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Best cheap USB-C headphone dongles?
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HissingFree
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My JM12 doesn't crackle with Tinhifi firmware, but then I get background noise almost as bad as Jcally JM06 Pro, it doesn't make any sense lol
Received the Kuang Pai Player 3. Ordered it based on its advertised high output (430 mW from its balanced out @ 32 Ohm). Wanted to write a review along with measurements if its performance is just (or nearly) as indicated by the specs.
After measuring its distortion vs. output power, I immediately dismissed it. See below for 1 kHz sine tone tests of THD+N vs. power:
(measured by E1DA Cosmos ADCiso, Scaler, and dummy load board; ADC input sensitivity was calibrated using a True RMS meter )
By the way, shown above is THD+N vs. Power (not just THD, which is mislabeled).
Why is the THD+N curve so flat? The reason is that its THD (forgot to show on the plot) rises nearly in proportion to the fundamental tone level. That is, THD dominates noise, which must be due to bad power supply design.
Same goes for its unbalanced output:
In fact, I should've expected this low power output because of the fact that it adopts ESS's old headphone driver SABRE9601K. It can produce at best less than 50 mW under 32 Ohm, anyway, according to its datasheet.
I would be somewhat satisfied IF the balanced output provided double (or nearly double) its max SE voltage. Not even close. And its actual performance is way worse than its advertised specs. Disappointing.
After measuring its distortion vs. output power, I immediately dismissed it. See below for 1 kHz sine tone tests of THD+N vs. power:
(measured by E1DA Cosmos ADCiso, Scaler, and dummy load board; ADC input sensitivity was calibrated using a True RMS meter )
By the way, shown above is THD+N vs. Power (not just THD, which is mislabeled).
Why is the THD+N curve so flat? The reason is that its THD (forgot to show on the plot) rises nearly in proportion to the fundamental tone level. That is, THD dominates noise, which must be due to bad power supply design.
Same goes for its unbalanced output:
In fact, I should've expected this low power output because of the fact that it adopts ESS's old headphone driver SABRE9601K. It can produce at best less than 50 mW under 32 Ohm, anyway, according to its datasheet.
I would be somewhat satisfied IF the balanced output provided double (or nearly double) its max SE voltage. Not even close. And its actual performance is way worse than its advertised specs. Disappointing.
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You mean power? The expected benefit of these ESS amps may be more their (alleged) low noise than pure power. I believe 48mW is more than enough for plenty of IEMs.
Did you turned the high power mode of the Kuang Pai 3 on for these measurements?
Oh lol, I'm usig it as my daily driver with no complaints at all, it demontrates how much we are good at hearing distortion.
Can't express on power since i keep it in low gain and use only sensitive iems.
Now I'm struggled, keep it and living with the mind bug of high thd or go back to my Sonata BHD with it's much worse volume management?
Damn me, i knew that I should not have pointed you to measure this, anyway thank you very much!
My bad. I simply thought such a mode switch would be through an app. Since it has no app support I assumed nothing can be changed. Will measure again.
Btw the purpose of adding a HP amp stage is power. Nothing else. And CS43131 includes an extremely low-noise HP driver that can output 50 mW. No reason to add another HP amp stage unless the target power is much higher.
Do any of these chipsets that can output 2 Vrms drain your phone battery excessively? I understand this will be somewhat dependent on listening levels, but at the same listening levels, does it drain it more than say, an Apple dongle which is 1 Vrms?
In my very limited experience/measurements, what matters is the current. With the same dongle, if your headphones are low impedance and you need high voltage (volume) to drive them, your battery is going to drain faster, and the opposite.
Of course, hence my "with the same dongle" at the beginning of the sentence.The caveat to this is the chip itself (or chips), what data processing is done or not. There are quite a number of dongles with onboard MCU, DSP, ADC, LEDs, Display, etc. These don’t get free power from the ambient noise, and they may drain the phone battery “excessively”.
Kuang Pai Player 3
Ok, measured it again in both its Standard Power and Full Power modes:
It turns out that the original measurements reported in my previous post were made in Full Power mode. And also found that its Standard Power mode is done simply by applying -6 dB digital gain. There's no noise benefit from using this low-gain mode.
Also, very very strangely, it struggles producing clean outputs under light loads (i.e., high impedance). See below:
It was so strange I checked everything again. The results were reproducible. It CAN only produce clean output under NO LOAD (in fact, 200 KOhm), but not even under 300 Ohm! See below:
What is the take home message? This USB dongle is not worth it. USB dongles based on just CS43131 (i.e., no additional HP amp stage) like the Jcally JM20 should be a better buy. There is no point of adding two SABRE9601K's and providing balanced outputs if the end results are like this.
I wouldn't say it is a bad device in most of its use cases. It can provide clean signals in most of the situations I can think of (i.e., IEMs and headphones that are not very demanding). But there are other better choices.
P.S. In case you wonder I made sure a powered USB hub was used for this test. The power was clean, too (confirmed no PSU leakage noise in FFT results).
Ok, measured it again in both its Standard Power and Full Power modes:
It turns out that the original measurements reported in my previous post were made in Full Power mode. And also found that its Standard Power mode is done simply by applying -6 dB digital gain. There's no noise benefit from using this low-gain mode.
Also, very very strangely, it struggles producing clean outputs under light loads (i.e., high impedance). See below:
It was so strange I checked everything again. The results were reproducible. It CAN only produce clean output under NO LOAD (in fact, 200 KOhm), but not even under 300 Ohm! See below:
What is the take home message? This USB dongle is not worth it. USB dongles based on just CS43131 (i.e., no additional HP amp stage) like the Jcally JM20 should be a better buy. There is no point of adding two SABRE9601K's and providing balanced outputs if the end results are like this.
I wouldn't say it is a bad device in most of its use cases. It can provide clean signals in most of the situations I can think of (i.e., IEMs and headphones that are not very demanding). But there are other better choices.
P.S. In case you wonder I made sure a powered USB hub was used for this test. The power was clean, too (confirmed no PSU leakage noise in FFT results).
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Wow, it seems I'm using a very odd device
Especially that 300 ohm voltage behavior is very strange... 
maybe there is a reason why no one around is using that ESS op-amp...I'd better go back to my other dongles.
Thank you again!
JCally JM20 Max
Received it today from Aliexpress (link here). Initial tests are extremely encouraging. This definitely deserves a more detailed review and measurements!
1 kHz SINAD under two load settings:
The results are very, very impressive! Have we seen any USB dongle that can produce UNBALANCED 2.5 Vrms with this level of THD+N under 32 Ohm load? I don't recall any. The company's claimed 195 mW @ 32 Ohm per channel is spot on.
As you can see in the first chart, its clean output can reach 2 Vrms even under 12 and 16 ohm loads.
If a combination of CS43131 + SGM8262 is this good, other dongles with the same components like Fiio KA11, KA13, and KA15 will be worth looking at.
Lastly, it only gets warm under stressed test conditions like low impedance loads but does not get very hot.
Will write a more detailed review when I get a chance.
Received it today from Aliexpress (link here). Initial tests are extremely encouraging. This definitely deserves a more detailed review and measurements!
1 kHz SINAD under two load settings:
The results are very, very impressive! Have we seen any USB dongle that can produce UNBALANCED 2.5 Vrms with this level of THD+N under 32 Ohm load? I don't recall any. The company's claimed 195 mW @ 32 Ohm per channel is spot on.
As you can see in the first chart, its clean output can reach 2 Vrms even under 12 and 16 ohm loads.
If a combination of CS43131 + SGM8262 is this good, other dongles with the same components like Fiio KA11, KA13, and KA15 will be worth looking at.
Lastly, it only gets warm under stressed test conditions like low impedance loads but does not get very hot.
Will write a more detailed review when I get a chance.
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Jean-Paul Petrosyan
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I wonder how it performs with multitone at different signal levels, given that's it's based on CS43131.
CS43198 and CS43131 DAC sound defects
Impressive, yes.
Thank you for the great test!
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AFAIK the JM20MAX uses the Savitech USB bridge and therefore might suffer from the known ramp-up on start let's swallow the important stuff issue. See Fosi DS-2 review for details. Got one on the way myself as I am not affected by it and wanted a simple but powerful replacement for the Apple dongle.
IVX
Major Contributor
as I remember, a bare CS43131 in Meizu Hi-Fi DAC(I guess it is the cheapest CS43131 DAC) has the same THD+N or is close to -115db.
BTW, E1DA 9039S at 32ohm 1k@THD+N is close to -125db, and -120 at 12ohm, so the world record is still mine
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