SPL Phonitor se: power output and what it will drive

The SPL Phonitor se is a desktop amplifier at $1600. It delivers 1.0 W into 32Ω and 4.2 W into 300Ω, which ranks it 85 of 280 for raw power among the sources in this database.

Measured at 100 dB SPL it has comfortable headroom on 560 of the 567 dynamic and planar headphones catalogued here, enough but not generous on 6 and not enough power for 1. Power is published at 32Ω, 250Ω; the rest of the table is derived from those figures.

The manufacturer publishes 1.0 W into 32Ω, 5.0 W into 250Ω. Everything else in the table above is worked out from those figures, and this table says which is which.

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: spl.audio.

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.

At 5.48 µV of output noise, here is where that noise lands in the five most revealing in-ears in the database.

This one hisses. With the most sensitive in-ears in the database its own noise lands around 36 dB SPL, which you will hear between tracks and in quiet passages.

At 0.18Ω output impedance this source satisfies the one-eighth rule with every headphone in the database, down to the 3Ω in-ears. Nothing here will have its frequency response shaped by the source.

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 SPL publishes for this headphone output, the SPL Phonitor se is identical to the SPL Phonitor x. Each of them states power at 32 Ω and at 250 Ω, an output impedance of 0.18 Ω and a noise figure of 5.48 µV — and each states the same values.

They do not cost the same. The spread across the 2 of them is $1600, 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, 13 do everything the SPL Phonitor se does as a headphone output: reach 100 dB on every headphone it reaches, stay inside the one-eighth rule wherever it does and stay under the audible-hiss threshold wherever it does. The cheapest of them is the Schiit Magni Unity at $119, against this one’s $1600 — $1481 less.

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 Cayin HA-6A · vs Headamp GS-X Mini · vs Schiit Mjolnir 3 · vs Schiit Ragnarok 2 · vs SMSL VMV P2 MK2 · vs SPL Phonitor xe · vs Violectric V222 · vs Wells Audio Milo. 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 SPL source in the database, and how much of what this site says about them came from SPL’s own documents.