The EP-630. Low impedance (12 ohm I think) and very sensitive. I already lost it so If you want to listen to noise, you may get something similar in the market.
The Creative EP-630?
$20 earbuds from 2005? Seriously? Which you have conveniently "lost".
You still haven't answered if you actually tried these with the Dawn, the device this thread is on, that you made the allegation "Cannot drive 32 ohm properly."
Now it's 16Ω, not 32Ω. Generic 16Ω earbuds from 20 years ago. This is supposedly the fatal flaw in this device, that it can't drive $20 earbuds from 2005 for some reason.
So what's the issue with 32Ω exactly? What is the 32Ω device that it has problems with?
As these are attached wire earbuds with a 3.5mm termination
you wouldn't be able to use them on the Dawn, which is 4.4mm only. I guess that would mean it "can't drive them properly", with the stock termination it can't drive them at all. You wouldn't hear hiss. You wouldn't hear anything. But I don't think that's what you meant.
As the Dawn is 4.4 balanced, with two entirely separated channels and no common ground, it will also have substantially better crosstalk performance, essentially none. I don't think this matters, but it's going to be better.
Spec on these earbuds on 16Ω and 106 dB/mW.
RAA measured them at 112dB/mW. Whichever of these it is, this is moderately sensitive but not extraordinary or radically out of line for earbuds/IEMs. I have IEMs that are substantially more sensitive than these, and there is zero hiss on the Dawn.
You would not hear any noise whatsoever with the Dawn, if you did actually cut the 3.5mm off and rewire them balanced with a 4.4. You didn't do any of this, but if you did, you wouldn't hear noise on the Dawn.
I remember 2005, I remember the devices we had then, and the sort of very slight hiss you could get. This thing, the noise is so far down, it's just utterly impossible that you would hear any hiss.
And Hiss is not THD, it's noise floor.
THD is substantially LESS audible than hiss. I linked you some listening tests on that, to see what level of THD you can actually hear. You could have THD probably several orders of magnitude worse than the Dawn and you still wouldn't hear it. You certainly won't hear it on the Dawn.
You would not be putting 1V into these either. RAA measured 130.1 dB/V SPL. That's louder than you want to listen.
The AK4376 device I have is the Fiio BTR3. I have several other AKM devices as well, Fiio K5 Pro, UTWS5, LC-BT2, these all use AKM chips and I have nothing against AKM. I don't have strong feelings about DAC chips either way, I also have several ESS and several Cirrus Logic devices. They are all fine.
A AK4377 evaluation kit is not a finished product. But I'm sure it is possible to implement an AK4377 into a perfectly good product. By the numbers though, there are chips from ESS and Cirrus Logic that have lower noise and distortion. There are chips from AKM that have lower noise and distortion as well, it's one of their lower end chips. It's fine though.
It's just that you seem to have this weird idea that this specific one entry-level AKM AK4377 DAC is somehow uniquely remarkable in a way that others are not, and feel compelled to dump on other stuff you have never actually heard, and stuff that objectively measures excellently as well.
