DAC Chip: Apple (Single)
PCM Undisclosed, SNR: Unspecified, Power: Unspecified, USB Type-C Male, 3.5mm SE (Microphone: Yes), Plastic Chassis with Short Cable
Listening Equipment: Etymotic ER4SR, ER2XR, Shure KSE1500, TIN HiFi P1, HZSOUND Heart Mirror
LISTENING EQUIPMENT USED IMPARTED HUGE INFLUENCE TO SOUND IMPRESSIONS & RATING
💚PROS
- Natural timbre with balanced tonality, pleasantly organic
- Vibrant dynamics, well controlled and engaging.
- Lush Mids with crisp Male and Female vocals
- Crisp Treble with commendable textures, snappy decays
- Commanding and fast Mid-Bass with ample punch and textures
- Sub-Bass is present and with good seismic feedback.
- Surprisingly good details retrieval with proper nuances
- Spacious and open soundstage with decent imaging, great layering
- Sounds best with EBM and modern music.
- Great speed and transients handling, no congestion observed.
- Great resistances to sibilance
- Very forgiving on source quality (but also less transparent)
💔CONS
- Slightly grainy edged for Treble decays
- Dull edged extensions for Treble and Percussions
- Exceedingly meek driving capability due to Android SRC limitations
- The build seems very flimsy with the data cable being very thin.
- Mids focused and somewhat recessed highs and lows, rolled off slightly shorter.
VERDICT
Apple Type-C. In all fairness this Apple Type-C is a decent dongle with natural sense of sound that is not compressed and artificial. The Achilles heel for this unit is when you plug it directly to a stock Android phone. To unlock the full potential, you will need to switch to nerd mode and work it up with UAPP. However, I already stated that I don’t use UAPP as I prefer stock user experience and if a similarly priced dongle can do the job out of the box without tweaking then it is obvious to me that using Apple Type-C is not practical. To make things worse, there are several similarly priced dongles that perform on 4 stars rating level and this further made it even more difficult to appraise the Apple unit.
I was only able to do this impressions with my HZSOUND Heart Mirror (80/100 Volume) which is so easy to drive and synergize. The Tin HiFi P1 and Etymotic ER2XR was not even usable at 100/100 volume with everything sounded distant and recessed.
⭐⭐⭐ ($12.00)
Best Pairing: Anything below 32 Ohm and no less than 105db of sensitivity
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