Unique Melody: what they publish

In this database2 headphones
Figures from their own material0 of 2
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This page does not review anything Unique Melody 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
Maven III8.8 Ω105.0 dBUnit not stated
Multiverse Mentor22 Ω114.0 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.

  • Unit not stated — 2: 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
Maven IIInothing printed——
Multiverse Mentor20Hz-40kHznot printednot printed

Unique Melody prints a frequency range for 1 of both 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 Unique Melody 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 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 2

The hardest of the 2 to drive is the Unique Melody Maven III: 0.32 mW and 53 mV for a 100 dB SPL peak. Their impedances run from 8.8 to 22 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 2, 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, 68 stay under the threshold of hearing on it. The one to watch is the Unique Melody Maven III at 126 dB/V — the more sensitive the in-ear, the more of the amplifier’s own noise you hear.

Their lowest impedance is the Unique Melody Maven III at 8.8 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.

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