FiiO BTR11 vs FiiO BTR13

Both are Bluetooth receivers, $36 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 FiiO BTR11 on 549.

Every published figure, next to each other

SpecificationFiiO BTR11FiiO BTR13
Power into 32Ω30 mW100 mW
Power into 150Ω6.2 mW21 mW
Power into 300Ω3.0 mW10.0 mW
Power into 600Ω1.5 mW5.0 mW
Output impedance0.5 Ω0.6 Ω
Output noise8.0 µV1.0 µV
Price$36$59
Headphones it reaches 100 dB on
out of 567
549565

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

LoadFiiO BTR11FiiO BTR13
32 ΩPublishedPublished
150 ΩDerivedDerived
300 ΩPublishedPublished
600 ΩDerivedDerived

Both makers publish a power rating, which is less common than the table above makes it look: of the 280 sources here, 209 publish a figure at at least one load and only 2 publish one at all four. FiiO BTR11 publishes at 32 Ω and at 300 Ω; FiiO BTR13 at 32 Ω and at 300 Ω. Every other row is worked out from those — between two published loads, or beyond them holding voltage constant, which understates rather than flatters.

The two publish at the same loads, which is the one case where the rows of this table can be read straight across.

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

16 headphones reach 100 dB on the FiiO BTR13 but not on the FiiO BTR11 — Audio-Technica ATH-R70xa, Beyerdynamic DT 880 Edition (600Ω), Beyerdynamic DT 990 Edition (600Ω), 13 more.

148 headphones stay below the audible-hiss threshold on the FiiO BTR13 but cross it on the FiiO BTR11 (64 Audio Aspire 1, 64 Audio Fourte, 64 Audio Nio, 145 more).

549 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 Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pro (250Ω): FiiO BTR13 has +13 dB of headroom there against +8 dB. 5 dB is about 3.3 times the power, which matters for peaks rather than for how loud the music sits.

Hiss is this source’s own noise, in decibels SPL, in that headphone — not a rating. Below about 20 dB SPL it is under the threshold of hearing in a quiet room; a negative figure means it is far below it.

HeadphoneImpedanceNeedsFiiO BTR11 headroomFiiO BTR13 headroomFiiO BTR11 hissFiiO BTR13 hiss
Shure SE8469 Ω0.04 mW+28 dB+32 dB33 dB14 dB
Campfire Audio Andromeda 20209 Ω4.0 mW+8 dB+12 dB13 dB-6 dB
Audeze LCD-2 Classic70 Ω0.79 mW+12 dB+18 dB11 dB-7 dB
Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pro (250Ω)250 Ω0.63 mW+8 dB+13 dB6 dB-12 dB
HiFiMAN HE400se25 Ω7.9 mW+6 dB+11 dB5 dB-13 dB
Audio-Technica ATH-R70X470 Ω1.6 mW+1 dB+6 dB-1 dB-19 dB
Sennheiser HD 600300 Ω6.6 mW-3 dB+2 dB-5 dB-23 dB
HiFiMAN Susvara60 Ω50 mW-5 dB+0 dB-7 dB-25 dB

The gap in dollars, against the gap in numbers

The FiiO BTR13 costs $23 more than the FiiO BTR11. Out of the 567 models here, that difference buys 16 more models driven to 100 dB and 148 more models kept below the audible-hiss threshold.

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 every power figure traced to what the maker published and a full headphone list: FiiO BTR11 and FiiO BTR13. Or put either against your own headphones in the source comparison tool.

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