Topping D90iii - worth a try?

[Columbo]

Good listen.

There is a lot of talk about being able to hear 'x' frequency or not, having seem my hearing test results on a number of occasions it is very obvious that my hearing frequency response doesn't drop off a cliff and just because you can hear something at close range to a tweeter doesn't mean that details at those frequencies on full band music will be audible. This is why signal to noise ratio matters. I liked the bit where he says, I can hear even higher if I turn it up!

I comes as no surprise to me that I cannot hear the differences between practically implemented filters :0( but that there is no point in me worrying about this :0)

I never been able to pick out the difference between filters on the chifi DACs (other DACs like the T+A the differences are supposed to be more pronounced, apparently)

 

[camverton]

Largely this. The differences are subtle and they tend to get overblown in discussions and reviews.

And also agree with the point that A/B testing is limited - sometimes it takes me a month or two to of straight listening to some gear to figure out I do / don't like it, and then I have to reverse engineer what's bothering me. Sometimes I can suss it out, sometimes I can't.

Whether that difference is important is probably down to the individual. For some it won't, in which case Topping all the way. Why waste your money. For others it will, in which case be prepared to spend more.

Also, the gear it's attached to is relevant. My Dali Opticon 2 Mk2 I could throw any DAC on and the difference wasn't important enough for me to worry about. A Topping or Eversolo with these was just fine. When I got the Dynaudio Heritage Special in, which are stupidly resolving and revealing - to the point of annoyance some times - DAC choice became more significant. (FWIW: the 3 AKM/ESS DACs I tried with Dynaudio created a clear sharpness/edge to guitar fret noise which was not pleasant to my ears. Didn't have that "scratchy" issue with a Chord or a Merason. Imagined or real, I dunno. I'd like to think I could pick that out blind quite easily. I'm tempted to get one of those ABX boxes)

A ton of other factors too... room background noise levels, hearing range (one of my friends can only hear up to 7khz!), choice of music, room acoustics, vol level you listen at etc. will all effect whether the subtle differences are more or less important.

A 72yo dude who can barely hear up to 9khz, listening in a room with a ton of room reverb and double digit dB room nodes, with a background ambient noise of 40-50db, listening on his Kef LS50s at 70dB peak vol is likely to have a different experience with DACs than a 21yo chappy with 20khz hearing in a perfectly treated room with 30dB ambient noise, listening to some Magico floor standers at 90dB peaks, for example.

Great post. It seems obvious to me that partnering equipment, hearing ability and room will have a large effect on whether one can discern nuances between DACs. Curiously these are the things that get the hardline objective crowd into jeering mode! I suspect that many of them, certainly not all, are just propping up a belief system that they have latched on to.

 

[Peter Stockwell]

Great post. It seems obvious to me that partnering equipment, hearing ability and room will have a large effect on whether one can discern nuances between DACs. Curiously these are the things that get the hardline objective crowd into jeering mode! I suspect that many of them, certainly not all, are just propping up a belief system that they have latched on to.

And that's what they would say back at ya!

I can't be bothered to go through the rigmarole of ABX blind testing, my life is too short for that. OTOH, now, I don't discount its worth offhand as I once did. I'm working my way up to tackling room/speaker interactions with REW analysis and then trying to tame the resonances with PEQ, which is, on the face of it, easy to dial in with Roon.

 

[Columbo]

And that's what they would say back at ya!

I can't be bothered to go through the rigmarole of ABX blind testing, my life is too short for that. OTOH, now, I don't discount its worth offhand as I once did. I'm working my way up to tackling room/speaker interactions with REW analysis and then trying to tame the resonances with PEQ, which is, on the face of it, easy to dial in with Roon.

That's reminded me... think it was John Darko (cranky YouTube review chap) who compared DACs from £100 to £10k and claimed they did make a difference but it wasn't night and day. And most people, once they hit a certain level, would be far better off doing spending money on room treatment. It was something like (I'm horribly butchering this from memory but you get the gist)...

Computer DAC 3/10
Dongle DAC 5/10
Topping £200 6.5/10
Some £1000 DAC 7/10
Tambaqui £10k 8/10

I know have a chunky 50hz room node in my room, that punches well over 10dB higher than I'd like. Fixing that will improve SQ much more than spending triple on a DAC - the Technics amp DSP I had for a bit patched that up and was far more noticeable than DAC swapping. I'm going to get Roon back up and running this weekend and EQ that sucker out using some fancy pants REW methodology. Then I want to have a play around with RTE and slap some fugly panels about the room and see what that brings to the party.

Mind you I am considering a used Tambaqui, so yeah, I'm an idiot. I'm ok with that

 

[adamdea]

I’m increasingly perplexed by these arguments. I have a variety of dacs using different technologies at various price points. They all sound very similar.

Of course. But are you really perplexed? It’s obvious isn’t it? Human perception is quite limited; human experiences when presented with the same sonic information are strikingly various.

If one makes up an entire hobby and, dare I say, personality based on not getting this then one is going to post a lot of “perplexing” things.

It’s easy to let it wash over you; the problem comes if you allow yourself to remain alive to the possibility that once in a while you might find a tiny signal amid the noise. But you might go mad first.

 

[brab]

In terms of timbre I hear zero difference between my 10 year old Audiolab Mdac and new Soncoz DACs. They both sound like the real instruments they are reproducing. So yes the Topping is worth a punt.