Abyss: what they publish

In this database5 headphones
Figures from their own material4 of 5
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This page does not review anything Abyss makes. It counts one thing: how much of what this database says about their products came out of their own documents, and how much had to be worked out or left blank.

Where each sensitivity figure came from

ModelImpedanceSensitivitySource of the figure
AB-1266 Phi CC42 Ω88.0 dBNot published
AB-1266 Phi TC50 Ω88.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
Diana MR30 Ω93.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
Diana Phi32 Ω91.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
Diana V242 Ω91.0 dB/mWPublished per mW

Impedance is almost always printed. Sensitivity is the one that goes wrong, because a decibel figure means two very different things depending on whether it is per milliwatt or per volt — about five decibels apart at 300 Ω and eighteen at 16 Ω. The conversion is here.

  • Published per mW — 4: the maker prints a decibel figure per milliwatt, which is what the database stores
  • Not published — 1: no sensitivity figure in anything the maker published

What they print, and what it is worth

ModelAs printedToleranceStandard
AB-1266 Phi TC5 Hz - 45 KHznot printednot printed
Diana MR42Hz – 45 KHz, -3 dB @ 5 Hznot printednot printed
Diana Phi6 Hz - 26 KHznot printednot printed

Abyss prints a frequency range for all 3 models here whose sheets have been read.

Not one of those ranges comes with a tolerance in decibels. Without a ±dB figure a range says nothing about how loud the headphone is at either end of it, which puts Abyss with the majority: of the 490 models across this database whose maker prints a range, 58 print the tolerance.

Every range stands under the same heading: “Frequency Response”.

2 further models of theirs in this database have no page left on their site at all, so there is nothing to read for them either way. That is counted separately from printing nothing, because it is a different fact.

No measurement is published here — only what was printed. The whole count, maker by maker, is in the frequency response audit.

What reaches 100 dB on all 5

The hardest of the 5 to drive is the Abyss AB-1266 Phi TC: 16 mW and 0.89 V for a 100 dB SPL peak. Their impedances run from 30 to 50 Ω, which matters because the voltage a headphone wants rises with impedance while the power falls.

275 of the 280 sources here reach 100 dB on all 5, and the cheapest of them is the Apple USB-C dongle (US) at $9. “Reaches” means the maker’s own published power figure is enough at that load; it is not a judgement of how it sounds.

Their lowest impedance is the Abyss Diana MR at 30 Ω, so a source wants an output impedance at or below 3.8 Ω to satisfy the one-eighth rule on everything they make. 134 of the 169 sources that publish an output impedance manage that.

These counts use figures the source makers published themselves. A product that publishes nothing is not counted as a pass anywhere above, which is why the three numbers differ so much. The collection matcher runs the same arithmetic over whatever you actually own.

What the paperwork adds up to

Most of what this site says about Abyss came from them, with the rest derived and labelled as derived.

The rule used here is the same for every maker and is described on the manufacturer index. Every figure behind it can be opened on the product page it came from, with the document it came from linked.

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