I’ve not purchased a new DAC or Amp in several years but with recent deals coming out I’m getting that old itch.
Simple question for anyone who happens to own both.
Is it worth the extra money to get the HiFiman EF 499 or would you say the FIIO K11 R2R sounds as good for less money?
I’m really just interested in the DAC section as they both have preouts and I have lots of amps.
Any info would be of great help to me.
Thank you.
I’d say FiiO. They actually utilize their budget into research… Their products have actual value. Sound is subjective, so won’t comment on that. Strictly speaking about how the two companies operate, FiiO is a major player in the industry now. They have a lot of capital, and have shown major progress through diversification. I’d place my trust in FiiO.
The only thing that comes to my mind is why not HiFiiOman?
Sorry for not being of any help here 
I wouldn’t expect a big difference sound wise main difference would be power output, I had a ef400 and the power it had was super overkill for the headphones I had at the time so depends what you need lol
Most of the ChiFi companies use nuclear substation levels of power as a marketing “feature” for new amps and amp/DAC stacks.
There are probably less than a couple of handfuls of headphones or IEMs in the world – not counting electrostats that often come with a power supply – that need that kind of power, yet FIIO, HiFiMan, SMSL and others keep cranking out units with 4, 6, even 8 WPC at 32 ohms.
Ridiculous.
Thank you for the reply’s everyone. Is there anyone here who actually owns both? Someone who has compared these for sound quality?
It’s worth asking on Head-Fi.
Depending on where you buy from, the EF499 can actually be cheaper. They’re $133 on Taobao directly from the Hifiman storefront and if you email Hifiman, you might be able to get them to honor that price in a direct purchase and not have to use Taobao if that’s an issue. The EF499 is suuuuper neutral and more detailed, much better amp section with really solid control and tons of features. K11 is smoother and a little mushy at times and honestly I can’t believe it’s gotten the hype it has. The EF499 is definitely more capable all around, neither are very good examples of an “R2R sound” if that’s the reason for getting either of them. I have a feeling that the K11 would be a lot better if the amp section wasn’t holding it back, but Fiios lower end amps kinda just suck imo, they’re super lackluster like Ifi’s Zen line.
Cuz majority of their target audience dont understand how little power is actually needed for portable transducers so these big and cool numbers is an easy way to appeal to them.
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I think the whole concept of headroom has poisoned peoples brains, too. Headroom is bad, objectively. The further from max on a volume knob, the worse the dynamic range. Only exception being if you’re clipping, and if you’re clipping, your amp is too weak.
You arent telling people to blast their hearing into oblivion are you? It is certainly true that higher volumes do have better dynamic range due to psychoacoustics.
No, headroom is just a factor of improper gain staging. You want to ideally have no volume control at all but have your gain staged so that your volume is the exact level you want. Attenuators of any kind will lose dynamics, no matter if they’re digital, resistor ladders, potentiometers or otherwise. Always pick the lowest gain stage that allows you enough volume and gets you as close to max on the volume knob. Anything else is just people liking compression, which is fine, but it isn’t correct. When I hear people say they like high gain on a certain amp when sitting at like 20/100 volume vs low gain at 95/100, I instantly assume they just like the compression that comes with it, because that’s basically what it is. A loss of dynamic range is essentially compression and it leads to some sometimes positive effects like making some sounds punchier when they’re just normally supposed to be a much quieter sound. The opposite can be true, too. Loud sounds can be brought closer to the average as well and sibilance can be softened.
Wattage is wattage. Volume controls don’t change how much wattage a headphone takes to get to a certain volume.
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Yes, you are correct. Although realistically it may not be feasible to do it like this. Especially if you have multiple transducer. This kinda setup would work better with speaker setups where it is usually set and forget it.
I think you are misunderstanding headroom a bit though. You want it because if your average volume is x db and you are already maxed out, if you do not have do not have headroom you will not be able to fully get out the dynamic range if the track needs to go louder (peak) like +10-20db extra over the average.
Nope, still a gain problem. If your amp doesn’t have enough power, it will clip at the same volume regardless of gain level because the output power is still the same.
(Purely fictional numbers incoming)
If you’re sitting at high gain at 5/100 volume outputting 100mw with no clipping, and low gain at 100/100 outputs 100mw, you can’t clip. You aren’t maxing the amp out, you’re just changing where the power is coming from, whether from amplification or attenuation. Headroom is exclusively bad unless you’re so close to maxing out your amp that it runs the chance of clipping. The reality of clipping an amp on headphones these days is so close to impossible, most everything has hundreds of times more power than they need to drive most headphones. There are soft clipping scenarios though where you can starve capacitors and run into power droop issues, but that’s not traditional clipping and is a lot more subtle. HE6 shows a lot of power droop issues with amps and it has a pretty specific sound to it when it happens.
Jason Stoddard, the owner of Schiit Audio did a good writeup on gain: Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up | Page 10356 | Headphone Reviews and Discussion - Head-Fi.org
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You are correct but I was referring more to if you DONT have any higher gain levels to adjust to.
Where you are already sitting at 100/100 and the volume is just fine enough for average volume but not for peaks.
but for portable transducers this is next to impossible since they need such a miniscule amount of power. Speakers may be a different story since they do (afaik) need power that is measured in W and not mW.
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Interesting. I always viewed it as such. That the lowest gain setting gives the optimal sound performance.
However, when it comes to volume control, this is not true, at least not in the case of stepped attenuation. When you have a stepped attenuator for volume control, you want to keep it on the ‘loudest’ position, max position, as that’s where there are no resistors in the signal path, giving you the most unaltered signal.
It’s very limiting and it’s not versatile to have lowest gain + max volume, as some tracks will be too loud, while others will be too quiet. But, the tracks that allow for this combo sound otherworldly!
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BINGO. It’s all marketing BS, not a feature that anyone truly needs.
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