Arturia AudioFuse Rev2: power output and what it will drive

The Arturia AudioFuse Rev2 is an audio interface at $599. It delivers 187 mW into 32Ω and 20 mW into 300Ω, which ranks it 165 of 280 for raw power among the sources in this database.

Measured at 100 dB SPL it has comfortable headroom on 521 of the 567 dynamic and planar headphones catalogued here, enough but not generous on 37, only marginal on 6 and not enough power for 3. The maker publishes a maximum output voltage but no power figure at any load, so every number here is an upper bound rather than a rating. Output noise is not published, so the hiss estimate cannot be run.

The manufacturer publishes a maximum output of 2.449 V but no power rating at any load. Every figure above is therefore a ceiling: the real output into a low impedance will be lower, possibly much lower.

Derivation holds output voltage steady between and beyond the published loads rather than output power, because that is what an amplifier actually does. The full method is written up here.

Source: arturia.com.

Ordered from easiest to hardest to drive. Headroom is measured at 100 dB SPL, which is louder than almost anyone listens — a small negative number means the source still plays loud, just without reserve for peaks.

These figures come from each manufacturer's own sensitivity rating. A handful of planars — the HiFiMAN Susvara and the Abyss AB-1266 in particular — are widely reported to need far more than their published sensitivity implies, so treat a bare pass on those as optimistic rather than settled.

The manufacturer does not publish an output noise figure for this source, so the hiss estimate that runs on every other page here cannot be run on this one. Rather than substitute a plausible number, this page leaves the question open.

If you know the noise figure from a measurement you trust, the hiss calculator takes it directly and tells you where that noise lands in your own in-ears.

At 33Ω output impedance, the one-eighth rule says this source suits headphones of 264.0Ω and above. 545 of the 567 models here fall below that. That is most of the database, not a niche — 222 of them multi-driver in-ears, and the mismatch tilts the frequency response audibly rather than subtly.

The rule is a rule of thumb, not physics: a source impedance below one eighth of the headphone's keeps the interaction under about 1 dB. The checker works it out for any pair.

Of the 280 sources here, 53 do everything the Arturia AudioFuse Rev2 does as a headphone output: reach 100 dB on every headphone it reaches and stay inside the one-eighth rule wherever it does. The cheapest of them is the FiiO KA11 at $29, against this one’s $599 — $570 less, and a USB dongle rather than an audio interface.

The cheaper one also publishes a noise figure, which the Arturia AudioFuse Rev2 does not — so on the paperwork it is ahead, not merely level.

This counts a headphone output and nothing else. Inputs, converters, microphone preamps, balanced outputs, the volume control, the case and the warranty are all outside it, and any of them can be the reason to buy the dearer box. What the count does say is that the three numbers a maker can be held to do not separate them.

Worked out in advance against its closest rivals: vs Apogee Duet 3 · vs Arturia MiniFuse 1 · vs Arturia MiniFuse 2 · vs Arturia MiniFuse 4 · vs Audient iD24 · vs Focusrite Scarlett 18i16 (4th Gen) · vs IK Multimedia AXE I/O · vs SSL 12 · vs Universal Audio Volt 476P. Each of those pages lists the headphones that tell the two apart.

Or put any two side by side in the source comparison tool, or run your own headphones through the amplifier matcher. Or see every Arturia source in the database, and how much of what this site says about them came from Arturia’s own documents.