Topping E30 II DAC Preamp Audio Decoder- 2xAK4493S Hi-Res XMOS XU208 DAC 32Bit/768kHz DSD512 DSD Direct Mode for USB/Coax/Opt Inputs RCA HiFi Stereo Digital Audio Decoder(Black)

Sounds great. Replaced an older DAC that died.

TLDR; Did a lot of research, Topping E30 is a great value DAC, saw some issues w/ polarity. Took a chance to get it now, and turns out no issues w/ polarity it's serial 2004+ 😊I spent probably a month deciding which DAC to buy. I spent hours debating whether I needed or wanted balanced XLR for future upgrades. I was comparing what all essentially seemed to be similar offerings with different feature sets from Geshelli, SMSL, and Topping. Then I stumbled upon the E30. I waited patiently for the new SMSL M200 DAC to have some reviews which I was sold on previously. I realized that the M200 was overhyped and not especially great value. If the E30 was balanced, it would be the end-all DAC in the price range. I don't know if it matters; the sound quality produced by the E30 is incredible.You can look at oscilloscope readings that tell you why a DAC is the best, which scientifically has the cleanest signal. The E30 tests are remarkably high, it tests similarly to DACs more than 300% of its MSRP on many tests. WOW. This includes linearity, distortion, and dynamic range. It made me rethink whether I even cared if a device had a balanced XLR output. I started researching the minute differences in RCA and XLR to determine if I even really cared about XLR. As much as I would like to have XLR for a powered monitor upgrade and to feed a 789 in balanced mode, most powered monitors still include RCA. Additionally, RCA doesn't suffer much degradation in signal comparatively over short distances.All of these factors led me to conclude that the E30 was something that hit the mark high for budget DACs. So high in fact that I was willing to buy this with 0 reviews from HiFi-College marked as manufactured by KGUSS. I can assure you, it is the right DAC with the right serial, and it is fantastic. Stop hesitating, just get this.Things I've learned:1. Check the manual when you get it and switch it into DAC mode if you don't want to use the preamp. The display will then only display bitrate and no longer function only as a DAC.2. I would suggest leaving Windows volume at 99, without a longwinded explanation it allows a tiny amount of overhead for the DAC to function well. More information can be found by searching DACs and the Gibbs Phenomenon.

I bought this to replace my Sound Blaster Z, and so far it's working flawlessly. Windows 10 detects it without any additional driver installation (up to 32 bit / 384 kHz), and I was able to power it with a spare iPhone charger. I'm using mine in DAC-only mode connected up to a set of powered speakers and the sound quality is excellent. The metal housing is also very solid, and looks quite nice on my desk.The only downside is the the single touch button on the front of the unit: it's the only way to change settings without the remote, and it's a bit of a pain to use. You also can't change the volume for the pre-out with it. Thankfully for my use case, I set everything up and don't need to screw with it again.I'd expect something like this to be priced much higher, and barring any future hardware failures, I'm extremely happy with it.Edit: Knocking off a star as the unit seems to have an issue where it will disconnect from my PC with a "pop" through the speakers, and get stuck with "OFF" on the display. In this state, the unit is unresponsive to both the remote and face button. The only way I've been able to solve this issue is to unplug the unit's power and plug it back in. This happens roughly once every 2-3 weeks.

I needed a decent DAC to stream music into my stereo amp (a very good one, but old enough not to have an internal DAC), both from my MP3/FLAC library, as well as online sources. (If you're an "audiophile", you can stop reading now.) So I'm using optical (or coax) in, not USB. The headline specs are 768kHz/32bit max, but read carefully, that's for USB in. With coax/optical in you get 192kHz/24bit max. All I care about is CD quality or better, since like most people I can't hear the difference with anything higher, so these specs more than meet my need.Specs aside, how does it actually sound? Very good indeed. The sound is perhaps just slightly different (wee bit brighter) from my very good CD player (with Wolfson DAC) -- but I'm not sure I could tell which is which with a blind test. I'm quite happy with it, even when I'm streaming FLAC-source classical music that I'm fussy about.I think 100-150 is the sweet spot for DACs: if you choose carefully you can get a very good one for the money, and paying more isn't necessarily going to give you better sound. Do your research carefully, and enjoy!