Anyone looking to liven up your upper low to high mid-grade earbuds, look no further. This little amp by Fiio is well made, has features of high-low gain, bass boost and a very convenient center control knob. If your earbuds are in the range of 16,000-150,000, this is the portable amp for you. I purchased this for my Focal Spheres and the sound is amazing! No distortion, bass hum or treble shriek, everything comes through clear and rich. Even when the bass is on it doesn’t overpower the mids & highs. Just very full, warm rich sound that makes your mid quality earbuds sound like one of the expensive big boys! Give it a try, you won’t be disappointed. This is also not my first experience with FiiO. May not be expensive but delivers all that’s promised and then some!
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New
I like this little unit. About the size of a pack of cigarettes. Smaller than I thought. Sounds nice. Improves sound of my late 2012 mac mini. But not drastically. My biggest complaint? Lack of volume. I really don't notice much amplification at all. Even on max volume, with "itunes" cranked to the max, and my computer system cranked to the max, and this little Fiio cranked to the max, using Sensheiser HD558's, I still get the urge to make it louder, but have no more volume. No where to go, except my home stereo amp, which is plenty loud and accurate. I was hoping for more. But it's not that bad. And I think the bass boost is a nice improvement on the sound. Subtle but nice. If I had to do it over, I would have gotten a different model or brand, with the same features, but more volume. Doesn't amplify sound much as all.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
In efforts to improve sound quality beyond my realtek onboard sound card could provide, i researched solutions that would work great in a budget conscious mind. I know that great sound and budget conscious don’t always go together, but i gave it a shot. Please note I was looking for something for music and PC gaming. First I selected Sennheiser GAME ONE. Raved by music fans and gamers alike as one of the best headsets to have that will not break the budget, Sennheiser GAME ON is exactly that. Far superior to my old Turtle Beach PX51 the sound on these cans is incredible, everything is nice and crisp; the music is much more enjoyable to listen to. Miles Davis feels like is right there and Queen live like concert is just one click away. Super confy for long gaming sessions, even when you wear glasses and have a giant noggin like i do. These headphones come from manufacturer well versed in building great sound equipment. Not only they used their own battle proven transducers, they also slapped a professional grade mic on it, simply brilliant. I also looked into Astros A40 headset, which i must note the A40s aimed more for gaming, while great on their own i wanted something that was also excellent for music. I got my GAME ONE for $129 and i would have easily paid the full price, they’re worth it. Due the lack of surround sound from the GAME ONE, which is Stereo only, i'm currently using Razer surround application. While not close to a 7.1 true surround sound, it does a great job a replicating one. I strongly recommend ponying up the extra $20 bucks for the full app, so you can tune the sound to your liking. I have this on for movies and games but turn it off for music... somehow feels like it takes away from how the musician wants you to listen to his or her sound. While this is all great, it was all still being driven by a crappy onboard Realtek sound card. Here is where Fiio E10k comes in. Highly spoken by many reviewers as one of the best DACs for such a low price point and better than many hundreds of dollars counter parts, Fiio E10k is an amazing piece of equipment which is an improved version of the renown E10, First, this thing is tiny, easily concealed under a desk or velcroed to a table, the sound that emanates from this tiny device is a head scratcher. The GAME ONE with the onboard Realtek sounded good, but when paired with the E10K truly comes alive. The sound stage is wider; all the sounds are clearer and, for the lack of a better term, just sound better!! A great joy to listen to, from John Lennon melodic vocals to thundering Guns and Roses. It has a high low gain switch, for hard to drive headphones (GAME ONE is low impedance so low gain is perfect). Has a bass boost switch, which i leave it on. The Razer surround also has bass boost, but the Fiios bass boost sounds better and less muddy. I chose this over a sound card because it’s portable, but needs to be connected via USB to your computer, it also sits outside the machine avoiding any electrical and magnetic fields generated from within the computer. If you’re in a situation like mine, limited budget but looking for a decent sound, you can combine all these 3 things for around 250 and every time place your headphones on it will leave you smiling. Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New
For a quite modest price, this little gem sounds WAAAY better than the computer's built-in sound card, and far better also than lesser outboard DACs. Its headphone output also sounds much better than the headphone output on my powered speaker setup, and has enough power to give plenty of volume on all headphones and earbuds that I have tried with it. It is super-simple to set up, requiring no auxiliary power supply, no adapters, no downloads (at least on mine, though I have read something about possible downloads), and no other fiddly details to fuss with. It can run headphones and powered speakers (through the line output) at the same time, so no need to plug and unplug headphones when swapping back and forth between headphones and speakers. It also has a nice switchable bass boost that affects the headphone output only. It is very compact and takes up hardly any space. Note: the "Tell Us More" section required an answer to the question about battery life, which is not applicable here because it doesn't use batteries - it draws its power from the USB connection instead.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
This was a good upgrade from the soundcard. The output is stereo for headphones- I didn't expect surround sound. When trying Blu-ray movies with Sony WH1000XM2 headphones, the dialogue comes through crystal clear at low volume. I enjoy music and compared to a 192khz/24 bit portable player with flac format and the subtlety of added background tones in the song were balanced with no distortion. I am very pleased with zero ambient noise from the amp. I don't hear anything when simply turning this on and listening on headphones.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New
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