Tempotec Sonata HD II vs. Tempotec Sonata E35 – Excitement for Your Pocket

INTRO

DAC Dongles never really aroused me that much since LG was making phones that were excellent in terms of ease of good portable audio. However, now that LG is exiting the phone business the options for carrying around one device to do everything including good audio has now dried up. So reluctantly, the dongle now looks attractive for folks that don’t want to go down the DAP rabbit hole.

Tempotec seems to be mentioned everywhere these days when someone is recommending a budget friendly option either with the Tempotec Sonata HD or Tempotec Sonata HD Pro. They have recently expanded options to include balanced output versions, and general upgrades to later DAC chips. These dongles have come a long way from being cheapo band-aides of the $10 variety and Tempotec has found a way to give us what we need, transparent sound from portable devices for minimal cost.

GOOD TRAITS

NOT SO HOT

PACKAGE CONTENTS

• Dongle
• USB to USB-C adapter
• Hi-Res sticker
• Extra device protector (E35 only)

TECHNICAL OVERVIEW

These all-in-one buffet style all you can eat DAC chips include the necessary amplification, so the only thing that is supplied external to the DAC chip itself is power supply, USB interface, and clocking for sampling rate and some capacitors.

Most of these include a class H or G headphone amplifier that is a class A/B design with essentially two voltage rails +1.8V and +3.3V. These designs allow for how much voltage should be used to power the amplifier section to keep it efficient and not eat up precious battery turning it into a small pocket heater.

It is hard to remove expectation bias from these types of reviews, for example my bias is that I do not expect a huge difference between lots of these devices. There is programming that can be done to “tune” how it compensates for noise and harmonic distortion. This is most likely what you see for example when they say it is tuned by some well known brand.

This is boring stuff except for the propeller heads. There are also analog amps at the end of these DAC dongles that can react differently when loaded or at frequency band low/high ranges, but they are still a built-in part of the DAC chip itself on most of these dongle devices.

Also, it is strongly recommended to make sure what ever device these are connected to have the proper sampling rate selected. On LG Android devices, this requires certain players be utilized otherwise everything gets resampled to 48Khz which really jacks with low listening levels.

I noticed it does not exactly stay put when un-plugging and re-plugging these devices at least in Poweramp, but it only changed on me once and not sure why. No big deal, simple enough to change back in the Poweramp settings.

TEMPOTEC SONATA HD II SOUND

Why buy one? It’s small, uses about 4.9% battery per hour so approximate 20 hours of use depending on battery size, and sounds clean and mostly transparent. It is an upgrade to the Tempotec Sonata HD with a few more dB of dynamic range and DSD capability. With 16 bit music files, it should be mostly transparent. I say mostly, because it has a slight midrange emphasis.

Noise-wise it exceeds the 96db dynamic range of 16bit files. Bass is a bit soft and lower mids and treble sound smoothed over on details in comparison to the Sonata E35. The LG V30 sounds a bit more raw and warmer in comparison. Volume steps are quite large at only 15 variations of volume.

This is perfectly acceptable given the price and purpose of a small and simple USB dongle. It was plug an play on my PC, but my LG V30 has to be tricked into using it through a USB OTG adapter. This is a known Android issue on some devices, but I blame another dongle that may have crippled my USB-C port at one point. Same goes for the Tempotec Sonata E35.

TEMPOTEC SONATA E35 SOUND

Why should you upgrade to this over the HD II? If you have an HD Pro already, I think no reason to buy this one. It is the same as the HD pro with a dual DAC chip used to boost SINAD values as these dongles race to have bragging rights on how noise free they measure. Power output is only marginally increased as well from 60mW to 80mW.

The bass sounds cleaner with more definition over my LG V30. The LG V30 sounds a bit warmer despite I know it measures flat. Others might call this sterile vs warm, or it could also be called transparent (E35) vs colored (V30). My noted battery usage was about 9%/hr with my LG V30 3500mah battery so I would expect about 10hr of use- YMMV.

The Tempotec Sonata E35 also includes a rocker button for 30 steps of volume control INDEPENDENT of the source volume. On an Android phone, the source gives you 15 steps, so at each step then you have 30 more fine adjustment options. While semi complicated, I do find it useful as a coarse plus fine adjustment method. It does pull off a better three dimensional soundstage as well. Butter my biscuits, I was truly thinking I would not notice a difference. It’s ok powering the HD6XX, but doesn’t have the required headroom to really bring them to life.

TEMPOTEC SONATA E35 DESIGN CHOICES

When comparing the Tempotec Sonata E35 to the predecessor Tempotec Sonata HD Pro, gone are the external cables. The downside is the Tempotec HD Pro had a micro USB to lightning adapter, where the Sonata E35 only has USB-C. This does not prevent usage since it should work with an Apple lightning to USB adapter sold separately, but I was unable to verify. For those that still think that external cables allow for easy replacement if something were to happen.

I also originally thought that was an annoying change, but let me re-frame this in a different light. With a dongle that has a headphone jack plus a USB connection right at the dongle, this might be an annoyance in your pocket since the length of the dongle increases into something awkward and you might end up looking like you are playing pocket pool to reposition. The Temptotec Sonata E35 instead folds around like a snake and the cables are extremely flexible. This might have been a necessary design choice also to make room due to the extra DAC chip.

OUTRO

I think they are both great devices to have. So which one should you pick? For me the answer is simple, if you are planning on more active mobility use, go with the Tempotec HD II. It’s tiny, uses minimal battery, great sounding and the extra staging capabilities of the Tempotec Sonata E35 would be lost on someone out and about.

For those that plan on traveling with, but end use is stationary listening I recommend the Tempotec Sonata E35. It will give you more volume refinement and better technical abilities. For those that prefer balanced output options, the Sonata BHD or the Sonata 4.4 are also available. My personal pick is the Sonata E35, I enjoy the cleaner and more holographic sound over the LG V30.

SPECIFICATIONS

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DISCLAIMER

Tempotec provided these to me but you can Get the both from their store here.

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