Topping DACs?

Definitely is, mainly because sometimes you spend a lot more trying to reach something and the differences between competent dacs can be hardly noticeable sometimes while their price difference smacks you in the face.

 

https://geshelli.com/shop/ols/products/enog2-pro-dac-metal-case

Interesting and quite inexpensive.

 

What if... Topping came out with their own RDAC that measured somewhat well yet sounded similar to other ladder DAC's on the market. Sort of their own Heresy version of an RDAC?

How would that shake up the market? Or cause "certain other websites" to implode? Or contradict themselves?

 

It will not happen. This is a quote from one of their head engineers that posts on ASR:

"Audio reproduction is science.
Making music is art.
Simple as that."

I could agree with this in principle, but when science of measuring audio performance is not advanced enough to capture all the nuances of audio reproduction, it becomes a bit of an art to get it to sound great. And it is sad to believe that engineering of audio products has no element of creativity to it, which is implied by this statement. The sense of wonder and discovery is completely absent from this type of thinking which is depressing. I really hope that the main purpose of this line of reasoning is NOT to sell products. Somehow, that is more corrupt than genuinely believing this mantra.

 

Art and science come together when people explore the internals of DACs. Does it have a good clean linear PSU? How is the DAC chip implemented, capacitors used, what filter are they using. Just quoting people who know more about this. A lot of "high ranking" audio individuals are active on these forums with broad experience. Also, DIY'ers who have built stuff around DAC components. That's why it is usually better to read and lurk around than to come out of the closet all of a sudden. It has been discussed in depth why and how Yggdrasil sounds good for its price and why it improved with v2. I believe the story that comes with v2. I haven't heard v2, but It makes sense. Most DAC output stages are lackluster and bottleneck the sound.

 

False (science and art)
False (science and art)
False (Never simple)

= Epic fail.

That poor guy seems to be not schooled well in either arts or science.

 

Take guys like Mike, Jason plus people producing tube amps (making the better amps that probably belong to 0.9% club) and Lockheed Martin engineers discussing DAC internals. I bet we are not going to find anything mindblowing about Topping products.

 

Topping... a tale of calculated mass shill marketing, climaxing with the D90 release.

• Phase 1 - Release meh products, glowing shill reviews (D10/30/50).
• Phase 2 - Get the newb buy-in and release -$500 products that measure well, shill (D70)
• Phase 3 - Release flagship Dac D90, provide shills script "Hey not as expensive as RME or the Yggdrasil!! and it measures better than any other dac on the planet"

Newb has the "best" dac ever, Topping laughing all the way to the bank.

 

Actually, Archimago had an answer to that, maybe even before this product was thought of. I'd hesitate paraphrase it as "there isn't one," as it's quite a while since I read it. And hey, someone has to buy stuff to plug Audioquest network cables into!

Love his blog. But I haven't followed it much since I stopped being one of those guys that joined in arguments at places like hydrogenaud.io

 

I like Archimago a lot, and he has fought the good fight against ultra/radical subjectivism for a while. One could argue that it was his technical summation of MQA that "lifted the veil" on it for most audiophiles who had otherwise thought that what Stereophile and Bob S. were telling them was true.

His blog is far too loquacious (a problem for many in academia). Also he is one for whom all decently measuring dacs and amps sound the same, so in the end he is no good for subjective sound impressions.

 

Heh, even at many non-tech places I had to visit in China have quite a bit for security for the same reasons. Security also included randomly having your car searched (with the only exemption being if you are the guy who owns the place) when leaving, your email/comms being monitored, etc.

 

I read this news from a CEO of a certain innovative cutting edge technology company. To a certain extent, some monitoring even at workplace makes sense when you are dealing with big companies, one email might consist of a lot of company secrets. That's why no one puts in their CV details of some custom / specific measurement instruments they used in company A or B, because of company secrets. It seems like "good practice."

 

So how is this anything new or different? Reviewers/critics in every human endeavor have long used the power of their bully pulpits for self gain. To paraphrase the old saw; those who can, do. Those who cannot , review.

 

The ASR jihadis are actively opposed to good sound and accurate sound. If they found Brit-fi, they probably would get dragged into British court for libel. If the Ayatollah publicly chewed out ATC and Quested for not having ultra complex crossovers and not paying any respect to his garage’s acoustics, they would raise hell.

 

ASR is worse than HF because I don’t think Jude’s a dealer even if he may or may not have his hand in the pot somewhere. They also don’t allow dealers to pull the same crap they do at ASR. The entire site is basically all unethical dealers and mostly f'ing deaf idiots in shitty rooms sucking class dick speakers and amps. They’re all deaf and can’t hear the distorted treble or any detail. To be deaf and not hear distorted treble, means you have to be really deaf because most people with some hearing damage have hyperacusis set off by distortion in shitty treble. The harmonics of it aren’t acoustically masked for them. Most musicians and sound guys have high frequency hearing loss and tinnitus.

They allow dealers to post threads like this
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/dutch-dutch-8c-atc-active-50’s-listening.2162/

Some dealer who got dropped from his dealership roasts ATC in his shitty living room and claims that some class dick speakers have more detail than probaby the best midbass to 20khz speaker in the world from a couple of meters away in a good room.

He then cites physics. Sorry a bunch of off brand chinese woofers and a seas tweeter and midrange aren’t going to hang with ATC drivers and a 50 pound magnet assembly that weighs more than Chinese speakers. The shitty digital crossovers inside the speakers aren’t going to hang with the Prism sound converters that ATC shows their speakers with. No wonder that loser got booted. Trying to show off midfield studio monitors in an untreated room placed terribly off axis and then shitting on them because his entire schtick is selling crappy dsp speakers to overpaid tech bros. He needs to shit on them to sell class dick speakers with cheaper class dick components and higher markups. It’s not just the owner of Madrona Digiral also owning ASR and pimping products he sells and shitting on others. It’s others too.

 

It's because they allowed some 'desperate dealers' sub forum lol, almost all posts there are by the same guy so go figure.

 

The Geshelli Labs Archel 2.5 Pro with Bifrost 2 is bliss (review coming soon). I bought it cause it looked cool and maybe replace the shitty Atom for burning in headphones. Geshelli seems like a good company and no shilling that I saw, but they're jerking off to the measurements over at ASR... When I was in the Navy, my roommate used to jerk off to battleship pics/schematics (true story), wonder if Amir and his minions do the same with measurements.