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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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In Reply to: Choice for new DAC: Schiit Gungir Multibit vs. Topping D90 MQA posted by Terry P on January 7, 2021 at 13:33:00:
I'm a very late conversion to digital/streaming and bought a Topping E30 a couple of months ago as my entry point, using Amazon Music HD running from a Windows laptop via USB. Very basic setup.
I run the E30 off a battery powerbank-I never even attempted to feed it from the laptop but originally used a quite inexpensive Chinese Linear Power Supply before trying the battery power bank when someone suggested it. To my ears, the powerbank sounds quite a bit better than the LPS but I admit fully that a LPS that sells for $75 may well not perform as well as something in the $250-$500 range.
In any event, the D90 should not require any outboard power supply or powerbank, but my point is that the E30 sounds very good. It is detailed, as Abe has made out the D90 to be (I know he owns the E30 as well) but is reasonably full bodied and not thin, at least not from my perspective.
One thing that I have noticed is that the filters on the AKM based dacs (like the E30 and D90) get very little mention apart from most reviewers suggesting that they do not hear much difference between filters. I admit fully that when I acquired the E30 and had it in the first week or two and cycled through the filters while playing that I could hear very little difference between them. I'm still not sure that I could in terms of trying to identify them while quickly switching through them now.
But what I have found after owning the DAC for a few months and listening extensively to one filter (Filter #4) and then switching over to the other filters, particularly Filter #5 which is a "super slow rolloff" filter, is that Filter 5 is probably the most "analog" sounding of the filters. It may sacrifice some detail, but it also has has a slightly more euphonic and slightly rolled off sound (more noticeable with 16/44 material-I make sure that I never upsample with the E30 in Amazon HD-that is another slightly long story).
Ironically (or maybe not so ironically lol), Filter 5 on the AKM chip is probably considered to be the worst, or certainly one of the worst, with digital purists who analyze this filter, as it seems to have more IM distortion than the other filters. It does, however, reproduce a square wave almost perfectly and much better than the other filters, which puts it very much in line with NOS or R2R/ladder dacs apparently.
My limited understanding of these filters is that they function (or perhaps don't function) in two areas: time and frequency response. And that ultimately they are a compromise; ie. they all function better in one domain than they do in the other so it is a bit of a choose your poison kind of thing.
I've come to the conclusion that my subjective listening preferences err more to better performance in the time domain (ie. ringing or lack of ringing) than they do to better performance in the frequency response area, and supposedly the limitations in the frequency response characteristics of these filter become less an issue as the bit and sampling rate are increased. But I'm not a real technical guy so don't take my word for that haha!
In any event, the filter options on the AKM based Topping Dacs are something to consider in terms of tailoring its performance and perhaps making it more analog like, specifically with the #5 filter-I believe the #3 default filter is perhaps the most 'digital" filter although it supposedly measures exceedingly well.
A crazy, or maybe not so crazy, idea might be for you to pick up an E30 on the cheap and experiment with it (use a powerbank) and then resell it for a $30-$40 loss to see if the Topping thing might be worthwhile for uou as I would anticipate that the D90 should certainly outperform the E30.
I actually have no desire to upgrade from the E30 and I can listen to it for hours without fatigue. It is not as good as my turntable with very good all analog recordings (it is listed in inmates systems) but as a value proposition it is off the charts and still sounds very good to me.
And I'm pretty sensitive to nasty digital sound.
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Follow Ups
- RE: Choice for new DAC: Schiit Gungir Multibit vs. Topping D90 MQA - blake 17:14:45 01/08/21 (0)
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