Topping E50 Stuttering with MQA?
Feb 11, 2022 at 6:52 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 24
wgallon

wgallon

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I've got a Topping E50/L50 stack, and I've had stuttering since I got it when playing MQA files. Normally, I use Tidal for my music playback and have had this issue since I've received the DAC. I assumed it was a networking issue, but I finally looked into a desktop media player that will play MQA (JRiver MediaCenter) and played an MQA song through it, which has the same stuttering issue. I can see on the display panel on the DAC that the format changes from MQA to PCM then back to MQA. The sound cuts out each time it does this, and it will happen frequently enough that I'll get frustrated and just turn off my music.

Has anyone else run into this issue? Is this just a faulty unit? I've made sure both my drivers and firmware are up to date, but that didn't fix anything. I originally thought it was a Tidal issue, and went through with clearing cache and reinstalling, but obviously that didn't work. I've changed out the USB cable I'm using, I've changed which USB port I'm using on my computer, nothing has made a difference. I'm not sure if I should get it replaced and hope that the next one doesn't have this problem, but I'm not sure what else I could do.

EDIT: I got a video of it doing the switch. It doesn't matter if its MQA or MQA Studio. https://imgur.com/a/ywbBBjm
 
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Feb 12, 2022 at 12:38 AM Post #3 of 24
If anybody uses a Topping E50 with Tidal and doesn’t have this problem, I’d love to hear from you as well. Mostly just so I know that this is a weird one-off issue.
 
Feb 12, 2022 at 3:32 PM Post #5 of 24
Feb 14, 2022 at 10:36 AM Post #6 of 24
Cool new error this morning, looks like the DAC might just be dead. Completely drops out, and flashes "Err" "PNL" when trying to use it.
https://imgur.com/a/wnVVKTP
 
Feb 16, 2022 at 11:41 AM Post #7 of 24
For anyone following, I got a second E50, and have had 0 issues using it the past couple of days. Looks like my first one was a defective unit.

EDIT: Right as I posted this, the bitrate changed in the middle of a song. Ugh.
 
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Feb 16, 2022 at 10:51 PM Post #9 of 24
jmwant said:
Ah, try it with different PC?
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I only had it happen literally the one time today, compared to it being every other song. I even was going out of my way to play MQA songs today. I think maybe that one was actually just a buffering skip for once?

Either way, we’ll see if it happens again during the rest of the week.
 
Feb 17, 2022 at 6:21 PM Post #10 of 24
hey me and other guy in other forum are having the same issue, the freaking pnl error. im really interested in the follow up with your new unit. and how was the process of returning it. which seller you had?
 
Feb 18, 2022 at 10:06 AM Post #12 of 24
slackerpo said:
hey me and other guy in other forum are having the same issue, the freaking pnl error. im really interested in the follow up with your new unit. and how was the process of returning it. which seller you had?
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Still working on the return of my original one, I just bought a second one off of Amazon to see if my issues were hardware related. I played an MQA radio station on Tidal all day yesterday with 0 skips/buffering of any kind, and no pnl errors. I definitely had a faulty unit in my first one.
 
Feb 18, 2022 at 2:42 PM Post #13 of 24
wgallon said:
Still working on the return of my original one, I just bought a second one off of Amazon to see if my issues were hardware related. I played an MQA radio station on Tidal all day yesterday with 0 skips/buffering of any kind, and no pnl errors. I definitely had a faulty unit in my first one.
Click to expand...

it wouldnt be only you though, we are 3 people with the same problem. that would seem like a faulty batch of products to me. this is the first time i get a faulty product ever. i so not wanted to deal with the returns. im testing new configs with the unit, i wasnt able to use it in preamp mode as i need the bitrate display, but i did reconfig brightness levels, filters settings, and auto off. i was able to make a good run after that with no errors. ill throw the kitchen sink to it today (mqa, foobar dsds), and see if i can make it pnl error me. if it comes up, ill just pull the trigger on a smsl su8s.
 
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Feb 18, 2022 at 3:09 PM Post #14 of 24
slackerpo said:
it wouldnt be only you though, we are 3 people with the same problem. that would seem like a faulty batch of products to me. this is the first time i get a faulty product ever. i so not wanted to deal with the returns. im testing new configs with the unit, i wasnt able to use it in preamp mode as i need the bitrate display, but i did reconfig brightness levels, filters settings, and auto off. i was able to make a good run after that with no errors. ill throw the kitchen sink to it today (mqa, foobar dsds), and see if i can make it pnl error me. if it comes up, ill just pull the trigger on a smsl su8s.
Click to expand...
I honestly have terrible luck for some reason when buying electronics, and manage to get faulty units like half the time. I was using it in preamp mode for a couple of days to test out the KSE1200, but normally I have it in DAC mode. The new one has been completely fine for me outside of that one skip I posted about earlier.

I do kind of wish I had just spent the extra on an RME ADI-2 given the problems I've run into now, but I wanted MQA decoding since I use Tidal for streaming.
 
Feb 18, 2022 at 3:58 PM Post #15 of 24
wgallon said:
I honestly have terrible luck for some reason when buying electronics, and manage to get faulty units like half the time. I was using it in preamp mode for a couple of days to test out the KSE1200, but normally I have it in DAC mode. The new one has been completely fine for me outside of that one skip I posted about earlier.

I do kind of wish I had just spent the extra on an RME ADI-2 given the problems I've run into now, but I wanted MQA decoding since I use Tidal for streaming.
Click to expand...

i agree tidal is my main streaming service and mqa is a must, regardless what people say. im confident ill have to buy another dac, because i cant keep dealing with this thing, and treat it in cottons for it to not pnl error me. thats not happening.

in a weird way im glad i found you guys, it conforts me to know i wasnt the only one struggling with the unit. and it just topping is to blame for they poor quality control.
 
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