Agreed, but it's a straw-man point I think, as we are talking not about notions but experience and observations.. What is the preconceived notion; Topping is Chinese and Chinese products are crap, therefore Topping is crap? I did't see that sort of reasoning in the responses made by Topping detractors. Yet that simple minded thinking was seemingly imputed on to the detractors by those who threw the racist thinking flag.bboris77 said:Dismissing products without listening to them based on a set of preconceived notions effectively becomes similar to the ignorant mantra propagated at ASR where they don't even bother to listen to stuff if it measures "badly".Click to expand...
Some detractors had evaluated the D90. I did generalize from observation of another Topping product, literally dismissing the D90 in favor of the Bifrost after a cursory but very revealing audition of the D50s. Was that irrational, unfair or ignorant? I think not. I had read Amirm's ASR Review and Measurements of New Topping D50s DAC, which had many great things to say about it and endorsed it as exemplary of Topping's engineering. Of course I was skeptical of the review, but decided to give the D50s a shot to test my skepticism. The result of the experiment was D50s bad and Amiirm unreliable. Did that experience prove that the D90 is bad? No, but it gave me no reason to expect good things from Topping, So my $700 office system DAC upgrade was the Bifrost and not the D90*. That could have been the wrong decision, but I doubt it, and it was certainly not unfair, irrational or closed minded.
* edit: D50 -> D90
Out of curiosity, what did you compare the D50s against? I thought it sounded acceptable compared to the older D50 which was lifeless. The D50s also had a fairly significant channel imbalance that bothered my OCD. I could not really hear the imbalance, and I don't remember why I decided to measure it with my multimeter, but it was around 0.2dB, which was out of spec [+-0.025dB]. It's probably because they are using two ESS 9038Q2M chips and they were not perfectly matched.MichaeLeroy said:Agreed, but it's a straw-man point I think, as we are talking not about notions but experience and observations.. What is the preconceived notion; Topping is Chinese and Chinese products are crap, therefore Topping is crap? I did't see that sort of reasoning in the responses made by Topping detractors. Yet that simple minded thinking was seemingly imputed on to the detractors by those who threw the racist thinking flag.
Some detractors had evaluated the D90. I did generalize from observation of another Topping product, literally dismissing the D90 in favor of the Bifrost after a cursory but very revealing audition of the D50s. Was that irrational, unfair or ignorant? I think not. I had read Amirm's ASR Review and Measurements of New Topping D50s DAC, which had many great things to say about it and endorsed it as exemplary of Topping's engineering. Of course I was skeptical of the review, but decided to give the D50s a shot to test my skepticism. The result of the experiment was D50s bad and Amiirm unreliable. Did that experience prove that the D90 is bad? No, but it gave me no reason to expect good things from Topping, So my $700 office system DAC upgrade was the Bifrost and not the D50. That could have been the wrong decision, but I doubt it, and it was certainly not unfair, irrational or closed minded.Click to expand...
Amir actually sent some mixed messages about the Modi 3 as well. At first, when comparing the D30 to the Modi 3, he was saying that they are very close:purr1n said:It was D30 vs Modi 2U:
//www.superbestaudiofriends.o...c-deconstructing-amirs-hack-job-part-ii.6449/
@atomicbob may have found stuff which I didn't. I just did very basic measurements to do apples to apples with Amir.
The Modi 3 is a significant improvement.Click to expand...
"Topping D30 sells for nearly the same money as Modi 3. It has the same three inputs just the same. I like its larger USB input jack and the on/off switch in the front. Aesthetically I say it is better than Modi 3 but this is a personal thing and you can decide that. From distortion+noise point of view, it is neck and neck with Modi 3. It is more well behaved in jitter test/sensitive to USB data than Modi 3. I give it a slight nod in this regard."
Then he changed his mind two months later [Dec 2018]:
"Schiit Modi 3 has better performance than Topping D30 so if you are inclined to go there, that would be fine."
One day I truly hope that there will be a way of proving to the ASR crowd that each D/S chip [and each amp] has its own sound signature. For them, evaluating an audio product is very simple and it consists mainly of looking at the frequency response chart and the THD+N chart, all created using generated signals that have very little resemblance to any form of music produced by human beings. Basically, the implication is that all DACs that measure well enough sound 100% exactly the same - transparent. I do not understand how someone can choose to believe that when their own ears must be telling them otherwise. It's like when people used to argue back in the day that any cable carrying digital signal either works perfectly or doesn't work at all because "it is all ones and zeros", without recognizing the importance of jitter-related issues.
I hope that people like atomicbob one devise some kind of measurement that would reveal why exactly certain amps that measure similarly sound very different - say the Heresy vs the Magni 3+.
You'll never be able to do that given most of them are inattentive and many of them fully drank the mullah's kool-aid and own shitty dsp speakers designed to get subbass out of a small box or crossover a massive woofer to a compression driver like a pa system with a pa system amp.bboris77 said:Amir actually sent some mixed messages about the Modi 3 as well. At first, when comparing the D30 to the Modi 3, he was saying that they are very close:
"Topping D30 sells for nearly the same money as Modi 3. It has the same three inputs just the same. I like its larger USB input jack and the on/off switch in the front. Aesthetically I say it is better than Modi 3 but this is a personal thing and you can decide that. From distortion+noise point of view, it is neck and neck with Modi 3. It is more well behaved in jitter test/sensitive to USB data than Modi 3. I give it a slight nod in this regard."
Then he changed his mind two months later [Dec 2018]:
"Schiit Modi 3 has better performance than Topping D30 so if you are inclined to go there, that would be fine."
One day I truly hope that there will be a way of proving to the ASR crowd that each D/S chip [and each amp] has its own sound signature. For them, evaluating an audio product is very simple and it consists mainly of looking at the frequency response chart and the THD+N chart, all created using generated signals that have very little resemblance to any form of music produced by human beings. Basically, the implication is that all DACs that measure well enough sound 100% exactly the same - transparent. I do not understand how someone can choose to believe that when their own ears must be telling them otherwise. It's like when people used to argue back in the day that any cable carrying digital signal either works perfectly or doesn't work at all because "it is all ones and zeros", without recognizing the importance of jitter-related issues.
I hope that people like atomicbob one devise some kind of measurement that would reveal why exactly certain amps that measure similarly sound very different - say the Heresy vs the Magni 3+.Click to expand...
Just curious - to those who have spent time on ASR [I have no desire to spend more time there] - who else does/provides the accepted measurements for their entire community aside from Amir?
I don't care as much as many people here that ASR as a whole chooses to buy ASR-fi dacs and amps, that Amir may be getting kickbacks based on the foolishness of his followers, that Amir's measurements may be botched, or whatever else. It doesn't affect me or the world at large.
However - the amount of mental gymnastics I saw in my