TOPPING Centaurus (collaborative product with HOLO AUDIO)

That is a lot less appealing. At that price it better be a Cyan 2 in all but name.

 

wtf is that? Quantization? Horrible internal amplifiers? Honestly looks worse than most name brand things you can get for over a few hundred dollars with linear phase filters and analog stages not made from cheap Japanese opamps associated with Behringer and guitar pedals.

 

Absolutely hilarious they're saying it was a "miscommunication." As posted on ASR, $799 was in Topping's own infographic on Twitter.

 

It's uhhhhhh $799--NO! $999! $1299? No, no, $999. Definitely $999. It's never been anything but $999.

 

The ASR supposedly objectivitists showed their true herd mentality by fawning over this so the Topping executives took advantage of pricing elasticity to milk the cow.

 

What a way to launch a product. They could've said, $799 introductory price through the end of 2024, hurry, get yours now! Instead, they've just dorked off all the enthusiasts.

Or maybe this was Holo's sneaky way of driving up interest in the Cyan 2.

 

Why you guys are shocked? It's Topping, Topping the Price.

 

Finally a dac to go Beast Mode.

 

Very lame and disappointing, wonder if Holo was supplying the R2R modules to Topping or if Topping got license to produce the Holo design. One of the benefits I saw with Topping was they likely do have higher economies of scale vs Holo to produce these units enmasse. It being only slightly cheaper than the Cyan 2 is a bummer.

I personally viewed them like Fiio moreso myself, who as well dominated the lower price market prior and then spread out to the higher tiers. Fiio for the most part stayed around in the budget tier stuff with their current offerings at least.

Also there are the brands like say a Lake People/Violectric/Niimbus that also end up making different brands up to distinguish the low/med/high tiers for them. Thought maybe Topping was going to do that to get into the kilobuck range but DX9 exists at $1299 so seems like Topping wants to keep everything under that umbrella right now.

 

I agree that, in terms of industrial design, Topping is a few steps above Audio GD. But they’ve got a long, long way to go to be like FiiO, IMHO. FiiO’s design are better, they’re products are more dependable, and they have actual customer service.

 

Completely agree with this. What a bad corporate decision!
I'm still skeptical about whether this "miscommunication" was truly unintentional or perhaps a marketing strategy to generate buzz. Initially, I was moderately interested in trying the new r2r product, as I consider the May and Spring 2/3 to be the finest r2r among we can buy, with few exceptions. However, after the price correction, my enthusiasm has significantly diminished.

Off topic, but I've noticed that Topping's strategic direction has shifted, likely because they've largely saturated the number-driven consumer market. Their results plateaued years ago when they almost reached the limits of the APX555. Now, (with taking some risk) they appear to be strategically diversifying their market approach to attract different consumer segments. This strategy has proven somehow successful in appealing to some hobbyist cluster where I belong to.

Aside: Take a grain of salt for anything above because my stance might be the most biased toward Topping in this forum (liking LA90 and DX9).

 

Liking something doesn't make you biased. Listen with your own ears, enjoy what you like.

I'm personally curious about some of Topping's higher end products, particularly the balanced amps with relay attenuators. I just can't shake the feeling that it's going to sound like any other high-feedback solid state amp though. I would have considered this Centaurus DAC and an A70 combo, but the pricing "miscommunication" has really soured me on it.

 

If it was a deliberate marketing decision, that’s a poor choice due to anchoring bias. Now the lower price is part of the buzz, but it’ll take a long time for folks to forget that it was originally held out for $799. And even longer for folks to stop coming across forum posts like these talking about the mythical $799 price! They can mark it down later, but then it’ll just be back at the price everyone remembers from this debacle.

I know for me, at the original price, I was interested in taking a flier on it. Now, I’ll just wait for reviews, and if it doesn’t promise to conjure the second coming of Jimi Hendrix in my room when I play Purple Haze, I’ll probably pass.

 

lol I said few days back Amir will twist himself in pretzels to give this a good review after his years of slagging all R2Rs and he did, although with the caveat, “I wouldn’t purchase an R2R myself”

 

mildshock.gif

 

Ahahahahahaha. Topping clearly has no idea how to design things unless a vendor does their homework for them. Even the line about using the Cirrus DAC for FFT makes zero sense; the XMOS they’re using could do that without breaking a sweat.

 

Somehow I am actually impressed that Topping support managed to handwave this away as being "within expectations" and then asking whether the Cyan 2 exhibited the same *measurably* terrible performance when feeding it anything but 48000Hz content. Also, the fact that they linked to Amir Majidimehr's measurements of all things speaks volumes more than the actual measurements Golden derived from both Centaurus samples.

 

At this point, either SBAF is filled with Nostradamuses or the cynical view of the relationship between Topping and Amir is correct. As the wise man once said: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, uh, won’t get fooled again.”

 

Some folks are too emotionally invested in ASR at this point and/or are unable to justify the expense for actually good gear because of myriad circumstances.

Before anyone calls me an out of touch elitist, yes I have a comfy existence relative to very many others but I'm far from being able to justify buying the superlative gear that I actually want— what I love about SBAF culture is how folks here are encouraged to shit on stuff that doesn't earn their asking price while championing high value gear like that recent xDuoo OTL amp, bringing affordable stuff that actually sounds grand their due respect. Friggin hell, the fact they seem to have no idea how to implement a perfectly serviceable premade DAC stage ought be OFFENSIVE to folks who want to make good sound accessible to more folks given how much Topping was asking for this, and moreso because Topping saw fit to increase MSRP by a significant amount just because they saw some interest in this toy.

I started out in this hobby as one of those teens who had no pocket money and so drank the NwAvGuy Kool Aid in the late 2000s/early 2010s; I UNDERSTAND what it's like wanting to hate on things you can't afford, I've been there. Then I actually made an effort to hear other headphones and discrete amps years ago, borrowed stuff from friends, and that's what turned me into an amp believer (I'm still a noob WRT DACs as far as I'm concerned— they do make an appreciable difference but I'd still not take my word on relative performance as gospel).

If we're talking pithy adages: "it's easier to fool someone than to convince them that they've been fooled".

Normally I'd be hesitant to add this much noise to a thread but bleh, rather than Topping earning my grudging respect for having tried something new as I hoped the Centaurus might have evidenced, this just inspired more disdain.