Tin HiFi: what they publish

In this database4 headphones
Figures from their own material3 of 4
Share75%

This page does not review anything Tin HiFi 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
C59 Ω98.5 dB/mWConverted from a stated voltage
T2 Plus32 Ω104.0 dBUnit not stated
T3 Plus32 Ω105.0 dB/mWConverted from a stated voltage
T4 Plus32 Ω106.0 dB/mWConverted from a stated voltage

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 — 3: the maker prints a level at a stated drive voltage, converted here to per milliwatt
  • 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
C5nothing printed——
T2 Plus10 - 200000Hznot printednot printed
T3 Plus10-20kHznot printednot printed
T4 Plusnothing printed——

Tin HiFi prints a frequency range for 2 of all 4 models here whose sheets have been read, and nothing for the other 2.

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 Tin HiFi with the majority: of the 490 models across this database whose maker prints a range, 58 print the tolerance.

The rows are not even called the same thing twice: 2 different headings across 2 models (“Frequency Response”, “Frequency Response Range”).

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 4

The hardest of the 4 to drive is the Tin HiFi T2 Plus: 0.40 mW and 0.11 V for a 100 dB SPL peak. Their impedances run from 9 to 32 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 4, 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 Tin HiFi T4 Plus at 121 dB/V — the more sensitive the in-ear, the more of the amplifier’s own noise you hear.

Their lowest impedance is the Tin HiFi C5 at 9 Ω, so a source wants an output impedance at or below 1.1 Ω to satisfy the one-eighth rule on everything they make. 123 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 Tin HiFi 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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