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DAC Chip: Apple (Single)
PCM Undisclosed, SNR: Unspecified, Power: Unspecified, USB Type-C Male, 3.5mm SE (Microphone: Yes), Plastic Chassis with Short Cable

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Listening Equipment: Etymotic ER4SR, ER2XR, Shure KSE1500, TIN HiFi P1, HZSOUND Heart Mirror

LISTENING EQUIPMENT USED IMPARTED HUGE INFLUENCE TO SOUND IMPRESSIONS & RATING

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💚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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