FiiO A1 Micro Headphone Amplifier

The Fiio A1 is an insanely small portable amp. It weighs less that a fly’s fart and it uses about as much space.
Priced at only AUD $49, it’s probably the cheapest audio equipment I have.
So what is it good for?
It’s an amp. It increases volume and that’s it. It doesn’t increase audio resolution, tighten bass, massage your feet or make the little man playing music inside your phone keep up with the beat better (no matter what ‘What Hi-Fi?’ Says). All it does is amplify the signal, because it’s an amp and that’s what amps do.
So, does it do it well?
Yes... and no.
As you might imagine, such a tiny device doesn’t have a lot of power. Don’t expect to suddenly be able to use some 300 ohms set of cans that your phone wasn’t able to drive. No, this is to simply provide a little extra oomph where it’s needed.

Case study:
The Audio-Technica MSR7 is not difficult to drive, however, I could never get enough volume out of my phone. The A1 served its purpose beautifully here delivering rich, powerful sound whereas before it struggled.
This is what the A1 is for, to provide that little bit of extra power, and for the price (and size), you couldn’t reasonably expect anything else.

If I was using this with consumer headphones, I would just rate it 5 stars. It has a nice design, good battery life, quality aluminium enclosure, comes with several cables, power button 3 stage-eq, three different clips to attach it to your clothes, volume control and lastly it boosts your volume.

EQ
It's nearly useless. Makes the sound slow and bloated. I loved the flashing light and smooth buttons. I bet it is good on some bass light headphones, like Superlux HD668 though. It may also work differently on headphones with different impedances.

SQ
Bass: Lacks authority
Midrange: I feel there is a bit of distortion lurking somewhere.
Highs: Slightly glossy

accuracy, coherency, timing, all that stuff is lacking, maybe because of the digital volume control.


TLDR; I wanted to like it, but it didn't manage to sound good enough. (Not with 80ohm DT770's that I reviewed them with) You could have different result with easier to drive headphones. I really hope FiiO tries to improve the sound quality, because it is already very promising. Maybe another version with just a gain switch instead of volume control.

    As a music lover who prefers a portable means of listening to music, you might eventually discover that your device can't provide enough power for your IEMs, headphones, or earphones to reach their full potential. In situations such as these, you have three options. You can upgrade your source(dap), add a portable amp, or add an amp/DAC combo. Until recently, there weren't many DAPs (Digital audio players) to choose from. You basically had Ipod and Creative, and shortly thereafter, the Microsoft Zune., so upgrading your source wasn't a realistic option, This meant you had to add an amp or an amp/dac combo. There really were not any options for a dac/amp combo at this time, so this just left the amp as your only feasible option. Now that you decided you needed an amp, you really only had two options. You could build a CMoy for a pretty reasonable price, or you could buy one of the few expensive ($200-500 USD) production units available from a niche manufacturer. For those of us that were not that skilled with circuitry we spent a lot of money purchasing amps. Around this time frame the saying “Welcome to Head-fi. Sorry about your wallet” came about.
 
   2007 saw the emergence of a Chinese company called Fiio, whose mission was to provide quality audio equipment at affordable prices. They started production with a series of portable headphone amps, which included the e3, e4, and the e5. With everything else on the market being so expensive, many audiophiles refused to take them seriously including myself, but Fiio was undeterred. They stayed true to their mission, and continued with research and development. In 2011 I was contacted by Fiio's own Sunny Wong who asked if I could please review one of their newer amp models. I was quite skeptical, as up to that point, I had only used high-end portable amps. Giving it some thought, I agreed to write an objective review.
 
  Soon after, the Fiio e11 Kilimanjaro (www.head-fi.org/products/fiio-e11/reviews/5887) arrived in my mail box and after putting it to the test, I was pleasantly surprised. Overall, the Kilimanjaro was a much better product than I expected. It opened my eyes to new possibilities, and I have since become a fan of Fiio amps. They are a company that isn't “above” listening to their customers and enlisting the help of this community. As a result, they continue to make significant leaps in function and design. You still get a great price, but each new product feels more “premium” than the one before it.
 
This beings us to the present. Fiio recently announced that they needed reviews for an amp that was designed to replace for the e5. Needless to say, I was on board from the start.
 
             Packaging
The A1 arrived in retail packaging straight from Fiio in about 3 weeks. The packaging is a fairly small clear plastic hanger with the amp displayed nicely and black accessory package with “A1” in bold red. It is very simplistic and cost effective, yet would attract your eye if hanging on a hook at the local shop. Inside the package you get the amp, a short 2.75” 3.5 to 3.5mm interconnect with right angle TRRS, long 30” 3.5mm to 3.5mm straight TRRS interconnect, USB to micro USB charging cable, and two clear plastic belt clips. For the price this amp retails for (27.99 Amazon) it is quite a nice package of accessories.
 
Please forgive the pictures. I am without a decent camera at this moment.
 



 
Specs
  
     Fiio sent the silver version. With my experience of the past Fiio amps, I was expecting a fairly small amp. This did not disappoint. It is about the size of an Ipod shuffle. Measuring in at 42mm x 40.7mm x 9.4mm and 20g makes for a nice micro portable amp. The top of the amp features the power button, volume + and – buttons, and the 3.5mm headphone out. The bottom you get the 3.5mm, line in, and the micro USB charging port. The power button has a RGB LED that turns green when fully charged, red when charging, red flashing when low power, blue when on, and blue flashing when changing modes. The A1 is capable to driving 16-100Ω headphones at ≥ 78mW, and it can amplify a frequency range from 10Hz-90kHz. Fiio chose a 160mAh battery that should charge in around 90min and last for around 13 hours with a 32Ω impedance load. This is all pretty impressive on paper, but how does it really perform?
 




 
 
   My testing platform is from the Ipod classic 7^th gen, Fiio x1, Chrome book, Asus tablet, and Dell notebook. I used the AAW Q, AAW Nebula Two, Westone 4, Sennheiser hd439, Westone es60, and InEarz p450s. My music was an eclectic selection of genres in bit-rates from 256kbps Aac and mp3 to 24/96 flac. Majority of it being in 320 and flac.
 
Performance
 
   I was quite pleased that in the standard mode there was not much coloration to the sound from the source. The is a slight bump in the warmness, but its not bad at all. With the first bass boost activated it gives a nice bump for the bass without affecting the highs too much. When you go past the first setting into the second and third things change. You start to get bloat into the mids and a bit of muddiness on two and severe bloat and bass blends right into the mids on three and treble is all but lost.. I just don't think they needed a second bass boost setting much less a third.
 
   They decided to use a digital volume control with an increase and decrease buttons. They work well, but you have no idea where you are in the range of the amps capabilities. There is nothing to let you know when you reach max volume except that there is no more increase in volume. I feel they could have added an audible beep or something to give warning as to prevent someone from trying to keep increasing the volume past max. For the majority of my Iems I found it provided enough volume. With the Ipod I feel it improved the sound stage slightly over the internal amp and gave it a more pleasing sound. With chrome-book it was a vast improvement over the stock hp out. I am still on the fence on whether the x1 benefited from the x1 yet and I feel the amp in the Pioneer is far superior. It was just not worth it to pair the pioneer with the a1.. When I tried full sized cans, I found the a1 struggled. The hd439 is fairly low impedance, but it still struggled. Its not surprising as they struggle with most players using the hp out. Low impedance iem's performed quite well and sounded really good.
Conclusion
 
   For the most part I was quite pleased. For the price I think it is hard to do better. I do feel they should leave off some of the bass boost and add an audible signal for volume control, but at 30.00 its a heck of a buy. I think it would pair really well with something like an ipod nano or shuffle. It would allow the owner to upgrade their iem's to something better that the nano or shuffle can not drive very well. If you are using a larger portable player I think you would be better off spending a bit more on the new Fiio e11K Kilimanjaro 2. It will provide as much power as you need for most anything.
 
 
Update. Speaking with some other reviewers, despite Fiio saying it has three bass boost settings the third setting is actually a flat attenuation mode. The following was borrowed with permission from Brooko in his review http://www.head-fi.org/products/fiio-a1-micro-headphone-amplifier/reviews/15718
 

  But the biggest feature the A1 has is its built in EQ. This works in 4 distinct stages.  The first or default provides around 4 dB gain above your source output – and it is essentially pretty flat with a very slight roll-off in the sub-bass (this is well under 0.5 dB so it’s negligible – you won’t notice it).  Going to bass boost one adds some gradual warmth beginning slowly in the mid-range and gradually rising through the mid-bass to culminate in a +4bB rise from 100 Hz down. The second boost setting is quite cleverly implemented.  This drops everything from about 2kHz forward down by 3 dB, and then raises slowly back to 0 at ~ 600 Hz, and then slowly raises the mid-bass and sub bass to the + 4dB level.  This adds a lot more bass, but by dropping the upper mids and treble, it does it unobtrusively so that it minimises the chances of clipping. The third “boost” setting is actually volume attenuation.  It returns to the default flat signal, but drops the signal down by -5 dB. This is handy if you have very sensitive IEM’s or headphones, and need to attenuate the signal to allow yourself more headroom, or finer control on volume. One more push then returns you to the default setting again.
 

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Please visit his review to view the graphs and measurements he did. It is a great review.