That’s great man. Honestly. The only way to know “what the artists intended” (mastering engineers included!) is to be there. If you’ve been there, and the D90SE reminds you of this experience, that’s just excellent, and I hope you enjoy every minute of music listened with your D90SE. I did not meant to troll you or anything, just wanted to know why you thought the D90SE was the best, for you.
Obviously, the easiest way to get there would be to buy the exact same equipment as Jens… but… I know what studios look like… not everyone has infinite money. By the way, I’m the guy who shared the Soundnews video above, in which he said the D90SE was more detailed than his ~3000$ Matrix Element X. If detail (for your headphones) is what you want… the D90SE appears to be a great DAC for the price.
Keep in mind, if you’d have been in a different studio, it could’ve been a different story… “colored” DACs or not, whatever works. But that’s one of your favorite mixing engineers, and you found a DAC you liked. So enjoy!
Again, I don’t care about DACs. I just expect them to be completely transparent and get the audio into the amp. The D90SE along with the A90 does the job for me and I’m very happy with what I’m hearing. Hopefully I won’t have to worry about the dac or amp anymore and can concentrate on the sound of the headphones and IEMs which is what I actually do care about.
To this reviewer, the ares2 had the most noticeable difference compared to the bf2 and d90se which he says are very similar. So bf2 for $700 or bf2 sounding d90se for $900…hmmm…that being said if topping did make a dac that sounds like the bf2, that’s def a direction id like to see from topping
I can’t quite figure whether he was using OS or NOS on the Ares II as I don’t think I agree with his assessments, although he’s using speakers instead of headphones?
And the recording engineer goes to drink a few beers while the mastering engineer is doing something to get the recording to sound good from smartphone speakers to SACD-pressing.
Bought on Black Friday for about $750 to complete the stack (A90+D90SE) and my HarmonicDyne lost all it’s slam and rumble. Bass is just barely there. When using EIMs (KANO snd 7Hz Timeless) the bass is awesome. When paring the D90SE w/ Ifi zen can the low end on the Zeus comes back to life. Am I missing some setting or maybe have a defective unit? When connecting Cambridge Audion DacMagic 200 paired w/ A90 Zeus has all the bass I could ever want. Any help would be greatly appreciate, thanks.
I’m not in the market for a D90. But I appreciate how Topping is now offering a non MQA version. It’s $100 less
I’m assuming this will continue for future models.
Don’t you just love that they had the original d90, then came out with a “se” model with mqa support as one of the selling points and reasons why it was more expensive and now they’re dropping the support for a cheaper price again basically like another selling point…
Still doesn’t make it in a price bracket that’s anywhere near competitive for the performance it gives from what I’ve heard about them
By the way, I’m the guy who shared the Soundnews video above, in which he said the D90SE was more detailed than his ~3000$ Matrix Element X. If detail (for your headphones) is what you want… the D90SE appears to be a great DAC for the price.
