A $99 BARGAIN! The TOPPING D10s DAC (and USB-S/PDIF converter)

this video is brought to you by audioquest  makers of the dragonfly range of usb dax   click to audioquest.com for more information so many of us have things like this like a laptop  which is a headphone socket on the outside here   well we have a streamer like the xiaomi mi box  s that i made a video about couple weeks ago   and that has a headphone socket here and then  over here we've got a raspberry pi 4 which is also   equipped with a headphone socket and in  each case we are using the internal dac   inside the laptop the streamer or the pi and it  sounds pretty compared to something like this   this is the [ __ ] modi 3 dac which i made a video  about two years ago i called it a 99 bargain it   is it's a very simple d a converter with three  inputs usb toslink coax so you can apply this   to many different situations so basically you  take usb out of your laptop usb out of the xiaomi   or usb out of the pie into the [ __ ] and then  the [ __ ] into your hifi system and it sounds   a whole lot better than using the inbuilt dac and  headphone outputs on each of those three devices   so for the last couple of years i've been  recommended left right and center the ship mode e3   it has three inputs and it can be  applied in many different use cases   it's a terrific sounding piece and there hasn't  really been too much to rival it in my world   until people started hassling me about topping  which is this dac under here the topping   d10s now this is a usb dac it does not have coax  it does not have toslink inputs but i still wanted   to compare these two devices running as usb dacs  running out of a raspberry pi 4 you will recall   that i have said in videos in the past that the  pi 3s usb output is pretty that's because on a   pi 3 the ethernet and the usb traffic share  the same data bus and that data bus was not   wide enough and it caused pops and glitches and  clicks and all sorts when the usb buffer under ran   that's not the case with a pi 4 so i've got a pi 4  it's feeding the topping d10s over usb and it can   also feed the ship mode e3 over usb now before i  say anything about feature sets and sound quality   i do want to say a few words about pricing  and availability because in the usa the   ship mode 3 sells for 99 bucks and you buy it  direct from [ __ ] whereas outside of the usa   its availability gets a bit spotty and pricing  is higher than the equivalent of us 99 on the   other hand the topping you can get this on  most amazons i did check you can get this on   amazon usa for 99. i paid 99 euros on amazon  germany so yeah i bought this one this   for me the topping is the the more universally  available around the world than the [ __ ]   so the toppings most obvious key feature  is staring us right in the face it's this   display here which shows the sample rate of  the music playing in this case it's 44.1 which   is cd quality but because this dac can support  everything up to 384 kilohertz i also found this   display very useful in working out what comes out  of the usb socket of the xiaomi mi box s because   the android os on here up samples everything to  96 kilohertz so it was always showing 96 kilohertz   no matter what i played the pi 4 is different  i'm running on here something called vit os or   vi taos i don't know how you say it it's made  by silent angel it just runs roon bridge or   like a roon ready device so this is a very high  res capable dac this topping it does dsd up to   dsd256 so if you're a dsd person it's good  for you the [ __ ] is constrained to 24 192.   there's no way it'll do dst i dare you to ask the  [ __ ] guys about dsd because you'll get a very   you know you'll get a very interesting response so  no dsd in the world of [ __ ] it's the thing about   high res it just gets so nerdy and it just gets it  becomes a numbers game and people get really hung   up on the numbers when as we know and i've said  it many times before the mastering matters more so   functionally and display wise for me the topping  beats the [ __ ] you know as a usb dac because   obviously we're only considering these as usb dax  obviously this [ __ ] has the telstra the coax now i don't know about you but most of my music  even out there on kobo's and tidal is cd quality   i've been playing this album quite  a lot recently this is craig finn's   b-sides and outtakes album and i've also  been playing a lot of giant sand so the track   eventually the kings of ling kings of lings kings  king of limbs oh my god radiohead radiohead's king   of limbs i can't even say it oh my god radiohead's  king of limbs remixes the one by caribou i've been   smashing that and i've been playing a lot of new  order recently the new power corruption and lies   remaster so i've been comparing these two usb  dacs mainly using red book cd quality material   now inside the topping the dac chip is a ess  labs 1938 q2m the q2m is important because   it means it's not the pro chip and inside the [  __ ] is an akm-4490 now based upon that can you   tell me what these two decks sound like of course  you can't because that would be insane insane to   think that the the dac chip is the only thing that  influences a d a-converter's sound because in each   of these the power supply matters the output  stage matters the usb receiver chip matters so   when people try and tell you that a dac chip has  a certain sound just politely show them the door so i've been listening to these two dacs  or rather music through these two decks the   last few weeks and getting out my sort of audio  magnifying glass to tease out the differences   i have found that the topping gives us a better  illusion of detail it it sounds more alive there's   better separation um there's better top end air  and perhaps tonal color is a bit more vibrant   but it does so at the comparative relative to  the [ __ ] comparative expense of body of music   sort of mass the sort of the fatness and the  chunkiness of the instruments which is where   comparative comparatively the [ __ ] steps ahead  so even though it's contrasted as more congealed   not quite as extended and doesn't really have the  illusion of more detail it sounds meatier and more   substantial now both of these dax sound better  than the internal dac inside the pi the xiaomi   and my macbook clearly now which one i prefer  depends upon the headphones that i have in play   because i decided to use a headphone system to  compare these dacs and that comprised mainly   these dan clark ether2 headphones and down the  front here a ps audio bhk signature pre-amplifier   to check my results i also use a [ __ ] yuttenheim  so for me using these dank club headphones   i actually prefer the [ __ ] dac with these  because the toppings sort of lighter area   presentation matches that of these headphones and  it just proves to be too much of the same thing   and i think tonal balance wise the shit's  kind of thicker meteor presentation works   better with these headphones however cutting  over to the roster audio rad zero headphones   also a very high-end headphone these  have a a much more substantial thicker   punchier feel than the dan clark and i for me that  the topping proved to be the better dance partner   with these so which one of these dax you'll prefer  will depend upon the rest of your audio system so so far 100 dax and it's kind of hard to say  which one is best i mean as always there is no   best it depends upon the hardware elsewhere in  your audio system chain however there is a twist   because the topping has a very cool party  trick on the back panel there are coaxial and   toslink sockets and they're not inputs they're  outputs so effectively the topping can also   serve as a usb to spit off converter  so we can take usb out of the pie and then the topping can convert it into our  choice of coaxial or toslink and then we can   connect that to something else now if you're  one of these people grumbling that your dac or   powered loudspeakers do not have a  usb socket one of these things will   solve your problem now that is very cool in  and of itself from a functional point of view   however there is another slight twist in this tale  when we are taking digital audio from a digital   source and we're sort of feeding it into our dac  let's say it's the [ __ ] modi here for example   this modi will not be 100 percent resistant  to the pies jitter and electrical noise   that causes timing errors with a clock messes  with the output stage of the dac and this is   true of many many many many dacs and especially at  the entry level like this if we have the topping   intercede between the pie and the [ __ ] we  get a better sound from the [ __ ] so what i   mean by that is if we take usb from the pie  feed it into the topping and then come coax   out of the topping into the back of the [ __ ]  we make the [ __ ] sound better more alive more   avid now this is not new this this has been going  on for maybe decades but the my first experience   of this was with the audiophilio which took usb  in and then spat out i think yeah it was coaxial   and it sounded fantastic and many many  many other people found this to be a very   effective device but in this particular  case this is strictly entry-level stuff   the pie is 60 bucks the case the heatsink case  was 12. this topping is 100 bucks so you've got   an excellent digital front end here for 100 and  something bucks and so for me with this usb spin   of conversion i think the topping really steps  ahead of the [ __ ] in this particular scenario so what that means for you looking for your  first 100 dac is that you could go with the   topping and use it as a usb dac initially and  then later maybe when you upgrade to a better dac   that has a coaxial input you can then redeploy the  topping d10s as a usb spin of converter so it gets   a new life in a different role i think that's  fantastic i hope this video was useful if you   thought it was please smash the like button down  below if you like the fact that i still talk about   you know like a 60 streamer 100 dac one week and  then another week it'll be a 10 grand dac or even   a six grand turntable whatever like i'm i'm  trying to do like both ends of the market   um if you dig that then please subscribe  to this channel yeah thanks for watching you

Channel: Darko Audio

Views: 256,175

Keywords: Audio, streaming, High-End Audio, Audiophile, head-fi, porta-fi, sound quality, Darko, reviews, show reports, berlin, techno

Id: zgRLCAbrr2c

Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020