5/16/2023 0 Comments Earman eagleTrebles are fast and Sabre’s signature can be felt right from the beginning. The EarMen achieves a good job there, with a good amount of air. Long story short, if not as good as the Sparrow, for the price it’s definitely one of the top choices at the moment Tonality It fits right between the Chord and the NuPrime in this aspect(like AudioQuest), and EarMen tuned it just right for me. But, I like that sound, and the Eagle extracted more details that I could ever ask, for a device this small. Of course, if you can up your game an get a Sparrow with a balanced cable, that’s even better! Like every Sabre based solution, highs can be a tad too sharp, almost uncanny, where Cirrus Logic or AKM feels more natural. Pan effects are delightful, dynamic is superb and if you think an IEM cannot match a headphone in terms of spaciousness, in 2020, I think you should put this one to the test. On my S8F, FA9, or ME700, nothing occurred and, again, I had to use iFi IEMatch to dampen that hiss with my Onkyo. With my CIEM, I could hear a very faint noise, but nothing that would allow me to define the Eagle as noisy. In fact, out of all the headphones I tried, this was one of the best blends with the EarMen. Commanding bass, wide soundstage, excellent layering, the DAC sounded much more at ease. Once paired with the Meze 99 Classics, this is where the Eagle really came to life. I tried More of Just the Same from Infected Mushroom, my usual test-track, and if the Senn felt a little cramped with the NuPrime, the Eagle was much more potent in this regard. Nothing deafening for sure, yet enough to hear a good level of details and some low tones. But, even with its sole single-ended output, the DAC was able to push the headphone moderately loud. Obviously, the Eagle couldn’t reach the same level of accuracy I found with the Sparrow or the TR-AMP. If I used the LCD-3 to test-proof the Hi-mDAC, my previous impressions with EarMen lead me to the Sennheiser this time. Straight out of the box, I plugged the Eagle to my Sennheiser HD-800S, to see how well the amp behave with a (very) demanding headphone. So, did EarMen shoehorned his Sparrow in the Eagle? Yes and no. All files were played from a computer in USB DAC mode. For the purpose of this review, I used a different set as usual: The Sennheiser HD800S, my Onkyo IE-C3, and Meze 99 Classics, for good measure.
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