Final Audio: what they publish

In this database5 headphones
Figures from their own material4 of 5
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This page does not review anything Final 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
A400018 Ω100.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
A500018 Ω100.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
D8000 Pro Edition60 Ω98.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
E300016 Ω100.0 dB/mWPublished per mW
E500014 Ω93.0 dBUnit not stated

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
  • Unit not stated — 1: the maker prints a decibel figure with no reference unit, so it is shown as printed and flagged rather than quietly converted

What they print, and what it is worth

ModelAs printedToleranceStandard
A4000nothing printed——
A5000nothing printed——
D8000 Pro Editionnothing printed——
E3000nothing printed——
E5000nothing printed——

Final Audio prints no frequency range for any of all 5 models here whose sheets have been read.

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 Final Audio D8000 Pro Edition: 1.6 mW and 0.31 V for a 100 dB SPL peak. Their impedances run from 14 to 60 Ω, which matters because the voltage a headphone wants rises with impedance while the power falls.

280 of the 280 sources here reach 100 dB on all 5, and the cheapest of them is the Apple USB-C dongle (EU) 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, 82 stay under the threshold of hearing on all 4 of their in-ears. The one to watch is the Final Audio E3000 at 118 dB/V — the more sensitive the in-ear, the more of the amplifier’s own noise you hear.

Their lowest impedance is the Final Audio E5000 at 14 Ω, so a source wants an output impedance at or below 1.8 Ω to satisfy the one-eighth rule on everything they make. 130 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 Final Audio 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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