Topping D50 / RPi 2W - Issue

Audio Gear DACs
1

I just purchased a Topping D50 that I’ve connected to my Pi 2W via a micro usb to usb B cable. I’m running Volumio 3.159.

No matter what I connect to, say a streaming station at 128, 192 or even, say Linn at 320kb, the D50 is showing 44k. No change with Flac from Radio Paradise either.

I have played with turning upsampling on and off and see no difference.

What am I doing wrong? Is this a Pi 2W issue? Something with Volumio? Is my D50 defective?

The music sounds great at 44k, but why spend all this on a high end DAC when I can get, essentially, the same quality stream with a $9 Apple dongle? (Check the Audio Science Review of the Apple dongle if you do t believe me.)

Cheers

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2

Are you shure you playing high-res files?
Like 24/192 Quobus / Tidal etc

3

Im seeing hi-res files but the sources are typically streaming stations from Volumio’s web radio offerings. For example, Linn shows a bitrate of 320kb on Volumio. Wouldn’t that stream pass to the DAC at full bandwidth? I can’t imagine this would be a problem for USB 2.

4

I think you have mixed up what is the bit rate vs sample rate?

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5

Am I wrong to interpret this as the bit rate? When playing via the Topping DAC, the DAC display shows 44K.

Shouldn’t the DAC also show 320k?

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6

No. You mix 2 things : samplerate and bitrate. There is no relation between them.

7

Bit rate is the sample rate x sample depth x number of channels. In raw form 44.1k x 16bit x 2 is 1411 kb/s. MP3 is a compression scheme to take the raw signal and converts it to 320 kb/s. Some quality will be lost but it should still sound ok.

8

My bad.

Indeed, it sounds great.

Thanks.

9

Cheers :+1:

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