Audient iD14 MkII vs M-Audio AIR 192|14

Both are audio interfaces, $349 against $329. This page puts them side by side on the only three things a maker can be held to — power, output impedance and noise — and then asks the question that actually matters: which headphones do they treat differently?

The M-Audio AIR 192|14 reaches 100 dB on 563 of the 567 models here, the Audient iD14 MkII on 561.

Every published figure, next to each other

SpecificationAudient iD14 MkIIM-Audio AIR 192|14
Power into 32Ω112 mW160 mW
Power into 150Ω75 mW34 mW
Power into 300Ω55 mW17 mW
Power into 600Ω50 mW8.5 mW
Output impedancenot publishednot published
Output noisenot publishednot published
Price$349$329
Headphones it reaches 100 dB on
out of 567
561563

A figure marked not published is missing from the maker’s own material, which is not the same as being good or bad. Where one of these two publishes a number and the other does not, the comparison on that axis cannot be made at all — and saying so is more useful than guessing.

Where each power figure comes from

LoadAudient iD14 MkIIM-Audio AIR 192|14
32 ΩDerivedPublished
150 ΩDerivedDerived
300 ΩDerivedDerived
600 ΩRecomputedDerived

Only one of these two columns starts from a power rating. M-Audio AIR 192|14 publishes one at 32 Ω; Audient iD14 MkII publishes none at any of these four loads, so its column is worked out from power it published at other loads. Both are arithmetic on a maker’s own figures rather than guesses, and the method used for the Audient iD14 MkII understates rather than flatters — but at 32 Ω is the only load here at which its maker can be held to a figure.

What each of these labels means, and why a derived figure is still worth printing, is set out in how this data was built.

The headphones that tell them apart

2 headphones reach 100 dB on the M-Audio AIR 192|14 but not on the Audient iD14 MkII — Moondrop COSMO, Symphonium Zenith.

561 of the 567 models here reach 100 dB on both. That is a power count and nothing more; whether either source suits a given headphone also depends on the two lines above.

Headroom and hiss on 8 models, both sources

The counts above say how many models the two treat differently. This says by how much. The same 8 headphones appear on every page of this kind, ordered from the easiest to drive to the hardest, so a row can be read across pages as well as across columns. Headroom is at a 100 dB SPL peak.

The widest gap on the list is the Audio-Technica ATH-R70X: Audient iD14 MkII has +15 dB of headroom there against +8 dB. 7 dB is about 4.6 times the power, which matters for peaks rather than for how loud the music sits.

The hiss columns are empty for Audient iD14 MkII and M-Audio AIR 192|14 because neither maker publishes no output noise figure. That is a gap in the specification, not a quiet amplifier, and it is left blank here rather than filled with a plausible number.

HeadphoneImpedanceNeedsAudient iD14 MkII headroomM-Audio AIR 192|14 headroomAudient iD14 MkII hissM-Audio AIR 192|14 hiss
Shure SE8469 Ω0.04 mW+29 dB+31 dBnot publishednot published
Campfire Audio Andromeda 20209 Ω4.0 mW+9 dB+11 dBnot publishednot published
Audeze LCD-2 Classic70 Ω0.79 mW+22 dB+20 dBnot publishednot published
Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pro (250Ω)250 Ω0.63 mW+20 dB+15 dBnot publishednot published
HiFiMAN HE400se25 Ω7.9 mW+11 dB+12 dBnot publishednot published
Audio-Technica ATH-R70X470 Ω1.6 mW+15 dB+8 dBnot publishednot published
Sennheiser HD 600300 Ω6.6 mW+9 dB+4 dBnot publishednot published
HiFiMAN Susvara60 Ω50 mW+4 dB+2 dBnot publishednot published

The gap in dollars, against the gap in numbers

The Audient iD14 MkII costs $20 more than the M-Audio AIR 192|14, and on these three axes the money buys nothing: among the 567 models here there is not one that the Audient iD14 MkII handles and the M-Audio AIR 192|14 does not — not on power, not on the one-eighth rule, not on hiss. The traffic runs the other way: the cheaper M-Audio AIR 192|14 drives 2 models to 100 dB that the Audient iD14 MkII does not.

Everything in this paragraph counts only figures the two makers published. An advantage on an axis one of them leaves blank cannot be counted, and is not counted — how often that happens is its own page.

Both pages in full

Each has a page of its own with every power figure traced to what the maker published and a full headphone list: Audient iD14 MkII and M-Audio AIR 192|14. Or put either against your own headphones in the source comparison tool.

↑