FiiO M11S vs iBasso DX180

Both are portable players, $499 against $480. 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?

On raw power they are level: each reaches 100 dB on 566 of the 567 non-electrostatic models here.

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.

Only one of these two columns starts from a power rating. FiiO M11S publishes one at 32 Ω and at 300 Ω; iBasso DX180 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 iBasso DX180 understates rather than flatters — but at 32 Ω and at 300 Ω are the only loads 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.

On power they are interchangeable across this whole database: there is no headphone here that one reaches 100 dB on and the other does not.

50 headphones are left alone by the iBasso DX180 under the one-eighth rule but coloured by the FiiO M11S (64 Audio Aspire 1, 64 Audio Fourte, 64 Audio Nio, 47 more).

566 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 Campfire Audio Andromeda 2020: iBasso DX180 has +19 dB of headroom there against +16 dB. 2 dB is about 1.8 times the power, which matters for peaks rather than for how loud the music sits.

The hiss columns are empty for iBasso DX180 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.

The FiiO M11S costs $19 more than the iBasso DX180, and on these three axes the money buys nothing: among the 567 models here there is not one that the FiiO M11S handles and the iBasso DX180 does not — not on power, not on the one-eighth rule, not on hiss. The traffic runs the other way: the cheaper iBasso DX180 leaves 50 models alone under the one-eighth rule that the FiiO M11S 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 M11S and iBasso DX180. Or put either against your own headphones in the source comparison tool.