iFi audio EarBuddy
Sep 18, 2017 at 8:54 PM Post #31 of 148
The Ear Buddy had a ball at IFA as you know but then sadly had to fly home. Check it out working away with a DAP belonging to one of the team. Shame it wasn't long haul - could have used if for the in-flight movie!


Mhm, looks good! That black/orange color works!
 
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Sep 19, 2017 at 9:26 AM Post #34 of 148
Hi guys - take a look at this. We caught up with Sam, Chief Commercial Officer of Echobox Audio, and he gave the Ear Buddy a whirl. Here's what he had to say.... (think they might be besties now!) Thanks Sam!



Heard a few of you guys out there asking where you can get this little bit of iFi magic - check out our sales page for all our dealers worldwide - https://ifi-audio.com/sales/.
 
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Sep 19, 2017 at 12:37 PM Post #36 of 148
Will this little gizmo be useful for headphones (over-ear) or just in-ear monitors?
My use case would be out of a DAP (FiiO X5-III) or DAC/AMP (iFi iDSD BL) -> to be used with Sony Z7 or Meze 99 Classics or HiFiMAN HE-400i (or even Mr. Speakers AEON). So, not hard to drive headphones, but not super sensitive IEMs...
 
Sep 20, 2017 at 11:24 PM Post #37 of 148
Will this little gizmo be useful for headphones (over-ear) or just in-ear monitors?
My use case would be out of a DAP (FiiO X5-III) or DAC/AMP (iFi iDSD BL) -> to be used with Sony Z7 or Meze 99 Classics or HiFiMAN HE-400i (or even Mr. Speakers AEON). So, not hard to drive headphones, but not super sensitive IEMs...
Anyone?!
Let me try to ask it differently:
Anyone who tried these - can you please post which headphones / IEMs you listened with? and what did it do for you?
 
Sep 21, 2017 at 4:50 AM Post #39 of 148
Will this little gizmo be useful for headphones (over-ear) or just in-ear monitors?
My use case would be out of a DAP (FiiO X5-III) or DAC/AMP (iFi iDSD BL) -> to be used with Sony Z7 or Meze 99 Classics or HiFiMAN HE-400i (or even Mr. Speakers AEON). So, not hard to drive headphones, but not super sensitive IEMs...

Dear Zachik

The Earbuddy is a different application of the iEMatch as already build into your iDSD micro Black Label, so just use this.

Past that, if you consistently find yourself using the volume control at very low settings with a given Headphone & Amp/DAP combo, engaging iEMatch circuitry if fitted, or adding either Earbuddy or iEMatch is usually a good idea, especially if you have noticeable and audible background noise levels.
 
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Sep 21, 2017 at 9:44 AM Post #40 of 148
Dear Zachik

The Earbuddy is a different application of the iEMatch as already build into your iDSD micro Black Label, so just use this.

Past that, if you consistently find yourself using the volume control at very low settings with a given Headphone & Amp/DAP combo, engaging iEMatch circuitry if fitted, or adding either Earbuddy or iEMatch is usually a good idea, especially if you have noticeable and audible background noise levels.

That's a very useful guideline - thanks!
Will pay attention to volume levels on DAP, and if consistently using low levels - I will try it with EarBuddy. :)
 
Sep 22, 2017 at 5:52 PM Post #41 of 148
Will this little gizmo be useful for headphones (over-ear) or just in-ear monitors?
My use case would be out of a DAP (FiiO X5-III) or DAC/AMP (iFi iDSD BL) -> to be used with Sony Z7 or Meze 99 Classics or HiFiMAN HE-400i (or even Mr. Speakers AEON). So, not hard to drive headphones, but not super sensitive IEMs...
Don't just throw everything and anything at your music.......understanding what you already have will save you from buying redundant purchases.
 
Sep 22, 2017 at 8:06 PM Post #42 of 148
So I seem to be one of the first people to receive one of these?
And I can't help but wonder if I got a demo unit - it came in some packaging that looked very tampered with and the space for a serial number is just blank...

Moving past that curiosity, I'm absolutely loving this thing. I don't know about "restored dynamic range" but in my eyes, it covers impedance matching, lowers the noise floor and more play on the volume pot means not being stuck in the <10% volume region with IEMs, where most of my less than stellar quality sources do an especially poor job (especially with low impedance loads).


I'm not going to pretend I have anything particularly high quality in terms of sources to compare performance with though - I have some distant memories of such things but it's been years since I've owned anything like that. I'm sure I could do better if I was willing to throw several times as much money at the problem, but short of that, I'm pretty happy with the purchase.


Oh and I'm using it with some KZ ZS5s at the moment - which seems to work fine to me (even with my on-board realtek, which is definitely not the case without the Ear Buddy), but admissibly I don't have any <0.5 ohm sources on hand to compare with.
 
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Sep 23, 2017 at 2:19 AM Post #44 of 148
Don't just throw everything and anything at your music.......understanding what you already have will save you from buying redundant purchases.
not useful for anything that is not super sensitive
 
Sep 23, 2017 at 11:07 AM Post #45 of 148
2-3 ohm increase is too larhe for sensitive iems. Sound signature will change

For this case use the bigger brother iEMatch it has just 1 ohms output impedance at ultra setting (-24 dB) + addtional a real advantage is, it can decrease the output impedance from sources with higher output impedance, like i.e a 6 ohms Smartphone output, will be down to just 1 ohms, which works pretty good, I already measured this with my multimeter + different loads and sensitive CIEMs + RMAA.

Btw. in official user manual Ear Buddy is mentioned with just 1.5 ohms: https://ifi-audio.com/wp-content/uploads/data/manual/EarBuddy-manua-Ver1.0.pdf for reference iEMatch: https://ifi-audio.com/wp-content/uploads/data/manual/iEMatch-Manual.pdf
 

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