This is a review and detailed measurements of the Razer USB-C headphone adapter DAC and Amplifier for smartphones. It is on kind loan from a member. The Razer adapter sells for US $25 from company's website so more than twice as much as typical "dongle" from other phone companies.
The Razer adapter has sturdy build and is much larger than typical $9 dongle:
There is a THX logo on the other side of it. Nothing in the website indicates that that means. I guess we will find out in testing.
I measured the Razer dongle using Windows 10 which nicely recognized the unit as a DAC. Inserting and removing the headphone plug would cause it to be active or not.
There is no rise in temperature of the unit in testing I performed so power consumption should be low.
Headphone DAC & Amp Dongle Audio Measurements
As usual, we start with our dashboard of 1 kHz tone:
Sad to see the low output of just 1 volt as that will hurt available power into high impedance headphones/loads. SINAD which is a figure of merit for noise and distortion is just 78 dB which puts it firmly in the red category (worst quadrant) of all DACs tested:
While most dongles land in the same bucket, it would have been good for it to land higher in the tier.
Noise level is not bad:
Intermodulation distortion versus level shows what we know:
We are far away from any kind of desktop performance. If the output distortion did not rise at just -15 dB, it could have done much better though.
Using 32-tones to simulate "music" we see similar issues:
Jitter test is not pretty but then again, most dongles have similar issue (likely lack of filtering of the USB power):
Linearity test shows rather poor results indicating that we can't reproduce clean levels even below 16 bits:
Output impedance is a bit high as well:
Power Measurements
The most audible issue in any headphone amplifier is when it runs out of power and as a result, either sounds anemic, or very distorted. So let's measure that, first into 300 ohm load simulating high impedance headphones:
There is no clipping but there is so little output power at just 3 milliwatts. As a perspective, I like to see 100 milliwatts in desktop headphone amplifiers.
Power does increase into 33 ohm as expected but still nothing to write home about:
The higher output impedance is likely causing some losses here.
Comparing the power to other dongles we see:
Disappointing all around.
Headphone Listening Tests
I started testing on my PC first with Sennheiser HD-650 headphones. As expected, the volume was just not there. In a quiet room, you will have adequate loudness but otherwise, you need more power. Bass response suffered as a result fair bit as was low level detail.
Switching to Hifiman HE-400i, the situation improved and I had a reasonably enjoyable sound and performance.
Thinking I may be holding these little dongles to too high a standard, I connected the Razer to my Samsung S8+ smartphone. Here, performance was substantially better than using the headphone jack on the S8+. With the HD-650, the S8+ by itself was too quiet. The Razer increased volume by a factor of two or so and made the experience, "listenable." Likewise, the HE-400i really came to life with the Razer as opposed to S8+ by itself.
Conclusions
Given the larger size of the Razer dongle and THX logo, I expected to get a lot of power out of this device but did not remotely get there. So the thing you can hang your hat on is better build which does have value. As does the performance over native output of phones like my Samsung S8+. Net result is that you may still want to purchase this unit even though it doesn't perform that well. I am not going to recommend it however. I stand on too tall of a mountain to do so.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
The panthers want to throw a huge party for the new year's and want to invite all of their friends. And that means one thing: tons of money spent on steaks to feed them all! So please help me with the expenses of this by donating generously using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The Razer adapter has sturdy build and is much larger than typical $9 dongle:
There is a THX logo on the other side of it. Nothing in the website indicates that that means. I guess we will find out in testing.
I measured the Razer dongle using Windows 10 which nicely recognized the unit as a DAC. Inserting and removing the headphone plug would cause it to be active or not.
There is no rise in temperature of the unit in testing I performed so power consumption should be low.
Headphone DAC & Amp Dongle Audio Measurements
As usual, we start with our dashboard of 1 kHz tone:
Sad to see the low output of just 1 volt as that will hurt available power into high impedance headphones/loads. SINAD which is a figure of merit for noise and distortion is just 78 dB which puts it firmly in the red category (worst quadrant) of all DACs tested:
While most dongles land in the same bucket, it would have been good for it to land higher in the tier.
Noise level is not bad:
Intermodulation distortion versus level shows what we know:
We are far away from any kind of desktop performance. If the output distortion did not rise at just -15 dB, it could have done much better though.
Using 32-tones to simulate "music" we see similar issues:
Jitter test is not pretty but then again, most dongles have similar issue (likely lack of filtering of the USB power):
Linearity test shows rather poor results indicating that we can't reproduce clean levels even below 16 bits:
Output impedance is a bit high as well:
Power Measurements
The most audible issue in any headphone amplifier is when it runs out of power and as a result, either sounds anemic, or very distorted. So let's measure that, first into 300 ohm load simulating high impedance headphones:
There is no clipping but there is so little output power at just 3 milliwatts. As a perspective, I like to see 100 milliwatts in desktop headphone amplifiers.
Power does increase into 33 ohm as expected but still nothing to write home about:
The higher output impedance is likely causing some losses here.
Comparing the power to other dongles we see:
Disappointing all around.
Headphone Listening Tests
I started testing on my PC first with Sennheiser HD-650 headphones. As expected, the volume was just not there. In a quiet room, you will have adequate loudness but otherwise, you need more power. Bass response suffered as a result fair bit as was low level detail.
Switching to Hifiman HE-400i, the situation improved and I had a reasonably enjoyable sound and performance.
Thinking I may be holding these little dongles to too high a standard, I connected the Razer to my Samsung S8+ smartphone. Here, performance was substantially better than using the headphone jack on the S8+. With the HD-650, the S8+ by itself was too quiet. The Razer increased volume by a factor of two or so and made the experience, "listenable." Likewise, the HE-400i really came to life with the Razer as opposed to S8+ by itself.
Conclusions
Given the larger size of the Razer dongle and THX logo, I expected to get a lot of power out of this device but did not remotely get there. So the thing you can hang your hat on is better build which does have value. As does the performance over native output of phones like my Samsung S8+. Net result is that you may still want to purchase this unit even though it doesn't perform that well. I am not going to recommend it however. I stand on too tall of a mountain to do so.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
The panthers want to throw a huge party for the new year's and want to invite all of their friends. And that means one thing: tons of money spent on steaks to feed them all! So please help me with the expenses of this by donating generously using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
