Concise-Feiao KA3 Portable Decoding Ear (Small Tail) Evaluation

a minute to understand Feiao KA3

Reference Price: 499 yuan

Tuning style: there are light micro-tone dyeing, high frequency slightly brighter, voice slightly grainy and line feeling. The sound is transparent, the density is moderate, and the overall style is relatively balanced and straightforward.

features: good sound quality, large thrust, small size, insensitive to mobile phone signals, and large power consumption.

grip comfort:excellent/good/fair/poor

workmanship level: excellent/good/fair/poor

control experience: fuselage without buttons.

battery life: This machine does not have a battery, and the battery life is based on the front battery capacity.

boot time: plug and play, no need to wait.

Bluetooth support: No

balanced port support: 4.4MM balanced interface

Native capacity and expansion support: This machine does not have storage space and does not support expansion cards.

Sound Quality Score

Quality score

Assessment Text

mobile phone cancels the 3.5MM earphone port, the simple and convenient plug-and-play feature of the small tail is favored by many people, and the small tail market has also become very hot. As a traditional hifi manufacturer, Feiao introduced similar products in 2009, but Zhihu, which was the first to cancel the earphone port in Apple, has not updated such products. Although BTR5 is barely one, it is strictly a Bluetooth receiver. However, with its good sound quality, multi-function and excellent cost performance, it has become our daily recommended front end, and I often use it myself. Now Feiao has finally introduced its latest little tail-KA3 (although it is a brand of Feiao and Fei Sheng), and it is a very pure little tail with no keys, no screen and only one indicator light. Let's see how it actually performs today.

optional color

KA3 has only one color.

box is still flying proud of the traditional style.

accessories are also very simple:

1. USB-C to USB adapter.

2. USB-C a data line.

KA3 measures 56.3mm x 20.2mm x 12mm and weighs about 17.5g. (The phone in the picture is iPhone SE2)

KA3 uses a ES9038Q2M decoding chip with a signal-to-noise ratio of 122dB,THD + N 0.0008%, and supports PCM32Bit/768kHz and DSD512.

single-ended 130mW/balanced 235mW @ 32Ω output power is also the top of the small tail, which is similar to the top of the small tail Lebi W2 (compared with the single-ended output power 206mW of Feiao M11PLUS, the M11PLUS volume is many times that of Feiao)

KA3 body is made of magnesium aluminum alloy, and its appearance is a bit too straight for men, much like computer accessories such as hard disk boxes. Although the body seams, chamfers, etc. are handled well, but this appearance is really not good-looking, can only be regarded as satisfactory.

The front of the fuselage is printed with the brand and model, and the characteristics of the machine; The back is printed with Philippe logo and some parameters. In short, straight men are very aesthetic inside and outside.

There is an indicator light on the front of the fuselage, blue: below 48kHz, yellow: above 48kHz, green: DSD.

fuselage is the USB-C data port, and the right side is the 3.5MM single-ended and 4.4MM balance port.

it does not have any buttons, all settings and adjustments are done through the phone. Under ios, only mobile phones can be used to adjust the volume. Under Android, EQ, high and low gain, etc. can be adjusted through APP.

life (mobile phone):

KA3 does not have a battery and is completely powered by the phone. Seeing its large output power, I think of W2' s relatively serious power consumption. The actual use is indeed similar to W2, which is not optimistic. Although the output power is large and good, I can't accept the serious power failure of the mobile phone, which leads to its limited usage scenario.

The machine heats slightly during use.

handling and grip:

KA3 does not have any buttons, the volume is adjusted on the phone.

grip, the volume and weight of KA3 are relatively small in the small tail, and the grip is good.

it does a good job of shielding and is not sensitive to mobile phone signals.is better than most of the small tails I have used so far, which is well received.

sound quality evaluation

Summary: The sound quality evaluation part is based on the basic quality of the earphone. Due to the individual differences of the listener, the following contents are for reference only.

scoring system: front-end (player, decoding ear amp and other equipment) evaluation, we selected the sound is more neutral, less tone and has a greater potential of the classic moving coil headset SONY EX1000 as a fixed test headset, the front-end scoring and concise and intuitive hearing comments. The front-end attribute scores are obtained by referring to a number of front-end scores of the same grade as the tested front-end. As the brief evaluation of hearing sense is written, there is a situation that cannot be accurately described. The headphone official suggests that the front-end score should be the main hearing sense evaluation for reference. (The words used to describe the degree in the auditory perception review are all compared under the same grade. By default, the earplug adopts the standard ordinary silicone sleeve, and all front ends are in low gain mode and adopt single-ended connection)

Evaluation Equipment

Front End: Feiao KA3

headphones: SONY MDR-EX1000, select headphones X-01

audio format: FLAC.

Evaluation Track

Popular: Jiangnan-Lin Junjie, Kite-Sun Yanzi, Ferry-Cai Qin

Rock: Sunburn-Muse

Strings: Carmen Fantasia-Mutt

Symphony: Voltava River-Kuberjic

audition tracks include pop male voice, female voice, rock music, small orchestrated string music and large orchestrated symphony, which basically cover most types of daily music. You can test the earphone and player's ability to restore high frequency (high frequency part of sound), low frequency (low frequency part of sound such as drum sound), human voice and analysis (to sound, equivalent to the resolution of the image), the sound field (the sense of space of the sound) and positioning, separation (different sound mixing degree, the higher the degree of separation, the better the performance level, and vice versa) and other major properties.

listening sense

High Frequency:, and the sound is slightly brighter. The high frequency is transparent and bright, with moderate density, good texture and extension, slight graininess and line feeling, and slight residual sound.

Vocals:the human voice is close, the density is moderate, slightly warm, with slight graininess and line feeling. Its male and female voice performance is not bad, but the female voice will feel a little less delicate, relatively speaking, the male voice performance will be better..

low frequency:is moderate, the diving and texture performance is good, the rebound speed is fast, there is not much sense of dispersion, it is relatively compact and cohesive, but it is a little superficial. With headphones with less low frequency, it will appear that the low frequency is slightly lower and the atmosphere is not enough.

parsing:this price upstream level.

Sound field and separation:sound field has a certain distance horizontally and vertically, and the sound has a certain sense of encirclement. The knot is clearer, and the separation and dynamics are good.

Other Aspects:is slightly dyed, the high frequency is slightly brighter, and the human voice is slightly grainy and linear. The sound is transparent, the density is moderate, and the overall style is relatively balanced and straightforward. There is almost no audible noise.

Balanced Mouth Listening Sense (Using Headphones for Feiao EM5)

compared with single port: in fact, the difference between balance and single end is very small. the high frequency under the balance port is slightly softer, the graininess and line feeling of human voice are more obvious, and the sound is not as delicate and soft as that under single end.

Overall evaluation

KA3 is in line with Feiao's high cost-effective style in recent years. All the supports such as balance mouth and DSD are supported, and there is nothing wrong with all aspects. Its sound is at the upper-middle level of this price, and its thrust is also very large. Its sound follows Feiao's usual style of not dyeing too much. However, I am not very satisfied with its appearance. Although the workmanship and texture are still good, the appearance design is a bit too computer accessory style. It would be better if the appearance design could be more optimized. In short, it is a small tail product worth recommending at this price.

Author:Muyan orzEditor at 2021-12-13 23:00

Website: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/444945425