Hifiman EF400

EF400 wildly outperformed Ear Fidelity's expectations who didn't expect HIFIMAN's pedigree at building great headphones to extend to an amplification system. It's the best Audiophile Heaven can recommend today.

Disregarding its entry-level standing, this diminutive powerhouse is a statement of technological ambition from China's leading headphone manufacturers, changing the game by equipping all levels of Head-Fi with an extremely capable source. 

HIFIMAN originally developed its discrete Himalaya R2R for its portable bluetooth gear. But ever one to dream, Fang Bian's team strapped its technology to original DSP work carried on a FPGA and a massive toroidal linear power supply, before stepping back to marvel at their progress.

The promises EF400 make in terms of fidelity and power output are not small. Head-Fi has paid attention when Himalaya decodes up to 24/192 PCM ala typical R2R – NOS (non-oversampling).

That's double the feat because the precision demanded in exact resistor values – for the buttery, natural and resolving ability that R2R DAC topology is known for – goes up.

For an entirely different sound otherwise, EF400's grants users the ability to switch from NOS to oversampling mode, for the cleanest possible result. That scrubs any last distortion and artifacts beyond the audible human hearing range, claiming over 115dB of signal-to-noise ratio.

That's signal that sees EF400 output in fixed voltage via line XLRs and RCAs, in the sense of a conventional DAC. But HIFIMAN – famous for its immensely challenging Susvara and HE6 – challenge you to bring its balanced headphone outputs to bear.