ddHiFi TC44Grip vs Questyle M15

Both are dongles, $160 against $250. 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 Questyle M15 reaches 100 dB on 565 of the 567 models here, the ddHiFi TC44Grip on 557.

Every published figure, next to each other

SpecificationddHiFi TC44GripQuestyle M15
Power into 32Ω80 mW300 mW
Power into 150Ω17 mW110 mW
Power into 300Ω8.5 mW55 mW
Power into 600Ω4.3 mW28 mW
Output impedancenot published0.5 Ω unverified
Output noisenot published3 µV unverified
Price$160$250
Headphones it reaches 100 dB on
out of 567
557565

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

LoadddHiFi TC44GripQuestyle M15
32 ΩPublishedUnverified
150 ΩDerivedUnverified
300 ΩDerivedUnverified
600 ΩDerivedUnverified

Questyle M15 publishes no electrical specification at all. That is true of 10 of the 280 sources here, and the figures in that column come from independent measurement rather than from a maker document — which is not worse, but it is not the same thing, and it cannot be checked against anything the maker will stand behind.

The ddHiFi TC44Grip column does stand on a power rating its maker printed, at one of these four loads at least. Reading the two straight across sets one kind of claim against another, and nobody has written down the conditions of both side by side.

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

8 headphones reach 100 dB on the Questyle M15 but not on the ddHiFi TC44Grip — HiFiMAN Susvara, Moondrop COSMO, Moondrop PARA 2, 5 more.

557 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: Questyle M15 has +13 dB of headroom there against +5 dB. 8 dB is about 6.5 times the power, which matters for peaks rather than for how loud the music sits.

The hiss columns are empty for ddHiFi TC44Grip and Questyle M15 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.

HeadphoneImpedanceNeedsddHiFi TC44Grip headroomQuestyle M15 headroomddHiFi TC44Grip hissQuestyle M15 hiss
Shure SE8469 Ω0.04 mW+28 dB+33 dBnot publishednot published
Campfire Audio Andromeda 20209 Ω4.0 mW+8 dB+13 dBnot publishednot published
Audeze LCD-2 Classic70 Ω0.79 mW+17 dB+23 dBnot publishednot published
Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pro (250Ω)250 Ω0.63 mW+12 dB+20 dBnot publishednot published
HiFiMAN HE400se25 Ω7.9 mW+9 dB+15 dBnot publishednot published
Audio-Technica ATH-R70X470 Ω1.6 mW+5 dB+13 dBnot publishednot published
Sennheiser HD 600300 Ω6.6 mW+1 dB+9 dBnot publishednot published
HiFiMAN Susvara60 Ω50 mW-1 dB+6 dBnot publishednot published

The gap in dollars, against the gap in numbers

The Questyle M15 costs $90 more than the ddHiFi TC44Grip. Out of the 567 models here, that difference buys 8 more models driven to 100 dB.

Nothing runs the other way: there is no axis here on which the cheaper of the two does better.

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 a full headphone list and the provenance of every figure — worth opening here, because Questyle M15 has published no electrical specification at all and everything above comes from independent measurement: ddHiFi TC44Grip and Questyle M15. Or put either against your own headphones in the source comparison tool.

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