EarStudio ES100 MK2 vs FiiO BTR13

Both are Bluetooth receivers, $90 against $59. 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 FiiO BTR13 reaches 100 dB on 565 of the 567 models here, the EarStudio ES100 MK2 on 553.

Every published figure, next to each other

SpecificationEarStudio ES100 MK2FiiO BTR13
Power into 32Ω60 mW100 mW
Power into 150Ω20 mW21 mW
Power into 300Ω10.0 mW10.0 mW
Power into 600Ω5.0 mW5.0 mW
Output impedance0.5 Ω unverified0.6 Ω
Output noise3 µV unverified1.0 µV
Price$90$59
Headphones it reaches 100 dB on
out of 567
553565

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

LoadEarStudio ES100 MK2FiiO BTR13
32 ΩUnverifiedPublished
150 ΩUnverifiedDerived
300 ΩUnverifiedPublished
600 ΩUnverifiedDerived

EarStudio ES100 MK2 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 FiiO BTR13 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

12 headphones reach 100 dB on the FiiO BTR13 but not on the EarStudio ES100 MK2 — HiFiMAN HE-6se V2, HiFiMAN HE6 Remastered, HiFiMAN Susvara, 9 more.

553 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 Shure SE846: FiiO BTR13 has +32 dB of headroom there against +26 dB. 6 dB is about 4 times the power, which matters for peaks rather than for how loud the music sits.

The hiss columns are empty for EarStudio ES100 MK2 because that 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.

HeadphoneImpedanceNeedsEarStudio ES100 MK2 headroomFiiO BTR13 headroomEarStudio ES100 MK2 hissFiiO BTR13 hiss
Shure SE8469 Ω0.04 mW+26 dB+32 dBnot published14 dB
Campfire Audio Andromeda 20209 Ω4.0 mW+6 dB+12 dBnot published-6 dB
Audeze LCD-2 Classic70 Ω0.79 mW+16 dB+18 dBnot published-7 dB
Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pro (250Ω)250 Ω0.63 mW+13 dB+13 dBnot published-12 dB
HiFiMAN HE400se25 Ω7.9 mW+8 dB+11 dBnot published-13 dB
Audio-Technica ATH-R70X470 Ω1.6 mW+6 dB+6 dBnot published-19 dB
Sennheiser HD 600300 Ω6.6 mW+2 dB+2 dBnot published-23 dB
HiFiMAN Susvara60 Ω50 mW-1 dB+0 dBnot published-25 dB

The gap in dollars, against the gap in numbers

The EarStudio ES100 MK2 costs $31 more than the FiiO BTR13, and on these three axes the money buys nothing: among the 567 models here there is not one that the EarStudio ES100 MK2 handles and the FiiO BTR13 does not — not on power, not on the one-eighth rule, not on hiss. The traffic runs the other way: the cheaper FiiO BTR13 drives 12 models to 100 dB that the EarStudio ES100 MK2 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 a full headphone list and the provenance of every figure — worth opening here, because EarStudio ES100 MK2 has published no electrical specification at all and everything above comes from independent measurement: EarStudio ES100 MK2 and FiiO BTR13. Or put either against your own headphones in the source comparison tool.

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