This is a review and detailed measurements of the THX Onyx MQA DAC and Headphone Adapter. Company was kind enough to send me one prior to its announcement today. The Onyx costs US $200.
There are a lot of "dongles" out there but the Onyx is the first one to bring good bit of class to the category:
As you see, the device is a bit long but also sleek. An integrated USB-C cable has a large custom strain relief and is made of lovely silicon. Better yet, it has a magnet at the end which mates with the same on the device itself to give a mechanism to wrap your headphone cable around:
I didn't have a use for that but would play with it for hours, attaching and detaching the magnetic latch!
There are three LEDs that show the various status of the device. I didn't care to memorize what they do so I leave it up to you all to figure out.
The Onyx uses the THX amplification module which became famous in desktop configuration. At the time, it broke all records as far as low level of distortion and noise. Interestingly enough, the marketing material talked a lot about its low power requirements (due to lack of need to bias the output stage) but all the products based on it were desktop, powered units. Later, a headphone with the amplification was released but no stand-alone such as we see here. While I did not measure the power consumption, the Onyx ran cool to touch after some use.
THX Onyx Measurements
As usual, we start with our dashboard:
Distortion is at the limit of audibility which is to say it is transparent. With a bit of noise, SINAD slides to 108 dB which while not class leading, is still excellent:
Dynamic range follows suit:
Dongles tend to show a lot of spurious but usually inaudible tones in our jitter test. Onyx is the same although it is much better than many dongle including the free or $9 ones you get with your phones:
At -130 dB, the spikes are 15 dB better than best case threshold of audibility so definite a problem for the eye but not the ear.
Multitone test shows the low distortion levels:
The filter is a rather slow one:
Most important measurement for a portable dongle is not the above but availability of power. So let's start with 300 ohm load:
Nice to see no clipping. Output power is limited by 2 volt output which is almost the best we get in this class product without resorting to differential ("balanced") output:
Switching to 32 ohm load though, allows the Onyx to shine more with its high current delivery:
Testing for load dependency we see an amplifier that simply doesn't care (in a good way):
It only goes into protection (tall lines going left) when impedance is at 12 and 16 ohms. Above that, there is no clipping at all.
THX Onyx Headphone Listening Tests
With my Sennheiser HD-650, the Onyx was capable of driving them to very nice loudness with superb fidelity. It is nice to be able to crank up the volume to max and not notice any distortion. For normal listening though, I had the volume down -6 dB (software DSP volume in my Roon player).
Switching to Drop Ether CX low impedance headphone resulted in similar experience. Again, there was no distortion and plenty of volume although maybe a hair less than I had with Sennheiser HD-650.
Conclusions
THX's take on portable headphone adapters is up the industrial and look and feel of the product. And bring it under a much more recognized brand name. Its subjective and objective performance are near or at the top of the class. The only two misses are rather high price of $200 and lack of balanced output for very inefficient headphones.
Overall, I really like the look and feel and execution of THX Onyx and such, I am going to put it on my recommended list.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
There are a lot of "dongles" out there but the Onyx is the first one to bring good bit of class to the category:
As you see, the device is a bit long but also sleek. An integrated USB-C cable has a large custom strain relief and is made of lovely silicon. Better yet, it has a magnet at the end which mates with the same on the device itself to give a mechanism to wrap your headphone cable around:
I didn't have a use for that but would play with it for hours, attaching and detaching the magnetic latch!
There are three LEDs that show the various status of the device. I didn't care to memorize what they do so I leave it up to you all to figure out.
The Onyx uses the THX amplification module which became famous in desktop configuration. At the time, it broke all records as far as low level of distortion and noise. Interestingly enough, the marketing material talked a lot about its low power requirements (due to lack of need to bias the output stage) but all the products based on it were desktop, powered units. Later, a headphone with the amplification was released but no stand-alone such as we see here. While I did not measure the power consumption, the Onyx ran cool to touch after some use.
THX Onyx Measurements
As usual, we start with our dashboard:
Distortion is at the limit of audibility which is to say it is transparent. With a bit of noise, SINAD slides to 108 dB which while not class leading, is still excellent:
Dynamic range follows suit:
Dongles tend to show a lot of spurious but usually inaudible tones in our jitter test. Onyx is the same although it is much better than many dongle including the free or $9 ones you get with your phones:
At -130 dB, the spikes are 15 dB better than best case threshold of audibility so definite a problem for the eye but not the ear.
Multitone test shows the low distortion levels:
The filter is a rather slow one:
Most important measurement for a portable dongle is not the above but availability of power. So let's start with 300 ohm load:
Nice to see no clipping. Output power is limited by 2 volt output which is almost the best we get in this class product without resorting to differential ("balanced") output:
Switching to 32 ohm load though, allows the Onyx to shine more with its high current delivery:
Testing for load dependency we see an amplifier that simply doesn't care (in a good way):
It only goes into protection (tall lines going left) when impedance is at 12 and 16 ohms. Above that, there is no clipping at all.
THX Onyx Headphone Listening Tests
With my Sennheiser HD-650, the Onyx was capable of driving them to very nice loudness with superb fidelity. It is nice to be able to crank up the volume to max and not notice any distortion. For normal listening though, I had the volume down -6 dB (software DSP volume in my Roon player).
Switching to Drop Ether CX low impedance headphone resulted in similar experience. Again, there was no distortion and plenty of volume although maybe a hair less than I had with Sennheiser HD-650.
Conclusions
THX's take on portable headphone adapters is up the industrial and look and feel of the product. And bring it under a much more recognized brand name. Its subjective and objective performance are near or at the top of the class. The only two misses are rather high price of $200 and lack of balanced output for very inefficient headphones.
Overall, I really like the look and feel and execution of THX Onyx and such, I am going to put it on my recommended list.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
