iBasso DX180: power output and what it will drive

The iBasso DX180 is a portable player at $480. It delivers 262 mW into 32Ω and 28 mW into 300Ω, which ranks it 141 of 280 for raw power among the sources in this database.

Measured at 100 dB SPL it has comfortable headroom on 551 of the 567 dynamic and planar headphones catalogued here, enough but not generous on 15 and not enough power for 1. The cheaper of iBasso's current pair. Published power is one figure per output, so most of the table here is derived.

The manufacturer publishes 525 mW into 16Ω. Everything else in the table above is worked out from those figures, and this table says which is which.

The balanced output is rated separately: 690 mW into 32Ω through the 4.4mm jack.

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: ibasso.com, ibasso.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 0.6Ω output impedance, the one-eighth rule says this source suits headphones of 4.8Ω and above. 1 of the 567 models here falls below that. The one model below that line is the Symphonium Titan, 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.

On every figure iBasso publishes for this headphone output, the iBasso DX180 is identical to the iBasso DX260. Each of them states power at 16 Ω and an output impedance of 0.6 Ω — and each states the same values.

They do not cost the same. The spread across the 2 of them is $469, and none of that difference is visible in the figures above.

Identical published figures do not mean identical products. A spec sheet for a headphone output covers power, output impedance and noise. It says nothing about the converter, the inputs, the case, the battery, the volume control or how any of it sounds, and those are real differences that cost real money. What this section says is narrower and worth saying anyway: if you are choosing between these on what the maker printed about the headphone jack, there is nothing to choose.

15 groups of products in this database share a spec sheet this way, 36 products in all.

Of the 280 sources here, 18 do everything the iBasso DX180 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 Schiit Magni Heresy at $99, against this one’s $480 — $381 less, and a desktop amplifier rather than a portable player.

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 FiiO M11S · vs iBasso DX320 · vs Shanling H5 · vs Shanling M3 Ultra · vs Sony NW-A306. 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 iBasso source in the database, and how much of what this site says about them came from iBasso’s own documents.