A member purchased what he thought was a Topping D10 DAC from Amazon as the seller. The unit that he received however had the brand "Aimpire" and model number AD10. He asked me if I could look to see if it performs the same or is a fake.
Looking on Amazon, one clearly sees the issue:
Yet the picture of what the device looks like the one that the member received:
This curious note on Amazon page makes the buy think this is a newer version:
Stacking the real Topping D10 on top of Aimpire AD10 shows the striking similarity:
In use however, the display of sample rate on AD10 fake is dim and not matching the PCM/DSD. The reverse is true on real Topping D10 where the sample rate is bright and clear and the PCM/DSD is merely in sharper front.
Plugging either DAC in gets identified as "D10" so clearly the identity of the USB transceiver is copied in the AD10.
Unlike Topping products, there is no manual, or Audio Precision measurements.
Speculation is that maybe they have cloned the entire thing so performance would be the same. Let's find out.
USB DAC Audio Measurements
Let's start with Aimpire AD10:
That's not good. Our noise floor is so high that it is hiding all distortion spikes.
Let's put the Topping D10 in there instead with identical cabling and setup:
We get a bunch of noise back resulting in large improvement in SINAD of 14 dB.
So if they have cloned Topping 10, they have screwed something up. If not, then it must using a different DAC chip which can't even resolve 16 bit audio properly without adding noise to it.
The member is on a short fuse to return this to amazon so I did not run additional tests. It is clear you are paying the same amount but not getting the same performance as the real Topping D10.
Conclusions
Fair bit of work has gone into making this clone including the case and such. Maybe Topping made it for others with reduced performance. Maybe it is cloned. We can't tell. What we can tell is that it doesn't perform the same yet you are charged the same amount of money. So I say avoid it.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
As you see, on top of reviewing audio equipment, I have taken on detective work! That surly deserves a raise in the money I can extract from you all. So please donate generously using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Looking on Amazon, one clearly sees the issue:
Yet the picture of what the device looks like the one that the member received:
This curious note on Amazon page makes the buy think this is a newer version:
Stacking the real Topping D10 on top of Aimpire AD10 shows the striking similarity:
In use however, the display of sample rate on AD10 fake is dim and not matching the PCM/DSD. The reverse is true on real Topping D10 where the sample rate is bright and clear and the PCM/DSD is merely in sharper front.
Plugging either DAC in gets identified as "D10" so clearly the identity of the USB transceiver is copied in the AD10.
Unlike Topping products, there is no manual, or Audio Precision measurements.
Speculation is that maybe they have cloned the entire thing so performance would be the same. Let's find out.
USB DAC Audio Measurements
Let's start with Aimpire AD10:
That's not good. Our noise floor is so high that it is hiding all distortion spikes.
Let's put the Topping D10 in there instead with identical cabling and setup:
We get a bunch of noise back resulting in large improvement in SINAD of 14 dB.
So if they have cloned Topping 10, they have screwed something up. If not, then it must using a different DAC chip which can't even resolve 16 bit audio properly without adding noise to it.
The member is on a short fuse to return this to amazon so I did not run additional tests. It is clear you are paying the same amount but not getting the same performance as the real Topping D10.
Conclusions
Fair bit of work has gone into making this clone including the case and such. Maybe Topping made it for others with reduced performance. Maybe it is cloned. We can't tell. What we can tell is that it doesn't perform the same yet you are charged the same amount of money. So I say avoid it.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
As you see, on top of reviewing audio equipment, I have taken on detective work! That surly deserves a raise in the money I can extract from you all. So please donate generously using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/