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 FiiO E5 Sounds and works Great Feb 06, 2010
I will Go right to the point. The FiiO E5 Headphone Amp. works really well, easy to use, good sound, I like it very much. I have a few brands of MP3 players, some of them are a little light in the output side, the E5 brings them to life.. Get one you will be pleased.. Randy 57 years old and a music lover..FiiO E5 Headphone Amplifier
pretty good little gadget Feb 02, 2010
I bought it because my cell phone, a Motorola W766 entice, has weak sound and low volume when playing music through wired headphones. With this little thing added on the sound is much bigger, fuller and deeper. I don't know about the battery life yet as I just got it today. But I'm happy with the sound.
Great for the price Jan 15, 2010
I have been looking for a cheap headphone amplifier for a while now for my Sennheiser HD201's. My laptop and mp3 players just couldn't get the headphones loud enough for me. This thing did the trick and was very cheap. It supplies just enough power to increase the volume by an extra 10-15% and produce a "fuller" sound. The rechargeable battery is a big plus and the amplifier seems to be built pretty well. I have tried using the bass boost switch, but it just doesn't sound right with it on. On most songs there is a noticeable low-midrange frequency that sounds real 'boomy' and makes the music sound sloppy. This is really a great buy for the price, if you are trying to get a little more ooomph or volume from your headphones or laptop speakers.
a bit of needed help for iPod with hi-end headphones Jan 04, 2010
I give this little amp 4 stars -- I bought it for use with my iPod Nano 5g and Sennheiser HD600 headphones. The built-in amp in the iPod is **just** a bit inadequate to drive these headphones well -- on some albums I needed to crank the volume up all the way, and sometimes that still didn't give me enough volume.
For $20 plus shipping, I figured I'd give the FiiO a try. If it didn't work, just return it, right? So it came today, and I gave it a try with some of the problematic tracks on my iPod. First reactions: enough volume boost (barely, but enough) to make the problem tracks listenable, and to drive the HD600's to more than comfortable levels on most music. I have the volume on the E5 turned up all the way, and use the touch-wheel on the iPod for volume control.
Second, despite some other reviews here and elsewhere, there is NO discernable hiss or noise from the FiiO E5, either idle or with music playing.
Third: Bass boost works as advertised. If you have phones that don't give you good bass response, this will probably fix your problem. The HD600's have great low-end, so I'm running the E5 set to the OFF position.
Summary: well worth the money, and worth a try if your music player is working too hard to drive your particular headphones, or if you need the bass boost. I detect no degredation of the sound with my iPod. Just for fun, I hooked it up in series with my Home Headroom amp, to see if I could hear a difference...yep, the E5 blurs the extraordinarily good sound from the Headroom just a bit. But, then, that's not what it's for, is it? It's NOT a high-end, multi-$$$ amp, just a way to get a bit more performance from your portable music player. For that, it works just fine! The only alternatives would be a CMOY amp from one of the builders on eBay, at two to 3 times the price, or a commercial amp at much greater cost. The E5 is good value for the money, in my book.
- 1/2 star for the flimsy interconnect cables, - 1/2 star for not having a bit more gain. However, overall, I'm very satisfied. Build quality looks fine. The battery even came charged!
Happy listening!
Competent, diminutive headphone amp Dec 30, 2009
I'm a bit torn on my rating of the Fiio E5 headphone amp, only because it performs as advertised, is economically packaged and priced, and provides some amplification - although therein lies my rating dilemma - just not that *much* amplification. But who would expect it to, given its diminutive size and power output? For that reason, I'd give the E5 four out of five stars - competent and amazingly affordable, but perhaps not entirely compelling.
For clarification, I'm using the E5 in conjunction with my Zune 120GB and Audio-Technica ATH-M50 headphones. These headphones are easily driven by the Zune alone, given their 38 ohm impedance rating, but the Zune's lack of equalizer leaves some sound customization to be desired, hence my desire to find a compact, affordable headphone amp. After researching the E5's frequency response, I decided to give it a try, primarily for the bass boost feature. I'm obviously not an audio 'purist', but I'm not a bass freak either - I just wanted to fill out the sound of my ATH-M50's beyond the output of my Zune alone.
And to that end, the E5 performs admirably. The bass-boost feature is mild, to say the least, and does not push the lower frequencies into sounding artificial or distorted, nor does make the mids muddy or noticeably attenuate the highs. The added fullness from the bass boost is highly noticeable over the unamped output of the Zune, and for that reason alone, for me, it's a keeper. Like others have mentioned, the volume increase is somewhat minimal, but that's not what I wanted it for. There is some hiss toward the highest volume settings on the amp, but with the headphones I use it's almost inaudible except between tracks or in extremely quiet passages within a song, so this is a non-issue for me.
The built in rechargeable battery is handy and the overall design and build quality are great for the price. My only reason for docking the E5 one star is that it probably just isn't a compelling purchase for most enthusiasts considering it is marketed toward a somewhat niche group with high expectations. The performance and expectations of a device such as this are based both on perception and the audio equipment being used, but at this price, most mild enthusiasts should give it a shot if they feel that their portable audio player doesn't provide enough output for their headphones.
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