FiiO KA17 vs FiiO KA3

Both are dongles, $149 against $79. 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 KA3 reaches 100 dB on 565 of the 567 models here, the FiiO KA17 on 564.

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.

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 KA17 publishes at 32 Ω and at 300 Ω; FiiO KA3 at 32 Ω, at 300 Ω and at 600 Ω. Every other row is worked out from those — between two published loads, or beyond them holding voltage constant, which understates rather than flatters.

So the two columns are not equally firm row by row: at 600 Ω only the FiiO KA3 figure is the maker’s own. On those rows the derived number is the one to doubt first.

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

1 headphone reaches 100 dB on the FiiO KA3 but not on the FiiO KA17 — Symphonium Crimson.

14 headphones are left alone by the FiiO KA3 under the one-eighth rule but coloured by the FiiO KA17 (64 Audio Nio, 64 Audio Volur, Campfire Audio Andromeda 2023, 11 more).

4 headphones stay below the audible-hiss threshold on the FiiO KA3 but cross it on the FiiO KA17 (64 Audio Fourte, Campfire Audio Clara, Shure SE846, 1 more).

564 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.

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 Sennheiser HD 600: FiiO KA17 has +5 dB of headroom there against +3 dB. 2 dB is about 1.4 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.

The FiiO KA17 costs $70 more than the FiiO KA3, and on these three axes the money buys nothing: among the 567 models here there is not one that the FiiO KA17 handles and the FiiO KA3 does not — not on power, not on the one-eighth rule, not on hiss. The traffic runs the other way: the cheaper FiiO KA3 drives one model to 100 dB, leaves 14 alone under the one-eighth rule and keeps 4 below the audible-hiss threshold that the FiiO KA17 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.

Each has a page of its own with every power figure traced to what the maker published and a full headphone list: FiiO KA17 and FiiO KA3. Or put either against your own headphones in the source comparison tool.