Hi guys.

I just recently came across the phenomena that is FiiO. Upon further research however, a friend of mine told me that they should only be used with single armature 'phones. He said that with 2-way/3-way etc armature drivers, the FiiO would "burn" the crossover chips. He also said that it could spoil dynamics, and he said that now the IE8s sounded fine with his E5, but if he plugged it into another 3.5mm jack, the sound would be crackling.

Any info on this?

Thanks!!

This rumor of FiiO burning off crossover started a few months ago on another forum where an user testing FiiO E3 (Not E5) and ends up damaging his q-JAYS (a two-ways IEM). As far as I know, there is still no clear reason of why the damage happened, but I do have a very possible explanation: E3, unlike E5, doesn't have build-in safety mechanism to deal with DC offset. If the source (such as an iPod) has any DC leakage on the headphone-out (music is AC and not DC, just so you know), the voltage will be amplified by what ever gain on the amp (E3 is about 3x). Since balanced armature based IEM are more sensitive to voltage, that could lead to internal damage. DC leakage is quite rare, but it can happen. As long as the source doesn't have any DC offset, I don't see why E3 will damage the IEM (assuming E2 is functioning properly of course). In fact, here is a picture of my q-JAYS connected to an E3 (and Sansa Fuze while playing music). My q-JAYS is still fine as it was before.



Now we move on to E5: it does have protection against DC offset, so there is no chance of excessive voltage causing damage to IEM even if the source has a DC leakage. I have been using E3 and E5 coupled with multiple IEM for many months now (dynamic and multiple-ways balanced armature alike) . If there is any damage, I would have notice it by now. So, lets stop the rumor right here.

Ah. Alright then