For years I enjoyed listening to CDs at the gym with a pair of 32Ohm Sennheiser EH-150's and a 15mW Sony DNE-330 Walkman (with customizable paremetric EQ). But, alas, the Walkman died and the current lineup of portable CD players all boasted only 5mW of output power (albeit the same EQ and bass boost features) ... and what a sonic difference those missing 10 milliWatts made! I nearly cried each time I put on the headphones, knowing how good they could sound if only ... . And headphone amplifiers were either AC-powered or outlandishly high-priced -- or both!
Until the Fiio E5! Finally, a 150mW, portable, high-fidelity headphone amplifier that -- connected to the right components -- returns your music to it's full dynamic range and frequency spectrum. My Sennheisers roar! Thumping bass! Sizzling treble! Quiet soft passages and deafening loud passages ... all from a rechargable gizmo about the size of a matchbook!
But it is what it is. The Fiio E5 does not have nearly the amp to drive my full-size 150Ohm Sennheiser HD-525s to their abilities; alternately, hooked up to my son's Ipod Touch (which apparently has quite a bit of output power to begin with) and his preferred earbuds I could not notice a distingushable improvement in sound. But for an underpowered portable CD or MP3 player and a mid-sized set of high-fidelity headphones ... the Fiio E5 is a godsend. Hear what you've been missing! And for under $25? It's a no-brainer. FiiO E5 Headphone Amplifier
I truly have to respect the E5 and the good people who made it available in the US at such a low price. You get better-than-average build quality and ergonomics (though the accessory cables are a bit cheap). The one thing that you don't get is much improvement in sound quality. While I don't have the software and instrumentation to verify my suspicions, some other purchasers and reviewers have put this amp to the test and report a somewhat-startling rise in gain above 500 Hz. Anybody who has ever sold hi-fi equipment knows that adding a few dB of volume in that range will make ANY piece of equipment (cough, cough) sound more attractive in an "A-B" demonstration. (How do you think I made my quota each month?) And herein lies the problem...the E5 is not really so much a headphone amplifier as it is an active tone control. Frankly, the gain (volume increase) on the unit is pretty limited and it does nothing for my better-quality headphones. It just doesn't have any guts. What's more, it has a noticeable hiss from the electronic circuit. Now, you may not notice this right away, but it's there. There are also any number of other nice CMOY amplifiers out there that will exhibit virtually NO hiss at any volume level, and they're priced about the same as the E5 (at the price shown on this website). In summary, the E5 can make your headphones sound a bit more attractive, if you have the right "taste" and happen to have a set of compatible headphones. I just think that you could spend a few $$$ more and get a very-good to excellent headphone amplifier instead.
I give this little amp 4 stars -- I bought it for use with my iPod Nano 5g and Sennheiser HD600 headphones. The built-in amp in the iPod is **just** a bit inadequate to drive these headphones well -- on some albums I needed to crank the volume up all the way, and sometimes that still didn't give me enough volume.
For $20 plus shipping, I figured I'd give the FiiO a try. If it didn't work, just return it, right? So it came today, and I gave it a try with some of the problematic tracks on my iPod. First reactions: enough volume boost (barely, but enough) to make the problem tracks listenable, and to drive the HD600's to more than comfortable levels on most music. I have the volume on the E5 turned up all the way, and use the touch-wheel on the iPod for volume control.
Second, despite some other reviews here and elsewhere, there is NO discernable hiss or noise from the FiiO E5, either idle or with music playing.
Third: Bass boost works as advertised. If you have phones that don't give you good bass response, this will probably fix your problem. The HD600's have great low-end, so I'm running the E5 set to the OFF position.
Summary: well worth the money, and worth a try if your music player is working too hard to drive your particular headphones, or if you need the bass boost. I detect no degredation of the sound with my iPod. Just for fun, I hooked it up in series with my Home Headroom amp, to see if I could hear a difference...yep, the E5 blurs the extraordinarily good sound from the Headroom just a bit. But, then, that's not what it's for, is it? It's NOT a high-end, multi-$$$ amp, just a way to get a bit more performance from your portable music player. For that, it works just fine! The only alternatives would be a CMOY amp from one of the builders on eBay, at two to 3 times the price, or a commercial amp at much greater cost. The E5 is good value for the money, in my book.
- 1/2 star for the flimsy interconnect cables, - 1/2 star for not having a bit more gain. However, overall, I'm very satisfied. Build quality looks fine. The battery even came charged!
Happy listening!
As soon as it was charged, I connected the E5 to my Creative Zen V Plus & a pair of Ultimate Ears Metro.fi 150's. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the thing actually works. It doesn't just bring out the bass, but the detail as well, & gives you a nice rich, warm, well-balanced sound. At first, I was disappointed with the 150's. Thanks to the E5, I'm not at all sorry I bought them. The only problem I have with the E5 is that it doesn't work as well with my Sony Walkman CD player. It does noticeably improve the sound quality, but there is a background hiss during the more quiet spots that gets really annoying no matter how you adjust the settings on either the E5 or the CD player. Still, the E5 works very well with MP3 players & I won't hesitate to buy another one when the battery finally dies. For only $27 including shipping, it's well worth the price to have your music sound this good.
P.S. Buy these at Head-Direct, these people get nothing but 5 star ratings for a good reason!'
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