There can be quite a lot in a single letter. A while back I reviewed (elsewhere) the budget FiiO JT7 headphones and was impressed, given the price. Could there be much difference with the FiiO FT7 headphones? There’s only one letter difference in the name, after all, and they are both over-ear, open backed planar magnetic models. Well, they do cost six or seven times as much, so there’s that. Let’s check them out.
Information
- Weight: 431 grams plus cable
- Impedance: 25 ohms
- Sensitivity: 94dB, 1mW@1kHz, 110dB, 1Vrms @ 1kHz
- Frequency response: 5 to 40,000 hertz
- Colour: Black, Zebrawood
- Accessories: 3m cable with 4.4mm balanced plug, 4.4mm to 4-pin balanced adaptor, 4.4mm to 6.25mm TRS adaptor, hard carry case, two sets of earpads
- Manufacturer Website here.
- User manual here.
- Price: $1,299
- Available from: Here.
About the FiiO FT7 headphones
They are largely explained by the full title FiiO gives the FT7: Gold Diaphragm Open-Back Planar Headphones. “Open-Back”, in contrast to closed, means that there’s no air cushioning resisting the movement of the sound-generating diaphragm. That can allow an extended high frequency response. In practice, what it usually means is a more “open”, airy sound than is typical from closed-back headphones. It also means virtually no isolation from outside noise – so they aren’t much good in noisy environments. And what you’re listening to is also broadcast into the space around you.
I for one prefer open back, except when in noisy environments.
“Planar” means planar magnetic drivers, rather than dynamic ones. For a detailed explanation of these, check out our article. But, in short, rather than having a coil attached to the back of the driver diaphragm, inserted into a magnet, planar magnetic drivers use a conductive trace covering a very fine diaphragm which is placed between two sets of magnets. That support across its entire surface means a very light and thin diaphragm can be used. One micrometre in this case. That is one thousandth of a millimetre! FiiO describes the conductive trace as being multi-layered gold and silver, thus “Gold Diaphragm”. The diaphragms are much larger than you find in most dynamic headphones: 106mm. One very practical advantage of this design is that planar magnetic headphones have a consistent impedance across their full bandwidth, eliminating colourations caused by high output impedances on some source devices. This is particularly important given that their low impedance – 25 ohms – would make similar dynamic headphones very susceptible to such colourations.
They are also over ear models. The earcups, round with an internal diameter of 67mm, external of 110mm, are large enough to fully enclose your ears, rather than sitting on top of them. On-ears can be uncomfortable and by squashing your ears, change the way you hear. FiiO provides two sets of earcups. Already fitted are “lambskin” ones. They are not fluffy, but finished in a very soft leather, perforated around the sides to permit a degree of breathing. Also included are “breathable fabric pads”, which have a dark gray appearance.
The bodies of the earcups are made from carbon fibre – indeed, that is the main construction material for the headphones – except for the grille on the back of each cup. This is made from zebrawood, sourced from high altitudes in West Africa. Apparently, it’s extremely dense. Suspended under the structural carbon fibre band is a soft leather-like band which rests on your head. The adjustment knobs for this band are nicely finished in copper. There is plenty of adjustment range for all head sizes.
The cable is split so that it connects to both earcups via mono 3.5mm plugs. The cable is 3 metres long and if such things matter to you (they don’t to me), it is constructed using 99.99998% high purity monocrystalline copper, which has been cryogenically treated with frozen nitrogen at -192 degrees Celsius for seven days. A lot of listeners do think that special cables can make a difference to the sound. I think all competently made cables deliver identical sound. Nonetheless, this kind of thing is a marker of quality, or going the extra mile.
The cable is terminated in a 4.4mm TRRRS balanced plug.
Usually, balanced cables are included as extras or as options. But with the FT7 headphones, this is the only cable. The other main balanced connector commonly used on equipment is a 4-pin XLR-style connection. An adaptor for this is included. Another adaptor is provided to turn the 4.4mm connector into a standard 6.25mm (quarter inch) TRS plug. That gives it wide compatibility with a lot of equipment … but not all. No 3.5mm plug adaptor is provided! Clearly FiiO has targeted the FT7 headphones at higher end users. FiiO CD and digital audio players and DACs all support the 4.4mm connection. If you’re using the headphones with professional gear, the 6.25mm plug is all that’s typically required.
But if you want to use these headphones with your treasured, and still functional, iPod Classic, you’ll need to purchase a 6.25mm to 3.5mm adaptor. I have some of those so I was able to use the headphones with all manner of gear.
Last thing: the headphones come with a rather attractive storage/carry case. This was finished in a kind of glowing brown/bronze fabric called Yaoli linen. Most handsome in my opinion. Remember, these headphones do not fold up. The earcups swivel enough to fit your head, but that’s it. They are substantial, not portable.
Listening with the FiiO FT7 headphones
I used a quite range of equipment with these headphones. Of course I used a couple of FiiO devices, such as the DM15 R2R CD player and the M21 digital audio player With an adaptor I listened using the 3.5mm outputs of a Macbook Air and a Lenovo Yoga Windows notebook and even a dirt cheap K-Mart Anko CD player. And via 6.5mm I streamed music using a couple of professional RME interfaces. I even tried vinyl.
So, how did it sound?
Let’s start with the Yoga notebook. This one is one of the “worst case” examples, because I know that it has a low output in terms of voltage (1.1 volts into an open circuit) and a high impedance (69 ohms). Since the impedance of these headphones is only 25 ohms, they should only get a bit more than one quarter of the power of the output delivered by the computer. The hippie-era song “Venus” by Shocking Blue, streamed from TIDAL sounded rather nice, a little cleaner than usual, and it was delivered at a level that was … well, listenable but not quite what I wanted. So I went to Beyoncé’s album Lemonade. The bass had all the body I could have asked for, at least in terms of matching the rest of the sound. But it was just too damned quiet. I mean, the whole level of the sound.
I love the Lenova Yoga, particularly its OLED screen, but headphone-wise, it needs high impedance, high sensitivity, which is a rare combo.
The Macbook Air (M4), on the other hand, sounded just as good, except I could actually wind it up with these headphones. It can deliver up to nearly 3 volts and has an internal impedance of just 0.3 ohms. As I write Kanye’s “Power” from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is blasting, truly blasting, with the level set to 80%, or with six decibels to go. And it is detailed, clean and would be a revelation to anyone who listens to this music on a Bluetooth speaker.
Next I span up the Anko portable CD player. It’s been a few months, and I’d forgotten how bad it is. Not in any esoteric terms, just a comically uneven frequency response and low (less than 0.9 volts) output at best. I had The Hidden Land by Béla Fleck & The Flecktones in the player, and the colouration was obvious, along with the smearing of detail right from the opening seconds of the opening Fugue. And at max volume the level was like that of the Yoga. So I popped the same CD into the FiiO DM15 R2R portable player and plugged the headphones into it. All the detail returned, the colouration disappeared, and as much loudness as I could tolerated became instantly available.
To this point, I’ve talked only about devices to which I’d connected via their 3.5mm outputs. That meant that the headphone cable was plugged into the supplied 4.4mm to 6.25mm adaptor, and that in turn into 6.25mm to 3.5mm adaptor that had come with my Focal headphones. So now it was time to go full balanced. I kept the Fleck CD in the FiiO player and plugged the headphones directly into its balanced output. And that was a step up – somewhat to my surprise – from the 3.5mm connection. There was an apparent increase in clarity, a sound that was easier on the ears due to lower distortion, it seemed, even with a higher volume. I’m aware that things can sound better simply through a volume increase, so I tried my best to adjust for that. But, well, it just seemed better.
I popped in an EMI digital recording of the Romeo and Juliet suites by Prokofiev – Muti conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra – and jumped to the start of Suite 2, “Montagues and Capulets”. Wow! With the volume set at 83% – obviously a lot more available had I wanted – there were orchestral levels playing, and with the brass highlights sounding clearly above the already loud background. I guess some might find the bite of the first violins at points a touch steely, but it’s a matter of opinion whether in real life loud violins really are somewhat steely. They certainly weren’t excessively so.
And the reality is, to deliver anywhere near the performance provided by this FiiO CD player and headphone combination with loudspeakers you’d have to pay north of $10,000 for the equipment.
Let's go analogue!
At this point I think we should go full analogue. I grabbed some of the vinyl I purchased in the 1970s and 1980s – so there’s no chance they went through a digital stage – and put them on a Thorens TD 1600 fully manual belt-drive turntable, fitted with a Goldring Ethos moving coil cartridge, pre-amped and RIAA-ed by a Simaudio Moon 310LP phono preamp, and delivered to the headphones by an iFi Zen Can headphone amplifier with its balanced 4.4mm output (output impedance 0.55 ohms, open circuit output up to 7.5 volts).
I will confess that I am often reluctant to listen to vinyl through headphones. That’s because many emphasise precisely the frequency band in which the almost inevitable background crackle of LPs resides. But my 50-year-old copy of Uriah Heep’s The Magician’s Birthday, and my 40-year-old copy of Ultravox’s Vienna (peak electronic new wave, that one) sounded magnificent. The crackle was audible only between tracks, and the tonal balance was simply great. The FiiO FT7 headphones did reveal something, after all the digital to which I’d previously been listening: the lack of truly deep bass on almost all vinyl. That’s the way they mostly made them in those days for the very practical reason that the levels of bass used these days would be untrackable by a lot of record players back in those days.
Unless the label was Telarc. Yes, it used digital recording, but transferred a clean (in this case 50kHz, 16-bit Soundstream) digital recording, unprocessed, uncompressed, to the vinyl cutting machine. Telarc DG-10049 is an LP of Bach organ works played on the Methuen Memorial Music Hall Organ, with its four keyboards (plus pedals), 85 stops and more than six thousand pipes.
Including bass pipes with a fundamental of 16 hertz. If you squint, you can see the wobbles in the groove in those sections! I used to have a 15-inch 400-watt subwoofer that could deliver this, but no full range speakers. The FiiO FT7 headphones could do so handily. More importantly, they kept the complexity of the soundscape in order. With any decent volume, a lot of gear just gets quite confused.
A final word on bass. I sometimes read people complaining that the bass is too full with planar magnetic headphones. Oh, I differ on that. Bass is difficult to reproduce, and we're generally not used to bass being delivered at the correct level, so it can seem loud. But what you're hearing is what is on the recording.
Conclusion
I still prefer, slightly, my Final Audio D8000 headphones, but I can’t say it’s like chalk and cheese. Given the relative affordability of the FiiO FT7 headphones, and the fact that they support balanced connections out of the box, I’d have to say that they, like the JT7s, are a bargain.
