New Topping D90SE DAC

Thanks to everyone for their comments and impressions. 

I'm still very happy with my D90SE. 

I have stopped spending money on upgrades,  at least for now. 

Mc452 took a few dollars out of the audio budget for sure. 

Just kicking back and finding more music that sounds enjoyable to listen to. 

It's a lot cheaper than constantly buying and selling equipment too.😁

DACs are weird beasts. You can have a perfectly measuring one at $899 and devices that cost $25K or $80K that may not measure as well. Expectation biases do come into play, which in turn affect how we actually hear things. Having said all that I do prefer r2r dacs, as they sound pleasant, knowing fully well they attenuate high frequencies.

This D90SE is affordable enough to buy and try but I am always unsure if I will like delta sigma dacs, as previously I didn't like the ones I purchased.

Ultimately, the whole system including the room itself also matters. People do tend to think delta-sigma or well measuring DACs are "sterile", but I wonder if speaker placement and room reflections were taken into account during these experiences, as well expectation biases from too much forum topics. Ultimately we are tribal, so we align with certain groupthink and personas. So D-S dacs will always seem "sterile" and so on.

Sorry folks, but I just don’t agree on the discounting of measurements here. For headphones, measurements can be inaccurate due to placement on instruments. With amps, measurements don’t take into account subjective, analog benchmarks such as tone, soundstage, warmth, etc. But with DACs, and by that I mean pure DACs like the Topping D90se, the goal is the most accurate reproduction of the digital source material, and for that measurements tell the whole story, full stop.
 

They offer validated endpoints such as SINAD, linearity and multi tone, all designed to assess how accurately the DAC is outputting a reproduction of the original analog master with the least possible distortion, noise, error, or jitter—as it was encoded by an ADC during the sampling process. That is the definition of what DACs are designed to do. Any discussion of how well a DAC “sounds” is a ruse—subjective factors such as tonality, warmth, soundstage etc are the responsibilities of circuits involved in the post-DA process—filters, DSPs, preamps and amps, and other elements in the analog stages before the signal is output to headphones and speakers (and those provide a substantial contribution to the sound signature as well). 
 

All well-designed DACs should sound exactly the same. Anything you have read otherwise is in the service of marketing high-priced gear to susceptible buyers. 

Thanks for your thoughts SRKBEAR.

I agree that with a DAC that should be the case.  But some people might differ and I do respect their opinion. The chain of source to ear has many steps and each one tweeks the sound a bit. 

 

Pretty complicated really and people have fun researching and trying different things. 

 

Otherwise it wouldn't be a hobby.