Srajan
Fidelity to 1s and 0s. It’s how the FiiO brand name breaks out. But just as darko.audio outgrew its initial broadcasting of digital audio review from Sydney to cover all product categories from seasonally split headquarters in Berlin and Lisbon, so our Chinese juggernaut’s portfolio relaxed its early focus on just digital. Today it includes tiny active desktop speakers, outliers like a mechanical keyboard with built-in headphone socket, even three full-size headphones. The latest of those is the FT5 planar-magnetic. We rewind just past it to the preceding FT3. That’s a classic open-backed dynamic in black 32Ω and black or white 350Ω versions. Looking identically safe for the literal small print, it’s their N52 neodymium-powered 60mm angled drivers and aluminium voice coils that differ.
In broad strokes, higher impedance aims at the professional market. Low impedance eyes regular consumers. Translated, pro means high(er)-power stationary kit. Consumers are the catch-all for IC-driven smartphones, dongle DACs and DAP. Hello mobile kit with lower voltage rails. Digital audio players are today’s iPods. Many pack very serious heat. That relaxes worries over insufficient drive. They cross back into the realm of prosumers or power users. Elite DAPs can cryogenically freeze our wallets to below -€3’000C°. Does that aim at never-good-enough audiophiles on perhaps lengthy train commutes or flights? If so, IEM not open-backed over-ears become virtually de rigueur to avoid pesky noise pollution. Hence FiiO makes eight different IEMs plus four earbuds fit for roaming.
In lieu of my Samsung smartphone red carded for its radiation to car-only use, my €299 FT3 32Ω tangoed with a €469 Shanling M3 Ultra DAP; and FiiO’s own €699 R7 streaming desktop amp. That was my favorite find of 2023. With the FT3 it equals my bedside NightFi further down the page. Here a 1TB microSD card in the R7 hosts 16/44.1 to 24/192 PCM and DSD64 files. The lowest of five gain modes tends to see me play at ~90 to 100 of 120.
On raw speculation aka specmanship, the 32Ω FT3 hits 110dB/1Vrms sensitivity. That’s five more decibels than the 350Ω’s 105dB which wants more current than voltage. Weight without wiring harness and its branded metal splitter and ends is the same 391g. The descriptive game of the FT3 must start with its fashionably faux camel-leather zippered hard case, a full complement of swappable 3.5/4.4/6.3mm and XLR4 connectors and a 1m Furukawa mono-crystal copper leash with dual 3.5mm non-locking ends. The 350Ω that John Darko bought [as seen in many of the photos here – Ed] also comes with a 2.5m cable. The inside hinge of each ear cup is proudly marked L/R. So are the cable ends. For once there’s zero fiddle by magnifying glass to grasp how to correctly assign channels.
There are even two different ear pads to tweak the tuning. That’s because foam density, sleeving materials and perf patterns all set the relative absorptive/reflective properties of the miniature rooms that classic headphones attach to our ears. Change their wall thickness, shape and makeup and change the sound. The split outer metal bridge covers in pleather as does the auto-adjusting actual headband whose underside lines in faux micro suede. The light aluminium-alloy shells feature a 5-armed Ninja shuriken motif. It’s more adolescent gamer than Philistine ‘phile. The sizing of the circular not oval pad openings could pinch pointy-eared Vulcans and elves to become more on than over-ear. My smallish pink bits still fit inside but compared to my Final D8000 for example, FiiO’s FT3 is decidedly compact.
The 3-axis swivels pack sufficient play of back/fore and up/down to adapt to divergent head shapes whilst plenty of headband lift should accommodate even colossal Captain Picard domes. Build quality overtakes my prior ~€300 Meze 99 Classic benchmark. It really becomes a gleaming military parade of PRC-based acumen and the benefits of working at a large industrial scale.
Getting such build, style and comfort for this sticker borders on expectational misdirection. Anyone charging more whilst delivering less now gets exposed in the high beams like a raccoon braving oncoming traffic. Fancy road-kill dinner? Actually, something did get run over. John and I were earmarked to review our two versions by podcast. But unforeseen schedule constipation bollixed up said plan. Not that we’d been able to palaver over what distinguishes the two versions. We each only bought one. Here I must fall back on anecdotal suggestions. They say that high-Ω windings favour the treble–300Ω Sennheiser HD800S?– low-Ω equivalents the bass. Grado 38Ω RS1x perhaps? Even FiiO’s German reseller had something to that effect. Does it imply that all else being equal, the 32Ω is a bassy beastie or even bestie?
Without clapping ears on John’s specimen, I couldn’t tell. What I can say is that clawing up the mountain of Less Compromise from DAP basecamp to R7 first camp to iFi iDSD Pro Signature second camp to finally the twin peaks of Enleum AMP-23 and Cen.Grand Silver Fox, my FT3 kicked off bassy then added more and more treble elucidation as amplifier airs thinned to, cough, €6.25K. Very robust sub-bass from small batteries fronting amps on chips stepped more in line with the upper octaves as drive intensified. Put inverted, as power grew to discrete lateral Mosfets in an ultra-bandwidth current-mode circuit, treble built out to match the bass. That summed to perfect balance and far higher resolution. Going in triplicate on the same observation, we might say that despite a modest sticker, my FT3 really scaled up as its amps bigged up. In the real world, such unreasonableness is irrelevant. What real buyer not reviewer in his ivory tower would duplicate it? It simply showed sonic potential for FiiO’s big 60mm driver which well eclipsed what a price- commensurate DAP like my small Shanling could liberate. And it showed how what starts out as a bottom-up slightly opaque bassy response gets ever more linear and top-down clarified as driving power grows more robust and refined.
Saying the same thing a fourth time to really pinch your patience, we remember the elephant who asked the naked man whether he can really breathe through that thing. Whilst the FT3 sucked oxygen through my Shanling, it struck me as unusually hung below 40Hz, warmish, somewhat hooded on top and of average resolution without offensive bite. Already my bedside FiiO R7 wiped away some treble sleepiness and its greater low-down grip replaced warmth with more wallop. On the 1st-octave score, John and I had an off-the-record exchange on a far pricier headphone which had us both curious. He managed to bag a sample first only to return it to its maker unreviewed. Compared to his FT3 it so egregiously lacked in bottom-end reach that it killed his Jones to dedicate a week of video-review work to it [especially as I’d already run out of 2023 review runway – Ed].
Given that his finding mirrored other web comments, I too withdrew my name from a planned gig. I dare say that its butch sub-bass coverage and how that anchors the sound in wonderful earthiness could well be the 32Ω’s calling card when we drive it off a price-likely DAP. How about side-to-side comparisons? The headphone closest in my small collection to FiiO’s ask was a €799 Meze 109Pro. It’s why I wrote closest not close. It’s how the cookie can crumble when one isn’t a deeply inventoried retailer; or reviewer specializing in just head-fi. Call it my better-than-nothing attempt at comparative context where fairness didn’t factor. To keep my footing from collapsing altogether, both Meze and FiiO powered off my white R7. That’s otherwise my digital transport for the upstairs speaker system powered by an iFi iPower Elite 12V. As WiFi- allergic renters, we don’t run 50m laborious Ethernet spurs from the router in my downstair office up the far stairs into our 1st-floor rooms at the end of a long hallway. Local files accessible without Internet access are key. Here a FiiO R7 with 1TB card outputs USB-C into a Soundaware D300Pro USB bridge. That forwards 6m AES/EBU from the sidewall to a Sonnet Pasithea DAC between the speakers. With the R7 right next to my chair, its responsive touch screen and Android 10-based GUI become my local library access. But of course, it also works as a second headphone amp/stand. How did Meze and FiiO fare?
The Romanian was brighter, harder, more forward and energetically far shinier. The Chinese was texturally matte, gentler on the leading edge, less lit up, energetically more relaxed, as a result warmer and seemingly playing from greater distance. Newbs would invariably call the Meze more resolved. I’ll stay out of that discussion other than say that despite price disparity favouring the 109 Pro, I didn’t think that the FiiO was really lesser; although it was absolutely different. For an over-ear design, it again is on the small side so those of large ears ought to practice try-before-buy safety.
In conclusion, a €299 ask in this category that packs a chic alloy build, futuristic styling and ground-up exclusive drivers rightly eyes smartphone users with/out dongle DACs. If we’re allowed momentary hifi racism, we anticipate lots of Spotify-level data thinning and ‘radio-ready’ music suffering severe dynamic compression. Would we rather serve that up under a microscope backlit by harsh neon lights; or in natural sunlight at more of a distance? If you picked option N°2, FiiO’s FT3 has your number. It goes quite light on raw separation power and far heavier on tone weight and textural gentleness. That it’s capable of rather greater resolution and treble finesse most will never realize. That requires playing with rather pricier amplification. If that’s what you have or can afford, chances are slim that you’d shop for cans anywhere near the FT3’s ‘hood. To wrap, our all-black FiiO has already replaced Meze’s 99 Classic as my new default reco in this class. I think that really says it all…
Further information: FiiO
