Digital Drive

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RE: There is NO MAGIC here

Posted by morricab on February 21, 2024 at 02:46:09:
How is something completely neutral and "only what is on the recordings" when subjective reviews of something like the Topping D90se indicate that it truncates soundstage depth and has brightness in the highs and that this is consistent (especially the soundstage lack of depth) across pretty much all recordings?

The soundstage depth should vary radically from recording to recording, as should the tonality. If not, then there is something systematic that the DAC is doing that is not being picked up by the objective measurements.

I think you need to rethink your position that you are hearing (only what is on the recordings" because clearly, based on observations like those above, this is not the case.

Do some other DACs create an artificially wide/deep soundstage? Perhaps and the way to know is if nearly all recordings suddenly get very deep/wide soundstageing then it is possibly being artificially manipulated. Same with tonality. If all recordings start to sound tonally similar then that is a clear indication of some kind of coloration. That might still be ok, if mild (probably all have some kind of signature) and as long as it is not interfering with low level resolution and...soundstage/imaging.

Topping D90se, for all it's seemingly amazing transparency, appears to trunctate soundstage depth and width and has been observed to be somewhat "hot" in the highs. As that seems to be consistent across recordings...and reviews, it is logical to conclude that it is not "completely neutral" nor is it "only what is on the recording".

I pick on this DAC in particular because it sits at the top, or nearly the top, of the DAC SINAD heap...and by ASR and your standards then a "blameless" DAC.