USB DAC for RopieeeXL

Audio Gear Talk
1

Hello to everyone
Although i consider myself an audio guy since ages and having played around with different kind of audio gear and audio software (runeaudio,volumio,moode etc) i think it’s time to make a step forward and have a taste of roon basically due to the fact that makes things look more beautiful.
So my setup is a NUC for ROCK on the server side and a pi4 (4gb) as a client running ropieee.
I like the idea of using a usb DAC and according to my budget (having read the working audio gear on ropieee site) i came up to the Topping DX7s .
This runs on 2xES9038Q2M mono design but there’s also the SMSL SU 9 (XMOS usb) which uses ES9038Pro and IMHO is the best budget DAC (for my taste). Any of the above will be used as a pre-amp for my Rotel RB1552 MKII

So does anybody have tried any of these configs (DACs)?
Any advice would be much appreciated.

Kind Regards

S.

2

I moved this to audio products.

3

Yes, I’m running RoPieee on a Pi with USB out to a Topping D70 DAC, very happy with the set-up. I picked the D70 for two reasons; I liked having an integrated power supply, and I liked having balanced outputs to run to my amp. The DX7s is very similar, a little older, ESS chips instead of AKM, also including a headphone amplifier (which I didn’t need).

The SMSL also looks good to me.

4

Hi, I am using a pi3 with SMSL M500, and am very happy with the sound. If you are into it, this setup also supports MQA.

5

I’m using for two endpoints the Topping D70 and the DX7s.
Both supporting native DSD with ropieee.
Because I’ve a lot of endpoints and many different DACs I’ll say, that’s really hard to find differences in the SQ…

6

Get whichever DAC has the feature set/UI that best suits your needs. That is what will result in the most satisfaction over time.