Sony's PHA-1, the first all-in-one headphone with iOS digital-to-analog conversion, gets hands-on.

Sony has been actively working on headphone-related products since last year, and one of them is the PHA-1, an all-in-one headphone that was unveiled at the MDR-1 headphone launch event in Taiwan. The PHA-1 not only has the functionality of a portable headphone amplifier with an integrated USB sound card, but it's also one of the few all-in-one headphones that can be directly connected to an iOS device for digital-to-analog conversion.

Introducing Sony's first all-in-one, starting at the jump.

For the average smartphone user, you may not have heard of a device such as a portable headphone amplifier. The function of a portable headphone amplifier is that when you have some headphones on hand that require a larger headphone jack to output power, or if you feel the need to help tune your phone to your headphones, then the portable headphone amplifier will play its role.

Sony's PHA-1 not only has the functionality of a portable earphone, it also integrates a computer USB sound card and acts as a digital-to-analog converter for iOS, the former of which can be understood by the general public as a way to replace the computer's built-in sound effects by connecting it to the computer via a USB cable; and the latter of which is, frankly, to be used as a sound card for iOS devices, which means that you skip the built-in sound chip of iOS. The latter means that you can use it as a sound card on your iOS device, which means that you can skip the iOS built-in sound chip and send a digital signal directly to PHA-1 to decode the music.

Why do this? With today's digital audio, there are a lot of things that go into achieving good sound quality, but a few of the main ones are the original source (which can be traced back to the quality of the recording, the mixing, and so on), the degree of archival preservation (e.g., distortion of the compressed file), the ability to convert the digital analogs, the amplification circuitry, etc.

This is a very important part of the process.

Mobile audio playback devices such as iOS, for example, tend to favor power consumption and chip size over digital-to-analog conversion, and use a lower-quality, but less power-efficient and more integrated digital-to-analog converter, which does have an impact on the quality of the sound.

Even though earbuds can be used to enhance sound quality to a limited extent, don't forget that if the quality of the front end is poor, the amplification will only make the defects more obvious, and if you can enhance the quality of the front end, you will also be able to bring a better feeling to the music listening experience; due to Apple's complex specification and certification, there are currently only a handful of devices that can directly allow iOS devices to perform digital-to-analog conversions, and fewer are available for portable use. In fact, I think the only ones who have such products are Fostex (Japan), Venture Craft, and ALO (U.S.).

Some of the aforementioned models are more expensive than others, and some even have a purely digital analog conversion function, with an additional headphone amplifier to make it a usable setup, so Sony's PHA-1 is priced at a fairly affordable price for a product with similar functionality.

The PHA-1 is the first of its kind in the world.

From the design point of view, although PHA-1 is not immune to the metal cigarette case look of most portable earphones, the details are quite meticulous. In addition, there are also rubberized rubber strips on the top and bottom of the case for good measure.

As Sony set this product for portable music players and smartphone users, in the past such users would bundle their players and phones with their portable earphones, and such portable earphones would use a metal casing due to noise isolation, but without a protective film between the player and the earphone, it would be easy to scratch the device; Sony went ahead and added a non-slip grip to the PHA-1 to make it more durable and easier to use. Sony's PHA-1 comes with a non-slip adhesive strip and two straps to hold the player in place, saving gamers a lot of trouble.

The front of the unit has a volume knob, 3.5 audio inputs, and a headphone output. The red light above the knob is a recharge indicator, which turns off when it's full, and the lower part is an earphone activation light, which turns from green to red when it runs out of power; at the back are the source buttons, the iOS digitizer inputs, and the USB input/charging microUSB slot, so remember to set the buttons to the corresponding source. On the side, there is a gain dial, which is more suitable for headphones over 100 Ohms.

From the third page of the product description on Taiwan's official website (click here), you can see the full interview with the developer and the positioning of this product, which is noteworthy because this portable earphone is powered by Wolfson's mid-to-high-end DAC chip, the WM8741, which doesn't have the same SNR as its big brother, the WM8740, but has higher efficiency at 5V than the WM8741, and is more efficient than the WM8741. The WM8741 has a higher SNR than the WM8740, but its efficiency at 5V is higher than the WM8741, making it more suitable for portable devices, and the slightly warmer mid-range is more in line with Sony's own MP3s.

The analog circuit uses TI's LM49860, which emphasizes resolution and low distortion, and the earphone amplifier side is TI's highly integrated TAP6120, which is an amplifier with a certain level of efficiency at lower voltages, and this combination allows for headphone amplification to combine power saving and sound neutrality, with outputs of about dual 175mW at 8 ohms and 300 ohms.

In addition, the board uses a 6-layer circuit board and up to 6μm copper foil to improve conduction efficiency and reduce noise, and the internal wiring is also configured to isolate the digital line from the analog line to minimize interference with the two transmissions. In addition, the PHA-1's power supply eliminates the need for a fully digital power management IC, and instead utilizes a traditional hardware-based charging circuitry with less noise.

The PHA-1 also has a lot to offer when it comes to USB ports on PCs. Sony has made the PHA-1 available as a plug-and-play device, but with Sony's own chipset, the PHA-1 is capable of delivering 24-bit/96KHz performance on a 24-bit/96KHz scale, as well as driver-less, so-called asynchronous transfers, which is why there is no shortage of USB external audio devices on the market. There are many USB external audio devices available, but most of them require a separate driver installation, and when the driver does not support a particular system, it will not be able to provide the functionality of asynchronous transfer.

The standard USB transfer is to calibrate and synchronize the transfer clock between the computer and the USB playback device, but the downside is that the calibrated clock on the computer side is not designed for audio, and the accuracy of the clock is much lower than that of the audio level, which makes it prone to jitter and audio degradation, and the transfer of the general transfer to the USB device side is also intact, resulting in lower quality of audio.

What are the benefits of asynchronous transfers? Asynchronous transfer literally means adding extra reading bits to the transmitted digital audio signal through the driver as a calibration, transferring it to the device's buffer memory, and then restoring it through the internal calibration clock on the USB playback device side to achieve high quality sound with less loss, but also because of the extra bits that are not necessary, resulting in an asynchronous transmission between the transmitting side and the receiving side, and is therefore called asynchronous transfer. This means that you can use the same processor as you would in a PC, but with a lower power consumption.

As for iOS, while Apple's digital audio output is limited to 16bit/44.1KHz, the WM8740's high-specification chip cannot be fully utilized. However, the highest specification of the chip is one thing, and the optimal working specification of the chip is another, and with the higher-order analog converter chip, even if the same specification of the signal is used, the better the listening experience. This is a very important part of the process, but it is also a very important part of the process, as well.

I borrowed the Sony MDR-1, Sony XBA-4, a friend's Shure SE530 and UE TF-10, my own Beyerdynamatic DT880 250-ohm version, and the Sony MDR-Z1000 headphones as a baseline for comparison. The playback sources include my iPad 2, Walkman Z1000 and computer with Foobar 2000 software.

First of all, use the Walkman special Line Out cable included in the package to connect to the Z1000 and through the 3.5 analog end to connect to the iPad 2 for purely in-ear amplification test; to the power, even if adjusted to High Gain, used to drive high impedance headphones is not ideal, the author's personal estimate of the limit of roughly 250 ohms or so on the PHA- 1 can handle the limit of higher impedance headphones, the PHA- 1 can handle the limit of higher impedance headphones. The PHA-1 can handle higher impedance headphones such as 600 ohm headphones with sound, but the layers and space are basically not pushed out.

PHA-1 ear expansion of the tonality of Sony's traditional rich rendering flavor is not so significant, but more inclined to neutral some, should be used with the analog amplification LM49820 and ear expansion of the TAP6120 related to the front-end of the original style of amplification, the front-end of the adjustments to the direction of the change is not very much, it is a rather neutral design of the ear expansion, but the low-frequency is still a powerful, and not to the front-end of the low frequency. The newest addition to the lineup is a new, more powerful, and more powerful front-end speaker. With the volume knob above the circle, it is clear that the Line Out of the WM8740 inside the PHA-1 is much louder than that of a typical smartphone or MP3.

But with the inherently warmer WM8740, the sound is much warmer than the Line Out of the iPad 2 to the PHA-1, with the Sony Walkman's usual warmer sound and slightly smaller soundstage, but still much more neutral than the Sony standard tuning of the Walkman Z1000's headphone jack output.

The most important thing you can do is to make sure that your iOS device sounds like a Sony Walkman.

But the biggest value is that it improves the ability of iOS devices to handle MP3 files. I personally feel that the same spinning 320k MP3 files (after all, my main playback device is still a Walkman, so I'm less likely to convert them to the lossless format of iOS) would have made the original iPad 2 sound more neutral and have a wider soundstage compared to the Walkman Z1000, but the ability to reproduce details would have been lost.

The iPad 2 has a more neutral sound and a wider soundstage than the Walkman Z1000, but its ability to reproduce details is severely compromised.

With the PHA-1, you can see a significant increase in detail, and the overall listening experience is much more detailed, thanks to the WM8740, which is a high-end DAC chip that can still be used to its advantage even when limited to 16Bit/44.1KHz, but I still want to emphasize that if you have poor audio files, such as poor recordings, and are listening to overly compressed files (such as streaming video), you can still get a better picture of what's going on. However, I would like to emphasize that if you have poor audio files, such as poor recording and listening to overly compressed files (especially streaming music such as KKBOX and EZPeer)

It's worth noting that the PHA-1 is confirmed to be compatible with newer iOS devices that utilize the Lightning connector, and we've confirmed that the newer iPod Touch and iPad mini will work fine, but the PHA-1 only comes with a short 30-pin device cable, which is a bit longer than the original Lightinig cable that you can use directly. The PHA-1 is powered only by USB, and that's a big difference.

Also in USB mode with the Windows preset driver (the DS driver for Foobar 2000), the desktop All-in-One can only rely on the inherently lower noise level of the dual WM8741, but the TL7022 on the USB side has inherently poorer Windows universal drivers, and the details are much more detailed than the PHA-1, which is not synchronized with USB, and is frankly not as good as it could have been. The advantage of my personal all-in-one PC is not significant.

But after switching to the WASAPI driver, the PHA-1's sound quality didn't improve dramatically because it avoided the problem of the generic driver being inherently bad, but the details of the desktop DAC suddenly increased, and the overall resolution was dramatically better than that of the PHA-1; however, as I emphasized earlier, this is an inherent advantage of desktop DACs, and it can only be said to be due to the fact that Sony's firmware isn't as good as it used to be, so it's not as good as it could be. The TL7022's use of generic USB drivers is a tragic result of the lack of synchronization between Sony's chipset firmware and the TL7022's well-tuned, generic USB audio drivers.

When paired with a computer, the PHA-1 cuts off the internal Li-ion battery and uses the USB 5V power supply, but the biggest concern is whether it will suffer from the unstable USB power supply, but the PHA-1 seems to have done a good job of fighting interference internally, and at least there's no noticeable current interference when the music stops playing completely.

In terms of compatibility, the PHA-1 is a great match for the MDR-1 as a sound card for iOS devices and PCs, and it's a great match for the MDR-1, which has a slightly recessed mid-range that makes the MDR-1's vocals sound better, but I personally prefer to drive the MDR-1 with a low Gain, to avoid overloading the MDR-1 with a high output. However, I personally prefer to drive the MDR-1 with Low Gain to avoid excessive sound pressure on the MDR-1 due to the higher output, and also with Sony's monitor-oriented headphones such as the MDR-7520, EX-1000, Z1000, and so on.

However, when paired with Shure-SE530 or Sony's own CD-900ST headphones, which originally emphasized vocals, you can't help but feel that the already prominent vocals are even more compressed; in addition, the combination with the Beyerdynamic DT880 is quite usable, and it can also bring out the deep low frequencies that are not possible with a normal source, but if you're born with a more recessed midrange, the Beyer DT990 won't be able to do that, and you'll be able to hear it. The Beyer DT990, however, does not work as well as the more recessed Beyer DT990.

And the ability of the earphone part, compared to the function and specifications close to the all-in-one machine output is not too bad, but compared to a similar price point of pure earphone, PHA-1 only take out the earphone structure, in addition to the tuning style, the driving force of the performance is not ideal, if you use the front-end has been very good, such as a professional recorder goods is an audiophile MP3 player, unless you like PHA-1 earphone features, or else not to use its digital input part, if you do not need.

Of course, if you don't have space constraints and can always plug in your home, and don't need to connect your earphones to a portable device to take it on the road, you can get a better all-in-one for the price of the PHA-1; after all, being able to use your home's power is an inherent advantage, and a portable all-in-one that is built to last and cannot be plugged in is still hard to compete with, but we'd like to ask our readers to first understand that this is a development that was made with portability in mind. The first thing you need to know is that you're not going to be able to use the same thing you're used to, but you're going to need to be able to use the same thing you're used to.

Simply put, if a plugged-in, less powerful, and larger all-in-one device doesn't perform as well as the PHA-1, then the manufacturer should be reviewing their R&D.

There is no reason why the PHA-1 should not have been designed with the same level of performance as the PHA-1, but it should have been designed with the same level of performance as the PHA-1.

In addition, while the PHA-1's resolution is much better than that of the DACs on typical smartphones and players, there is still a gap in resolution when compared to the AKM AK4480, which is used in the more advanced Fostex HP-P1. And with Sony's setup, the PHA-1 is already an intermediary and the end of the line, so it no longer has the analogous Line Out function. Personally, I have friends who insist on stacking three or more floors (iPod + HP-P1 + additional headphone expansion), and I can't accept the PHA-1's design.

PhA-1 is also not able to accept additional power during operation.

The PHA-1's knob is also integrated into the switch, so that in addition to the usual popping sound of a portable amplifier at the moment of powering on, it doesn't temporarily stop powering up because there's no signal input. I've had a couple of occasions where I forgot to turn off the switch when I was using it as a sound card for my computer, which resulted in me waking up to virtually no power at all, and I'm really looking forward to seeing Sony incorporate this kind of mechanism, or to make the power button independent of the power button. After all, rotating the volume knob regularly will cause wear and tear, and may result in poor contact or aging.

Also, the leaded protection bar on the front that protects the volume knob is a nice touch, but when I have an L-shaped connector on my headphone cable or a large headphone plug (some gamers use audiophile-grade handmade cables, and may use high-quality hand-soldered terminals), it tends to get stuck in the middle.

On the other hand, the Sony audiovisual design engineering team has been able to think of a way to protect the headphones without making them too difficult to insert.

While I've complained about some of the shortcomings of the PHA-1's design, the PHA-1 is one of the few devices on the market to address all three of these issues, iOS, PC audio enhancement, and headphone amplification, if you're an iOS device user who wants a device that you can use in the office, take with you when you leave for work, and listen to your music on your laptop. The PHA-1 is also one of the few devices on the market that offers all of these features in one package.

If you look at the PHA-1 as a single-function device, it may be overpriced, but if you want to fulfill two of these functions, the PHA-1's price is actually quite competitive. However, the pairing of this type of audio device is still a matter of personal preference, and after all, the PHA-1 doesn't reserve the ability to adjust the OPEX chip to adjust the sound, so we recommend that you look for a place where you can audition your favorite headphones and pair them with your favorite headphones before buying. In addition, it is possible to use the PHA-1 with headphones of your own choice.

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