FiiO K3 Powered USB DAC
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Customer Reviews
Feels super premium. Nice and heavy, made of metal, all the buttons and dials are super smooth and satisfying. Also great IO for such a small amp. Running with my Hifiman Sundaras and they sound great
I have good, studio quality open-back headphones (250 ohm Beyerdynamic DT1990s), and have been experimenting with different DACs to try to get the most out of them. I have (a) my motherboard sound output (which is good as those go, it's a relatively pricey gaming motherboard), (b) the headphone output jack that goes with my Bose desktop speakers, (c) a Soundblaster AE-5 plus PCIe soundcard, and now (d) this K3.Honestly I really struggle to detect much difference between them, even testing them back-to-back, playing hi-fi audio off of Tidal. They all offer more than enough amplification to drive the headphones, and they all sound good. Some offer more fine tuning than others (the Creative software that goes with the AE-5 includes equalizer curve control and all sorts of effects, this K3 has a bass boost toggle), but playing audio vanilla they sound basically the same. So I'd say your money is best spent on good headphones, the DAC makes a less-than-overwhelming difference.That said, if I really strain to detect I difference, I do think that the sound with the K3 seems noticeably *cleaner* than my alternatives. If you think of it like a picture, the contrast feels a bit sharper, like the blacks are more black and the whites are more white (more literally, it feels like I'm *only* hearing the music, without a milky film of noise underneath it). It's not a night and day difference, but it is pleasantly clean.
The K3 has a USB input from a pc, nice optical/coaxial outputs to an a/v receiver or tv, and both 2.5 mm and 3.5 mm headphone outputs with handy bass and gain sound enhancements.. That's a lot of versatility for a cigarette size device. Excellent sound, but the 3.5 jack is somewhat underpowered for headphones/IEMS, but when I added my old Fiio A3 amp to the headpone chain, WOW! Powerful yet clean excitement from my TIN T4s, ATH MSR7Bs and 7hz Timeles. Such a great combo.
MacBook usb 2.0 connection is more convenient than windows 10. Sound rate bit up to 32 bit 384khz. Very good, I’ll probably get some of blue ray movies see how it sounds like! Try some DTS-HD.
Bought these for my first high-end headphones the hd660s and works and sounds great.