FiiO K7

[staticV3]

Do they? The acronym is as old as technically possible.

yes. just open the hyperlink.

 

[Veri]

yes. just open the hyperlink.
View attachment 247814

I think he means where it says PO: front headphone out.

 

[xeizo]

The discussion on the volume pot reminds me of Spinal Tap "it goes to eleven"

 

[crea]

Do they? The acronym is as old as technically possible.

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View attachment 247789

I've been using mine for 2 days now, and it's really enjoyable. I can't really hear a difference from my K9 Pro, but I do love the different UX. Faster to turn on/off, and I can read the labels on the face this time! It's also tiny; the PL50 is longer. If you don't need bluetooth this is a great choice for a balanced dac/amp.

Does the PL50 improve sound quality in combo with the K7?

 

[asteroth]

can you turn off that stupid light?

 

[crea]

can you turn off that stupid light?

No you can't for now. Many peoples have been asking Fiio to make a specific firmware/software to turn the led off but apparently they don't have enough requests to bother. Anyway you can get the volume wheel protective foam ring you found attached to the device and maybe cover it with some black paper or eva foam and put it on the wheel so the light will be way less distracting.That's what i did atleast.

 

[Psigh]

Just got this. It fit the bill for a good small all-in-one desktop unit to upgrade from an Aune T1 mk1. Power at high gain and unbalances for the Focal Elex seems good, only just past halfway on the vol pot. Will try balanced at some point, and see if I can drop the gain back to low.

 

[bruh]

I don't think it's very good to only be able to utilize half of the pot. That's not better volume control. I want to have the volume be evenly spread out through as much of the pot as possible. It doesn't affect power, but people will think it has less power if the pot reacts very late.




People are reporting that normal listening levels kicks in at 11-12 o clock in high gain on the K5 Pro with Sundara. While on the K7, they have to use 1-3 o' clock in high gain using balanced, despite having way more power. Which is because of the volume control, not the power.







Thats insane lol. I need to set it at 2 or 3 o'clock max on low gain for the hifiman sundara to sound loud enough. jesus christ what volume do people listen to?

 

[Phoney]

@bruh What about high gain then? Try it in high gain.

 

[sarfdawg]

Pretty much a newbie here; so please bear with me. I am getting the K7 for Christmas, and I was planning on pairing them with Hifiman 400i. I'm sure the K7 has more than enough to power those and sound great. I have flirted with the idea of getting the Hifiman HE6se deal through a certain Slick discount website and Adorama. For $399 and a juicy return policy, I thought it may be worth a shot. That said, everyone says the HE6se needs a ton of juice to power them. I don't quite understand the metrics of certain number of volts at certain number of ohms. Does anyone know if the K7 has the juice? TIA.

 

[staticV3]

Hi @sarfdawg ! Welcome to asr.

Based on independent measurements by Amir and Brent Butterworth, here's how much juice the HE6se needs:


At that impedance, the Fiio K7 can output about 11.8Vrms or 2.1W before clipping, via its 4.4mm balanced headphone output.
That's enough to drive the HE6se to 113dB SPL peak. In other words: very loud!

 

[sarfdawg]

Hi @sarfdawg ! Welcome to asr.

Based on independent measurements by Amir and Brent Butterworth, here's how much juice the HE6se needs:
View attachment 251875

At that impedance, the Fiio K7 can output about 11.8Vrms or 2.1W before clipping, via its 4.4mm balanced headphone output.
That's enough to drive the HE6se to 113dB SPL peak. In other words: very loud!

Thank you so much. Glad to be here and learning so much.

 

[bruh]

@bruh What about high gain then? Try it in high gain.



in high gain i need to set it at like 10 or 11 clock maybe 12 o clock max. or else its too loud.

 

[littlenezt]

i have the k7, but currently only using it with the 6.3mm SE because i dont have any pentaconn cable, is it worth it to spent more for cable for the k7? is there any noticeable tonal / technical difference on the 4.4mm?
on the 6.3mm high gain, at 1 o'clock it powers my sundara to a very loud listening level (at least for me its very loud)

 

[Veri]

i have the k7, but currently only using it with the 6.3mm SE because i dont have any pentaconn cable, is it worth it to spent more for cable for the k7? is there any noticeable tonal / technical difference on the 4.4mm?
on the 6.3mm high gain, at 1 o'clock it powers my sundara to a very loud listening level (at least for me its very loud)

No it won't matter. 4.4mm is there for when you ever need an upgrade in output power, then.

 

[digititus]

Works great with my Sundara's.

To echo other people's thoughts, the K7 does have a weird volume knob, there is like a reasonably small difference between 12 o'clock till like 3/4? o'clock and then the last little bit ramps up exponentially.

It may well be the case this does deliver more power than the Can's (at certain ohms), can't argue with objective measurements, but I really didn't like the way the volume knob/gain seemed weak for most of the pot (if that's what it's called) before ramping up massively near the end. The Can has 4 gain settings and then a volume knob that seems to be pretty well rounded. My Sundara's usually live on the first gain setting and around 12~1 o'clock, or sometimes the second gain setting and 11~12 o'clock.

I've sent mine back so I can't do more testing if EqualizerAPO in any way causes any of this (why would it???), but my minus pre-amp gain isn't that much all things considered (-5.5db unless I increase bass and it jumps to around -7~-8db to avoid clipping). I was of course using the latest FiiO USB drivers.

Still stand by most of my positives, the unit looks great, balanced is an upgrade over the K5 and the pricing is really competitive. Just not for me given what I already own. Picked up a SMSL M200 DAC quite cheap so I'm going to see how it plays with the Can. The one thing I don't like about using a FiiO DAC (Zen DAC V2) is it completely disables any Windows digital volume control. Sometimes having access to your keyboard volume knob comes in handy.

I don't look at the position of the K7 volume knob. I use my ears to tell me when I have the correct volume ;-)
I like the K7 a lot. Works well with everything I've tried with it so far.
The light can be annoying, but as long as you aren't facing it in a blackened room, it's not really an issue.

 

[Phoney]

I don't look at the position of the K7 volume knob. I use my ears to tell me when I have the correct volume ;-)
I like the K7 a lot. Works well with everything I've tried with it so far.
The light can be annoying, but as long as you aren't facing it in a blackened room, it's not really an issue.

It's annoying when it's difficult to hit the right volume when it ramps up like that. I sold my Topping A30 because of that, it gets annoying in the long run and hitting the right volume is actually important for the best sound without fatigue. RME ADI-2 was amazing in that sense, and to me it was so much easier to achieve the best possible non fatigueing sound when doing 0,5db at the time. Especially when I have to adjust the volume between each song. In my opinion having good volume control is more important than having a ton of power that you don't need anyways.

 

[animalfromhell0]

Would this be an upgrade over my Nuforce Icon HDP? I am using an R70x that i like a lot and its a beautiful headphone. Thank you.

 

[pagan84]

The light can be annoying, but as long as you aren't facing it in a blackened room, it's not really an issue.

For me, the only issue is that they've removed a color code for 'no signal' (K5pro: red) and changed color code for signal 'up to 48kHz' (K5pro: blue; K7: turquoise).
As far I know the volume knob works the same way on K9 so it is not a bug, but a feature.

Would this be an upgrade over my Nuforce Icon HDP? I am using an R70x that i like a lot and its a beautiful headphone. Thank you.

Nuforce was/is a premium product and looks cool, K7 has more power and lower noise. I guess it would be the best to borrow it from someone. I upgraded from K5pro AKM and I'm happy.

IMO K7 is perfect for beginners. A lot of clean power, small chassis, no quality problems, no problems with Windows driver.
DAC/Amp/Preamp. Balanced design.
And only £170 in the UK right now!

 

[animalfromhell0]

For me, the only issue is that they've removed a color code for 'no signal' (K5pro: red) and changed color code for signal 'up to 48kHz' (K5pro: blue; K7: turquoise).
As far I know the volume knob works the same way on K9 so it is not a bug, but a feature.



Nuforce was/is a premium product and looks cool, K7 has more power and lower noise. I guess it would be the best to borrow it from someone. I upgraded from K5pro AKM and I'm happy.

IMO K7 is perfect for beginners. A lot of clean power, small chassis, no quality problems, no problems with Windows driver.
DAC/Amp/Preamp. Balanced design.
And only £170 in the UK right now!

Doesn't the K7 have the volume increment problem on the knob?