Campfire Audio: what they publish

In this database10 headphones
Figures from their own material5 of 10
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This page does not review anything Campfire Audio 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
Andromeda 108.5 Ω111.6 dB/mWConverted from a stated voltage
Andromeda 20209 Ω94.0 dBNot published
Andromeda 20236.375 Ω110.6 dB/mWConverted from a stated voltage
Ara8 Ω94.0 dBNot published
Astrolith8.2 Ω100.1 dB/mWConverted from a stated voltage
Chimera5.5 Ω108.1 dB/mWConverted from a stated voltage
Clara13.3 Ω115.3 dB/mWConverted from a stated voltage
Holocene9 Ω94.0 dBNot published
Mammoth8 Ω94.0 dBNot published
Solaris 202015 Ω94.0 dBNot published

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.

  • Converted from a stated voltage — 5: the maker prints a level at a stated drive voltage, converted here to per milliwatt
  • Not published — 5: no sensitivity figure in anything the maker published

What they print, and what it is worth

ModelAs printedToleranceStandard
Andromeda 105-20 kHznot printednot printed
Andromeda 2020nothing printed——
Andromeda 20235-20 kHznot printednot printed
Astrolith5-25 kHznot printednot printed
Chimera5-20 kHznot printednot printed
Clara5-20 kHznot printednot printed

Campfire Audio prints a frequency range for 5 of all 6 models here whose sheets have been read, and nothing for the other 1.

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 Campfire Audio 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”.

4 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 10

The hardest of the 10 to drive is the Campfire Audio Solaris 2020: 4.0 mW and 0.24 V for a 100 dB SPL peak. Their impedances run from 5.5 to 15 Ω, which matters because the voltage a headphone wants rises with impedance while the power falls.

278 of the 280 sources here reach 100 dB on all 10, 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.

On hiss the count is smaller, because most of the industry does not publish a noise figure at all: of the 83 sources here that do, 35 stay under the threshold of hearing on all 10 of their in-ears. The one to watch is the Campfire Audio Clara at 134 dB/V — the more sensitive the in-ear, the more of the amplifier’s own noise you hear.

Their lowest impedance is the Campfire Audio Chimera at 5.5 Ω, so a source wants an output impedance at or below 0.68 Ω to satisfy the one-eighth rule on everything they make. 80 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

About half of what this site says about Campfire Audio came from them. The rest is arithmetic, and it is marked as arithmetic on every page.

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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