Hidizs S9 Pro Plus vs Tanchjim LUNA

Both are dongles, $139 against $140. 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 Tanchjim LUNA reaches 100 dB on 565 of the 567 models here, the Hidizs S9 Pro Plus on 562.

Every published figure, next to each other

SpecificationHidizs S9 Pro PlusTanchjim LUNA
Power into 32Ω138 mW285 mW
Power into 150Ω29 mW80 mW
Power into 300Ω15 mW54 mW
Power into 600Ω7.4 mW27 mW
Output impedancenot publishednot published
Output noisenot published1.3 µV
Price$139$140
Headphones it reaches 100 dB on
out of 567
562565

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

LoadHidizs S9 Pro PlusTanchjim LUNA
32 ΩPublishedPublished
150 ΩDerivedDerived
300 ΩDerivedPublished
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. Hidizs S9 Pro Plus publishes at 32 Ω; Tanchjim LUNA 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.

So the two columns are not equally firm row by row: at 300 Ω only the Tanchjim LUNA 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.

The headphones that tell them apart

3 headphones reach 100 dB on the Tanchjim LUNA but not on the Hidizs S9 Pro Plus — Moondrop COSMO, Symphonium Crimson, Symphonium Helios.

562 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 Sennheiser HD 600: Tanchjim LUNA has +9 dB of headroom there against +3 dB. 6 dB is about 3.7 times the power, which matters for peaks rather than for how loud the music sits.

The hiss columns are empty for Hidizs S9 Pro Plus 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.

HeadphoneImpedanceNeedsHidizs S9 Pro Plus headroomTanchjim LUNA headroomHidizs S9 Pro Plus hissTanchjim LUNA hiss
Shure SE8469 Ω0.04 mW+30 dB+34 dBnot published17 dB
Campfire Audio Andromeda 20209 Ω4.0 mW+10 dB+14 dBnot published-3 dB
Audeze LCD-2 Classic70 Ω0.79 mW+19 dB+23 dBnot published-5 dB
Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pro (250Ω)250 Ω0.63 mW+14 dB+20 dBnot published-10 dB
HiFiMAN HE400se25 Ω7.9 mW+11 dB+15 dBnot published-11 dB
Audio-Technica ATH-R70X470 Ω1.6 mW+8 dB+13 dBnot published-16 dB
Sennheiser HD 600300 Ω6.6 mW+3 dB+9 dBnot published-21 dB
HiFiMAN Susvara60 Ω50 mW+2 dB+5 dBnot published-23 dB

The gap in dollars, against the gap in numbers

The Tanchjim LUNA costs $1 more than the Hidizs S9 Pro Plus. Out of the 567 models here, that difference buys 3 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 every power figure traced to what the maker published and a full headphone list: Hidizs S9 Pro Plus and Tanchjim LUNA. Or put either against your own headphones in the source comparison tool.

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