The truth is, there is an incredibly low chance you’d be able to tell the difference between those DACs. I’d be extremely sceptical of any subjective reviews of electronics without either blind testing or measurements to back up the claims.
Every one of those DACs is transparent beyond human hearing, and you’re running it through a tube amp which reduces the fidelity of the system anyways, albeit in a nice way.
I’d go JDS Labs for the customer service, or maybe one of the Topping, whichever has the best features for you
I think so, but then comes the question if I even need a DAC… Nevertheless, to complete my setup, I will probably go with the Topping D10s since it’s the cheapest and IMO has the best looks + I don’t need any of the extra features of the E30.
To be fair SMSL recently had an issue where several of their dacs were putting out odd harmonics at audible and measurable levels, but it was never caught with standard test suites.
Subjective audiophiles bad mouth these dacs, but the objective fans claimed no problems to later be proven wrong.
I’d somewhat agree, although it’s moreso that most of the cheap dacs sound pretty similar, so just go with the ones that have the features you need and are more accessible in your location. There are differences between the 100 buck dacs, but I think most of those differences are not really all that influential or make or break at this price point. To start getting into larger and more substantial or influential differences you need to move up the price bracket imo. So I wouldn’t worry about it too much here, I’d just grab what’s most easily convenient to you
There’s a switch on the back of the ZEN DACs that allows you to choose either fixed or variable output, allowing you to use the volume knob or not (you do need to be on variable for bass boost to affect the output).
And yes, I’ll jump on the bass button bandwagon. I’ve got a ZEN DAC V2 feeding an Asgard 3 in my office at work. It’s a great little setup.
My D10s have arrived. It’s fine. Not a huge difference by any means, but I am happy to have it in my little setup. I am not really able to quickly A/B test it, since I have to unplug the interconnects from the AMP and the volume is also louder.
Few things I noticed:
I can sometimes hear a slight pop/crackle when the song or voice is really quiet (not sure what’s causing it) - may also just be cable noise etc. - I am hypersensitive when testing new gear lol
The volume output of D10s can actually be controlled using the driver from Topping’s site (one less thing which the E30 supposedly had, which the D10s did not):
What about $100–200 DACs versus something like a Sound Blaster Z sitting inside your computer (assuming a budget desktop headphone amp is used, in my case K5 non-pro)? Or something like AE-5 Plus (Creative’s current sweet spot along with the G6, I guess). Would there be a realistic benefit in going for the D10s, DX3 Pro or Zen instead, or is the money better spent elsewhere?
Honestly I’d upgrade your amp first, the sound blaster likely has a decent enough dac for now where I’d rather focus on your amps, assuming your headphones are also up to par (assuming you have a soundblaster already, if you don’t have one I’d rather consider something else). I personally wouldn’t go for an AE-5 or something of that sort, if you needed a microphone in, I’d rather get an audio interface and use that as both a mic in and a dac out to a headphone amp
Then if you already have a creative soundcard I’d rather get a nicer amp, or nicer headphones depending on what you currently have and use the creative as the dac for now. Then focus the dac later down the line
