|  |
| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 230 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
127 of 133 found the following review helpful:
It is what it is Feb 03, 2009
By Bradley Scroggs
For years I enjoyed listening to CDs at the gym with a pair of 32Ohm Sennheiser EH-150's and a 15mW Sony DNE-330 Walkman (with customizable paremetric EQ). But, alas, the Walkman died and the current lineup of portable CD players all boasted only 5mW of output power (albeit the same EQ and bass boost features) ... and what a sonic difference those missing 10 milliWatts made! I nearly cried each time I put on the headphones, knowing how good they could sound if only ... . And headphone amplifiers were either AC-powered or outlandishly high-priced -- or both!
Until the Fiio E5! Finally, a 150mW, portable, high-fidelity headphone amplifier that -- connected to the right components -- returns your music to it's full dynamic range and frequency spectrum. My Sennheisers roar! Thumping bass! Sizzling treble! Quiet soft passages and deafening loud passages ... all from a rechargable gizmo about the size of a matchbook!
But it is what it is. The Fiio E5 does not have nearly the amp to drive my full-size 150Ohm Sennheiser HD-525s to their abilities; alternately, hooked up to my son's Ipod Touch (which apparently has quite a bit of output power to begin with) and his preferred earbuds I could not notice a distingushable improvement in sound. But for an underpowered portable CD or MP3 player and a mid-sized set of high-fidelity headphones ... the Fiio E5 is a godsend. Hear what you've been missing! And for under $25? It's a no-brainer.
26 of 27 found the following review helpful:
a bit of needed help for iPod with hi-end headphones Jan 04, 2010
By No Longer Frustrated!
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!
170 of 207 found the following review helpful:
 Well, it is what it is. But there are better options.... Aug 04, 2009
By Zube
"kile25"
I truly have to respect the E5 and the good people who made it available in the US at such a low price. You get better-than-average build quality and ergonomics (though the accessory cables are a bit cheap). The one thing that you don't get is much improvement in sound quality. While I don't have the software and instrumentation to verify my suspicions, some other purchasers and reviewers have put this amp to the test and report a somewhat-startling rise in gain above 500 Hz. Anybody who has ever sold hi-fi equipment knows that adding a few dB of volume in that range will make ANY piece of equipment (cough, cough) sound more attractive in an "A-B" demonstration. (How do you think I made my quota each month?) And herein lies the problem...the E5 is not really so much a headphone amplifier as it is an active tone control. Frankly, the gain (volume increase) on the unit is pretty limited and it does nothing for my better-quality headphones. It just doesn't have any guts. What's more, it has a noticeable hiss from the electronic circuit. Now, you may not notice this right away, but it's there. There are also any number of other nice CMOY amplifiers out there that will exhibit virtually NO hiss at any volume level, and they're priced about the same as the E5 (at the price shown on this website). In summary, the E5 can make your headphones sound a bit more attractive, if you have the right "taste" and happen to have a set of compatible headphones. I just think that you could spend a few $$$ more and get a very-good to excellent headphone amplifier instead.
15 of 17 found the following review helpful:
 Workable for some, but "what's the point" for most Sep 25, 2010
By monoblocks
I really didn't have high hopes for this little amp, but for the past year or three I've read enough glowing comments about this little guy that cemented the notion that I had to sample one.
The reality is that the FiiO E5 fits in with only a select grouping of headphones, ones that have relatively high impedance ratings. I didn't know that going in, but after dogged listening sessions with all sorts of cans from my own stash--from basic OE units for the Zune HD and iPod Touch to my usual portable-use Sennheiser IE-8 and Koss PortaPros to my in-home use Senn HD-650 and HD-800 and many units in-between, it was clear to me that the E5 doesn't have enough power within it diminutive chassis to do the usual low impedance portable head and earphones any tangible favors. Using either a Touch or Zune HD as the source, the E5 struggled with pretty much every set of cans that had a rating of under 100 ohms or thereabouts. It wasn't until I hooked up my HD-650 (300 ohms) with its own set of aftermarket cables (Stefan Audio Art Equinox)--one of the few high impedance units I have left in this world of low impedance portability--that there was any measure of uptick in SQ. Here at least the E5 was making a positive difference, where as with the Shure SE530, Senn PX-100 and others it just sounded wretchedly overmatched and severely underpowered.
With the HD-650 (and later the HD-800, what I consider the best set of cans I currently own), the E5 perceptively improved low-end depth and punch, while also smoothing out midrange sound and adding enough power to heighten sonic detail into the upper frequencies (well, at least as high as my near five decade-old ears will go these days). Vocals sound more lush and full, horns have a deeper, more complete timbre than was ever capable when relying solely on the base amplification circuitry housed within the Touch or Zune HD. It's not to say that the E5 is sonically perfect, only that it's BETTER. The E5 still doesn't have enough juice to really make either of the big Sennheisers truly sing, but for a shade north of twenty bucks it does account for itself quite well within the confines of this company of equipment.
But that's were I really have a problem with the whole purpose of the E5. As positive an effect that it had with my big Sennheiser cans, those are EXACTLY the sort of headphones that I WOULDN'T USE on the go. The clip-on nature of this FiiO amp makes it abundantly clear that it's intended for portable use, yet most headphone sets designed specifically for that use don't have the sort of high impedance rating that allows them to benefit from the E5. This paradox makes owning an E5 rather pointless for most DAP and PMP owners, unless of course they happen to be running around with a fairly inefficient headphone set. It's not to say that those sorts of portable cans don't exist, but headphone makers as a whole know full well that they're catering to all the iPods, Walkmans, Zens, Zunes and Sansas (and all the rest) of the world; they're going to make their products WORK within that environment and function from the word go, and that makes the usefulness of this little FiiO E5 more than a bit superfluous.
So despite my discovery that the E5 really does make certain headphones sound better, it's not an add-on amp that I can recommend to most users of portable MP3 devices. Even amongst my big, inefficient cans I have significant better sounding headphone amps to choose from that have superior power and last longer on a charge, and several that--relatively speaking--didn't cost all that much more than the FiiO E5. And I suspect that most people with similar gear will be thinking--and doing--the same.
2 1/2 stars.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 mighty mouse Jun 09, 2010
By David A. Baer
When I left my beat-up, loyal, and long-suffering Boostaroos on a plane, I seized the opportunity to see if I could match the force-multiplying role they played so well for this long-suffering long-haul traveler and his beloved Sennheiser PXC 450s at a small size and weight.
Mission accomplished.
The tiny, Chinese-made FiiO E5 headphone amplifier measurably improves the quality of sound I hear when I play tunes on my iPod or iPhone through the Sennheisers. That's news enough. What truly astonishes is the minute size and weight of the E5, even when you factor in the handy little clip that sturdies the whole deal by latching it onto a shirt pocket while the airplane meals come and go. Spaghetti sauce never did the old Boostaroos much good whenever they did their slow role into the soup du jour.
Next up in the Pleasant Surprise Category is another little thing: the price. Twenty clams get this gizmo from Amazon to your door.
I note the opinion voiced my some reviewers that you can do better elsewhere. I suspect they're right. But for $20 it's hard to imagine going wrong with the E5.
See all 230 customer reviews on Amazon.com
|
| | |
