" edge discribed, I have a Yaqin SD-CD3 tube buffer (I know tube buffers have a bad reputation here) with NOS RCA 6SN7 GTB tubes with black plates. I know, I'm adding distorsion to the sound of the Topping D50, pleasing distorsion in my opinion and some noise, a tiny amount of it. I told these before, I cheched with my heaphones on and turning the volume knob all the way uponmy Pioneer SC LX-76 A/V receiver,there was some noise, little one,I then switched the Yaqin SD-CD3 off and noise level was almost the same.I'm talking about a totally unrealistic situation, noticing a very slight amount of noise with all the volume up. And the Topping D50 combined with the yaqin SD-CD3 sounds warm, no harshness or hard top end, and I get a fatter sound with the Yaqin between the Topping D50 and the receiver. I know what I'm telling here is heressy but I like how this combination sounds.
I can even get a 12 year old USB input on my big rig (Bryston BDA1) to run just fine. Those old USB drivers on Windows 10 seem to work just fine. But the Schiit will NOT run on three of my Windows 10 computers. So I doubt it is a Windows 10 driver problem.
