Rattle it
The so-called fever, in fact, is the "marginal effect diminishing", the greater the investment can bring the surprise will become smaller, the pleasure obtained when the "fungus" is the most, and after sticking to a small circle for a long time, only the circle of attempts can have more possibilities and surprises...
The ceiling of the portable player has been broken several times, but it has not been raised much, electricity is the root, to be a greater and better driving force, but also longer endurance, then the battery is not small, although thanks to the needs of new energy vehicle manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers, the energy density of the battery has been greatly improved, but many new player machines still choose a larger volume to cater to the choice of those multi-unit flagship headphones that are not very reasonable.
Many manufacturers have chosen the cross-border road, abandoned the carry-on, the volume directly began to approach the desktop, the power supply part was upgraded, of course, the thrust was also significantly improved, Sony, AK, Qianlongsheng and Fei Ao have chosen this road, but this also makes the product itself segmented by the market, and the audience has fewer users.
I personally feel that without giving up the portable and sound quality of the premise, a portable player + a desktop decoding ear amplifier may be a better combination of gameplay, if you have a portable player yourself, coupled with a desktop decoding ear amplifier is a good upgrade, you can try some high-impedance flat-head headphones and "cost-effective" large headphones, really experience the "broken circle" sound.
Saying so much, it is because I have been using the combination of The Vion M11 Plus and the Flios K9 Pro ESS recently, I personally feel that it is a more versatile and fun combination than the "new species" of the Fleos M17 portable desktop, the desktop uses the K9 Pro ESS under the drive force is better (suitable for high-impedance large headphones), and the M11 Plus is more suitable for carrying in the portable scene, 1+1
About the hardware and design of the K9 Pro ESS
As we all know, because of the AKM accident, AK4499EQ this DAC has been discontinued, HiFi circle many manufacturers are in a state of no core available, ESS ES9038Pro has become the only choice for each flagship, FeiO adopted ES9038Pro, and is a dual DAC design. PS: The topic of the core theory has been hyped in the MP3 era, for manufacturers, how to promote how to promote, repeated horizontal jump is also a common thing, and finally to receive the goods by ear.
The ear amplifier part is the THX AAA 788 + ear amplifier technology (circuit design) cooperated by FeiO and THX, which strengthens the final output thrust in the original design, and increases the output capacity of the balance port (the original version is not), the overall design idea is to reduce the distortion when the signal is amplified, and use the exclusive error correction technology (algorithm) to make up for it, so as to achieve both audio performance and output efficiency, so that the sound is less colored, the distortion is lower, in short, it is better HiFi high-fidelity performance.
High-performance linear power supply system; digital and analog circuit separation, and independent multi-stage power supply; XMOS interface, asynchronous double femtosecond clock, etc., these basic operations in the new HiFi era are not absent, after all, these are the consensus in the circle. Simply put, feio can pile up good materials, and the design that can be optimized is also in place, and the hardware and design will never be short boards.
However, I personally feel that Fei Ao is still a bit unable to let go of the design of the appearance, and there are still a few details that need to be polished. K9 Pro ESS only has a black shell to choose from, too low-key, visual matching is not suitable for Apple devices, and the surface is easier to stick fingerprints, personal hope to launch starry gray and silver white sandblasting oxidation shell.
The volume knob feels good, but the glossy surface is also easy to stain fingerprints, and the identification characters on the panel are too shallow, and when you are not used to blind operation, you need to use a light source to illuminate.
Of course, the Fairall K9 Pro ESS also has some ingenious designs that other brands do not have, such as the built-in Bluetooth acceptance function, and the use of Qualcomm's top QCC5124 Bluetooth chip, which supports LADC encoding, which is excellent in both sound quality and stability. The standard base, which can be used vertically, is also a highlight, which can reduce the space occupied by the desktop. There is also Fei'ao's App control and fine-tuning function, after connecting to Bluetooth (non-Bluetooth mode can also be adjusted), you can directly set the K9 Pro ESS in Fei'ao Music, and fine-tune the functions such as EQ and encoding.
Gameplay and sound performance
As a decoded ear amplifier, the Fei ou K9 Pro ESS, like most similar devices, has a lot of gameplay.
Method 1: Connect the "digital dial" and cooperate with large headphones to form a desktop listening combination with high sound-to-price ratio
This is the most common and basic way to play, the mobile Internet era, can act as a digital turntable in addition to CDs or webcasts, smart phones, tablets and personal computers are undoubtedly more convenient to play, of which personally feel that iPads and smart phones are very good digital dials, there are LDACs lossless Bluetooth and wired connections are good, especially K9 Pro ESS side there is also a C port, ordinary data cable can be used, compared to USB-B port (square port, commonly found in printers) is more practical. The most recommended is the M1 chip with Thunderbolt 3 port iPad, compared to the Mac computer, iOS and iPadOS have an adaptive adaptive encoding output function, do not need to manually set the output bitrate, and the output current and voltage of the Thunderbolt 3 port are also more stable.
The front panel of the K9 Pro ESS has 6.35mm stereo and 4.4mm balanced headphone jacks, and has an XLR-4 balance port with adapter, basic pass kill. There is also an RCA stereo and XLR*2 balanced output on the back, which can be used with a power amplifier, with a passive speaker, or with a larger independent ear amplifier.
Headphones, personally tried some cost-effective large headphones and flagship into the ear, the overall effect is good, first regardless of whether the tone collocation is in line with taste, at least the drive is good, the quality of the headphones can be displayed, with the right gain (high, medium and low three gears), basically there will be no over-pushing problem, the following is the specific sense of hearing.
Sennheiser HD400 Pro, positioned as a professional product offline studio reference headphones, but the use of open structure, the overall transparency and sound field restoration is better than the common Sony 7506 and iron triangle M50X such closed headphones, the price of about 1600, personally think that it is within the 2K price, very good to listen to and very good with the front end of the large headphones.
With K9 Pro ESS, it is a very reference-level tuning combination, can be competent for most classical and popular styles, the sound of the smudge is less than ever, the style is more neutral (even a little white tooth feeling), high resolution, accurate sound field restoration, rich vocal details, the overall fresh and transparent, but also more suitable for some modern Japanese ACG tracks, especially some arrangements are complex to unreasonable "burning music", the advantages of sound field restoration are obvious, instrumental music distinction is very open, There is a better sense of distance between them, it doesn't mix together, and it doesn't sound messy.
The only disadvantage of this combination is actually too positive, after all, it is a monitor headphone, this kind of unoptimized processing, the track itself arrangement, recording, production and the sound source itself are very demanding, but also need to correctly understand the definition of the reference headphones, objective restoration is not "open mouth to come to the digital taste" is not. Of course, you can also choose a few classic models of Baia (Baia Power), or the small utopia of Jinlang, which is also a typical popular weapon.
Method two: get some "difficult" flagship earplugs
Further than the above gameplay is to connect the player, the player side to choose the digital output can be, decoding and amplification functions will be K9 Pro ESS to complete, can be M17 flagship, can also be M11 Plus such a mid-range benchmark, because the pure digital output, the gap between the players will not be too obvious. If you want to pick up the front end of the CD machine or network broadcast, you can also use coaxial, optical fiber or RCA input, but to be honest, the input level of some network broadcasting is not as good as that of smart phones, and the digital age must respect the laws of digital.
The current flagship earplugs, are a bit unreasonable, a lot of units, wire is very good, but basically have problems, eat front-end driving force, and very sensitive, easy to over-push, resulting in high-frequency shiny spikes, in short, flagship many flagships into the ear do not consider the front-end current and voltage output matching.
Chameleon V14 (private template), qdc's flagship headphones, is also a professional ear return (many obvious choices, some time ago "Tao Zhe" also specially did a sharing video). V14 is a unilateral 14-unit design, and the use of EST electrostatic unit and moving iron unit mix and match, itself pick the front end, the demand for driving force is relatively large, all the small tails on my hand can only push a barely strong (including W2 and RU6), and the portable player, basically still need a large thrust of the top product. K9 Pro ESS, the medium gain can be done, 4.4mm balance mouth, V14 sound field also has a certain pull, the sense of vocal density is quite good, the mouth shape of the junction reduction is also very clear, the sense of envelopment and level of instrumental music is also clear, it is highly recommended to audition vocal singers' tracks, quite "on the head" (recently I like to listen to the kindergarten divine song "Lone Brave"), it is no wonder that singers like V14, listening to their own songs can be "on the head".
The sound style of V14 should be said to be a typical ear return monitoring style, which is also the original intention of its design to meet the needs of ear return use on the stage. However, from the perspective of HiFi, its ear return monitoring style is counted as "extreme", in short, the overall is very close to the ear, the vocals are full, the details are clear, the restoration is objective, the sense of encirclement is very good, the vocal tracks are very good, but the soundstage is not open, nor does it pursue the sense of presence, which is the opposite of the common top HiFi earbuds to pursue the sense of dissupplantation, so the topicality in the circle is also very high, and the discussion is also biased towards polarization.
Sennheiser IE900, unlike the V14, IE900 is a typical top HiFi style earbud that pursues a sense of desample, and it is also the best earbud in the current earbuds to restore the sense of classical presence in the large compilation, and there is no one.
Generally speaking, IE900 users will have a top portable player, and after the K9 Pro ESS on the desktop, its sound field performance is still further, the openness is better, the spacing between instrumental music is more obvious, the low frequency dive is deeper, the drum sound is more condensed, the high frequency and very high frequency are also glitched, there is no over-pushing problem, when listening to the big compilation, the sense of presence and momentum is more sufficient, and the sense of suppression in "Ma Liu" is stronger.
PK1, old antique, alternative high-resistance flat head plug, its appearance is not proud, do not like to publicize, but every summer is a lot of old burned hearts, too tropical can not live in the big headphones, PK1 is a good choice for flat, sound field restoration, dynamic and transient performance are representatives of flat head headphones.
To put it simply, if you have unsure headphones, you can try the Fei ou K9 Pro ESS, multi-position gain can match the driving force matching needs of most headphones, multiple headphone jacks can also ensure compatibility, and the large thrust of the desktop itself can also make the performance of many headphones to a higher level.
Way three, connect HiFi or monitor active speakers, enhance the multimedia experience
The current general trend is HiFi or monitor speaker active, compared to the previous passive design (requires a special amplifier), its use is more convenient, the application range is wider, and it can even be directly connected to the computer or TV, but this use will also have a defect, compared to the real AV speaker or multimedia speaker, its sound effect will have mismatch problems.
Take the game as an example, the sound effect is an important part of the current action game, especially the sense of percussion, the recent hit "Eldon's Ring", the sound effect will be combined with the motion effect, will use the picture shake, the controller vibration and the sound effect to enhance the sense of percussion (especially when executing), BGM will also use more low-frequency instruments to enhance the sense of immersion, if it is directly connected to HiFi or monitor the active speaker, the low-frequency part of the energy sense will be too much, listening to it for a long time will be more tired, especially the "suffering game", will cause more negative feedback, so in the computer, Add the K9 Pro ESS connection between the game console and the speaker, and adjust the EQ with the Fei Ou Music App, and reduce the gain of the low frequency, which will be significantly improved.
The same is true with the TV, AV speakers will have a certain enhancement to the vocal dialogue, K9 Pro ESS can also enhance the performance of the intermediate frequency by adjusting the EQ, and the low frequency of HiFi or monitor speakers is more transparent and full, and the restoration of the explosion sound is actually better.
Personal use is Fei ou K9 Pro ESS with Audiomis HP5 active speaker use, whether it is a game or a movie, the sound performance is better than the direct connection, but also significantly better than some low-cost AV speakers or multimedia speakers (people who are accustomed to HiFi equipment, low frequency stuffiness, frequency band disconnection will be particularly sensitive), in addition to the "Elden Ring", in the "Horizon 5" racing game, there is also a significant improvement. However, because the HiFi decoding ear amplifier such as K9 Pro ESS is an asynchronous USB connection, the sound delay is still there, which is not suitable for competitive gun games that require sound positioning.
This is not to say that you have to add a K9 Pro ESS to the HiFi or monitor active speakers, but it is just that if you happen to have this kind of equipment, you can try to use it together, there will be surprises.
Some spit
Fei Ou K9 Pro ESS original power cable and data cable "pull crotch", similar manufacturers of common disease (high emotional intelligence, low retail price), users small upgrade will be better, Fei Ou has its own USB cable and RCA cable, about 100 yuan, but there is no power cord. The wires of these manufacturers such as Copper Color, ddHiFi, Yangshi and AQ Line Saint can further enhance the sound performance, and the price of mid-range products is also considered to be sweet.
There is also a small problem, C mouth is more picky wire, some hand-compiled HiFi wire, may not be recognized, should be the protocol chip is not standard caused, to not be a problem of Fei'ao.
Finally, it is a reminder that rational fever, remember that "the marginal effect is decreasing", and do not go up.
April 26, 2022 by Stray Reflex