Now that these babies have been stuck on our Wall of Excellence though… well, it’s time to act.

At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Sources: Apogee Groove + Burson FUN + IEMatch / Apogee Groove / Sony NW-A55 mrWalkman / Questyle QP1R – Type-D pads on Sonorous-II, Type-E pads on Sonorous-III – Stock OFC cable – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

Technicalities

Physicals

Specifications (declared)

A glance at the technology

Quite a few by now know final (yes, they write it lowercase) as a group of incredibly proficient audio engineers, and their products, may them encounter the complete appreciation of the single individual or not, based on personal taste, are anyhow always granted to be the fruit of non-trivial investigations, studies and technological achievements. Sonorous headphones make of course no exception.

Ear pads

Ear pads – their internal structure, size, thickness, and external fabric – do change headphones sound even more than what eartips do to IEMs.

First and foremost, the distance between the actual sound transducers and the ear modulate low frequency sound pressure, which obviously significantly influences the presentation. Based on this fact, final Sonorous earpads are filled with sponges of different thickness and consistency. Their external material is synthetic leather featuring equal horizontal and vertical flexibility.

Another important aspect when it comes to closed-back earphones is avoiding sound appearing “muffled” due to lack of backside venting. Final accomodates for this by carving small apertures on the inside and the outside of the pads “donuts”, achieving superb results in terms of sound clarity.

Lastly, final designed a quite ingenious system to facilitate pad swapping. By direct experience it does work. You may want to take a look at this video to get an idea.

BAM

That stands for “Balancing Air Movement”. It’s the marketing name for final’s project focused on obtaining results similar to open-back heaphones even on closed-back ones, especially in terms of clarity, controlled bass delivery and of course soundstage and imaging.

At final, we decided to focus on developing technology for the reproduction of bass tones and three-dimensional space with the full-range reproduction of a theoretically unproblematic single driver unit, rather than taking things in a multiway direction. We went back to the beginning and reviewed the performance of the balanced armature driver, focusing our attention on something we had previously overlooked : airflow inside the housing. We developed BAM (Balancing Air Movement), a mechanism that optimizes airflow inside the housing through the creation of an aperture in the driver unit, which is usually sealed. While achieving bass tones and deep, three-dimensional spatial representation, which proved difficult with single driver full-range reproduction, we achieved a BA type that at the same time made for natural listening the user doesn’t tire of.

https://snext-final.com/en/products/detail/SONOROUSII.html

And boy, that works! Of course I’m not technically competent enough to say wether the trick is that or “just” that, but it’s a fact that Sonorous earphones do deliver an incredibly clear and vast soundstage, and perfectly controlled bass, actually sensibly better than any other closedback headphone I happened to audition equal or below their cost. On the other hand, reading final’s description we get a hint as to why Sonorous HPs are “less isolating” than other models in their same technological category.

Let’s pad-roll a bit… !

Sonorous II and III are good as-is, i.e. with their stock pads. Period. You can skip this chapter, especially if you are on a tight budget.

That said, given my appreciation for the base configuration I wanted to go all the way through on their available options – at least the official ones, those offered by the manufacturer themselves.

Final makes a number of variations available for their Sonorous headphones line, which are all mechanically compatible with every model in the lineup as the housings chassis are identical accross the board. Each model is named with a letter (Type-B, Type-C, etc). Sonorous-II and Sonorous-III come equipped with 2 different earpad variations already, then I ordered 2 more different ones, and I started rolling…

So the aftermath is… I could have saved the money for Type C and B, and just swap stock pads between Sonorous-II and Sonorous-III to reach my preferred configuration on both. But how could I have known it without trying?

Conclusions

Sonorous-II and Sonorous-III are arguably the best closeback headphones on the market in their price class, and in my experience it takes tapping at Shure SRH-1540 to have something significantly competitive to talk about.

While they feature two quite different timbres, tonalities and presentations, neither is a real all-rounder musically wise. I’d recommend Sonorous-II blind-eyed for cool acoustic jazz, and any other clear-timbre musical genres, and Sonorus-III to whomever looks for a warm-neutral, midcentric, incredibly dynamic driver for prog rock, song writers, folk or such.

Finally, they are not “inexpensive” in absolute terms – so they might well not be one’s first take at overear headphones – but rest assured that they are not by any means “cheap”, indeed they are actually worth each single penny in their price for the quality, the comfort and the musical proficiency they deliver to their owner.

Disclaimer

Both samples I’m talking about in this article are my own property, they did not come from the manufacturer or a distributor on review/loan basis.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post final Sonorous-II And Sonorous-III Review appeared first on Audio Reviews.

Cons — Cayin C9 is rather heavy
– Very faint amp hiss with sensitive IEMs
– Gets warm in class-A mode after more than an hour of operation
– NuTubes don’t sound like classic tubes, tube purists may feel disappointed
– Won’t replace desktop setups if you’re running inefficient planar headphones
– Eye-watering price that gives you a pause before purchase

INTRODUCTION

Cayin is no stranger to amps. In fact, they make some of the best desktop amps out there, including the venerable iHA-6 and the top-dog, the HA-6 (one of the best amps I’ve ever had the pleasure to listen to, by the by).

The Cayin C9 is their flagship portable amp, meant to be more transportable than portable given the ~0.5kg of weight.

Note: the ratings given will be subjective to the price tier. Cayin C9 was sent to me as part of the EU Review Tour (thanks Andy!)

IEMs/Headphones used: Dunu Zen/SA6, Final FI-BA-SS/E5000, UM MEST mk. 2, Campfire Audio Holocene, Sennheiser HD650, Hifiman Ananda

Price, while reviewed: $2000. Can be bought from Musicteck.

PHYSICAL THINGS AND USABILITY

PACKAGING AND ACCESSORIES

In terms of accessories, you get two high quality interconnect cables (a 4.4mm to 4.4mm balanced cable, and a 3.5mm to 3.5mm single-ended cable). You also get a type-C cable for charging (supporting QuickCharge), a screw-driver (for removing the battery bay), and some spare screws. That’s about it, no carrying case or anything. The accessories aren’t plentiful given the price-tag but you do get all the basic necessities.
3.5/5

BUILD QUALITY

Cayin C9 has a two part design: the front part has the amp circuit along with the controls/switches, and the back side has the battery bay which can be slid out. The top of the device is aluminium with CNC-cut windows (covered by glass) that houses the NuTubes, and the bottom of the device has a sheet of glass on it (I do wish this portion was also aluminium for consistencies’ sake). The tubes glow green when turned on and takes about 3/4 seconds to warm up.

The front of the device has… everything. Well, everything bar the pre-amp/line-in toggle button (on the left side of the device, you need to press it along with selecting pre-amp input mode on the front panel to activate the mode) and the USB-C port/battery indicators (on the back of the device, with the battery bay). Both the 3.5mm and 4.4mm inputs/outputs are on the front, along with the power switch/operation indicator LED button. There are toggles for (from left to right) line-in/pre-amp input mode, gain (High/Low), Timbre (Solid state/Tube), operation mode (Class-A/AB).

Lastly , there is the volume knob which is an ALPS rotary encoder and has quite high precision from my experience with no channel imbalance even at extremely low volumes (it’s electronic and resistance-ladder based with 130 discrete steps). The knob takes some force to rotate though, and it’s somewhat recessed into the housing to prevent accidental volume changes (which can be damaging due to the extremely high output power on the C9).

I don’t really have any complaint about build quality here.
5/5

USABILITY

The Cayin C9 is more of a transportable than a portable device. In other words, they need to be stationed somewhere (a desk/bedside) and not really portable in a shirt/pant/coat pocket (unless you love unsightly bulges). Other than that, it’s quite easy to operate the device once stationed on a desk. Changing between modes is easy to do without looking once you get the layout memorized. However, due to all the controls being on the front, it can a pain to hook it up as a sole headphone amp with a desktop DAC (then you need to reach on the back to connect/disconnect headphones and IEMs). As of now it is more suited to connecting with DAPs than desk setups.

Another interesting aspect is that there is a slight delay every time you change modes. This is something you have to take into account for on-the-fly A/B comparison as the changes introduced by the tube mode, for example, won’t be instantaneous.
3.5/5

BATTERY

The Cayin C9 uses four 18650 Li-ion batteries and apparently switching batteries may bring subtle changes to the sound signature (I did not verify this). It supports quick charge so recharging is quite quick, and I managed ~8 hours on a single-charge in class-A/High gain mode from the balanced out. This is not a stellar showing but given the power and performance here it is within expectations. Do note that Cayin have built several protection mechanisms in the battery powered circuitry (and you cannot bypass battery power here, not sure why would you want to anyway since the battery power is better than direct AC input for this particular use-case). You can read more about the power delivery method here.

AMP ARCHITECTURE

The internal architecture of the Cayin C9 is fully discrete and fully balanced. Cayin also didn’t use a traditional IC/Op-amp based circuitry, rather opted for fully discrete design. The volume control is resistance-ladder based with 130 discrete steps.

Instead of trying to explain all the nitty-gritties in detail (which isn’t really my forte) I’d instead link to the Cayin head-fi thread (click here). There you will find amp schematics alongside a closer look at the internal components.

TONALITY AND TECHNICALITIES

The Cayin C9 is an absolute chameleon of an amp when it comes to tonality and technicalities. Between the class-A/AB mode and solid-state/tube timbre, you can have 4 different signatures, and this is quite helpful when it comes to pairing IEMs with a specific sound signature. Please note that due to the way the mode-switching works in this amp (has a 2-5 seconds delay depending on mode) some of the A/B comparisons below are based on auditory memory and listening notes. In other words: take them with some salt (though I am fairly convinced about the different bass reproduction in class-AB mode and the general characteristics of the tube mode).

CLASS-A (SOLID STATE)

This is my most favorite mode, and apart from very bass-heavy stuff I preferred almost everything in my collection in this mode.

The best part about the class-A mode is the bass rendition. This is, by far, the best bass reproduction I’ve heard on a portable amp. The sheer grunt of the sub-bass (provided you have a suitably extended IEM) is unmatched. No DAP I’ve tried till date including the likes of Lotoo PAW Gold Touch, Sony WM1Z, Questyle QP1R, or the A&K SE200 could come close. I went through a huge portion of my library to simply enjoy the basslines in a completely different manner.

The sheer control Cayin C9 has over the sub and mid-bass is also uncanny. Snare hits are authoritative, sub-bass rumble is very much present, but it doesn’t overwhelm and actually corrects the bass-bleed issue in certain IEMs (Final E5000, for one). The best part about the bass: its density, given you got a good bass reproduction on the transducer side of things. The Cayin C9 isn’t a miracle-worker of course even in class-A mode. If you are pairing it with a BA-only IEM, the bass can only be so good. You’ll miss the texture and slam of good dynamic-drivers and that’s expected. Thus, the class-A mode is especially suited for dynamic driver IEMs/Headphones and the efficient planar magnetic ones.

All this talk about bass made me almost ignore the delightful midrange in the class-A mode. There is an analogue tone to the entire sound and vocals sound especially rich. However, transients aren’t softened at all and there’s a sense of transparency to the entire presentation. The stage depth is another aspect that seemed best on class-A mode, though I’d attribute it to the sub-bass response that is often perceived as depth while listening to tracks with an elevated sub-bass line. Separation was stellar with balanced out and I don’t think it can get any better in terms of perceived channel separation.

CLASS-A/B (SOLID STATE)

If you found the class-A mode to be a bit bass heavy and the mids to be somewhat up-front, then the class-AB mode evens things out. The bass is less authoritative and the midrange esp vocals get slightly pushed back. So you end up with a more relaxed, wider presentation overall. I would recommend this mode with bassy IEMs or headphones. Channel separation was excellent in this mode as well.

NUTUBE + CLASS A, A/B

Last but not the least: NuTubes. The Korg NuTubes are miniaturized triode vacuum tube that uses vacuum fluorescent display technology to emulate the class tube distortion. Basically: you get the tube sound without having large, heat-generating, extremely microphonic vacuum tubes. More info can be found here.

That’s the sales pitch at least. In practice, I didn’t find Korg NuTubes to be as tonally rich and colored as traditional tubes. Cayin’s own N3Pro, for example, has a more drastic and noticeable coloration via JAN6418 tubes. The coloration here is subtler. When coupled with class-A mode, the bass becomes somewhat loose and lacks the texture, definition, and authority vs the solid-state mode. Resolved detail is also masked somewhat. Female vocals sound richer, however, and some harshness/shrillness is smoothed over. Treble detail is also masked to a degree esp the attack-decay of cymbal hits aren’t as pristine as they are on the solid-state mode.

In the end, I found the NuTube to work best with the class-AB mode for my tastes and gears. With some bright or neutral IEMs the tube mode works quite well in reigning down the harshness. However, don’t expect the stellar separation and resolution of the regular class-A mode with the tubes engaged.

PAIRING NOTES

The Cayin C9 made nearly every IEM/headphone in my collection sound, well, better. Given the numerous modes I think one can mix and match and make it work with any IEM. However, the Campfire Andromeda 2020 had audible hiss even at low gain, so if you own very sensitive IEMs you may want to use an iFi IEMatch in-between. Final FI-BA-SS, meanwhile, didn’t hiss much even though it can detect hiss on many sources.

There was a slight amount of hiss on the Dunu Zen but the end result was simply stunning when pairing the Cayin C9 with Lotoo PAW 6000. I used the balanced line out mode and the presentation was very dynamic. The resolved detail was desktop class and frankly – I can see myself ditching even high-end DAC/Amp setups for this combo (LP6K + Cayin C9). Cayin C9 + Questyle CMA-400i was less drastic a difference though the sound was softer and more rounded than the regular headphone out of the CMA-400i.

Lastly, I paired the Cayin C9 with the A&K SE200 and it was another excellent pairing. The A&K’s AKM output gained even better microdynamics and I could listen to the Sennheiser HD650 in its full glory. Many prefer this particular headphone from OTL tube amps so I decided to try the tube mode on the C9, but the end result wasn’t aligned to my tastes. Your mileage may vary.

Overall, I found the Cayin C9 to take on the characteristics of the DAC/DAP it’s connected to while enhancing some parts of it (mostly bass response, channel separation, and dynamics). As such, I’d recommend the Cayin C9 even for TOTL DAPs like Lotoo LPGT, provided you are willing to splurge for the diminishing returns.

SELECT COMPARISONS

vs iFi Diablo

The iFi Diablo ($1000) is a powerhouse of a portable DAC/Amp that’s mostly intended to drive power-hungry headphones. It is excellent with inefficient planars (apart from the most demanding ones like Hifiman HE-6/Susvara) and as such works better in terms of powering planars than the Cayin C9.

That’s about it, though. The amp section on the Cayin C9 is superior to the Diablo in terms of tonal richness, bass reproduction, and powering IEMs and efficient headphones. The stellar separation of the C9 cannot be found on the iFi Diablo as well, and staging is more cramped as a result on the iFi Diablo. Moreover, it doesn’t have as many different modes as the Cayin C9 incl. the NuTubes.

As an amp, the Cayin C9 is indeed superior to the iFi Diablo. However, at half the price the Diablo also has a built-in DAC section and doesn’t rely on stacking as the Cayin C9 does, which is something buyers shall take into account.

vs Cayin iHA-6

In the end, I decided to compare the Cayin C9 with other desktop amps because that’s what most of the target audience would be looking into (desktop-class performance in a more portable format). The Cayin iHA-6 ($700) is one of the best amps under $1000 IMO, and I love pairing it with the iFi Neo iDSD (review coming soon for the iHA-6 soon). The iHA-6 is huge and heavy so if the Cayin C9 can somewhat replicate the feeling of transparency you get with the iHA-6 – that’s a major win.

Turns out that the Cayin C9 is actually… better than the iHA-6. Wait, hear me out. It’s not better in terms of power, iHA-6 can push 7Watts (!) into a 32ohm load from the balanced out whereas the C9 manages a mere (!) 4Watts. However, when not driving super-demanding planars, the Cayin C9 simply has better imaging and dynamics (esp microdynamics). The iHA-6, despite being similarly transparent in the midrange, sounds edgier in treble and not as effortlessly resolving. Another issue with the iHA-6 is that it’s beyond overkill for IEMs and might even blow the drivers out if you’re not careful. Moreover, iHA-6 has very high noise-floor for sensitive drivers.

The realization that an amp 1/8th size of the venerable iHA-6 can outperform it in most scenarios is rather shocking for me, but that’s how it is. The C9 is almost 4x the price of the iHA-6, but it seems you do get your money’s worth of performance at a much smaller footprint.

vs Headamp GSX Mini

The Headamp GSX-Mini ($1800) is one of my all-time favorite solid-state desktop amps and something I recommend everyone to try out. Given its desktop nature, it completely outshines the Cayin C9 in terms of output power and headphone driveability, though with moderately sensitive planars like Final D8000 Pro/Meze Empyrean you’re not really gonna need extra juice out of either of them.

I’ll skip over build etc. since it doesn’t really make sense when you’re comparing apples to oranges (desk amp vs transportable amp), but in this case there aren’t many competition to the C9 so desktop amps it is. However, one thing I must note: the volume knob on the GSX-Mini. It’s fabulous, class-leading. I want to fiddle with it for absolutely no reason, it’s that good.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about sound. There is a distinct difference in presentation between these two amps. The Cayin C9 goes for a transparent signature with slightly warm/analogue midrange and a sizeable increment in bass texture. The Headamp GSX-Mini takes a more laid-back approach with the bass but focuses on midrange and treble more. Outstanding detail retrieval is its calling card and there it does beat out the Cayin C9 marginally (when paired with full-size headphones).

However, the Cayin C9 strikes back with superior staging/imaging. The GSX-Mini can feel a bit closed-in in comparison. As a result the GSX-Mini works great with planars like Arya which have a naturally wide staging and the sound gains more focus with the GSX-Mini (if that’s what you want). The Cayin C9 meanwhile works better with IEMs and headphones that have relatively more intimate staging (e.g. Dunu Zen, Focal Utopia).

Overall, with the correct matching/pairing of headphones, the GSX-Mini does outperform the Cayin C9 in terms of resolved detail. That the Cayin C9 competes with a full-on desktop amp priced similarly is testament to what Cayin has achieved with the C9, and I am left even more impressed at this point.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

If you’re someone who owns a premium DAP (>$1000) with a high quality line-out and intend to make the absolute most out of your IEMs and less demanding headphones (as in, less than the Susvara/1266 Phi/HE-6) – the Cayin C9 will pretty much be an endgame addition at this point. The weight of ~500gm makes it hard to carry around but I am mostly using it while on the desk/lying down and it works absolutely fine that way.

The biggest issue of the Cayin C9 is its price-tag of $2000. Only the most effusive of enthusiasts would pay that much for a headphone amp that improves upon the intangible aspects of the sound you get from a high quality DAP. However, once you hear it there’s no going back and the dynamism it brings is truly one-of-a-kind.

Cayin chased perfection with the C9, and I daresay that they came dangerously close to it. I’ll miss listening to it, but hopefully not for long as I plan on getting one for myself.

TEST TRACKS

https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/04350ebe-1582-4785-9984-ff050d80d2b7

MY VERDICT

4.75/5

Endgame performance, but you gotta pay a pretty penny. #HighlyRecommended

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DISCLAIMER

CAYIN C9 Was sent as part of the EU review tour. You can buy it from here.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

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Cons — Upper midrange glare, lack of treble extension.

Executive Summary

The $700 Dunu Zen is a natural sounding single-dynamic driver earphone with immersive depth and fantastic macro- and microdynamics and resolution that falls short of perfect only by its upper midrange glare.

Introduction

Dunu does not need an introduction, they have been providing the community with quality audio products since 1994. And they had been on my radar for the last five years, recommended by my German colleague “Chris, the Headphone Collector“. But whereas my co-authors have filled our blog with Dunu reviews, I have only had the opportunity to analyze one of their premium earphones now.

Specifications

Physical Things and Usability

I am skipping the package content as I never really unpacked the whole lot because of time constraints adherent to the short period I had this loaner for. I simply used stock cable and the earpieces, and added SpinFit CP 500 eartips upon the recommendation of co-blogger Kazi Mahbub Mutakabbir.

So I rather focus on my sonic perceptions and some simple comparisons with the Zen’s presumably closest competitors: Cayin Fantasy and Moondrop Illumination…and less so with the JVC HA-FDX1.

Tonality and Technicalities

Equipment used: MacBook Air & DragonFly Cobalt; iPod Classic 7th gen.; SpinFit CP500 eartips.

I since am a bit limited in my listening experience as I had the Dunu Zen only for two weeks as part of the Head-Fi tour. You may also want to read Kazi’s more detailed review for more details.

TL;DR: the Dunu Zen are characterized by their immersive, natural sound (timbre/dynamics) while having a great resolution and staging. They offer this rare combination of traits of multi-drivers and single dynamic-driver earphones.

And they also defy the idea of tuning a driver according to a trendy model curve. The Dun Zen appear to be tuned according to their driver, which results in a rather “ugly” frequency-response graph but a great sound (and not the other way round; plenty examples exist).

What stroke me most every time I used the Dunu Zen is that extended low-end with this well-layered, well-textured, articulate mid bass that creates a wonderful “depth of field”. The beefy, visceral low end comes with a natural punch. This results a warm tonality with full, rich drums and re-inforced deeper vocals. Simply seductive and essentially perfect.

And does not smear at all into the lower midrange. Voices are very well defined, nicely sculptured but the higher vocal notes could be a tad richer and creamier. There is a tendency toward sharpness/are a bit sharpened by that 12 dB gain from 1 to 2 kHz that adds some glare just below shoutiness. Nevertheless, the vocals are organic with good note definition.

Treble is crisp without being edgy. Cymbals are very well defined as you are used from a piezo. There is no smudging going on at all, but also no harshness. Good definition. Upper treble is lacking a bit.

Staging is not the widest but rather deep, and instrument placement and separation are bordering on spectacular. What is truly amazing is the macro- and microdynamics as well as macro-and micro-resolution. All this results in great spatial cues with – I had mentioned it already – lots of depth.

Yes, the piano and forte sections of an orchestra are handled very well, and so is the small dynamic nuances. For example, I really enjoyed the subtle dynamic variations of an oboe and its interplay with a harpsichord as in this DGG recording. And all this at a very natural, authentic timbre. Attack and decay are just right.

Dunu Zen compared

At $700, the Dunu Zen is in line with the $800 Cayin Fantasy and $800 Moondrop Illumination. Zen has the biggest depth and least treble extension of the three. The other two cannot compete in terms of punch and microdynamics.

I have to be cautious with details as these comparisons are based on memory – they were all loaners which I analyzed at different times. Please take my comments with a grain of salt.

The Cayin is brighter, wider, and also has excellent detail resolution, but it has this 5 kHz peak that introduces harshness and grain to many ears. And it lacks sub-bass extension.

The Moondrop is has the least mid-bass of the lot, and is the least resolving. It comes across as bright and aggressive to my ears, like the Cayin.

It may be a bit unfair to compare the $250 JVC HA-FDX1 with the Dunu Zen. But, the JVC had been hailed by some as possibly the best single DD on the market 2 years ago.

Well, the JVC cannot quite keep up with any of the three in terms of staging – and its timbre comes across as somewhat metallic. But it is a decent choice for the budget audio enthusiast.

Concluding Remarks

Although the Dunu Zen is not perfect, it is close. It comes in second on my eternal list, just beaten by the 3000 Euro VisionEars Elysium. I absolutely love the Dunu Zen for its immersive, seductive listening experience and its microdynamics: never have I enjoyed the synergy of an oboe and a harpsichord so much.

I am still considering buying one for my amp/dacs reviews. The usual problem: too much gear and no money…and the Zen Pro coming. The Zen Pro incorporates tuning suggestions by the graphing crowd.

I hope the company has not compromised sound quality for sales-generating graphs, as currently seen with DACs and amps. We’ll see.

Until next time…keep on listening!

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The Zen was provided as part of a Canadian Head-Fi tour and I think the organizers for that.

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Introduction

These brief notes are to complement Jürgen’s earlier review of the Vision Ears Elysium and VE8, with which I mostly concur. As with Jürgen’s review, my impressions are mainly comparisons between the two models because I’ve heard nothing else near their price range to compare them with. All listening was with with stock cables and (med) tips (which are Spinfit tips CP145s) and Audioquest DragonFly Black or Ifi iDSD Nano BL (‘Direct’ output unless noted) – perhaps rather ‘lo-fi’ sources for such expensive earphones.

Tonality and Timbre

VE8 bass is good – strong, extended. Nice timbre for a BA; still more ‘tight’ than ‘fast’, but similar to how I like it on a good ‘fast’ DD (JVC HA-FX1). Maybe too strong, kick drum & bass can come across as further forward on the stage than everything else but the vocalist. On the Elysium, mid to low bass (guitar) is strong, low to sub bass (kick drum) less so than VE8, ie less bass extension, but again it’s of excellent quality.

In contrast to some commentators, I thought bass guitar has better texture (reverb on decays) than on the VE8, maybe because it isn’t overwhelmed by the sub-bass. But, what would be nicer still is if the VE8 sub-bass level was present here too (yes, I want to have my cake as well as eat it).

VE8 mids are slightly honky – not good with vocals with nasal or honky signatures, and there’s noticeable emphasis on some horns and distorted guitars. They’re forward and can come across congested on some material.

By contrast, the mids on the Elysium are the star, further back in the mix while also being smooth and with fantastic timbre, not a trace of nasality or honk even with challenging vocals. Liquid, organic, and well integrated. Piano & vocals, wow. This is the best midrange I’ve yet heard on an IEM.

Treble on the VE8 is extended but smooth, the best I’ve heard on a BA (for the price of these, it should be!). It nonetheless seems a bit blunted in cymbal attacks, possibly as a result of a tonality in which the lower treble area is a bit recessed.

The Elysium treble imparts a slightly odd timbre to cymbals (because of the electrostatic drivers?) but is nicely extended, probably more than my old ears can really appreciate. Compared to the VE8, a lower treble boost is evident, and I’d say more accurate, with the transition from upper mids into treble being better balanced. Timbre-wise the Elysium treble seems a touch fast in both attack & decay, but compared to the VE8 cymbal hits are more prominent (if not louder), and decays are longer.

Pressing the Elysiums further into my ears exaggerated the treble, in contrast to the usual IEM experience of exaggerating the bass. Individual listeners’ treble experience will likely depend on seal and insertion depth.

Technicalities

Imaging & separation: imaging is more precise on the Elysium, separation between instruments more defined on the VE8.

Macro & microdynamics: VE8 is slightly ahead here, but is maybe a bit unrealistic (overdone) in amplitude on the macro. Elysium does better gradations, rather than ‘on-off’, with dynamics in the mids, and better captures subtleties there.

Pitch resolution: In the mids especially, this is better on the Elysium – small pitch change subtleties are rendered better, with more gradation.

Source Considerations

While the Elysiums are happiest with a more powerful source, the VE8s are more typical multi-BAs in that they have a very slight hiss noticeable in silences from the DragonFly and from the Nano BL’s ‘Direct’ jack at playing volume. This is unfortunate, because the ‘iEMatch’ jack’s relatively high output impedance lowers upper mids & treble by up to 3.3 dB.

Source matching will be important with both of these earphones, because as both listening and frequency-response measurements show (see Jürgen’s review), neither has an exaggerated upper midrange – yet both have impedance vs frequency curves that will suppress upper mids and treble if the amplifier that’s driving them has an elevated output impedance.

On the graph below, the tan curve is my impedance measurement for the VE8 and the blue curve is that supplied by Vision Ears after we queried them as to why my measurement was so different from the 22 Ohm (@ 1 kHz) specification given on their website.

VE replied that the 22 Ohm spec was for a prototype version, and the correct number is 16.4 Ohms as on their blue curve. The other curves on this graph show the effects on the VE8’s frequency response using amplifiers of up to 5.5 Ohms output impedance (purple, lowest, curve).

The Elysium has an even more extreme impedance vs frequency curve, increasing exponentially from single digits in the treble to > 200 Ohms in the bass. This will interact with amps of higher output impedance to tilt the frequency response darker, with the greatest effect around 12-13 kHz. 

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All Our >250 Earphone and Earbud Reviews (with Links)

Disclaimer

I too thank the tour organizers and VE for the opportunity to hear these two pairs. Also we thank Marcel from VE for providing his impedance measurements and discussion.

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You find an INDEX of our most relevant technical articles HERE.

The post Vision Ears Elysium and Vision Ears VE8 Review (2) – German Magic appeared first on Audio Reviews.

INTRODUCTION

Vision Ears Elysium and Vision Ears VE8. Vision Ears are a company out of Cologne, Germany, that specializes in premium items, universal fit and custom fit. Their products don’t come cheap, they are somewhat luxurious, we therefore don’t talk about money in the brief review, but rather about reward. Head-Fi and Audiotiers offered the Vision Ears Elysium and the Vision Ears VE8 for 8 days as part of the Canadian Tour. The time was a bit short for a full review, however I took good notes to give you my impressions. One thing up front, this was a great learning experience. After listening to these premium products, I now even see the budget and mid-tier offer in a different light…I therefore recommend every analyst to grow on testing such premium products.

The Vision Ears VE8, as the name may imply, is an 8 BA earphone whereas the slightly pricier Vision Ears Elysium features drivers of three different technologies: surprisingly a BA for the low end, a dynamic driver for the midrange, and two electrostatics for the upper end. In detail…

There is a complimentary view with some more measurements by Biodegraded:

SPECIFICATIONS ELYSIUM

Drivers: 1BA for bass – 1 dynamic for mids – 2 electrostatic for highs
Impedance: 14.2 Ω at 1 kHz
Sensitivity: 105 dB at 1mW
Frequency Range: X – Y Hz
Cable/Connector:
Tested at: 2500,00 EUR (incl. 19% German VAT)
Product Page: Vision Ears

SPECIFICATIONS VE8

Drivers: 2 x Bass – 2 x Mid – 4 x High 
Impedance: 16.4 Ohms ( at 1 kHz )
Sensitivity: 120 dB SPL at 1 mW 
Frequency Range: X – Y Hz
Cable/Connector:
Tested at: 2150,00 € 
Product Page: Vision Ears

TONALITY AND TECHNICALITIES

Follow these links for some background information:

My tonal preference and testing practice

My test tracks explained

Equipment used: MacBook Air/iPhone SE (1st gen.) and ifi nano BL (IEMatch for Vision Ears VE8 and Direct out for Vision Ears Elysium).

The Elysium needs a lot of power, probably owing to the electrostats, and they are not well driven by a phone. The VE8 are more content with low-power sources.

Most – if not all – tour participants and reviewers preferred the Vision Ears VE8 over the Vision Ears Elysium. In contrast, I found the Elysium fantastic and the VE8 “nothing special” (considering the price). The Vision Ears VE8 have toned-down upper mids similar to the Campfire Andromeda; they sound warmer and thicker, but also more congested and less energetic than the Elysium. This produces an inoffensive, agreeable meat-and-potato sound that fits most musical genres but it lacks the engagement factor, especially with female voices. The Elysium are overall more energetic with a “wider” sound. They have a boosted upper midrange that usually does not work for most earphones – but it does in this case (no shoutiness!), which points to the driver quality. I find the sonic image of the Elysium way more articulate and refined compared to the Vision Ears VE8 with breathtaking vocals reproduction. Best I have experienced in any earphone…though my selection is limited.

Both models are very similar at the low end: subtle, articulate, clean bass and sub-bass, well dosed and tasteful. Good, realistic attack. Minimalistic, slightly warm and never anemic…well separated from the lower midrange. Bass attack and decay are excellent. The difference in the upper midrange let’s the VE8’s bass perceive as a bit thicker, less focused, and thumpier as the human ears hear the whole frequency spectrum in context. The Elysium have the sharper drums attack.

The Elysium takes the lead in the vocals, and that by far. Voices in the Elysium are brighter, have more life, more bite/energy, more detail, more air, more corners, and more appeal. Note definition is generally superior over the VE8. In comparison, the vocals in the VE8 are “duller”, darker, more intimate, and have the lesser resolution…which also results in more body and more midrange intimacy. The fuller body is probably the reason why most protagonists prefer the VE8 over the Elysium. Midrange in the Elysium has more filigree and air – and is better resolving. Vocals have just the right intimacy and not too much intimacy in the Elysium. They are spicier but not too spicy. There is a good balanced between upper and lower midrange. The VE8’s midrange offers the sonic equivalent of an optical illusion.

And the Elysium extend their lead in the treble. Holy moly, I have never heard such clean, nicely separated, super dry, crisp cymbals. The two electrostats don’t overdo anything, they don’t emphasize the highs, they just refine them. Truly an outstanding sonic experience. The VE8’s treble are not bad either but cymbals are less pronounced and a bit covered/less separated by/from the thicker midrange.

The lean but energetic vocals in the Vision Ears Elysium means great midrange clarity, transparency, and detail resolution. Stage is very wide and tall, with realistic depth. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” at Live Aid put me right into Wembley Stadium. Rather holographic imaging. The VE8s have the narrower stage.

Vocals timbre is natural in both earphones despite the differences in energy level.

Elysium has better midrange clarity and transparency, better 3D rendering, better separation between instruments, more energetic voices, a more subtle bass, and better spatial imaging. Everything sounds more crowed and less open in the VE8. Overall, the Elysium are definitely the sharper knife in the drawer.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The Elysium constituted a highly educational experience and changed my approach to sound. The two electrostats produced cymbals so crisp – never heard that before. I found the energetic Elysium more engaging and involving over the thicker, fuller bodied but less resolving VE8s. In this tour kit, I perceived the VE8 more as decoration or support for the Elysium. In fact, the Elysium made so weak for a moment that I considered selling my house to afford one. But in the end, I will have to wait until I wander the Elyisan fields (or the Champs-Élysées before) to experience such (sonic) enjoyment again.

Until next time…keep on listening!

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DISCLAIMER

The two models were part of a semi-private Head-Fi tour. I thank Bill Barraugh for organizing it.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

About my measurements.

You find an INDEX of our most relevant technical articles HERE.

RELATED…

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Cons — Recessed mmcx port on Sony IER-Z1R housing can be an issue for 3rd party cables
– Bulky housing gets uncomfortable and might not even fit
– Can deliver over-bearing bass at times
– Mids are lacklustre, average in terms of resolution and engagement factor
– Center-imaging isn’t class-leading
– Somewhat source-picky

INTRODUCTION

Sony needs no introduction.

I mean, you have used at least one of their products in your lifetime. Thus, let’s cut to the chase. The Sony IER-Z1R is their flagship (universal) in-ear monitor. Priced at $1700 retail, these are true top-of-the-line contenders in the IEM space and is looking for a place among the best of the best earphones around. 

Does the Sony IER-Z1R justify the hefty price-tag, or is it another underachiever? Let’s find out.

Note: the ratings given will be subjective to the price tier. My dear friend Syed lent me his personal unit.

Sources used:  Cowon Plenue R2, Sony NW-A55, Sony WM1A, A&K Kann Alpha
Price, while reviewed: $1700. Can be bought from Sony’s Official Website

PHYSICAL THINGS AND USABILITY

PACKAGING AND ACCESSORIES

An accessory set fit for a king, preceded by a regal unboxing experience. The IER-Z1R puts most flagship packaging to royal shame *cough* 64Audio *cough*. It’s a TOTL product through and through and Sony spent considerable time into the packaging and accessories. The jewelry box like assembly with sliding trays keep the various items into their own compartment. The stock cables are built well and is very ergonomic with no touch noise, but they are a tad too long for my liking. Does help when you connect the IEMs to desktop amps though. There are too many tips to count and you get an oversized box to store the IEMs with felt-lining inside. Overkill, impractical, but very cool.
5/5

BUILD QUALITY

The Sony IER-Z1R is built and sized like a tank. The zirconium alloy shells are absurdly large. Everything but the nozzle is super-sized, including the recess into which the mmcx port sits. As a result one must choose after-market cables carefully. Most third-party cables have a thinner mmcx stem that will be literally eaten up by the Z1R (thus I’d recommend the Sony stock cable or the kimber cable).

Back to the housing, the backplate has a perlage pattern often seen on luxury watches (a metal tip rotates on top of the metal plate to form such a pattern). The shape of the housing mirrors the shape of the inner acoustic cavity (more on this later) and thus have a unique design rarely seen elsewhere. The top of the IEM houses the color-coded channel markings, where I can see something that resembles a vent. Other than that, no other vents or asymmetries in the housing.

The design stands out and draws attention, as is customary for Sony’s signature line of gear.
5/5

COMFORT, ISOLATION, AND FIT

Comfort = horrible. Fit = atrocious. Isolation = above average (when pushed deep into the canals, basically how these IEMs are supposed to be worn). Wearing the Sony IER-Z1R for any length of time is a challenge and will definitely be the deal-breaker for most people. Auditioning the IEM before purchasing is strongly advised. 
1/5

SOURCE AND EARTIPS

The best source for the Sony IER-Z1R is Sony’s own WM1A Walkman DAP. People often talk about “synergy” between source and IEM, and very few pairings showcase such synergy. I myself tried the Z1R mostly with the Cowon Plenue R2 during review, however, and used the stock Sony Hybrid tips. Later on I tried it with the WM1A and that did improve upon my issues with the mids. If you are planning to get an IER-Z1R, the WM1A/WM1Z DAPs are recommended.

DRIVER SETUP

The Sony IER-Z1R has a triple-driver hybrid setup, with two dynamic drivers in charge of bass/mids and upper-treble, and one BA driver in charge of the treble. 

The largest driver in this array is the 12mm bass/midrange driver that has a Magnesium dome with Aluminium-coated LCP surround. This ensures better pistonic motion and a very high excursion. The excursion is further aided by a resonance chamber and tube structure in the back of the driver. All of these results in the signature hard-hitting, dense bass of the Sony IER-Z1R.

The upper-treble tweeter also has a very interesting design. It’s a 5mm micro-dynamic driver with Al-coated LCP diaphragm and offers up to 100KHz response — a figure that’s inaudible by all humans but aces the numbers game. In practical use, the 5mm driver has very fast transients and offers the timbral accuracy of a dynamic driver instead of the artificial BA timbre or the fleeting, lightweight nature of EST tweeters.

Lost in all these is the miniscule side-firing BA treble driver that mostly handles lower and mid-treble. It’s a Sony proprietary T-shaped armature pin and has better timbre and slightly slower decay than typical Knowles BA drivers.

Sony doesn’t just stop here, rather they place these drivers in a coaxial orientation in a 3D-printed magnesium alloy chamber. The material choice is to reduce resonant frequencies and also the unique design results in a straight sound path for each driver, thus avoiding the usual cross-over tubes. Very fascinating driver setup all in all, but it’d all be for naught if the sound quality isn’t up to the mark. Fortunately, that’s not the case at all.

TONALITY AND TECHNICALITIES

The Sony IER-Z1R has a V-shaped sound signature, but that’s a reductionist statement to say the least. The IER-Z1R lives and breathes bass. The sub-bass sets the foundation of the entire sonic delivery and boy oh boy if this ain’t the best bass response in an earphone on this forsaken planet. I’ve heard IEMs with even more emphasized bass or faster bass, but the delightfully textured bass on the Z1R is second to none when it comes to providing the sense of rhythm. The slam, the slightly extended decay (unlike the super-fast BA bass), the subterranean reach of the sub-bass — it’s the whole package. The mid-bass is no slouch either (unlike the DF-tuned IEMs around) and snare hits/pedals have superb definition/body. Macrodynamics are some of the best I’ve ever heard. If you’re a bass-head, this is your endgame (as long as your ears are large enough).

The other aspect of the IER-Z1R that is apparent right away is the sense of space it portrays. The stage width is as good as many full-size open-backs. The stage depth is remarkable, and coupled with precise imaging you truly get that out-of-the-head experience. The one aspect where it falls short of the likes of, say, Hifiman Ananda in terms of staging is the stage height. This is where the large drivers on full-size headphones flex their muscles. 

Despite the bass focus the treble on the IER-Z1R is… perfect. It has adequate sparkle and air without veering into the “bright” zone. Cymbal decays are well-extended and even in sections with super-fast cymbal hits the notes don’t smear into each other. Transient response overall is excellent. There is a slight peak around 5.5KHz but that never became a bother for me personally. This is where insertion depth comes into play because with a less-than-adequate insertion the treble becomes splashy. If I had to nitpick about the treble response it would be the slightly soft leading edge of notes. This rounded nature of upper-frequency notes help in avoiding listening fatigue but can take away the rawness of crash cymbals. Nonetheless, Sony has made a good trade-off IMO and the treble is nearly as good as it gets in the TOTL range.

Unfortunately, Sony focused a bit too much on the bass and treble and the midrange played second-fiddle to both. The mids here are just about okay I’d say. Male vocals sound somewhat muffled and female vocals, despite having more focus than male vocals, are robbed off of the emotion that certain IEMs in this price are capable of displaying. Also instrument separation and microdynamics weren’t as great as I hoped it would be, partly due to the recessed lower midrange. String instruments lacked the bite and their undertones were often muddied by the bass. Mid-range performance is definitely the weakest link in the IER-Z1R signature and that’s disappointing given the stellar bass and treble.

To summarize: if you like V-shaped sound signature and aren’t too bothered about the subtleties of vocals — this is it, this is the IEM to end all V-shaped IEMs. 

Bass: 5/5
Midrange: 3.5/5
Treble: 5/5
Staging: 5/5
Imaging/Separation: 4.5/5
Dynamics/Speed: 4/5

SELECT COMPARISONS

vs Campfire Andromeda ($1000): The tuning of the Andromeda and the Z1R couldn’t be more different. Whereas Campfire Audio went for a relatively balanced tuning for the Andromeda 2020, Sony is proud of their bass driver and tuned the Z1R with sub-bass focus in mind. Bass is where these two IEMs differ the most. Andromeda 2020 has typical fast BA bass that’s nimble without being punchy. The Sony IER-Z1R’s bass is slower but makes up for that with slam and punch and sub-bass that rattles inside your eardrums.

Midrange is where the Sony pulls back a bit whereas the Andro 2020 (in contrast to the Andro 2019) gains some presence. Vocals are more prominent on the Andro 2020 and midrange in general is better executed, I’d say. String instruments esp shine on the Andromeda. 

As for the treble, the Campfire Andromeda 2020 has really well-executed treble that’s smooth, non-fatiguing, and well-extended but pales in comparison to the treble on the IER-Z1R. Cymbal hits have a presence and crunch that’s just missing on the Andromeda 2020. 

In terms of soundstage/imaging, the former goes to the IER-Z1R whereas the Andro 2020 has slightly better center-imaging than the IER-Z1R but similar cardinal/ordinal imaging otherwise. 

If you want visceral bass punch and some of the best treble under $2000, the Sony IER-Z1R shall be your pick. However, the Andro 2020 has a more balanced tuning and acts as a complimentary tuning to the IER-Z1R’s exciting delivery. Comfort is also much better on the Campfire Andromeda, so there’s that.

vs Final A8000 ($2000): The Final A8000 is their current single-DD flagship and sports a pure Be diaphragm driver. While the A8000 has north-of-neutral sub-bass rise, it pales in comparison to the level of mid-bass thump that the Sony IER-Z1R provides. However, the A8000 bass is faster and will cater well to those who prefer a nimble bass presentation. 

In terms of midrange, I prefer the A8000’s vocals by a margin over the IER-Z1R. Final knows how to tune the midrange and the vocals/string instruments are as articulate as they can be on the A8000. Every subtle nuance is highlighted including vocalists breathing in/out. Timbre is another strong point here with the metallic tinge of steel strings being evident against the more natural, softer tone of nylon strings. 

The treble region is where the Sony IER-Z1R pulls ahead with no sharp 6KHz peak (A8000’s biggest downside) and more extended upper-treble. This leads to an even wider soundstage (though A8000 has very good stage width). Imaging is about even on both with center-imaging being slightly less accurate on both IEMs. Overall resolution is about similar on both, with the more resolving A8000 midrange being counter-balanced by the smoother yet better extended treble on the IER-Z1R.

Between these two, I’d pick the IER-Z1R if you can get a fit and don’t bother too much about midrange. However, the A8000 is a great choice if you prefer well-realized vocals/string instruments, a faster bass response, and don’t mind the 6KHz peak/willing to tune it via PEQ.

vs 64Audio U12t ($2000): Finally, Goliath vs Goliath. The 64Audio U12t is one of the best IEMs available around the $2000 mark and is one of the best all-BA IEMs out there. By swapping the APEX modules you can also increase the bass response in them (M20 offers a bit more bass). This comparison is made with the M20 module. 

The U12t has perhaps the best BA bass out there, and it’s quite a feat indeed. However, it can’t out-muscle the physical grunt of the Sony IER-Z1R’s bass response. The mids are better tuned on the U12t, as is a theme in this comparison. The treble is where we find interesting differences. The U12t goes for a smoother treble presentation with rounded notes, whereas the IER-Z1R has a more immediate sense of attack that gives cymbal hits/hi-hats a really nice bite. I think depending on taste you might prefer one over the other, I myself find the Z1R’s treble response more appealing.

Soundstage is wider and taller on the IER-Z1R but stage depth is about par on the U12t. Imaging is tad more precise on the U12t, though these are marginal differences. Where I found more palpable was the difference in coherence. U12t, despite the 12 drivers, sounded more coherent than the IER-Z1R. Also a slight note about build/accessories: Sony IER-Z1R is quite a bit ahead on those aspects.

In conclusion, if you want a smoother, laid-back listen with great all-round performance, the 64Audio U12t will serve you really well. For those who need more excitement and fun-factor, the Sony IER-Z1R shall be on the top of your list.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

In hindsight, it’s quite easy to review and recommend the Sony IER-Z1R. If someone wants the best bass available in an IEM, they should definitely try the IER-Z1R. It’s an unabashedly fun, colored tuning that works well across various genres. 

The big elephant in the room: the fit. Without a deep, snug fit you’d have a hard time finding what makes the IER-Z1R so special, making it rather necessary to trial these beforehand. 

If you can get a fit, and if you love bass — the Sony IER-Z1R is a no-brainer really. I am yet to find something that tops it as the bass-head endgame, and if you know that’s what you want and got the right-sized ears — get ready for some brain-rattling.

Test tracks:

https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/04350ebe-1582-4785-9984-ff050d80d2b7

MY VERDICT

4.5/5

Highly Recommended if you want the ultimate bass-head IEM.

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DISCLAIMER

The unit was on loan from a friend.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

SONY IER-Z1R PHOTOGRAPHY

You find an INDEX of our most relevant technical articles HERE.

The post Sony IER-Z1R Review – Sheer Bass-Head Delight appeared first on Audio Reviews.

Cons — Stock cable forms kinks, gets tangled in pocket
– Somewhat soft transients
– Treble lacks sparkle, rolls-off early
– Soundstage depth/imaging is average
– Lower-mids can sound a bit recessed

INTRODUCTION

Moondrop needs no introduction nowadays after being one of the most consistent manufacturers out there in terms of releases and their adherence to hitting “target curves”, or a specific frequency-response in other words.

The Moondrop Aria 2 (2021) is their latest release that, on paper, succeeds their age-old model, the Aria (which had a shell similar to their now discontinued Crescent). Confusing naming schemes aside, the Aria refresh is nothing like the old model with a very different shell design along with a detachable cable (whereas the previous model had a fixed cable). Moreover, it seems to compete directly with their own Starfield and might even retire the old model given its lower price tag.

Let’s see if the new Aria 2 is a worthy refresh, and if it can carve itself a spot in the ultra-competitive budget segment.

Note: the ratings given will be subjective to the price tier. Nappoler Hu from HiFiGo was kind enough to send me the Moondrop Aria 2 for evaluation.

Sources used: Questyle CMA-400i, Sony NW-A55 (MrWalkman modded), LG G7
Price, while reviewed: $80. Can be bought from HiFiGo.

PHYSICAL THINGS AND USABILITY

PACKAGING AND ACCESSORIES

The packaging, in usual Moondrop fashion, has an anime box-art. Other than that the accessories are mostly standard: a cloth-braided cable, 6 pairs of eartips, a small carry case, a pair of tweezers to replace the nozzle filters, and some spare nozzle filters. While the tips and case works fine, I’m a bit annoyed with the stock cable. Now, it’s an upgrade over Starfield’s noodle-like cable but the ergonomics are poor and it gets tangled very easily. The sheathing is also stiff and forms kinks very easily. I’d recommend an upgrade cable if budget permits.
4/5

BUILD QUALITY

The build quality is excellent with an aluminium alloy housing. The matte black paintjob has a soft-touch finish and the rose-gold pattern on top adds a bit of character to the shells. There are two vents on the inner-side to alleviate pressure. The 2-pin ports are recessed which is great for long-term durability. Finally, the nozzle doesn’t have any lips to secure the tips but it does grip the tips better this time around (unlike the Starfield nozzles where tips would slip out). The paintjob also seems more durable than the Starfield one (which chipped off easily) but time will tell. So far so good.
5/5

COMFORT AND ISOLATION

Due to its snug-fit and lightweight nature, the Aria has very good wearing comfort. Isolation is above-average too and with the right tips you can drown out quite a bit of outside noise.
4.5/5

SOURCE AND EARTIPS

For the purpose of this review, I primarily used the Questyle CMA-400i and LG G7 as sources. The Aria 2 runs well on most sources, though with better sources it does seem to scale. I’ve found it to pair the best with Questyle CMA-400i but then again it’s a desk setup and costs quite a bit. On a budget, the LG G7 worked just fine, with the Sony NW-A55 providing a very dynamic and engaging presentation.

The stock tips are fine but I opted for Spinfit CP-145 as it seemed to slightly widen the stage without sacrificing on the tonality/technicalities.

DRIVER SETUP

Aria 2 opts for a 10mm LCP (Liquid-Crystal Polymer) along with an N52 magnet system. The voice coil is just 35 micron thick and there’s also a brass cavity on the back to reduce resonance. Finally, the high frequency waveguide disperses high-frequency waves to reduce resonance peaks. LCP diaphragms have been used in legendary single-DDs like the Sony EX-1000, though in that case the diaphragm size was much larger (16mm) and the diaphragm stiffness also reportedly higher. However, given the price constraint at play here (1/6th of the EX-1000ST) it’s great to see LCP diaphragm here instead of the more mainstream CNT, Ti/Be-plated PET, or DLC diaphragms (though the latter costs more usually).

One interesting tidbit: Moondrop recommends 100hrs of burning to ensure that the drivers are in “optimal” condition. They even provide some burn-in instructions in the user-manual (comes in the box). I usually don’t bother with IEM user-guides but this one time I’m glad I read it. Whether or not you’re a believer in burn-in, it’s interesting to see that Moondrop is recommending this as they’re usually very focused on measurements and such (burn-in usually doesn’t show up in FR graphs). I decided to follow the guidelines and burned-in for ~60 hours or so before forming my impressions. It doesn’t hurt after all.

TONALITY AND TECHNICALITIES

The Aria 2 has a warm, upper-mid centric presentation that has some similarities with the Harman In-ear target curve. Fortunately, the upper-mids aren’t as pronounced as the Harman IE target and the mid-bass has more body, resulting in a more even and natural transition from sub-bass to upper-bass and lower-mids subsequently.

The standout feature on this one has to be the bass response which, IMO, is one of the best under $100. The bass reaches all the way down to 20Hz and provides excellent rumble. Best of all: it doesn’t slope right away as it moves into the mid-bass unlike some recent IEM releases that gives rise to what I call “2.1 subwoofer effect” (you feel that the sub-bass is detached from the rest of the frequency). As a result, the bass frequencies are all well-portrayed and the sub-bass focus sounds tastefully done. Snare hits are authoritative, double-pedals have a full-bodied nature to them, and most of all male vocals don’t sound thinned-out. Bass texture is great, and bass speed is above-average.

As we move into the lower-mids, it does some warmth from the mid-bass bump but this is where I encounter my first issue with the Aria 2. The male vocals sound somewhat distant, although they’re perfectly intelligible. The finer articulations (vocalists inhaling/exhaling, subtle shifts in the delivery) are not as well portrayed as a result. Female vocals are much better portrayed however though again the lower-ranges suffer from recession. On the plus side, these are excellent when it comes to rendering acoustic guitars. The leading edge of guitars sound crisp while having a certain heft to them. Distortion guitars are not as well portrayed however due to less energy around the 4KHz region, but this also helps in reducing listening fatigue so there’s that.

Finally, the treble, and there’s not much to say here. It’s inoffensive without being boring. The treble rolls off fast post 11KHz and doesn’t really offer a lot of sparkle or air. Cymbal hits sound somewhat muted and the resonance after the hit is absent. There’s a slight peak ~10KHz in the official graph which seems more like driver resonance and didn’t really bother me during listening sessions. I should also add a note about the timbre which is very natural here and doesn’t suffer from the artificiality of the typical BA drivers (and even some metal-coated PET diaphragms).

Dynamics are quite good, especially macrodynamics are class-leading. Micro-dynamic shifts (gradual changes in volumes) are portrayed fairly well though some of the competition does that better. Staging is good overall in terms of width/height, though stage depth is lacking vs the higher-tier IEMs. Imaging is not as precise as I find on competing IEMs so I’d say it’s about average for the price bracket. Separation is good, however, owing to faster transients of the LCP diaphragm, though I do find the leading edge of notes to be somewhat soft which robs some instruments off of their excitement/engagement factor. The better transients also aids in complex tracks though the treble does seem to get drowned out in that case.

Overall, I find the Aria 2 to have a very versatile sound profile that works well across a variety of genres. The presentation is dynamic with a very natural timbre and excellent rendition of acoustic guitars/percussion instruments. Due to the wide stage, instruments aren’t congested and separation is very good as well. However, the male vocals might sound recessed, the imaging isn’t as precise as I hoped it to be, and stage depth/treble extension is lacking. Given its budget nature though, I’m willing to forgive a lot of that.

Bass: 4.5/5
Mids: 4/5
Treble: 4/5
Imaging/Separation: 3.5/5
Staging: 4/5
Dynamics/Speed: 4/5
Timbre: 4.5/5

SELECT COMPARISONS

vs Moondrop Starfield ($109): The Starfield received mostly rave reviews upon launch, though I myself found it very average on all fronts apart from the mid-range (vocals, to be specific). It was kind of a one-trick pony and I didn’t find the trick to be entertaining enough to warrant a super-positive review. I’d not discuss differences in build/accessories here as they are mostly similar (though Aria 2 cable is better).

The Aria 2 fixes most of my issues with the Starfield. The bass is much tighter with faster transients, acoustic guitars and percussion instruments don’t sound as “mushy” anymore, and the treble actually has some life in them. The stage is also wider and taller on the Aria 2, though stage-depth is similar on both (as in average). They measure similarly on FR but during listening the difference these technical upgrades are very noticeable. The one area where the Starfield trounces the Aria 2 is the vocal performance with Starfield having a more up-front/engaging vocal delivery. That’s about it though, and I’d pick the Aria 2 over the (more expensive) Starfield 11 out of 10 times.

vs Final E3000 ($50): The Final E3000 has long been one of my favorites under $100 and the Aria 2 has challenged it well for that throne. In terms of build quality, Aria 2 gets brownie points for having a detachable cable (though the supplied cable is far worse than E3000 stock cable). Both are very comfortable IEMs and offer good isolation.

The sound profile is quite different between them. The E3000 is a laid-back sounding IEM with warm, thick notes and an uncanny ability to separate the vocals from the rest of the instruments. In fact the biggest difference between the E3000 and the Aria 2 is how the former projects a wide, deep soundstage. Vocals are also more lush on the E3000, though they are even more recessed than the Aria 2. In terms of bass response, the Aria 2 is more sub-bass focused whereas the Final E3000 has mid-bass focus. Thus, the snare-hits/double-pedals sound even more substantial on the E3000 whereas Aria 2 can reproduce bass rumble better. Treble is about similar on both though the E3000 has slightly better sparkle and energy in the leading edge of cymbal hits. Imaging is also better on the E3000, though it falls behind the Aria 2 in complex tracks due to slower driver. Finally, microdynamics are superior on the E3000 with the Aria 2 having better macrodynamics.

One thing to note is the amping requirements which is higher on the E3000. Aria 2 is far easier to drive. All this makes the Aria 2 an easier pick for those who want more balance across the spectrum and don’t want to invest in a source. If you have a good source, however, the Final E3000 is still a very unique offering and will be right up your alley if you want a non-fatiguing, laid-back yet impressively wide presentation.

vs BLON BL-05S ($40): This is a comparison that many requested due to the BL-05S punching way above its price-tag in terms of technicalities. Let’s get into it, then.

In terms of build, the Aria 2 wins simply because of a more agreeable color, though I’m lately finding the BL-05S less of a turn-off. The stock accessories are also super-terrible on the BLONs so Moondrop gets an easy win here. Comfort/isolation is also better on the Aria 2.

Now, let’s get into the sound. The BL-05S has more focus on clarity with a more prominent upper-mids presence. The bass suffers on the BL-05S as a result with the Aria 2 having a superior bass response. In fact, the improvement in bass alone warrants an upgrade to the Aria 2 if you’re using BL-05S and need more “thump” in the lows. In the mids, I find the BL-05S to be better for female vocals and electric guitars. Treble also has more sparkle on the BL-05S though cymbals can sound a bit splashy at times on the BL-05S (which the Aria 2 avoids). Timbre is better on the Aria 2, so is soundstage width and height and the overall dynamics. Stage depth and imaging, however, is better on the BL-05S, so is the separation (surprisingly so).

It’s quite ironic that the BL-05S, despite being half as costly, is besting the Aria 2 in a few technical aspects (mainly imaging and separation). However, I find the Aria 2 an easier listen with far superior comfort/isolation and of course: bass. I can also see many getting both these IEMs to cover all bases (Aria 2 when you need a more smooth listen, BL-05S for the metal/rock sessions).

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The Moondrop Aria 2 is a wholesale upgrade over the Moondrop Starfield, despite the apparent similarity in the FR graph. I was very disappointed with the Starfield so the Aria comes as a form of redemption for the budget Moondrop offerings, among which I’ve only like the Crescent so far (and they don’t even make them anymore).

For me, the Aria 2 is now a default recommendation in the $100 range and renders many of its peers/predecessors irrelevant, if not unremarkable. It doesn’t excel in many technical aspects but as an all-round package it is very hard to beat. The stock accessories are good enough to get you going, the bass response is fantastic, the mids sound just right (albeit the lower-mids recession can sound a bit odd), and the treble is inoffensive for the most part aiding in long-term listening. Add to that good dynamics, separation, and stage width, and we’ve a new winner.

Well done, Moondrop, and I hope you guys keep it up.

MY VERDICT

4.25/5

A worthy upgrade to the Moondrop Starfield, and one of the best IEMs under $100.

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At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Sources: Apogee Groove / Questyle QP1R / Sony NW-A55 mrWalkman – Radius DeepMount or Tanchjim T-APB wide bore tips – Nicehck 16core High Purity Copper cable – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

Technicalities

Physicals

Specifications (declared)

Other notes and conclusions

Those who follow my articles know my musical preferences are quite sided – I’m not at all a generalist, I actually very much prefer listening to cool jazz for most of my time, with some secondary interest into classical, and some prog rock.

That’s why I cast a special eye on drivers tuned to sound particularly well for those genres, which are not at all easy to render, as they require control, calibration and fidelity – not really so easy to find features.

Tanchjim Oxygen get my top appreciation as drivers for cool jazz, bebop, avantgarde and even for vocal jazz – female voices especially, due to their particular proficiency on those.

I can probably name just one other IEM under their price offering a similarly neutral and non excessively bright timbre paired with sound quality refinement which is at least in the league of Tanchjim Oxygen, and that’s final A3000. Other less neutral i.e. more “accented” tuning alternatives I use for the same musical genres are the cheaper (and less refined) Shouer Tape, or the similar-priced and equally sophisticated Ikko OH10. End of my jazz-specialised sub-€300 list, really.

While not the most capricious IEM I ever tried, Tanchjim Oxygen do significantly benefit from an at least decent quality amping source. Apart for that, as for the vast majority of IEMs best to stay away from high-voltage amps e.g. desktop ones, or those multi-W-powered daps, or if you really must use one of those at least plug an iFi iEMatch at in the middle (do it!).

As I mentioned above, Oxygens oddly feature opposite cable polarity compared to what most other 2pin-connector drivers usually adopt. I personally checked both stock cables with a multimeter and they do have that. I also asked Tanchjim tech support for verification and they acknowledged the situation. Remember to take care of that when plugging a third party cable, which due to the low quality of both bundled cables is more than a rec to be honest. Swapping polarity won’t harm your drivers, but will produce some fancy imaging oddities on some tracks.

Disclaimers

The Tanchjim Oxygen pair I am discussing have been personally purchased, not offered as a review loaner. You can find them on mutiple online outlets like here, and here.

This article also appears on my personal audio blog, here.

Our standard disclaimer

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The post Tanchjim Oxygen Review – Just Like A Glove appeared first on Audio Reviews.

At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Sources: Questyle QP1R / Apogee Groove – Final E Clear M-size tips – Linsoul LSC09 cable – Lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks

Signature analysis

Technicalities

Physicals

Specifications (declared)

Opinions & considerations

Ikko OH10 gets the job done right as I like it. All my sound priorities for this application are indeed there, and very competently carried out:

• significant extention both on low and high end;
• elevated, very fast and strictly unbleeding yet bodied, textured and detailed bass;
• airy, sparkly, detailed but unoffensive trebles;
• high mids “as good as possible”, within all that precedes.

These are the ingredients to cool jazz and bebop for me, Ikko chose high quality ones, and hired a good chef to cook them into the OH10.

Compared to my other preferred driver for the same job – being Shouer Tape – a choice is quite arduous. At the end of the day I am lucky enough not to be forced into that, as I own both.

Shuoer Tape is sharply dryer, “nasty” in the positive sense of the word for once, and right due to that it can scant into getting fatiguing depending on tracks or authors. Ikko OH10 is a wide bit more “elegant”, less naughty definitely, chiseled actually.

Much like Shuoer Tape, Ikko OH10 is also cable-sensitive, especially once paired to some higher end, revealing source like QP1R. Its stock cable (silver plated oxygen free copper) while not horrible makes them sound too thin for my taste. Alternatives I tried based on single crystal copper or high purity copper do add a decisive little bit of fat around mids and highmids, much like adding milk to some teas.

Both OH10 and Tape feature a sensibly elevated bass line, with particular regards to sub-bass. Depending on the jazz performer or sub-genre I might actually prefer a leaner one – in which case I rather choose Tanchjim Oxygen or final A3000.

Ikko OH10 is also somewhat source sensitive: QP1R for one comes out very musical, almost analogue by itself; even more so does Sony NW-A55; Mojo on the opposite stays more on the dry side, which doesn’t “merry well” with Ikko OH10 for my tastes. With Apogee Groove we are in lucky territory as it can properly directly bias Ikko OH10 (Groove/multidrivers direct compatibility is by design not granted), and the pair is wonderful.

A special mention deserves Ikko OH10’s so uncommon weight. When I first took them in my hand I went “oh my… these will be unbearable”. But it ended up not to be so. Their shape helps incredibly well on that respect: their inverted-drop, almost triangular shape fits so well inside my concha that my outer ear sustains their weight in a totally surprising yet firmly comfortable way.

All well considered, a problem will stay on Ikko OH10 and that’s inertial mass: I would not recommend wearing them while running or working out. Luckily I’m a die-hard couch potato so I can totally disregard the issue.

Disclaimers

The Ikko OH10 unit I talked about is my own property, I did not receive them for free nor on loaner basis. You can find them here.

This article also appears on my personal audio blog, here.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post Ikko OH10 Review (1) – Masterfully Jazzy appeared first on Audio Reviews.

Cons — No balanced circuit; limited Hi Res decoding; pricey.

Executive Summary

The AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt is a natural sounding miniature headphone amp (dac/pre-amp), that even drives power-hungry headphones. It is sourced and powered by phones or computers. For people who don’t want to compromise sound quality.

Introduction

First was the DragonFly, which It hit the market in 2012. I purchased its 2016 re-incarnation DragonFly Black v1.5 upon its release. The DragonFly was the first “thumbdrive” dac of its kind, and v1.5 was the first that worked with smartphones because of its low power drain. And whereas many other companies have copied AudioQuest’s pioneering ideas since, the Black (jointly with the DragonFly Red) still has the lowest battery consumption of all I have tested with my iPhone. See below.

The “Black” has been my go to since it is a workhorse that has accompanied me and my iPhones around the world, from Egypt to Brazil. What I like about the “Black” apart from its power management, is its small form factor, and, of course, its good sound.

AudioQuest added the more powerful DragonFly Red in 2016, and the DragonFly Cobalt in 2019. All DragonFlies all have male USB-A connectors that makes them the only dongles that are actually sticks (“thumbdrives”), when connected to a computer’s USB-A port.

Today, there are portable dac/amps like sand on the beach it seems. They start at below $20, and many of the cheaper ones are pure power-draining ornaments that add nothing to the iPhone’s sound. I tested quite a few of the better ones up to $200, including the DragonFly Red, and TL;DR, the DragonFly Cobalt is the by far best sounding of them all, albeit not the strongest amplifying one.

Specifications

Physical Things and Usability

The DragonFly Cobalt comes with the obligatory travel sheath and the “DragonTail”, a USB-C male to USB-A female adapter (“OTG cable”) to connect to Android devices and newer MacBooks (ever attempted to attach the tail of a dragon to a dragonfly? Works only in this case). The device is attractively lacquered with car varnish – and you may wax it occasionally to preserve its looks :). It feels really good in my hand…

Functionality and Operation

The plug’n’play AudioQuest DragonFly connects to your computer’s USB port (Windows, Mac) and, via “DragonTail” or Apple camera adapter to your Android/iOS device, respectively. It converts the digital signal to analog and amplifies it. The volume is controlled from the source device, which essentially acts as a pre-amp.

The DragonFly has no battery, which is good and bad. Good in that it will not fall victim to planned obsolescence and work for a long time. Bad in that it draws power from your phone and therefore shortens the period between charges.

The DragonFly Cobalt streams Tidal masters (MQA) and Qobuz, and works with all the non-audiophile streaming services such as Spotify, Bandcamp, Soundcloud etc. And it is firmware upgradeable.

The dragonfly-shaped LED is lit in different colours according to status or sample rate: red: (standby),  green (44.1kHz),  blue (48kHz), yellow (88.2mkHz),  light blue (96 kHz),  purple (MQA).

Apart from its use as a headphone amplifier, the DragonFly Cobalt can be used as a dac in combination with a dedicated (desktop) headphone amp. For this purpose, its volume should be cranked up to close to but not quite to 100% (100% which would cause distortion and ringing according to Archimago’s measurements). This worked well with my Schiit Magni 2U.

The downside of the driverless technology is that the microchip’s USB receiver limits resolution to 96kHz PCM on Hi Res audio…which is not that important as it only affects 5% of audio files. I personally do not have any such Hi Res files.

What distinguishes the DragonFly Cobalt from most dongles (including the other two DragonFlys) is its dac functionality including its sophisticated USB noise filtering (any computer or phone is a source of electromagnetic interferences that deteriorates the audio signal).

Yes, many more devices feature the same ESS ES9038Q2M dac chip (costs $12 or less when purchased in large amounts), and people WRONGLY go by chip and amplification power when selecting a dongle. This is inherent to the fact that most of these devices are sold by mail order, which excludes the possibility of trying them out first.

But it takes more than that to produce good sound and therefore to define value: it is the dac chip + dac implementation (including filtering) + analogue output stage of the dac + the amp design…many variables.

It is therefore not surprising that my four devices featuring the ESS ES9038Q2M dac chip, that is the Cobalt, Shanling UA2, the Khadas Tone2 Pro, and the EarMen TR-amp, all sound completely different.

As to noise suppression, the DragonFly Cobalt borrows some of the AudioQuest JitterBug’s filtering by deploying an “extremely low-noise power supply” and a single low-jitter clock that minimizes timing errors. This is claimed to result in optimal signal-to-noise ratios and to resolution. You find the nitty gritty technical details on the product page , in the manual and the DragonFly comparison sheet.

Amplification and Power Management

The DragonFly Cobalt has a nominal output of 2.1 V (like the DragonFly Red). This places the Cobalt into the midfield of the countless $100 to $300 headphone dac/amps. Hobbyist Archimago measured a slightly higher voltage of 2.23 V at an output impedance of 0.4 Ω. John Atkinson of Stereophile measured 2.16 V at 0.45 Ω.

This is enough power to drive my 300 Ω Sennheiser HD 600 headphone sourced by my MacBook Air (the DragonFly Black with 1.2 V output worked, too, but was reaching its limits).

I had mentioned that DragonFly series does not have an internal battery but draws power from the source. This is of little relevance for a computer, but important for mobile use with a phone.

Power Consumption Comparison: Parameters and Raw Results

I tested the power consumption of several portable headphone amps connected to my iPhone 5S. The conditions were as identical as possible: 3h test, volume calibrated to 85 dB  ± 0.5 dB white noise with Dayton microphone, no sim card, BT off, no other apps open; network on, 32 ohm Blon BL-03 iem, Genesis’s Supper’s Ready (from the Seconds Out album) played in an endless loop.

The iPhone’s battery was fully charged at the start of the test and the remaining charge was measured thereafter. The result is shown in the table below. Since the tests were performed at different times and considering the iPhone’s ongoing battery deterioration, the results have to be seen with a grain of salt.

[collapse]

In a 3h battery-drain test of several dongles with my iPhone 5S, the DragonFly Black and Red had the lowest consumption, the DragonFly Cobalt needed about a third more, which placed it in the midfield of my test candidates. But it could have done far worse than that….see the detailed results. I would call the Cobalt’s battery consumption ok but not outstanding. In this respect, the DragonFly Red is the winner….of all the more powerful models tested.

AudioQuest DragonFly Red USB DAC + Preamp + Headphone Amp Review – Still Lord Of The Flies?

Sound

Equipment used: Macbook Air/iphone SE first generation; Sennheiser HD 600 / HD 25, Triaudio TRI3, Shozy Form 1.4, Dunu Zen; Schiit Magni 2 Uber.

Upon plugging the DragonFly Cobalt into my Mac for the first time, it sounded instantly better to my ears than my familiar DragonFly Black and all the other dongles I had tested – actually MUCH better – and it has stayed like that since…which makes the Cobalt most appealing to my ears.

The Cobalt sounds more natural and analog, and therefore smoother than the rest…it has this sense of lightness, there are no corners. The smoothness and refinement is particularly evident at the top end where the DragonFly Red, for example, is more forward and edgier. The Cobalt’s presentation is linear without elevated bass or top end.

Another aspect the Cobalt excels in is micro- and macrodynamics. While a rock band or an orchestra delivers a good punch, the Cobalt distinguishes small details around a single instrument or the interplay between two, for example oboe and harpsichord. This works for both, electric rock music and classical music. It brought the best out of the $700 Dunu Zen earphone.

The sonic image was like an analog photo: atmospheric, with a good depth of field, never overpixelated or oversharpened.

In terms of headroom, I don’t find it inferior to the dongles with a second, balanced circuit such as the $200 EarMen Sparrow or the $85 Shanling UA2. So no reason to fiddle with different headphone cables – one problem less. I never had the impression I just had a little stick in my MacBook but a desktop sized integrated dac-amp. Using the Cobalt as a dac with the Schiit Magni amp worked well and underlined its sonic quality.

The Shanling UA2, in comparison has a less linear response with a boosted and bumpier sounding bass, and thinner mids lacking the Cobalt’s creamier texture, sense of lightness/relaxation, and great midrange clarity. It also features a more powerful balanced output. The Shanling UA2 is a severe power drain on your mobile device.

Value – It’s the Dac, Stupid

At $299, the DragonFly Cobalt does not come cheap compared to its competitors, but, does it, really? The Cobalt was initially marketed as a dac, at a time when most competition was company internal; and it is the dac where its money is. The dac is the “voice” (sound quality), and the amplification makes it louder (sound quantity). Louder does not mean a better sound. Garbage in, garbage out…you know that.

Audiophiles pay $$$$ for a good dac for their home system, and they may add sophisticated USB noise filtering and re-clockers that add more $$$$. The DragonFly Cobalt has a bit of each built in – the competition, including the DragonFly Red, does not – and it shows in terms of sound quality. So, what you get for your money is – duhhh – better sound quality.

Therefore, if you get satisfaction from not having made compromises to sound quality, the Cobalt is for you. If you get satisfaction from a bang for your buck, get the Red or something similar.

YouTube Video

Concluding Remarks

The DragonFly Cobalt is a “piece-of-mind” product. It has its price but you cannot go wrong as it offers the best compromise between sound quality, amplification, and power consumption. Its value is mainly defined by sound quality combined with its long-term usability (without consumable built-in battery). I have treasured my DragonFly Black for over 5 years now, and for good reasons. And it will not be different with the superior DragonFly Cobalt.

The lesson learnt from reviewing dongles in the last year is that there are large differences in sound quality at similar specs. And the Cobalt leads the pack.

Quite frankly, I had not expected the DragonFly Cobalt to sound this good. Considering its qualities, the Cobalt is my new standard for miniature portable dac/amps.

Until next time…keep on listening!

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The DragonFly Cobalt was kindly provided by AudioQuest upon my request and I thank them for that.

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I did take my sweet time on this one as I’m particularly sensible to the topic. If one thing I learnt of this hobby is that source quality comes ages before drivers quality. I won’t anticipate the conclusions but in a nutshell Micro iDSD Signature is a remarkable player, sporting some great and even some unique features.

At-a-glance card

Physical endowment

Infrastructure

The device is easily transportable, but nowhere near to pocketable. Not really eligible if you are looking for a walker. Good as a sitter though.

Battery

Micro iDSD Signature exclusively works from its internal battery, it never gets power from the USB VBUS bit.

This is good from the sound performances standpoint as while playing it relies solely on local battery generated power which is apriori less electrically dirty compared to the power coming from an uncontrolled host, or from a budget power supply unit.

On the other hand this means Micro iDSD Signature needs to be charged, and this happens from a separate USB port, a USB-C one.

The battery charging circuit is compatible with quick chargers and protected vs excessive voltage. Based on a direct interview I had with iFi tech people the maximum exploited charging amperage is 1.5A – whatever above that will not harm the unit, but will be wasted.

Next to the USB-C port dedicated to battery charging there is a tiny color-phased led: that is the sole visual indication informing us about the battery charge level.

Battery capacity is above decent. iFi declares circa 12h on Eco mode, 9h on Normal mode depending on load and volume of course. My experience matches such values, give or take.

Lastly, micro iDSD Signature has no “sleep” feature: if you leave it on while not playing batteries will go on discharging.

Inputs

Micro iDSD Signature has no analog input. So unlike its predecessor Micro iDSD Black Label it can not be used as a standalone amplifier. Which is a pity, as the amp section is not bad at all as you’ll read later.

Two digital input are available: USB and S/PDIF.

The S/PDIF port accepts either 3.5mm coax or Tosink optical connections (a Toslink mini-plug adapter is supplied), but exclusively supports PCM only up to 192KHz sample rates.

The USB port is iFi’s “usual” recessed-USB-A-male connector (same as on Nano iDSD BL, Hip Dac, etc). Depending on firmware, up to PCM 768KHz / DSD512, in addition to MQA, are supported through this channel.

As mentioned above, the USB-A port is for data only and no power charging happens from this end. Which is good, as VBUS is usually a major source of electrical noise and therefore distortion.

The bad news though is that Micro iDSD Signature includes only limited, anyhow insufficient, “USB filtering” features. And it shows.

Ifi’s description talks about an “intelligent memory buffer” relying on a high precision internal clock. The presence of a (legacy) iPurifier circuitry inside is also in the specs. That said, I tested Micro iDSD Signature both natively plugged onto my PC and plugged through my Nano iUSB3.0 conditioner – and the output quality difference is significant. USB dejitter inside Micro iDSD Signature is sadly not something to write home about and this is bad when looking at its DAC module quality (more on this later) which does deserve a much better effort on this front.

My assessment has been conducted using Nano iUSB3.0 upstream. For your curiosity, here you can find some info on Nano iUSB3.0 and the general digital stream conditioning topic.

Outputs

Micro iDSD Signature offers both 6.3mm and 4.4mm phone analog output, and 2xRCA line output.

The Line output works on fixed parameters: > 2V voltage, < 240 Ohm impedance, > 117dB (A) are the key declared values.

Phone outputs come with some very interesting modulation features such as the option to select 3 different amplification power levels (labelled Eco, Normal and Turbo mode), and engaging a built-in iEMatch circuit. Much more on these down below, in the Amp module section.

Very appealing is also the adoption of a full-analog volume control, technologically offering better quality compared to a (cheaper) digital volume modulation option.

Finally, Micro iDSD Signature offers 2 switchable sound shaping options called XBass+ and 3D+, which I again I will cover in better detail later below.

Power mode selection, iEMatch circuit, Xbass+ and 3D+ only apply to headphone outputs. All of these are totally uneffective on Line output.

Differently to what happens on most similar devices, Micro iDSD Signature provide exactly the same power levels either on its 6.3mm or on its 4.4mm phone out ports.

This is evidently not unrelated to the fact that both ports are actually linked to the same “S-Balanced” internal circuit.

I’m a strong supporter of the S-Balanced concept. So much so that I think iFi should dedicate more attention to it and better “close the loop” in terms of offering their users all the tools needed to fully exploit their technology. Let me explain.

For how hard I tried, I never found a 6.3 TRRS M connector available for purchase. Nor I would know where to buy a 4.4mm TRRS M to 3.5mm TRS F adapter, for that matter. iFi themselves do not offer any of such adapters on their options catalogue – and this is really odd to say the least.

Long story short, while and right because I understand the value of the S-Balanced option included on iFi Nano iDSD Black Label much better – where no 4.4mm nor 2.5mm native-balanced port is available – in the Micro iDSD Signature case I think no user possibly can take advantage of the connectivity flexibility opportunity, which will rest as an unexploited value.

So in daily practice the user will expoit Micro iDSD Signature’s balanced-ended and single-ended phone outputs “the old way”, “as if” they were a single-ended-only port (6.3) and a balanced-ended-only port (4.4).

Unlike what happens on most competition the user will get equal power from either port, and very similar cleannes too (the S-Balanced circuit behind Micro iDSD Signature’s 6.3 port will deliver uncommonly low crosstalk to single-ended loads as per design – you did read the whitepaper didnt you?).

The DAC module

Firmware options

Like most if not all other iFi DAC devices, Micro iDSD Signature can run a range of firmware variants, each offering specific features or optimisations. I find iFi’s approach of leaving the user free to choose amongst such different options a very welcome added value.

Firmware packages and the apps required to flash them are freely available on iFi’s web site, here.  The flashing process is really easy and straightforward, at least on Windows platform (did not try on Mac).

The 3 significant versions to choose from for Micro iDSD Signature are:

I’m not much into DSD (I’ll explain why in a later article maybe) and I don’t de facto currently own nor plan to own music files sampled above 192KHz, so the two options which get my attention are 7.0 and 7.0c.

Their fundamental difference is one only but a significant one at that: with 7.0c iFi’s own GTO (Gibbs Transient Optimised) filter replaces Burr Brown’s native reconstruction filters.

I strongly recommend you read iFi’s whitepaper about why and how this may be technically desireable, or not.

Did you read the paper? C’mon do it! Seriously…

As you’ve seen the paper focuses on throughly illustrating GTO’s output features while leaving another important aspect in the background: with 7.0c Micro iDSD Signature will systematically upsample all digital input coming from the USB port up to 32 bit / 384KHz resolution prior to feeding the DAC chips. For what I seem to have understood this is fundamentally required for the GTO filter itself to work as intended.

It’s at this point worth noting (or remembering, for those who follow my articles) that I already experienced iFi’s GTO implementation in conjunction with Micro iDSD Signature’s smaller sibling, the Nano iDSD Black Label.

My full take on that is here, but in short: on Nano iDSD BL the GTO option “sounds worse” than the native ones – for my tastes at least. My suspect is in that case the upsampling effort ended up not adequately turned into higher sound quality delivery due to inherent dac bandwidth limitations.

DAC performances

Micro iDSD Signature on firmware 7.0 offers very nice DAC performances.

Range is superbly extended, sub-bass is fully and correctly rendered, bass is bodied and especially phenomenally controlled, mids are present without exaggerations and trebles are powerful and vivid.

Particularly significant are cleanness, note separation, imaging and layering.

Directly compared to my reference DAC which is Apogee Groove (my take here), Micro iDSD Signature on firmware 7.0 has a deeper lowend extension on one side, a less extended treble span on the opposite side. Tonally it comes accross even more controlled than Groove on the bass (up to delivering a “leaner” flavour there), very similar on the mids and trebles. Draws on 3D space very, very well, although still not precisely at Groove level. On space rendering alone, Micro iDSD Signature is the single DAC that comes closer to Groove that I heard as of yet, and that’s saying quite something.

A very evident feature of Micro iDSD Signature DAC which is worth underlining is tight transients.

The “Bit Perfect” option is very tight. All notes are snappy, razor cut. Switching onto Minimum Phase or Standard transients get a tad more relaxed, less “dry”, yet the general impact stays way into “analythical” territory, especially when compared to a more “musical” alternative e.g. Apogee Groove.

In terms of transients rendering Micro iDSD Signature is actually more on Chord Mojo ballpark – for those who have experience with that. Mojo stays a bit ahead of Micro iDSD Signature on its unique capacity to close the gap between front and back instruments, however Micro iDSD Signature provides quite evidently better results in terms of extension, lack of coloration, and detail, and seriously beats Mojo on space rendering (which never was Mojo’s specialty, there’s that…).

With firmware 7.0c Micro iDSD Signature will upsample all digital traffic incoming from the USB line prior to passing it to its DAC chips.

While this does not produce any “dramatic” difference when the original samples come at an already high resolution (96, 176 or 192 KHz), an evident improvement is audible when 44.1 or 48KHz material is being supplied, and especially so of course if the track mastering is good.

The improvement is of course mainly on spatial reconstruction, size shaping and imaging.

Pulling back the comparison vs Apogee Groove, firmware 7.0c comes out as a major point of advantage for Micro iDSD Signature. Both DACs show great mastery beyond the 40KHz mark (where most of the information on space, reverberations etc come from) but that only is applicable if there actually is some digital data in that region to be decoded. On native 96KHz++ material the two DACs compete head-to-head. On lower sample rate material Micro iDSD Signature offers a built-in, automatic and very well implemented (!) upsampling option, while Groove has to rely on the same happening on the host (if ever.

Another interesting note: Micro iDSD Signature is very much able to exploit the GTO upsampling and convert it into a tangible benefit to the user when busy with sub-hires music at the very least, while the same does not happen on Nano iDSD Black Label. Why? I don’t know. I suspect this is either because the GTO algorithm is better implemented on fw 7.0c (usable on Micro iDSD Signature) vs fw 5.3c (usable on Nano iDSD BL), or because Nano’s lower-tier DAC section is unable to exploit the opportunity. Or both.

Another very important note to make about GTO is that it renders transients even tighter compared to the already tight Bit Perfect option on non-GTO 7.0 package. And, there’s no escape: when 7.0c is installed only one filter is available – no Minimum Phase or Standard alternatives are attainable. You better like it as is…

And simply put, I don’t. I find it excessive. I do appreciate of course clarity and cleanness, and precise rendering of each note – it’s a matter of “levels”. This is of course totally subjective. I have friends considering GTO’s reconstruction “supremely natural”. I’m afraid I can’t anticipate which one you will prefer.

One dufitul last note: I don’t use MQA, so I did not try / test Micro iDSD Signature’s proficiency on that. Not big loss for you as due to what I just wrote I honestly haven’t got any decent experience / opinion to offer on this topic, other than the trivial comments you can easily find everywhere and don’t certainly need me to paste here.

Summarising: Micro iDSD Signature offers very, very good DAC performances. Imaging and spatial drawing in particular are nothing short of spectacular. GTO firmware offers automatic well-executed upscaling to sub-hires audio tracks. Transients are rendered from quite to very tightly, which more musical-sounding presentation lovers might not like.

The AMP module

As I quickly pointed out up above, Micro iDSD Signature offers some very interesting features when it comes to its internal amp section.

Firstly, its internal S-balanced architecture is equally available on both the 6.3 and 4.4 port, although for the reasons explained above in the real world scenario you can bet the two ports will be used as if the former was single-ended only, and the latter balanced-ended only. Too bad.

Secondly, and obviously related to the previous point, both ports provide the same output power levels – so choosing either is not a matter of power delivery, rather of convenience, and of a little cleaner output (better xtalk value) when a balanced connection is established on either port – so de facto on the 4.4 one for lack of avaialble 6.3 trrs connectivity options.

Finally,  it allows for power level reconfiguration at the click of a switch to optimally supply high impedance cans – requiring as high voltage swings as possible – or low impedance and low sensitivity ones, like planars – requiring little voltage and very intense currents – or even IEMs. Three different “powering levels” are available, selectable with a switch on the device side, and a built-in IEMatch module is also available for added measure.

At the Normal power level – the intermediate one of the three total – Micro iDSD Signature outputs something short of 2W max power (a bit less than 1W RMS @ 32 Ohm) and 5,5V max swing. That’s already great power.

My Shure SRH1540 (46 Ohm 99dB, but much more current hungry than spec facevalues tell) are biased very satisfactorily on Normal level: bass is full while also staying very controlled, trebles are nicely sparkly – within the limits of a treble-polished driver like 1540 of course.

Indeed, switching iEMatch on makes the situation even better as it tames a further bit of the unneeded voltage swing, making bass come out futher controlled and cleaner. A real pleasure to hear. IEMatch High setting is already sufficient in this case, which is consistent with SRH1540 impedance being still significantly higher than IEMatch-H’s 2.5 Ohm output impedance.

Switching Micro iDSD Signature to Turbo is not a good choice for SRH1540 – and that’s perfectly in line with logic too. The effect of excessive voltage swing on a low impedance load like that is similar to a taxing “Super High Gain” option: dynamics get closed-in, range is compressed, highmids get glary and expecially midbass goes too bloomy.

Same situation takes place with Koss KPH30i (60 Ohm 101 dB). Best biasing is obtained from Normal power + IEMatch-High. Eco power makes them sound muddy(er). Turbo power is totally excessive, KPH30i presentation gets unnatural.

As those who follow my articles probably already know, I’m not into high impedance cans, nor into extremely power hungry planars so I won’t comment on how the Turbo option does in those cases. Suffice here to say that Turbo setting promises 10V max and a tad more than 4W max power (1.5W RMS @ 64 Ohm), not peanuts at all for a portable device and many budget desktop ones either!

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I must stand and vigorously clap hands at how iFi solved the IEM equation instead: the combined benefits of the Eco power option and the built-in IEMatch module are nothing short of spectacular.

As all technically aware audiophiles know, IEMs despise high voltage and most times high power altogether. Impedances below 32 ohms – sometimes as low as 8 Ohm or less – like those on IEMs require (require, not simply prefer) low voltage swings, which is the exact opposite of what a voltage modulation amp powerful enough to drive higher impedance headphones is designed for.

When up to driving IEMs the very first thing to do on Micro iDSD Signature is to set the power switch to Eco setting. This makes sure the maximum delivered voltage is limited to 2V, and the maximum power is 500mW on an 8 Ohm load, which is way more than 99.9% of IEMs out there requires.

All of my IEMs are in facts perfectly driven by Micro iDSD Signature, on Eco mode and – on a case by case basis – with IEMatch set to Ultra or High. Same for my final Sonorous-II (16 Ohm 105 dB) which are closedback overears electrically behaving very much like IEMs: the best setup for them is Eco, with IEMatch turned off, although Normal + IEMatch Ultra is also a strong contender.

Micro iDSD Signature already comes with a number of features making some of its IEMatch built-in circuitry redundant, read useless: I’m talking about very low output impedance, support for loads as low as 8 Ohm and a volume pot in the analog-domain. That said, the IEMatch module stays beneficial to 2 main purposes: further reduce output voltage swing, and eliminate sibilance on hyper-sensitive IEMs.

The former of the two benefits is especially intriguing: on a case by case basis some drivers do sound better under Eco power other sound better under Normal power with IEMatch Ultra switched on on top. And for some others… it’s hard to tell – e.g. final Sonorous-II, Tanchjim Darling, final E5000.

Mind you: from a purely technological standpoint the topic is arguable upon to say the least. Post-attenuation does come with benefits and drawbacks like, I guess, everything else in life. The information I want to convey here is not how exactly I recommend to set Micro iDSD Signature to work best with this or that IEM, rather that the device offers the flexibility to try different ways to that target.

A truly multipurpose amp – finally!

As I mentioned before, to my knowdge at least there’s no single amp implementation out there yet which is capable of feeding different impedance/sentivity drivers with equally optimal results. And to my understanding, there’s a solid technological reason for this : high impedance cans “sound better” when submitted to high voltage swings, low impedance HPs and IEMs distort in the same condition. Simple as that.

Conceptually we have 3 possibilities then:

1. Use different amps for the various cases.
2. Use a high voltage amp, and aposteriori cut its output voltage down. That’s where attenuators e.g. IEMatch may help.
3. Use a sort of “configurable” amp…

Micro iDSD Signature’s amp can be reconfigured to optimally support very high impedance cans (Turbo mode) or low sensitivity cans (Normal mode) or low impedance + high sensitivity IEMs (Eco mode) offering each category its own best welcome powering profile.

When facing low impedance loads, in addition to selecting Eco power mode there may still be need to engage the built-in IEMatch module to furtherly reduce output voltage, which will benefit current delivery to particularly sensitive drivers, and/or cancel some hiss out of the most sensitive of those.

Of course a curious question as this point might be “which of the two features should I preferably use before the other: Eco power mode, apriori limitating voltage swing, or IEMatch, cutting it down aposteriori” ? I had my own opinion on that already but I asked iFi’s designers’ take on this.

With regards to Turbo/Normal/Eco modes vis-a-vis headphone matching, our AMR audio background means that we are of the opinion that while the impedance of a headphone is a factor to consider in matching, the over-arching one is actually power > sensitivity.

This is why we developed the headphone calculator which takes the power output of a headphone amplifier and compares it to the headphones to be used. The resulting volume level will give the customer the best insight into the ‘matching’. Just like a 1,000W Mark Levinson would be a poor match for high-sensitivity horns rated at 110dB sensitivity. Or a 10W 300B SET would not drive 87dB Magicos.

iFi’s headphone calculator is indeed an informative but most of all educative tool. Playing with it we can find out how wrong are common assumptions about this or that driver (IEMs or Headphones alike) requiring “high power”…

I can’t begin to stress how brilliant I find iFi’s choice to equip Micro iDSD Signature with what it takes to allow the user to substantially change its amping behaviour to cope with the dramatically diversified nature of those drivers out there. A really, really welcome idea, and a unique one in the mid-tier segment this device partakes into at the very least, but to my knowledge in the one above too.

Sound shaping addons

Similar to what is also offered on other iFi devices, Micro iDSD Signature’s amp section features two optional circuits providing bass enhancement and imaging improvement at the flick of a switch.

Both features are according to iFi’s documentation entirely implemented in the analog domain. No DSPs are involved which promises the minimal impact on sound quality of course.

“XBass+” behaves like what an EQ expert would call a low shelf positive filter. By ear I would say it pushes lows up by 2dB-ish from 100Hz down. Very personally speaking, I don’t like these types of options in principle – irregardless of their implementation quality that is – my fundamental position being: if I want more bass than the one delivered by the driver I’m using right now… I swap on a different driver. In the special Micro iDSD Signature case, XBass+ may be actually welcome to “compensate” the device super-lean bass presentation, especially as delivered by the GTO filter (fw 7.0c).

“3D+” is a “crossfeed filter”, i.e. a function that puts “some” of the right channel output into the left one and viceversa, simulating on headphones what happens when listening to loudspeakers. Within its limits (it’s not parametric, configurable etc – just a mere on/off) and situationality (effects are totally evident on some tracks, minimal on others) the trick is really nice, and I used it quite often. My main application case are those original jazz masters from the 60ies where mixing tended to be executed by hard panning each instrument on a single channel only: 3D+ sounds almost magical in those cases.

Conclusions and evaluations

Well, I’m certainly not known for generosity when it comes to assign good scores. This time I must say that from the technical standpoint Micro iDSD Signature deserves a very high mark.

DAC reconstruction quality on high-res lossless material is at the absolute top I found below 1K$ and possibly above. The sole other devices who can play an even match with Micro iDSD Signature on this part are Apogee Groove and Questyle QP1R, all the rest being a full class below at the very least.

Not only: adopting firmware 7.0c Micro iDSD Signature automatically upsamples all USB input thereby granting a significant share of the same quality to sub-highres tracks. Upsampling is not black art, it is very possible to implement that on the host, and feed competing DACs with the same improved input, and obtain improved output from those too – but it must be done, and done right, which is an extra burden and cost, while Micro iDSD Signature does it “out of the box”, and does it right too, and this is a major value on my scorebook.

Micro iDSD Signature’s DAC is so good that a no brainer rec is to exploit the Line Out option and interconnect into a serious quality desktop amp any time that’s possible (nothing short of a Jotunheim-2 at the very least will make Micro iDSD Signature’s DAC decent justice), but mobile DAC+AMP standalone operation will not disfigure at all when compared to no matter which top alternative device in its same price class.

Always talking about standalone mobile features, Micro iDSD Signature’s ability to reconfigure its amping section on the fly to optimally cope with IEMs or low impedance cans or high impedance hps or “nasty” planars is totally brilliant, and deserves – that alone – a standing ovation for the idea, and the implementation quality too.

As always where there’s light there’s some shadow too. The DAC section is so good that the lack of adequate built-in USB dejitter is very evident, and frankly I find it almost disappointing. On an even more subjective level, all filters in general and the GTO filter in particular deliver extremely tight transients – some may find them “more natural”, I find the opposite.

Last but not least, the price – and the value. At € 699,00 EU list price Micro iDSD Signature is not an inexpensive device. And please add another € 50 at the very least (iSilencer) or better another € 150 (iPurifier3) to dutifully add some very deserved USB cleansing.

Is it worth it?

Well, evaluating it in terms of a truly mobile (if not pocketable) device, not relying on host batteries, offering top class DAC competence, and truly capable to optimally bias anything, from the “easiest” IEM up to the “nastiest” planar overear well… Micro iDSD Signature is an easy win.

Such consideration does not make its price tag cheaper of course, but at least for my experience finding another battery driven device with similar output quality at a significantly lower price – at least to my knowledge – is today a hard task.

Totally different is of course the perspective if we plan a mainly static, “desktop” application. In such case Micro iDSD Signature stays a very significant device, but the price of its unexploited portions would make its cost/result score poorer.

Disclaimer

This Micro iDSD Signature device has been provided as a temporary loaner unit by iFi for the sole purpose of my assessment.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

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Introduction

As its company cipher, final puts a significant research effort in each product in the first place. A3000 has been conceived and developed as an evolution of their A series, which started last year with flagship model A8000. Also last year, the B range was also introduced by final.

According to final, both A and B IEM lines are different stems off a single base-concept: instead of trying to develop a mythical (read inexistant) “perfect all rounder” earphone, final considered how different types of music call for different presentation features, and went from there.

Sound design for these models has been undertaken with attention to the relationship between spatial impression and dynamic range of music, and the physical characteristics of earphones and headphones.
We have categorized sound creation on music recording onto these two axes: spatial impression and
dynamic range.

One way of thinking regards the distance perception. Classical and jazz recordings are thought to be performed with emphasis on aspects of spaciousness, such as sense of distance, broadness and reverberation. On the other hand, rock, pops and many of the recent animation soundtrack recordings, spaciousness is not as highly emphasized. There is thought to be greater emphasis on clarity, which brings the various instruments and vocals to the front.

Another approach is dynamic range – in other words, changes in loudness over time. If the dynamic range is wide, naturally it is possible to use the change in loudness over time to achieve a more dynamic expression of music. But, there are some types of music for which narrower dynamic range recordings are preferable to allow each of the instruments and vocals to ordinarily appear before the listener’s eyes.

The difference between these two ways of thinking pertains not to which is superior but rather differences in how music is composed and what is demanded of it. With regard to classical music, and that played by orchestra in particular, the spatial orientation of instruments is particularly important. Stringed instruments are positioned nearest to the audience with wind and percussion placed behind them.

Should the balance between the spatial orientation and volume of each group of instruments collapse, the music would disintegrate. For that reason, uniform clarity of sound that allows each instrument to appear before the eyes of the listener is not demanded of this type of music. Even for classical music, a string quartet, for example, would have a narrow dynamic range and the clarity of each instrument would be more prominent. For rock and pops on the other hand, spaciousness is not as necessary as for classical music, and so there is greater emphasis on clarity than spaciousness.

These preconditions are very important, particularly for earphone and headphone listening, and it has become apparent that the implementation of appropriate target curves and driver design result in deeper enjoyment of music.

https://snext-final.com/en/products/detail/B1

TL;DR – for classical and jazz music soundstage and imaging are more important than single sounds definition; the opposite is true for pop & rock.

Moving ahead:

The development of the A series began with the establishment of a new evaluation method by analyzing the relationship between sound quality and physical characteristics, and the result was the A8000. The A3000 has further evolved that evaluation method. We listen to music recorded in different qualities at different volumes.

However, in the conventional evaluation method, it is common to perform subjective evaluation under the condition that the sound pressure that presents the sound is fixed, and it is difficult to judge a good sound that matches the actual product audition. Therefore, as a result of a new research targeting an evaluation method that matches the actual music listening situation, we believe that we were able to produce a product that can be said to be the definitive edition in this price range.

https://snext-final.com/products/detail/A3000

Less elegantly, more vulgarly explained: you like listening to AC/DC? You’ll surely want huge loudness similar to what you experience during one of their concerts. Now tell me: when did you ever encouter deafening high sound volumes (a.k.a. SPL) at a jazz club?

A3000 is not for extraloud, supermeaty, iron-strong AC/DC sound. Hard rock lovers: you can quit now

With A3000 …

Each note is localized so that it emerges with a contour in the low range that spreads slowly, and you can vividly hear the fine touch of the guitar and the delicate vibrato of vocals. Since you can notice the detailed nuances of the music, new impressions will be created from the playlists you are familiar with.

https://snext-final.com/products/detail/A3000

Quite poetic.

Is it exactly like that? Well not “precisely” like that at least for my ungolden ears, or maybe for my unplatinum gear, or both. But one thing is sure for me and is that A3000 is a superb natural-clear-flavoured proposition in the market of classical / jazz / unplugged specialized drivers.

At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Apogee Groove / Questyle QP1R / Sony NW-A55 mrWalkman – JVS SpiralDot tips – Stock OFC cable – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

Technicalities

Physicals

Specifications (declared)

Conclusions

By design (!) final A3000 is supposed to be the opposite of an all rounder, and superbly fine-tuned for its intended application – which, in my experience, is a 100% achieved target.

Even beyond that, very simply put I auditioned no other natural/clear-tuned IEM under €150 which didn’t come with at least one or more of the following inconveniences: driver incoherence, lack of balance, excessive brightness, excessive presence trebles, sibilance. Avoiding all of that at the same time, and doing it at the asking price for A3000 must not be so easy, as it evidently takes a company like final – and for now, to my knowledge, no other – to deliver on that.

Applied to unplugged, acoustic tracks A3000 delivers nothing short of stunning clear sound, imaging and layering, which makes each instrument’s voice in the band pop out with unique authority. I just love how they sound.

Clarity and neutrality being their main cyphers, mid bass and sub bass come accross un-enhanced. A3000’s calibrated precision and emotion, detail and musicality nevertheless are by far the best match I ever auditioned until today applied to cool jazz, under € 150 asking price.

If a punchy, razor-sharp and meaty contrabbasso is a priority when listening to hardbop, A3000 won’t deliver on that. It takes however a pretty penny to have that properly executed, without losing too much on the other counts of course – more precisely I got this on Ikko OH10 for almost twice A3000’s price, or final B3 for more than 3 times that.

Disclaimers

Oh before I forget … A3000 like all of the other final IEMs I own and use are a direct purchase. I did not receive those as sample units, I am not a final reviewer, I have no commercial relations with them (other than being a paying customer of course). At the time of this article, they were solely available from final’s direct shop.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

This article already appeared on my personal audio blog, here

P.S. – Just for the record, as any truly affectionated user already knows, spelling final Co., Ltd. lowercase (“final”) is not a typo

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Cons — Requires tip rolling
– Upper-midrange glare
– Peak around 8KHz can be an issue in some recordings
– Soundstage width is below-average
– Lack of upper-treble air

INTRODUCTION

Single-dynamic driver IEMs have been a rare breed in the flagship territory for a while.

In the years past, most TOTL stuff have either been all-BA or hybrid designs. A subtle letdown for those who prefer a single dynamic setup due to the coherency and the dynamism they are capable of producing.

Dunu raised some eyebrows at the beginning of last year when they announced the Dunu Luna — a $1700 pure Be-foil totting single-dynamic flagship that introduced a number of “firsts” for both the company and the IEM scene in general. The Dunu Zen is a somewhat downscale version of their flagship but this time it’s totting an Magnesium-Aluminium alloy driver. Parallels can be drawn between Focal Utopia/Dunu Luna and Focal Clear/Dunu Zen and you wouldn’t be wrong.

That being said, the Dunu Zen isn’t just some cut-down model, rather it’s got its own identity in terms of tuning along with the ECLIPSE driver system that’s been specifically developed for this model (and will be used in future Dunu models).

As usual, there’s a lot to cover here, so let’s get right into it.

Note: the ratings given will be subjective to the price tier. Dunu was kind enough to send me the Zen as a review loaner (thanks Tom!) Disclaimer

This review was initially published on my blog.

Sources used: Cowon Plenue R2, Questyle CMA-400i, iFi Hip DAC
Price, while reviewed: $700. Can be bought from Dunu’s Official Website.

PHYSICAL THINGS AND USABILITY

IN THE BOX…

I’ll just link to my unboxing video here:

PACKAGING AND ACCESSORIES

Let’s just say that the Dunu Zen sports the best stock cable you’ll get under $1000 mark. Everyone should take a note from Dunu when it comes to the quality and quantity of accessories they provide. The Dunu Zen does have a lot of similarities with the Dunu Studio SA6’s accessory pack though the former comes with an extra airplane adapter and a nice shirt-clip. Also there are some extra pairs of tips that are eerily similar to Sony hybrid tips. Aside from those there are the Dunu signature blue and white tips, though I wish the blue ones had a less stiff stem.

If I have to really nitpick: I wish they came with some Spinfit CP-145/CP-500 tips. That’s about it.
5/5

BUILD QUALITY

If Batman had an IEM, the Dunu Zen would probably be it.

A 316L stainless steel body with a glossy piano-black finish, a slit on the back for Dunu’s proprietary ACIS (Air Control Impedance System) mechanism (now installed as a module), and another vent near the nozzle. The Zen’s build in a nutshell. The circular radiant pattern on the back gives the Dunu Zen a distinct look. The design has some similarities with their flagship, Dunu Luna, with a side-mounted stem that houses the mmcx port but the Dunu Zen has its own design language. Compared to the Luna there aren’t as many subtle design cues but for less than half the price I’m not expecting those either.

The shells feel positively dense, has a unique design, and has no visible imperfections. Biggest issue: it’s a fingerprint magnet and difficult to photograph (!) but those are nitpicks at best.
5/5

COMFORT AND ISOLATION

Isolation is good, though one must note that the Dunu Zen leaks sound due to the ACIS vent. Comfort is excellent as well with a snug fit. Due to the weight of the shells though the fit isn’t as secure as some resin-shell pseudo-custom designs out there.
4/5

DRIVER SETUP

Dunu debuted a new driver system with the Zen that goes by the ECLIPSE trademark. This system doesn’t necessarily indicate the diaphragm material rather how the dome, driver surround, and voice-coil attachment process is executed.

The Dunu Zen has a 13.5mm dynamic driver system with a Magnesium-Aluminium alloy diaphragm where the micro-pores on the diaphragm surface have been filled with nanoDLC to increase surface stiffness. The driver also has a W-shaped dome and this entire assembly reminds me of the Focal Clear driver (which is one of the best dynamic driver systems out there btw).

Another interesting thing about the driver dome here is that it occupies a larger area than the typical driver systems. The magnet assembly is also unique in that it’s a ring-type motor and has 1.8T magnetic flux which is the highest among all single-DD out there to my knowledge.

What all this means is that the Dunu Zen’s driver system allows it to have superior driver control, much better excursion, and faster transients than most other single-dynamic systems out there (with the exception of the Be-driver IEMs).

The following images can be referenced for more detail (All are courtesy of Dunu).

Dunu definitely has poured a lot of work into this new driver system, but it will all be for naught if the sound quality doesn’t live up to the engineering efforts. Fortunately, that’s not the case.

All sound impressions are made with the Dunu Zen + stock cable (2.5mm/4.4mm plugs) + Spinfit CP-500 tips.

TONALITY AND TECHNICALITIES

Dunu Zen has a mostly warm presentation with some emphasis in the upper-mids and mid-treble. The upper-treble is rolled-off whereas the sub-bass gets a boost around the 60Hz region which then slowly tapers off as it reaches 20Hz.

Before proceeding further with the sound impressions, I must talk about the effect tips/insertion depth have on the Dunu Zen’s signature. After trying out several tips I noticed a pattern. The Dunu Zen sounded the best when the distance between the mesh on the nozzle and the output bore of the tip was minimized. Having a larger distance would negatively affect separation/imaging and emphasize the peaks ~2.5KHz and ~8KHz. This leads to a shouty, shrill presentation that I didn’t like personally.

Minimizing the distance with the Spinfit CP-500 tips, by sliding the eartip stem down to the base of the nozzle (pictured below) and then going for a snug fit (by trying to push the IEMs as far in the canals as possible) resulted in a superior presentation. The upper-mid peak only showed up on certain recordings and the 8KHz peak was far less intrusive. Instrument separation and imaging also improved noticeably.

One negative thing about reducing the gap between the nozzle and tip-bore is that it reduces the soundstage width. Given the tonal improvements it’s a worthy sacrifice IMO.

When set up optimally, the Dunu Zen’s bass response stands out the most. The mid-bass texture is some of the best I’ve heard out of an IEM across any price point. Yes, it’s bested by the Sony IER-Z1R’s bass texture but that thing puts almost every IEM to shame when it comes to bass. It’s a wholesale upgrade over any IEM out there that uses a balanced-armature driver for bass and even most hybrid setups. Another aspect of the bass that stood out was the reverb which coupled with the natural decay resulted in an almost physical bass-response. This driver, however, is capable of much more and you can EQ it into a sub-bass monster. With the Cowon Plenue R2’s “Mach3Bass” DSP preset the bass response is frankly bass-head level and almost trades blows with the IER-Z1R. Then again, that’s DSP-based cheating in a sense so I’d only refer to it as a fun experiment.

The transition from bass to mids is handled well with the corner-frequency at ~300Hz adding some body to the mid-bass without clouding the lower-mids. It does add a bit of heft and warmth to the lower-mids and coupled with the emphasized upper-mids (~10dB higher than lower-mids) you get an almost euphonic midrange presentation. Warm, rich, engaging — these are the operative words when describing the Dunu Zen’s midrange. The 2.5KHz peak though can be exaggerated in certain tracks with high pitched female vocals/guitar distortion and can even get slightly shouty, though it never got uncomfortable for me. Your mileage might vary. Male vocals are superb though with baritone vocals getting special treatment. String instruments are put on the forefront and acoustic guitars esp has a nice bite to them.

The treble, then, is the most contentious part of the Dunu Zen’s signature (along with the upper-mid peak though it looks scarier on the graphs IMO). It rolls off drastically after 11KHz or so. Dunu does explain that this is due to the Zen’s driver having higher distortion in the upper-treble region but this also put off those who prefer an airy, ethereal treble. To offset this treble peak, perhaps, Dunu decided to add more presence near the 8KHz region and this can be detrimental if you’re listening to poorly mastered tracks. On most well-mastered material this treble peak didn’t really bother me and even in some shoddily mastered songs I never felt any sibilance or shrillness. Cymbals, hi-hats have slight emphasis on the leading edge of the notes and in busy passages the cymbal hits never bled into one another. It’s the resonance that’s often lost, as can be heard in Lamb of God’s Ruin (2:40 onwards). The treble is resolving enough overall, but I do admit a bit more air would be beneficial.

All that being said, the most underrated part of the Dunu Zen is its overall dynamics, especially how well it handles microdynamics (gradual shift in volumes). Macrodynamics are no slouch either with sudden bass-drops being delivered with gusto. The dynamics are definitely aided by the speed of the driver. The Dunu Zen has the second-fastest dynamic driver I’ve heard till date, with the top spot being taken by the Dunu Luna and Final A8000. Transients are near-instantaneous in their delivery and this leads to a sense of speed that’s hard to come across in the single-dynamic IEM space. No, it won’t beat a planar magnetic headphone for speed but given the physical constraints Dunu did a mighty fine job.

Then comes the soundstage and while the stage depth and height is some of the best in its price class, it’s the stage width that takes a hit. The instruments are placed very close to the listener which somewhat increases note-size. Some might prefer a less intimate and more spacious, ambient listening. For them the Dunu Zen’s presentation will likely be disappointing. However, the superb imaging and instrument separation makes up for the intimate staging, for me at least. For a single-dynamic driver the separation and imaging is truly impressive. Cardinal/ordinal/center imaging is spot on, even convincingly portraying events that are occurring behind you. The separation is also aided by the superior microdynamics with instruments playing at different volumes having their individual place in the stage without overlapping or smearing.

TL;DR: If you can get the ideal fit, Dunu Zen will deliver one of the most dynamic, rich sound out of a single-dynamic setup under $1000. It boasts a tactility of notes across the spectrum that’s very difficult to come by in its price range, esp in all-BA and hybrid setups.

Bass: 5/5
Mids: 4.5/5
Treble: 4/5
Imaging/Separation: 4.5/5
Staging: 3.5/5
Dynamics/Speed: 4.5/5

FREQUENCY RESPONSE GRAPH

My measurements of the Dunu Zen are slightly different than those you see online, esp in the sub-bass region. However, I repeated my measurements numerous times (always trying to center the resonance peak ~8KHz) and the result didn’t change.

SOURCE AND AMPLIFICATION

The Dunu Zen needs a source with low-noise floor since it’s susceptible to hiss. Also I’d recommend a source with low output impedance. It’s very easy to drive otherwise with 112dB sensitivity and 16 ohms impedance. I personally got the best performance out of Questyle QP1R (desktop source) and Cowon Plenue R2 (portable source), 2.5mm out.

SELECT COMPARISONS

vs Fiio FD5 ($320)

The Fiio FD5 is Fiio’s flagship single dynamic model but is priced quite a bit below that of the Dunu Zen. There are some similarities though: both are using high magnetic flux N52 magnets and both are totting DLC coating to some extend (though Fiio further PVD coats the DLC diaphragm with Be).

In terms of accessories, build, and comfort — the Dunu Zen has the upper hand by a margin, esp when it comes to the cable. Zen’s stock cable is miles ahead. The Fiio FD5 does come with the handy Final mmcx assist but that’s about it. When it comes to sound, the FD5 does have better upper-treble reach but it’s a poor imitation of the Dunu Zen’s bass response at best. The midrange is also more engaging on the Dunu Zen. Imaging, separation, dynamics — all are the Zen’s forte, only the soundstage width is better on the FD5 (though height and depth, again, goes to Dunu Zen).

To my ears, the 2x prime premium of the Dunu Zen over the Fiio FD5 is worth it.

vs Dunu Studio SA6 ($550)

I think these IEMs are more complementary than competitive. One is an all-BA setup whereas the other is a single-DD offering.

Both are built well but opt for very different design materials and philosophies. Studio SA6 is a pseudo-custom, 3D-printed resin shell whereas the Zen is an all stainless-steel affair. I’d give the build to the Zen since I’m a sucker for metal housings. As for comfort, I personally prefer the ergonomics of the SA6 more due to its snug fit (the Zen has a slightly looser fit). Both are comfortable for longer wearing sessions, but I’d pick the SA6 if I had to monitor stuff for hours, for example. Both come with similar accessories but I much prefer the tip collection on the Zen. Given its price tag though the SA6 has phenomenal accessory set that rivals many $1000+ options. Zen is more source picky than the SA6. If you want to drive your IEMs out of a budget dongle (though I don’t know why anyone would do that with IEMs like the SA6/Zen) then the SA6 is the better choice. Both scales with higher tier sources but Zen is more transparent to underlying source characteristics.

Now the sound is where things get interesting. In terms of overall signature, the Studio SA6 is definitely more “balanced” of the two, with the Zen having more mid-range emphasis.

Breaking things down, the bass is where things become very stark. The Studio SA6 has excellent bass for an all-BA setup but it can’t hold a candle to the Zen’s texture/articulation of bass notes. Snare hits for example have a physicality that’s missing on the SA6. However, sub-bass rumble is more evident on the SA6 in atmospheric mode. But bass notes are not as well defined as the Zen or even other unvented bass BA drivers (this is an issue with the vented Sonion BA: trades off absolute bass control for slam/physicality).

In the midrange, the SA6 is a bit more laid back and this works well with a variety of genres. Zen’s more up-front midrange might make it too up-front in some recordings (mostly Pop songs with an already emphasized female vocal). I do prefer the male vocals on the Zen more. String instruments are superb on both but Zen highlights the undertones better.

Lastly, the treble. Here in terms of absolute extension, the Studio SA6 is better. However, cymbals sound more lifelike on the Zen. It lacks the airiness I find on the SA6 but the initial hit and subsequent decay sounds more natural to my ears. Sustain instruments (e.g. violin) showcase a more natural decay on the Zen than on the SA6. In the end, this will be dependent upon one’s preferences. If you like the crispness of BA treble and want more extension then the SA6 will be the better fit. If you want a more natural decay and lifelike overtones, Zen is likely the way to go.

As for the rest: timbre goes to Zen, hands down. SA6 is less fatiguing in comparison (I wouldn’t call either fatiguing though, but SA6 is more relaxed). Imaging/separation is superior on the Zen whereas the SA6 has a wider stage (though stage depth/height goes to the Zen). Dynamics are also better on the Zen though for an all-BA set the SA6 is no slouch.

Last but not the least, the value proposition. I think the studio SA6 offers more value in general. The tuning is more suited to a range of genres, the accessories are practically same barring some extra tips and airplane adapter, the fit is slightly better and the overall sound quality is pretty close. The tuning switch is also pretty handy.

That being said, the Dunu Zen is the superior IEM, at least for my tastes/music library. I’m a sucker for a single-DD (esp a well-tuned, technically proficient one) so I guess this is where my bias shines through. Then again, this hobby is mostly a chain of biases and preferences so it’s alright.

vs Dunu Luna ($1700)

I’ve already reviewed the Luna and the Dunu Zen shares a number of similarities with its big brother. First, the basics. Build, accessories, comfort are all better on the Luna. For the price premium though, one should expect this. Luna, though, is more source sensitive than Zen.

Now I’m gonna go straight into sound. In terms of tuning the Dunu Luna is more of an acquired taste than the Dunu Zen. The Dunu Luna has a rolled-off sub-bass and a pretty emphasized 4KHz region (though again, the graphs are scarier than reality). This makes the sound signature more colored and due to the bass roll-off certain genres aren’t done full justice. That being said, the Luna bass is more textured in comparison and has far superior speed. In fact, the Dunu Luna has the fastest dynamic driver in any IEM I’ve heard till date (incl. the likes of JVC FW-10000 and Final A8000). In terms of transients, it’s hard to best the Luna. Dynamics are also superior on the Luna. Resolution is higher, and treble has better extension and articulation. Imaging, staging, separation — all these are just better on the flagship model.

The Dunu Zen though offers a lot of the Luna’s performance at less than half the price, while having better sub-bass extension (thus making it more genre-versatile). Moreover, both the Zen and the Luna offers the same “headphone-like presentation” that’s hard to come by in IEMs. So if you’d want the test of Luna without breaking the bank: Zen’s got your back.

vs Final A8000 ($2000)

Final Audio’s flagship IEM doesn’t quite offer the dizzying array of accessories you get with the Dunu Zen, and the cable is more pedestrian to boot (I so hope they included a balanced cable with this one). I do prefer Final A8000’s carrying case more. IMO it’s the best case-design out there.

In terms of build and comfort they are about par. However, it’s the sound where the differences lie. Similar to the Dunu Luna, Final A8000 is a single pure Be-foil driver and offers nearly the same zippy transients, speed, and technical prowess of the Luna.

The sub-bass on the A8000 is not as rolled-off as the Luna and thus it offers a direct challenge to the Dunu Zen. I do think the Zen is bested by the A8000 in both bass response and upper-mids presentation. That being said, the Dunu Zen has a warmer lower-midrange which I personally prefer. Also, A8000 has a presence region peak ~6KHz which was somewhat fatiguing for me. Dunu Zen doesn’t have such issues. Center-imaging was surprisingly slightly better on the Dunu Zen as well.

The sound signature is different between the A8000 and Dunu Zen, so is the technical prowess where the Final pulls ahead. But again, for less than half the price, Dunu Zen doesn’t sound like that much of a downgrade, and I even enjoy it over the A8000 on poorly mastered tracks (A8000 is brutally revealing).

vs Sony IER-Z1R ($1700)

This is more of a David vs Goliath fight due to the Z1R being Sony’s universal IEM flagship and having a more than 2x price premium, but the conclusion isn’t so cut and dry.

First up: packaging and accessories. The Z1R unboxing experience is as royal as it gets and the Dunu Zen seems fairly pedestrian in comparison. However, when it comes to the actual accessories, the Dunu Zen has the Z1R beat IMO. The tip collection on the Z1R is still great but Dunu just has far superior cables and the quick-switch plug is sheer genius. Also I prefer the Dunu Zen carry case over the jewelry-box like Z1R case which looks awesome but has poor practicality. Next, build quality. Both are well built but the Z1R’s Zirconium shell has a density which is very hard to beat. The Zen build is no slouch by any means but I just can’t get over the steampunk vibe of the Z1R.

Regarding fit and comfort: this one goes to the Zen, hands down. The Z1R is proper huge and won’t fit small ears at all. Also the Z1R requires the nozzle to be fairly flush with your canals so not everyone will find it a pleasant experience. I find it fairly well fitting but still the weight and sheer presence of it persists. The Dunu Zen meanwhile simply disappears in comparison. It’s a heavy IEM but the weight is well-balanced IMO.

Finally, the sound. If I have to summarize: IER-Z1R has the better bass and treble, Dunu Zen has superior midrange (esp vocal and string instruments rendition). Now, a bit more detail. The bass on the Z1R is truly world-class. It’s the best bass I’ve heard till date. The tactility, the sheer physicality and slam, the texture, the sub-bass rumble — it’s practically flawless bass for my tastes. The treble meanwhile has good amount of sparkle and air frequencies are portrayed well. This also gives rise to a massive soundstage and imaging is also very precise (though the Dunu Zen has similarly precise imaging to my ears, but the stage is considerably narrower).

The Zen has great bass but it’s not as good as the Z1R. Also the Zen lacks upper-treble extension which can be problematic for those who needs an airy presentation. However, when it comes to the vocals, string instruments, grand piano — Dunu Zen is my pick simply because the Z1R puts the male vocals/string instruments in the backseat whereas cymbals, bass, female vocals take the front stage. Also the Zen sounds more coherent (though the Z1R is remarkably coherent for a hybrid). Zen also has better center-imaging (center-imaging is a bit diffused on the IER-Z1R in comparison due to the sheer width of the soundstage).

So yeah, the IER-Z1R is every bit the flagship it’s supposed to be, but for an IEM that retails for $1000 less, the Dunu Zen is no less enjoyable and I even prefer it depending on track/genre/mood.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

This review turned out to be a lot longer than I expected. For those who need a quick summary: The Dunu Zen is one of the, if not the best single-DD options available under the $1000 mark. It sits at the zenith of single-dynamic IEMs in that price bracket, from my experience at least.

Technically it’s right up there with some of the multi-BA options and bests Dunu’s own Studio SA6 along with a few others. Tonality-wise, if you can get the ideal fit (shouldn’t be too difficult with tip rolling), you’re gonna have a blast with most of the genres.

It’s not without its drawbacks though and that upper-mid peak can be quite contentious, along with the lack of upper-treble air (though this isn’t as big a deal for me, your mileage may vary). For the majority of the tracks I listen to, though, the Dunu Zen has been absolutely fantastic. Moreover, it gives you much of the Dunu Luna’s technical prowess at $1000 less. Its dynamics are hard to beat, and if you are someone who values the coherency and presentation of a single dynamic-driver the Dunu Zen is something you must try.

MY VERDICT

4.5/5

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This review unit was provided by Dunu.

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Cons — 10 kHz driver resonance peak introduces some hardness at higher volumes.

Executive Summary

The Moondrop Aria is a cohesive sounding single dynamic-driver (“DD”) earphone with a good timbre and excellent technical competence that may suffer slightly from a treble peak. It is a “substantial sidegrade up” from the “slower” Starfield at a lower price.

Introduction

I claim to know a bit about Moondrop single-dynamic-driver earphones. Following their trends from with the Harman-target-tuned Kanas Pro Edition (KPE) and Crescent, through the slightly bass-reduced Starfield variety, to the near-diffuse-field tuned SSR and SSP, I recently ended with the premium Illumination. To be continued.

This is not Moondrop’s first Aria model. The previous one has the same cylindrical shells as the Crescent, and both went somewhat under the radar and were discontinued, prematurely (imo). The $30 Crescent was undermining Moondrop’s own marketing by being competition to their $180 KPE. Yes, it was that good. Will the “new” Aria, which has absolutely nothing in common with the “old” one, also be able to compete with Moondrop’s higher-priced models?

The “new” Aria is Moondrop’s first ~$100 model in over a year. It follows the Starfield by frequency response, which is broadly a bass-reduced Harman target – now with a treble boost. Sound wise both follow the same scheme with the Aria being more cohesive and “disciplined” to my ears. It differs from the lower-priced SSR/SSP by its reduced hotness and better staging.

The similarities between the Starfield and the Aria have been recorded by many reviewers. While this does not come as a surprise, there are distinct differences and – spoiler alert – I prefer the Moondrop Aria for many reasons, from haptic and ergonomics to sound. I actually like it A LOT.

Specifications

Physical Things and Usability

Yes, the Moondrop Aria also offers improved ergonomics. The earpieces have shrunk compared to its older $100-200 single-DD siblings, at least on the outside: the faceplates have become flat so that they sit flush with the ears, the “cherries” don’t stick out as far anymore. Fit and comfort are as good as before and isolation is ok.

The textile cable has no mentionable microphonics and feels as smooth and attractive between the fingers as the earpieces themselves with their matte metal finish. The homogenous presentation is rounded off by the nifty box – could have been a bit more roomy. I take it, Moondrop’s target keyword for the Aria was “compact”…from storage through appearance to sound.

Tonality and Technicalities

Equipment used: MacBook Air/iPhone SE (1st gen.) + AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt; iPod Classic (6th gen.) with Helm DB12 THX mobile amp.

The elephant first: from my holistic view, the Moondrop Aria is a single DD with a tight bottom and a well extended top end, the synergy of which results in a very articulate presentation with extremely good cohesion. The midrange definition further benefits from a 10 kHz driver resonance peak that also introduces some hardness. Nevertheless is the Moondrop Aria a sonic delight that works well with a phone but also does justice to more expensive days/amps.

Don’t tell us it’s got a long trunk, fat legs, and rough brown skin. Tell us instead it’s an elephant!” – RON FROM MEXICO CITY

Sure, the the Moondrop Aria broadly follows the Starfield in its tuning. Apart from some tiny differences at the low end and a slightly reduced upper midrange, the Moondrop Aria features the aforementioned prominent driver resonance peak at 10 kHz, which is clearly audible. But quantities tell us only half the story…let’s focus on the sonic qualities.

Frequency Response Diagrams of Moondrop Aria and Moondrop Starfield

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Whereas many claim there is not much of a difference between Starfield and Aria, the devil is in the small details…which ad up to a snowball effect, at least to my ears. According to the manufacturer, the Moondrop Aria, with its new liquid crystal polymer (“LCP”) diaphragm promises to deliver “excellent transient response and high resolution sound details”, and this is actually true in my opinion. So, what you expect is that the LCP diaphragm should have a better distortion characteristic for low frequencies.

And yes, that’s what I hear. The bass is articulate and well textured, no hint of fuzz or boom, fast bass sections do not get smeared. The well extended low end is well controlled and composed, it fits in like a brick in the wall. One could compare it to a tight sportscar suspension. It was its bass boom the Starfield had been criticized for.

The bottom shelf has consequences for the transition to the lower midrange, the Achilles heel of previous models. It is seamless. In some previous Moondrop DDs, a soft, voluptuous bass led into a lean, neutral vocals department, which did not harmonize at all. In the Aria, bass and vocals are from the same mold. And while the midrange remains neutral and well sculptured in the Moondrop Aria, the less distorting/less smearing bass brings it out better and this also results in midrange clarity and transparency. The upper midrange was kept pretty much the same as in the Starfield – which avoids shoutiness – but only by a hair.

Another difference to previous <$200 Moondrop single DDs is a better treble extension, which also introduces a driver-diaphragm resonance peak at around 10 kHz. This adds some crispness to the overall presentation, but also some hardness at higher volumes. But since it contributes to midrange clarity also, moderate volumes benefit from this resonance.

Adding all this up not only translates to a very articulate, accurate presentation, it also contributes to a reasonably wide (but not the most expansive) and tall soundstage, with a good depth, great spatial cues, as well as a really good definition, separation, and, most of all, to an outstanding note definition and cohesion across the frequency spectrum. Very good technicalities. All this makes for a great listen independent of the Moondrop Aria’s modest price.

Moondrop Aria Compared

Back to the Starfield. Its slower low end and its reduced treble extension makes the whole sonic perception less crisp and cohesive. The differences become most obvious when listening to the whole frequency spectrum in context. It is the cohesion and the faster transients that make the Aria most appealing to my ears. The elephant, you remember…

Compared to the SSP/SSR, the Moondrop Aria is much less spicy and grainy, notes are better defined, and the ceiling on the stage is higher. The Aria sounds simply more homogenous, and is technically better, but you see/hear the handwriting from the SSP/SSR.

Frequency Response Diagrams of Moondrop Aria and Moondrop SSP

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Another recent find is the Whizzer Kylin HE01. It is by no means worse than the Moondrop Aria, just different. And quite a bit.

Frequency Response Diagrams of Moondrop Aria and Whizzer Kylin HE01

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Apart from it retro appearance and its resin build, the Whizzer is easier to drive and more on the fun side. It is exuberant, forward, with more and slightly looser bass, and very intimate vocals.  Moondrop Aria is more disciplined, controlled and composed, and more technical. 

If the Whizzer was the guy in the jeans outfit with a Volkswagen cabriolet on the beach, the Moondrop Aria is the chap in a suit with a mid-sized BMW in front of the opera house. I’d say the Whizzer works better with cheap electronics and you tickle out more of the Aria with a good dac-amp.

YouTube Video

Concluding Remarks

What makes Moondrop distinct from many of their competitors is that they invest in real R&D, that they continuously evolve their technologies, and that they always have some good ideas. And this progressive development shows.

The Moondrop Aria is a winner. It may look inconspicuous and generic on a first glance, but wait until you put them into your ears and switch the music on. Actually, only until you hold them in your hands…It is another step up in Moondrop’s single DD offerings below $200, and that at a lower price. I prefer it over the Starfield based on its cohesion and faster transients. And it likely even puts Moondrop’s KXXS to shame. What else do we want?

Until next time…keep on listening!

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The Moondrop Aria was supplied from Moondrop in Chengdu (but dispatched from Shenzenaudio), and I thank them for that.

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Not only in absolute terms – it is nothing short of an absolutely out-dash-standing device – but in relative ones too: it taught me personally so much for such a low price and effort that even when I outgrow it I will forever stay in debt of a smile and a hug.

And times for back-condescending reminiscence are not even on the horizon at the moment. For the simple reason that I reckon it will take quite some more time for me to have the budget – which I would assess in approximately 1K€ – to invest in a real stack upgrade, vs yet another step in the sidegrade carousel which is what Groove teleported me out of really.

A quick TOC before we start, for those who wouldn’t bother reading “all” my bla-bla (yeah, you’re forgiven):

What’s that?

Apogee Groove is a USB DAC-AMP device.

I’m pretty sure a wide portion of the budget audiophile community have never heard about this, in spite of it being on the market since 2015. Chances are many have never heard of Apogee Electronics Corp. in the first place, indeed.

Apogee is a US-based professional audio equipment designer and manufacturer in business since 1985. They earned their glory (and money) from audio professionals thanks to their patents and products: initially analog filters which would retrofit Sony and other high-end analog devices significantly upgrading their quality, later followed by breakthrough-innovative Digital Audio interfaces. Their target market is musicians, producers, and sound engineers – it’s therefore quite normal their brand is totally off the usual chifi marketing hype circus.

Groove is Apogee’s “entry level” portable DAC-AMP aimed at providing audio pros with an easy-going tool they can carry with them and plug onto their laptops while on the go, delivering a quality which needs to be in-line with Apogee’s higher-end equiment the same customer is supposed to regularly use in their studio. E.g. Apogee Symphony, to name something.

I’m not here for marketing but I find this storytelling video from Apogee’s web site explains superclearly what their intendend positioning is about Groove. (TL;DW: “[Dad, an affirmed musician,] is listening to super-high quality stuff all day every day […] so I bring the Groove, plug it into the laptop, and it feels and sounds as if it was in the studio”)

Getting closer to the actual device: no internal battery, Apogee Groove needs to be connected to a USB host (a PC for example) to even turn on. The USB channel is its only input – both for power and digital data.

“Cmon, cut it. It’s just a dongle!”

Yes and no. Structurally it’s a dongle yes. But it’s bigger, heavier and most of all it absorbs 340mA from the host, which is a lot. It’s therefore technically possible but practically unviable to use a phone, or a tablet, or even a lower end DAP as an easy host / transport. For on-the-go usage a Laptop is reasonably required, or some DIY creativity with a nice battery bank and a tool like iFi iDefender+. But let’s not deviate – for the sake of this article let’s say this is a “hi-power demanding dongle”.

It’s got a single output: 3.5mm single ended phone out. It supports PCM up to 24 bit / 192 KHz, and does not support DSD, nor MQA. Specifications are available here. Some numbers might seem odd at first glance.

“LOL! No MQA, no balanced output. My dongle’s specs are 3 times better, and I can use it for hours on my phone !…”

… Keep reading

As a DAC: just phenomenal

Die-hard measurement freaks may want to take a look here. No, it’s no ASR.

The reconstruction filter is very good, but by far the most important of all those graphs is the frequency response one, which is wonderfuly linear well into the 60KHz range, and that’s why when playing FLACs sampled at 96KHz Apogee Groove delivers clarity and space reconstruction audibly even superior to what it delivers from 44.1KHz data – where performance is nonetheless already a full pair of steps above the usual budget suspects.

Compared to Groove, some other systems (often coming with the not too secondary “feature” of a 10X price tag…) may arguably be even more precisely optimised for 44.1KHz data, but their response drops dramatically rapidly immediately after 20KHz (e.g., Hugo).

Enough graphs. Let’s audition.

Starting from the most evident part: Apogee Groove draws on space in a totally stunning way. Yes, already at 44.1KHz – and even more mesmerisingly at higher sampling rates.

Never heard something like that before, and I yet have to hear anything really similar let alone better. Spatial reconstruction is nothing less than phenomenal out of the box, and that, and imaging, are easily better than what I can hear from Chord Mojo, iFi nano iDSD BL, iFi Micro iDSD Signature, as well as Questyle QP1R, Lotoo Paw 6000 and Gold Touch – when considering their DAC performances. Groove is really one class above. At least one.

Apogee Groove’s DAC also delivers high end detail, texture, openness and intonation. All other DACs I heard as of yet barred none offer a paler representation of instrument textures. Some may have a blacker background (e.g. Micro iDSD Sig), or can offer higher sharpness on high end details (e.g. Mojo), but most if not all the alternatives I heard are fundamentally duller (in comparison) and/or smear on detail and/or miss out on that unique, incredibly well calibrated “suspense factor” Groove puts in transients.

Summarising: Apogee Groove delivers a totally unique dimensional feel to the sonic images. It’s technical, but musical. Controlled, but emotional.

Compared to mid-tier competition Apogee Groove’s DAC wins easy, and big. By just casually plugging it in and listening the difference it totally obvious.

Its DAC tuning quality taken per se is actually at an even higher level than its price would suggest when compared to professional tier alternatives, but in that case Apogee Groove’s small physical size starts to represent an issue as it makes it technically impossible to pack high level of power filtering inside, or a separate, cleaner powering line, like it can be found on superior systems (Holo May, Schiit Yggdrasil…).

The little kid can be belped a bit though, and per my experience it’s big time worth doing it, as its performances furtherly improve and significantly so:

• privilege a Linux distro + a technical, lightweight music player, or an Android box + UAPP, over a generic Windows or Mac system;
• filter out and/or divert the VBUS power line into a cleaner source;
• manage grounding issues and rebalance DC;
• reclock / regen the USB signal;
• etc

On my #1 desktop stack Apogee Groove is USB-connected to the laptop host and powered via an iFi Nano iUSB3.0 (my take on that here) + an Uptone USPCB. The difference vs plugging directly onto the host is totally evident: voicing is furtherly open, detailed, imaged. I’ll soon finalise my switch from the laptop onto a Linux based box to furtherly improve the upstream quality (iUSB3 is a nice filter, but it’s always better having less dirt to filter out in the first place isn’t it).

Surely, additional infrastructural elements as a better PS, some competent USB reclocker etc will add to the total cost. Again, if the comparison reference is mainstream chifi DAC or DAC-AMP none of that is needed: Apogee Groove will run circles around those “as-is”. Integrating Apogee Groove with additional infrastructural elements serves the purpose of making it “clinge to” much upper-tier (i.e. way more expensive alternatives).

As an AMP: here’s where it gets tricky

First time I plugged my E4000 into Groove I had a sort of jaw-dropping reaction. That was unlike any other source I ever tried. Most of this was surely coming from Groove’s DAC capacities, but how much did the AMP part contribute on that?

What I did was of course trying to plug all amps I had, or I could get (on loaner for reviews, from friends… I won’t make a list here) downstream and try and find differences. Basically: not a single sub 200$ amplifier I tried on there made Groove’s native output into E4000 better. Most of them (as a matter of facts: all of them except just one) reduced dynamics, made stage smaller or flatter, or compressed the range – read: they are less clean.

My amp sensei taught me that “amps don’t add to dacs – they can only take away, if they are not clean enough”.

The key amp job is leaving a DAC’s voice unmodified while properly feeding the load the odd way it sometimes requires – otherwise it will be the load i.e. the headphone/IEM to ruin the DAC’s work in its turn.

My first E4000-based test was simply telling me that Groove’s built-in amp stage is (sometimes dramatically) cleaner than all external amps I have at hand, while at the same time capable enough to optimally bias its transducers.

Why did this happen? And will this be “always” the case?

Apogee Groove’s amp stage uses a current gain IC in its main circuit and according to Apogee the whole amp shapes the current waveform, aiming at keeping that stable, unlike what traditional amps do, which is shaping the voltage waveform instead.

They call it Constant Current Drive^tm technology, and – to paraphrase Steve Jobs – “boy did they patent it !”. They are not even keen on talking or explaining its details – it’s indeed “not so clear” how exactly Apogee Groove does what it actually does.

Be as it may, Groove’s output promises to sound very coherent in virtually all supported situations, no matter how “restless” the load impedance is.

Another quite surprising feature is Apogee Groove’s uncommonly high output impedance: 20 Ohm.

Such is welcome of course when plugging high impedance cans, while it is in general a serious hurdle when pairing lower impedance earphones or IEMs, which would “sound bad” in such situation. Groove offers you to forget the “8X impedance rule”.

Summarising: Apogee Groove won’t incur into FR-skewing effect when driving low impedance loads, or higher impedance ones featuring wild impedance swings (HD800, anyone?).

“Wow. So… Groove is the ultimate amp, all good, all fantastic?”

No. Groove’s amp stage has two quite significant limitations, and a third partial one.

First: depending on load requirements Apogee Groove may, and will, lack power.

Apogee Groove takes power from the USB2 line (supports USB3 if need be), and more precisely absorbs a maximum of 340mA from there, while on the output side it delivers 40mW and a bit more than 5V (!!) into 600 Ohm.

With that, beasts like HD800 (300 Ohm 102 dB), or HD650 (300 Ohm, 103 dB) will be perfectly supported as they welcome / require as high voltage as possible – and 5V starts to be “a pretty bit” – but absorb very little current, and Apogee Groove’s unique capability to cope with wide load impedance swings does the rest.

On the flip side, Groove falls short when paired with the like of Shure SRH1540. That’s because relatively low impedance & low sensitivity headphones require little voltage but a lot of current, and Groove simply won’t have enough (like all of its direct competitors by the way, but that’s another story).

Second: Apogee Groove won’t support all crossover setups.

In Apogee’s own words: “Apogee does not recommend the Apogee Groove for use with multi-driver balanced armature in-ear monitors. Due to the design of the balanced armature drivers and crossover networks used in this type of headphone, the Groove’s Constant Current Drive amplifier technology may result in uneven frequency response when used with certain models.”

Apogee Groove’s very technology aimed at automatically compensating for impedance mismatches and misalignments is at the origin of this (a crossover filter is working on capacitive components!…).

No harm to the circuits will happen when trying, they will just sound “bad”, not coherent. Shuoer Tape, Oriveti OH500 are examples.

Luckily, not all multidriver IEMs include filters: final B1 and B3 for example do not – and in facts are perfectly supported by Apogee Groove, as the disclaimer does not even apply to them in the first place really.

And even more luckily, to my direct experience a few crossover-equipped multidrivers do nonetheless work properly even on Apogee Groove’s unique amp stage: Ikko OH10, KBear Lark, Intime Sora 2 are all examples of this.

However the main message stands: for multidriver IEMs we can’t rely on Groove’s internal amp stage. Apogee told us crystal clear their technology doesn’t take responsibility for this.

The main way around the issue in employing a separate downstream amplifier of course. Again, be ready to spend some money for it to avoid depleting on other aspects of the output.

What also in some case works is adding an impedance adapter on Groove’s output. I am not 100% sure as to “why” exactly this works but it does. I suspect in such case Groove “sees” a stable full-resistive load, and does not engage in trying to compensate impedance variations.

Third and last: odd limitations on some (few) specific drivers.

Groove’s technology allowing for “8X rule disregard” does work like magic… almost always.

To just toss some examples, I auditioned final E3000, A3000 and E4000, or Tanchjim Oxygen on “quite a few” (!) sources.

If I consider mobile / transportable devices (DAPs, DAC/AMPs), Apogee Groove beats them all on DAC performance grounds, and is the best overall source (i.e., including the AMP stage) with the sole possible exception of Lotoo Paw Gold Touch (but it’s debateable, really). Which is twice as suriprising if I consider Groove’s native output impedance. Virtually impossible is also to find a better alternative looking amongst desktop class devices, but that’s logical as those are primarily designed for overears – typically requiring optimal voltage vs current modulation.

On the other hand, drivers like Koss KPH30i (60 Ohm 101 dB) paired to Apogee Groove present a very modest yet audible mid-bass bump – typical of an impedance mismatch situation. And in facts applying an impedance adapter (e.g. an iFi iEMatch, or equivalent) solves the problem.

Why exactly Apogee Groove can “perfectly manage” even lower impedance drivers, and doesn’t entirely support KPH30i is frankly still obscure to me. May be some specialty on KPH30i tuning? Difficult for me to say.

I might mention another “imperfect support” example, which is final E5000. But my extended experience with those taught me it’s them to be enigmatic. It’s simply not honest to take them as a benchmark for a source “normality” – if something, the other way around indeed!

At-a-glance Card

Conclusion

Besides simply “sounding incredibly better” than anything I had tried before, from the day I got it Apogee Groove has been extremely educational for me as it represented my affordable opportunity to hear and understand superior-tier sound quality.

There’s no going back for me: lower quality reconstruction filters, lack of spatial depth, and fuzzy or at best approximate imaging and layering are something I just don’t have a single reason to bear anymore.

As I tried to describe, there ain’t such thing as a Graal. Apogee Groove, too, has its limits. No direct DSD support is one, and USB2 (24 bit 192 KHz) maximum PCM resolution is another. It also lacks MQA support but that’s never been nor will be any of my concern. Also, the need to “help out” its built-in amp stage to cope with some specific loads turned out to be less of an issue for me than it appeared initially (ymmv).

Anyhow, Groove is so good that not only I adopted it as my core infrastructure on both my home stacks (yes, I bought a second unit after the first) but I even started modulating the rest of my gear relative to it, instead of the other way around. This is fundamentally due to budget restrictions: an headphone amplifier which is “clean enough” to hold true to Groove’s output, while offering appropriate power modulation for this or that driver which is not perfectly biased by Groove directly is no toy.

So I started to reason as follows: does a driver I like work perfectly on Groove? Does it even scale up with Groove? It’s a keeper! Does it not? Better be a really outstanding piece of gear! E.g.: SRH1540 – those are so good as to justify an adequate amp stage just for them, even if it’ll end up costing no way less than 350$ (eyeing a Jotunheim 2 as a minimum acceptable quality stadard at the moment).

That’s what I mean for “game change”: Apogee Groove flipped my perspective.

This is actually a general concept indeed, and a general recommendation. Who is keen on getting the best sound quality into his ears often gives priority to drivers (headphones / IEMs – it seems logical as they are the bits producing the actual sound, right?), then AMPs (as they are those supposed to “feed” the drivers well), keeping DACs last, and not even considering where does digital music come from (the player, a.k.a. “transport”).

The above paradigm is totally wrong. DAC first. Always. The DAC is the voice. Amping me as I sing totally off-key is pointless believe me. Same with a crappy DAC. Get a good DAC. The best your budget can buy. At the same time, make sure the DAC isn’t sent too much crap (i.e. spend money on the transport). Only then you are ready to define your budget for an AMP, and finally you will know which drivers you can choose.

I didn’t mention Groove’s price. Guess. Then open the last spoiler.

Even factoring the extra cost in for an iEMatch to keep at hand and use for this or that odd-behaving IEM – which I learnt is needed with just about any desktop-class amp anyway – I solidly put Groove’s price in no-brainer territory for the quality it delivers.

Final disclaimer: My Groove devices are my own property since day one, have not been supplied as loaners or any other sampling form.

This article also appears on my personal audio site, here.

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The post Apogee Groove Review – Changing The Budget Game For Good (since 2015) appeared first on Audio Reviews.

Cons — Stock cable can be a bit heavy for some
– Not as good in macrodynamics as some single-DD/hybrid IEMs in this range
– BA bass is still BA bass, subtle BA timbre in the high notes
– Dips at 4KHz and 6KHz might take away the energy of distortion guitars and cymbal hits
– Not the widest staging or the most precise imaging for the price-bracket

INTRODUCTION

It’s hard to stand out in the IEM space lately.

New brands pop up every now and then with claims of performance that far belies their price-tag, having measurement graphs that seem just about perfect, hitting a specific target curve. Driver count that would seem overkill even in $1000+ IEMs just a few years ago.

It’s really hard to stand out.

Dunu, having dealt primarily with single/multi dynamic drivers and hybrid IEMs for the past decade or so decided to move towards multi-BA setup again. Their new Studio series of IEMs are strictly multi-BA setups and have two models for now: SA3 and SA6. The SA6 is the higher-tier model and aims to bridge the gap between kilobuck IEMs and the relatively budget offerings. I’ve been using the Studio SA6 for the past four months (almost) and I believe now I’m ready to share my long-term verdict, i.e. not a rushed review to gather some sweet, sweet SEO.

So, is the DUNU Studio SA6 a stellar showing, or just another also-ran? Read on.

Note: the ratings given will be subjective to the price tier. DUNU-Topsound was kind enough to send a review unit of the Dunu Studio SA6. Disclaimer.

Sources used: Questyle CMA-400i/QP1R, Cowon Plenue R2

Price (while reviewed): $550

PHYSICAL THINGS AND USABILITY

IN THE BOX…

The Dunu Studio SA6 packaging is smaller than expected, as usually products in this price-bracket come with oversized packaging. Despite the below-average sizing it’s chock-full of accessories. First up: the cable, and this is the centerpiece of attraction no doubt. It’s their DUW-03 cable that retails for $200 as of the time of writing. The cable is an 8-core SPC affair, braided in Litz config. The termination is Dunu’s patented “quick-switch” modular plugs where you can easily swap out plugs by pulling at the plug end. It’s also spring-loaded so the mechanism didn’t get loose after multiple swaps. My biggest gripe about the cable is that it’s a bit too solid, a bit too heavy. I’d have preferred a lighter PVC jacket, but then again — heavy duty cables tend to be heavy. As a bonus, you also get two extra terminations: 2.5mm and 4.4mm pentaconn. Nice!

Then we have the case, which has a blue PU leather outer and felt-padded innards. The case has a small compartment for storing the extra terminations and such so that’s a nice touch. Next up: eartips. There are 11 pairs of eartips in total: 3 pairs of black tips, 4 pairs of white tips, and 4 pairs of blue tips. I personally found best results with the white tips but I’d suggest trying them all out.

Finally, you get a cleaning tool and a 6.35mm converter. The only thing missing is a shirt-clip but with a cable this nice I’m willing to ignore that.
5/5

APPEARANCE, HAPTIC, AND BUILD QUALITY

I’ve made a lot of fun of resin shells in the past since most of them are very generic and look shoddy compared to certain stainless steel finishes out there.

The Dunu Studio SA6 manages to make me eat a humble pie.

The quality of the resin itself is immaculate. No bubbles, no grain, no unevenness. Practically flawless in terms of appearance and haptics with UV-curing and an enamel-like finish that doesn’t attract fingerprints. The Studio SA6 looks pristine even after months of use. The faceplate is stabilized wood underneath where each pattern and color-combo is going to be unique for each earpiece. This is a nice perk and so far I’ve liked every single faceplate I’ve seen. Some might want more customization but I like the randomness myself (esp since they all look good to varying degrees). Then again, this is something one gotta decide for themselves.

The nozzle is a bit short and stout but with the eartips on it should fit snugly. There are three bores in the nozzle, each connected to the bass, mid, and high drivers. I’ll discuss further about the driver configuration in the sound section. There is a single vent beside the 2-pin connector (recessed, thankfully) on the underside of the IEMs. This allows the Sonion vented woofers to have greater excursion than a closed design.

Finally you get to see the switch which is quite easy to flick with your fingernails (even when wearing the IEMs). This is a welcome departure from other designs where one requires fiddly SIM-card ejector like tools to toggle the DIP switches.

Overall: fantastic build quality. I can’t find a single flaw or point of contention.
5/5

ERGONOMICS, COMFORT, ISOLATION, AND FIT

Due to its pseudo-custom fit and moderate nozzle length, the Dunu Studio SA6 offers a very snug, stable fit. I’ve worn it for hours and didn’t feel the need to take it out. Isolation is also above-average despite the vent in the housing. However, there can be some pressure-buildup inside the ear while pulling them out so I’d recommend not yanking them out of your ears and taking it slow.
4.5/5

TECH INSIDE

The Dunu Studio SA6, as the name suggest, is a 6-BA setup. Dunu’s website didn’t mention the exact model number of said BAs but the bass drivers are two Knowles 38D1XJ007. This particular model has a very high excursion for a BA driver and also has better textured bass than its Knowles counterparts. In fact, I think this is the only woofer/bass driver manufacturers should use if they want some decent bass response out of an all-BA setup. Moving on, the mid-range driver is an unspecified Knowles model, though I presume it’s a full-range Knowles driver customized to only have responses in the midrange frequencies. Finally, the treble driver is also unspecified but I believe it’s a Knowles SWFK-31736 dual-tweeter.

The tubing and crossover circuit inside is also interesting. Despite only one tuning switch, the circuitry is quite elaborate. The internal wiring is also SPC for those who keep track of these things. Finally, the tubing has similar length for the mid and treble drivers but the one for the Sonion woofers has a longer pathway. I suspect this is to improve bass rumble (apparently increasing tube length for the bass driver can improve bass response). Each tube also houses an acoustic filter to act as dampers.

SOUND

The general sound signature is mostly balanced with a warm, bassy tilt when the switch is put to “on” position. I did all my listening in this mode as the fuller lower-mids sound more natural to me. I won’t call it neutral because the upper-mids are a bit colored than dead-on-neutrality, though that’s not a bad thing in this case.

Sound impressions are made with Final E-type Clear tips and stock cable. The switch was set to on position.

Bass: There usually is a lot of contention regarding BA bass drivers. They lack the excursion, texture, and slam of their DD counterparts but does offer faster transients and nimbleness. That being said, bass without physicality feels undercooked so I myself am not a fan of BA bass.

The Dunu Studio SA6 changes that notion by a margin, though not entirely so. First off, these vented Sonion woofers are superior to the Knowles/unvented bass drivers when it comes to overall physicality and slam. Sudden bass drops have a body that’s missing on most BA-only IEMs. Secondly, there’s actual bass decay which is a bit similar to DD bass unlike the other BA drivers where there is no reverb which leads to a sense of artificiality.

As for the bass itself, there is a noticeable sub-bass emphasis but it doesn’t get into overkill category. The sub-bass frequencies are boosted over the lower-mids by about +5dB which is just about right for me. Many modern IEMs (e.g. ThieAudio Clairvoyance) boosts this region by ~10dB vs the lower mids which gives rise to the “2.1 subwoofer effect” that I personally dislike (sub-bass sounds detached from the rest of the sound). Fortunately the SA6 is rather coherent and the transition from bass to mids is quite even-handed. The mid-bass has slightly thicker notes than neutral which gives more body to snare hits and double-pedals. Flicking the switch to “off” position does thin down the snare hits slightly so if you want a closer to reference representation you can have that as well. In fast flowing bass section there was no smearing at all, though the bass didn’t quite have the same articulation as a good DD, or the scalpel-precision of typical BA drivers.

Where the bass falls short is the texturing and rumble you only find on good quality DD IEMs. Also if you are into super-nimble BA bass then you won’t get that here since the bass has a bit longer decay than typical BA setups.

To summarize: this is perhaps the best BA bass you can get around the price bracket, but still falls short of excellent DD bass. Something’s gotta give.
4/5

Mids: The midrange is where the Dunu Studio SA6 truly shows its prowess. It’s near-immaculate, at least for the genres I listen to/my taste (Rock/Metal/Pop/Singer-songwriter). The biggest issue with the midrange is the slight coloration in the upper-mids that makes higher-pitched vocals sound somewhat strained on some tracks (e.g. Billy Talent’s Surrender), but this is so rare that I’m inclined to blame the mastering for it.

With the switch turned on, the lower-mids are full and provides adequate heft to Baritone vocals, e.g. Colin Hay’s I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You. The upper-mids peak around 2.5KHz and are ~7dB higher than the lower mids and this provides adequate pinna gain without sounding diffused or shouty. At the same time acoustic guitars and guitar riffs get adequate bite. In terms of tuning and tonality — this is pretty much spot on. Another thing of note is the timbre which is quite natural but does exhibit some BA artificiality in cymbal-heavy tracks. The Studio SA6 does keep the timbre fairly natural and that’s commendable given its all-BA nature and how even many higher-tier IEMs ignore the timbral characteristics for sheer technical proficiency.

Beyond the tuning itself, the resolution is very good for the price bracket. You don’t get the macro and microdynamics of higher end IEMs (and that’s likely the biggest weakness of the SA6 if I am to nitpick) but what you get here is again — excellent, if not class-leading for the price bracket.
5/5

Treble: The treble tuning is what I’d call safe on the Dunu Studio SA6. The presence region is characterized by two dips: one at 4KHz, and another at 6KHz. The 6KHz dip in fact sounds more like a frequency cut that tones down the sibilance region. Whereas the 4KHz dip is barely noticeable, the 6KHz trough manifests as slightly hazy lower-treble. So if you are into super-sharp cymbal hits or pitch-perfect violin tones, the SA6 just might let you down a bit. However, this also allows the Studio SA6 to be very suitable for long-term listening as peaks in presence region can lead to listening fatigue. I myself am sensitive around that region so I’m fine with Dunu’s decision of de-emphasizing those frequencies. That being said, on tracks like Lamb of God’s Ruin this toned down lower treble makes crash cymbals sound somewhat tamed, which might not be the most ideal presentation in this case.

Upper-treble has above-average extension but nothing to write home about. After around 11Khz or so I couldn’t really hear much of it. There are certain competing IEMs that extends further in this region so if you prefer an airy presentation the Dunu Studio SA6 might not be the ideal choice. For me though this treble is overall done very well and I can’t ask/expect more at this price-range.
4.5/5

Soundstage: The overall staging is average, with decent height and depth but not much width. The stage depth is lacking a bit vs certain other IEMs in the price bracket though stage height adds some much needed dimensionality to the music. In short: well-rounded staging that doesn’t feel narrow or intimate but isn’t a stand-out either. This can likely be tweaked via tip change so I’d encourage trying various eartips and finding one that provides the best staging.
4/5

Imaging: Imaging has good cardinal and ordinal positioning though center-imaging is diffused as usual. This leads to the loss of some subtleties in vocal and lead instrument positioning, for example. Spatial cues are well portrayed even if they have a slight fuzziness in terms of location. Instrument separation is a strong point, however, and will satisfy most if not all buyers in the price bracket.
4.5/5

Source and Amplification: At 113dB sensitivity and 60ohm impedance the Dunu Studio SA6 can be run off of most budget dongles. It does scale somewhat decently with higher tier sources as I’ve found on the Questyle CMA-400i desktop DAC/Amp but you’d get ~90% of the performance out of decent dongles alone.

SELECT COMPARISONS

vs Moondrop Blessing2 ($320): The Moondrop Blessing2 (1DD + 4BA) has become a default recommendation for many under $500. The Studio SA6 aims to challenge for that spot.

In terms of build, comfort, and accessories — the Dunu Studio SA6 absolutely obliterates the Moondrop Blessing2. Blessing2 looks ghetto in comparison to the craftsmanship of the Dunu IEM. Also the thick nozzle on the Blessing2 can be a bit of a pain (though it was not for me).

As for the sound, the bass texture and overall dynamics is the only criteria where the Moondrop Blessing2 has the upper-hand. Bass slam, punch, articulation are superior on the Dunu Studio SA6. In terms of the midrange, the Blessing2 midrange is mostly clarity-focused, having both lower-mid thinness and some shoutiness. This pretty much makes the Blessing2 midrange a no-go for me since I prefer more body to the vocals/tones and I’m averse to shoutiness. The treble is where the Blessing2 does showcase better performance, even though it’s marred by a strong BA timbre. Imaging is slightly better on the Blessing2 with more defined positional cues but instrument separation is still better on the Studio SA6 IMO.

In short: I think the Dunu Studio SA6 is worth the ~$200 price premium.

vs Sony IER-M7 ($550): Being close to the Studio SA6’s price, Sony’s IER-M7 (four T-shaped BA drivers, Sony proprietary) becomes a viable alternative. In terms of build and accessories again the Dunu studio SA6 pulls ahead though the IER-M7 does offer a really nice tip collection (better than the Dunu one). Comfort is very good on both, with the Sony having slightly better isolation.

In terms of sound signature, what stands out the most for the Sony is its timbre which is very natural, organic and doesn’t really sound like a BA driver. If you are someone who needs natural timbre I think the IER-M7 deserves an audition. Now, the bass has more slam and physicality on the Dunu Studio SA6. The lower-mids are very good on both, and I personally think the IER-M7 has a lush tone that works well with vocal-focused genres. The treble is where the Studio SA6 pulls ahead, and same applies to instrument separation. Imaging, however, is slightly better on the IER-M7. Overall resolution is also higher on the Studio SA6.

In short, if you need a lusher, more organic presentation then the Sony IER-M7 is a good alternative. If you need better bass/dynamics and more resolution in general, the Dunu Studio SA6 is the better choice.

vs Dunu Zen ($700): Dunu Zen is the step-up model from the Studio SA6, at least in terms of Dunu’s product placement. These two are very different however with the Zen being a single dynamic-driver model vs the 6BA affair on the Studio SA6.

In terms of accessories, they are pretty similar. In terms of sound signature, though, they complement each other rather than compete. The Zen is capable of visceral DD bass (depending on track) with supreme texture, whereas the SA6 is a more nimble affair in comparison and has a more easygoing tuning in general. The Zen has superior macro and micro dynamics whereas the Studio SA6 has slightly more upper-treble extension.

To summarize: the Studio SA6 is the better value IEM, but the Dunu Zen is the better IEM, at least to my ears.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

For me, there are two types of IEMs: the specialists, as in those who focus on a specific part of the frequency range and/or excels with certain genres. Then there are the generalists: those who play most genres well but doesn’t excel at any of them. The latter category is safe to recommend but often becomes boring and lacks the soul that makes an IEM special.

Dunu Studio SA6 bucks that trend. It’s a generalist IEM that’s truly special in its overall sonic delivery. The bass is near-DD like in terms of extension and slam, the midrange is masterfully tuned, and the treble despite its safe tuning doesn’t skimp on resolution by much. Soundstage, imaging, instrument separation, dynamics — all are very competitive for the price bracket. The superb build and class-leading accessory set are just a couple extra cherries on top.

Dunu has a breakout hit with the Studio SA6 and it deservedly earns my highest recommendation.

MY VERDICT

Overall Rating: 4.75/5

Highly recommended. A leader in its price-bracket.

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DISCLAIMER

The Dunu Studio SA6 was sent as a loaner for the purpose of this review.

Can be purchased from DUNU Official Store.

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You find an INDEX of our most relevant technical articles HERE.

PHOTOGRAPHY

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Cons — No gain switch; rather big; non-serviceable battery.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The EarMen TR-Amp is a powerful neutral but not sterile of generic sounding integrated headphone amp (dac/pre-amp) that drives headphones up to 300 Ω) with ease. Made in Europe.

INTRODUCTION

EarMen recently appeared big on our radar out of nowhere, with their two models the TR-Amp (“transportable amp”) and the Sparrow dongle. The company is a subdivision of premium manufacturer  Auris Audio. Earmen is registered in the US, where most of its stakeholders are from. The new Chicago warehouse has its focus on the North American market. The production is currently in Krusavec, Serbia [video of production facilities]. EarMen is “Made in Europe”.

I have used the EarMen TR-amp for 4-5 months, mainly with the 300 Ω Sennheiser HD 600 headphones. This worked so well and the TR-amp so so easy to operate that I had real problems writing an actual review other than telling you that it “works well and is really good”.

I apologize to EarMen that it took me so long to write this article.

SPECIFICATIONS

ES9038Q2M SABRE dac chip

Inputs: USB C (DATA & charge)
Outputs: 6.3 mm/3.5mm (stereo)

Headphone Amp with Texas Instruments TPA6120 chip:
THD+N: (2.7V, 32R) <0.005% SNR: >114dB
Dynamic Range: >107 dB
Power: >2.5V/400 mW (16 Ω); >3.4V/350 mW (32 Ω)

Output Impedance: <1 Ω

Manual: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0250/1758/1634/files/TR-Amp_1_2_3_4.pdf?v=1593165092

Tested at: $249

Product page: https://earmen-shop.com/products/tr-amp

PHYSICAL THINGS

In the box are:

• TR-amp
• USB-C to USB-A cable, 1 m
• rubber ring (for strapping TR-amp to phone)
• storage meshbag
• manual/warranty card

The case is of sturdy aluminum, knob and switch are metal, there is nothing plastic. Rubber feet on the bottom prevent the metal chassis from being scratched/scratching the underlying surface such as a smartphone. The build is so sturdy that you can probably use it in self-defence – and it will still work thereafter.

The EarMen TR-amp features the TOTL ES9038Q2M SABRE dac chip and the Texas Instruments TPA6120 headphone amplifier chip. 

FUNCTIONALITY

The EarMen TR-amp connects to smartphones vial plug ‘n’ play, it needs a driver for Windows (download) and none for the Mac.

WHAT IT DOES

• Can be connected to phone or Windows/Mac computers or Android/iOS sources
• Works as a pre-amplifier or dac when connected to a dedicated headphone amplifier
• Plays two earphones/headphones simultaneously through its two outputs (3.5 mm/6.3 mm)
• Drives small loudspeakers through its RCA outputs
• Plays and charges simultaneously through its two USB-C ports (5V power supply/charger)
• …Or runs on its built-in 3700 mAh battery
• Handles even power-hungry headphones well, imo up to 300 Ω

WHAT IT DOES NOT

• There is no choice of different digital filters
• It has no gain switch
• The output impedance is fixed
• Cannot be used as an amp only as it has no analog inputs

The EarMen TR-amp is a rather large for use on the road – I’d store it in my pocket rather than strapping it onto my phone. I like using it in bed with my phone, where size does not matter…at least amp size does not.

OPERATION

Operation is straight forward. “The music plays” – as they say – in the front and back panels…

Front Panel

The front panel of the EarMen TR-Amp features 2 outputs: a 3.5 mm and a 6.3 mm, which points to its particular suitability for full-sized headphones. The “On-Off/Volume” is nicely protruding out and therefore convenient to handle. That little LED serves mainly as an audio format indicator, and less so than a battery indicator: EarMen TR-amp is on (“white”), connected/PCM (“green”), MQA (“magenta”), DSD (cyan), charging (“flashing blue”), and low battery (“flashing red”). It is well visible while inconspicuous.

Rear Panel

The back panel sports two USB-C ports, a Pre Out/Direct switch, and RCA outputs.

One of the UBS-C outputs is used for charging, the other for data transfer. Both can be deployed simultaneously. When the EarMen TR-amp is connected to a computer, it is running on battery by default. You have to connect the other USB-C port to a USB-charger or external battery pack for charging.

The EarMen TR-amp’s amplifier function can be bypassed when connecting it to a (more powerful desktop) amplifier through the 2 RCA outputs. The switch serves the purpose of specifying the volume control. in the “Direct” position, the EarMen TR-amp’s volume knob is being disabled and the full-strength signal is being transferred through the”Line Out” into the external amp, which requires its own volume control. In the “Pre Out” position, the TR-amp’s volume control is activated.

Independent of the switch position both headphone outputs are always operative and two people can listen simultaneously.

AMPLIFICATION

The EarMen TR-amp works well with the Sennheiser HD 300 Ω impedance headphone (and therefore most on the market), but its 350 mW into 32 Ω would probably not drive more exotic 600 Ω headphones well. Power details in the specs above.

POWER CONSUMPTION/PLAY TIME

Ear Men claims up to 10 hrs of play time but does not give you specifics on the setup. I tested with the power-hungry Sennheiser HD 600 and iPhone 5S at a “normal” but pretty healthy volume level. After 6 h and 15 minutes, the indicator light started blinking, which means the the battery level and dropped below 20%. This points to 7-8 h playtime with this setting.

I value this as being in line with the manufacturer’s claims.

SOUND

My tonal preference and testing practice

My test tracks explained

Equipment used: EarMen TR-amp; Macbook Air, iPhone SE 1st gen.; Apple camera adapter, ddHifi TC28i adapter; Schiit Magni 2U headphone amplifier with Audioquest Forest and Snake Oil Taipan RCA interconnects; 300 Ω Sennheiser HD 600 headphone, 16 Ω Sennheiser IE 300 earphone.

The “ingredients” of the EarMen TR-amp are top notch, but how good is the “cooked meal”? Such a device works well with your phone on the go (if you like strapping it around it), but it can also be deployed as a desktop amp, and it can also be used as pre-amp or dac, when connected to a “bigger” dedicated headphone amplifier.

I tested the TR-amp in these scenarios:

1. …as dac-amp with MacBook plus headphones/earphones
2. …as dac-amp with phone
3. …as dac AND pre-amp with Schiit Magni 2 Uber, sourced by MacBook

The EarMen TR-amp, just like the Sparrow, produces a neutral sound with a tinge of warmth added to spare us from a clinical, lifeless, or overwhelming sonic reproduction. Straddling that thin line, it allows for harmonizing with both, neutral and warm headphones/earphones.

Extension towards both ends is very good and so are headroom, sense of space, and dynamics. The punch is natural and works with electronic, rock, and acoustic music such as symphony or jazz. The image has a good volume and body, it does neither sound lean or syrupy thick. The TR-amp preserves the music’s midrange clarity and brings vocals out intimately.

I also could never hear any noticeable hiss, not even with the sensitive 16 Ω Sennheiser IE 300. But it brought out the bassy side of these naturally bassy iems without muddying or congesting the sound.

It is really boring to report the sound of an amp that does not alter music and reproduces it as should be. The EarMen TR-amp simply works and has been for quite some time for me.

Using the EarMen TR-amp with as a pre-amp (“Pre-Out”) and dac (“Direct”) with the warmer Schiit amp adds a bit of colour and results in added power and heft. This is only valid for this particular setup . Sonic results will vary with different amps connected.

What I’d like to see is a gain switch for easier volume fine adjustments with sensitive earphones.

EARMEN TR-AMP COMPARED

I can only offer the $199 British nano iDSD Black Label (“BL”), which is a bit smaller and less powerful (285 mW vs. 350 mW @ 32Ω) – both feature a 3700 mAh battery. The BL does not drive the Sennheiser HD 600 as well as the TR-amp, but it has two 3.5 mm outputs, one of which (“IE Match“) offers increased output impedance for sensitive iems. The more powerful TR-amp is rather designed towards full-sized cans with its 6.3 mm output – whereas the BL caters more to the less power hungry peripherals…although both play both well.

The BL is warmer sounding and therefore more limited to the more neutral headphones/earphones, it may sound muffled with warm earphones/headphones. The EarMen TR-amp is more versatile in this respect. The BL has the choice of two audio filters, the TR-Amp does not. And the BL has a pseudo 3.5 mm balanced circuit.

In terms of connectivity, the EarMen TR-amp has a L and R line out, the BL has a single 3.5 mm line out. Both can be used as dacs, and only the EarMen as pre-amp. The TR-amp, with its separate UBC-C ports for charging and data can be charged while playing, the BL with its USB-A port can draw power from the source (“computer”) or run on battery, but it cannot play and charge simultaneously.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The Earmen TR-amp has been playing everything I threw at it in the last few months, from sensitive iems to the 300 Ω Sennheiser HD 600. And it played them all very well. It is a robust classic design that feels and sounds good, that is powerful enough for almost anything, and that is reasonably priced. It simply works for me and don’t want to miss it.

What else can I say?

Until next time…keep on listening!

Contact us!

You find an INDEX of all our dac/amp reviews HERE.

DISCLAIMER

The Earmen TR-amp was provided by Earmen upon my request. I thank them and also the Audiofool who had established the contact. The Audiofool has reviewed the Earmen TR-amp here.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

About my measurements.

You find an INDEX of our most relevant technical articles HERE.

GALLERY

The post EarMen (By Auris) TR-Amp DAC + Pre-Amp + Headphone Amp Review – Work Horse appeared first on Audio Reviews.

Cons — None.

INTRODUCTION

I love adapters. Yes, you are reading correctly. I have boxes of them…see photo at the bottom. But when I recently received a couple of German premium earphone review loaners with a combined worth exceeding $5000, they came with an adapter. And guess wh

at, it was a ddHifi branded one. A Chinese adapter on a German premium earphone cable? Must be of good quality. And it was. In fact it worked so well that I purchased three versions of it way before I received the actual two units for this review.

One of them, the ddHifi TC25i let’s one connect a 2.5 mm mm balanced cable to an iPhone’s lightning port. The other one, ddHifi TCI28i, turns the iPhone’s lightning adapter into a USB-C port. I will explain the practicality of these devices in the following – also get some idea from the images throughout and at the bottom of this article.

SPECIFICATIONS TC25i

• ddHiFi 
• Apple Lightning to 2.5 mm headphone jack adapter
• Material: CNC-machined 316 stainless steel unibody shell
• Supports in-line control on CTIA standard earphones
• Supports full functionality for Apple earphones
• Supports iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch models running iOS 10.0 or later
• THD+N: < -92 db
• DNR: > 110 db
• SNR: > 120 db
• Dimensions: 0.74 x 0.44 x 0.4 in (18.8 x 11.2 x 10.2 mm)
• Weight: 0.2 oz (6 g)
• Tested at: $40
• Product page: ddHifi

SPECIFICATIONS TC28i

• Input: Lighting
• Output: USB-C
• Material: Aluminum alloy
• Dimensions: 0.7 x 0.4 x 0.5 in (18.5 x 9.5 x 13.5 mm)
• Tested at: $30
• Product page: ddHifi

PHYSICAL THINGS AND USABILITY/FEATURES

The TC25i and TC28i are robust, sturdy, small, and light – and made of metal. Build and haptic are excellent.

What do these adapter do? I’ll discuss this as follows. Note: the reviewed versions will only work with iPhones and iPads, even if these devices are mantled with the thickest possible cases. And – in order to give you some idea what these adapters can be used for, I appended a set of images of my own applications below.

TC25i Lightning to 2.5mm Headphone Adapter: is essentially the equivalent to the Apple lightning audio adapter (which I reviewed in great detail), but with a 2.5 mm output. Although all 2.5 mm cables are “balanced”, the TCi25 is not. Its sister adapter TC35i features a 3.5 mm adapter and serves the same purpose as the Apple lightning adapter.

The TCi25i/TC35i have a lot of technology packed into that small enclosure: a microscopic stereo digital-to-analog converter (DAC), a stereo headphone amplifier, a microphone preamplifier, and monophonic analog-to-digital converter (ADC) – and power converters to run this all.

Considering that any connector is a sonic bottleneck and that the wire in the Apple Audio adapter is the limiting factor for any premium cable, cable aficionados are better off with the TCi25.

TC28i Lightning to USB Type C Adapter: is simply a connector for dongles. It essentially serves the purpose of the Apple lightning camera adapter. When connecting your iPhone to a dongle via the Apple adapter, you create a rather long chain. The TC28i shortens this “snake” and makes it more portable.

There is a big difference, however, between Apple and ddHifi in that the former has the traditional USB-A connector whereas the ddHifi TC28i features the smaller USB-C connector.

This is no problem as most dongles come with either connectivity. And if everything fails, there are cheap USB-C to USB-A connectors.

TONALITY AND TECHNICALITIES OF THE TCI25i

First test of the ddHifi TC25i lightning to 2.5 mm adapter against the iPhone 5S’s internal dac/amp (which is essentially identical to the Apple audio adapter for later iPhones).

The iPhone 5S is a formidable audio player: https://www.kenrockwell.com/…/iphone-5s-audio-quality.htm. Result: no noticeable difference found in terms of sound quality and amplification power.

So what does the TC25i sound like? I agree with the Headphone Collector also analyzed the Apple audio adapter [here]…as said, the ddHifi TC25i sounds essentially identical . He writes: “…Neutral, clear, clean and very precise. Basically as audibly transparent, good-sounding and clean-sounding to my ears as it gets. Precise and tight bass reproduction with sensitive multi-BA in-ears.

VALUE

TC25i Lightning to 2.5mm Headphone Adapter, although identical sounding as the Apple Lightning Adapter, may appear expensive at four times the price.

But: Apple does not offer a 2.5 mm adapter and their dongle is plastic/rubber with a cable that is prone to fray. The TC25i is made of metal (and has therefore the much better haptic and durability), is much less conspicuous because of its smaller size, and is extremely practical as you don’t have to earphone change cables when switching between devices.

It is also classy compared to the Apple. And it is particularly useful when deploying cables with the unreliable MMCX connectors. It may save you money in the long run by not ripping your MMCX connectors apart.

The TC28i Lightning to Type C Adapter costs about the same as the Apple camera adapter. Again, the ddHifi product is smaller, more rugged, and has the better haptic. The difference between the two – that is USB-A for the Apples and USB-C for the ddHifi – is somewhat unimportant as most peripherals come with both-type cables – and if not, there are cheap quality adapters, the best from UGREEN.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

I love adapters and the ddHifi adapters are on top of my list. They are high-quality and therefore good enough to be used with the most premium equipment, they look and feel good, they are priced right, and they are extremely practical.

While these two units had been provided by dHifi, I purchased other ddHifi adapters for my pleasure so impressed was I. You will see ddHifi adapters all over this blog. Check it out for yourself:

https://www.audioreviews.org/?s=ddHifi

Until next time…keep on listening!

Contact us!

DISCLAIMER

These ddHifi adapters were provided by ddHifi – and I thank them for that.

Get them from ddHifi.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

EXAMPLES OF APPLICATIONS…

The post ddHiFi TC25i Lightning to 2.5mm Headphone Adapter And TC28i Lightning to USB-C Adapter Review – Connect Your iPhone appeared first on Audio Reviews.