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Shonyun 306A

Just got myself a demo unit of Shonyun 306a portable headphone amp for personal review. Personally, I was never fond of the idea of having a portable amp. Having an extra thing to carry aside from your phone or music player plus the trouble of charging the amp each time the battery depletes seems like a nuisance. Imagining how a compact unit could reproduce music and come close to the level of a desktop amp is dubious, at least to me.

Packaging:

The Shonyun 306a came in a brown box, not particularly attractive or anything classy but as long as it does the job of protecting the package, who would mind. On top you can see ‘class-a monitor headphone amp’ just below the Shonyun logo. A bold statement from Shonyun, which excites me to see how well this amp will bode at the end of my review. The package includes 1 x interconnect cable, 1 x charger, 1 x user’s manual (in both Chinese and English) and 1 x Shonyun 306a headphone amp.








Technical specs:

Frequency response: 10-100 kHz
Output power: 455mW @ 16 Ohm
SNR: 105dB
THD: <0.005%
Battery life: 8 hours
Charging Voltage: 21V
Suitable headphone impedance: 16-300 Ohm
Output impedance: 28 kOhm

Design:

This is actually the first portable headphone amp that I managed to get in hand. On first look, it is quite small in width, almost the size of my Xperia Sola, just that the amp is much thicker. Came with 3.5mm line in and headphone output, a charging port and push and pop volume knob. The volume knob amazed me simply because of its brilliant design. The fact that you can push the knob inside entirely almost like you’re hiding it, gave the amp a slick look.









Another brilliant design that I wanted to highlight is the powering on mechanism. I must say at first, I did spent a moment looking for a power on button (silly me) till I read the manual. To power the amp, you just simply have to plug in your headphone. While it is on you can see blue light illuminates the Shonyun logo and turns red when it charges.








The powering on mechanism will help you to spare the battery life in the event where you forgot to power off the amp after usage.

Audio quality:

Test peripherals:
Xperia Sola
Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro (250 Ohm)
Sennheiser MX 581 (16 Ohm)

For the audio test, I used my Xperia Sola as the audio source. Plugged the DT 990 Pro and indulged myself with a couple of track selection from Sara Bareilles, Norah Jones, Avenged sevenfold and Russian Red to all-time favorite classic, Beethoven’s 5th and 7th Symphony. Prior to track listening, the amp is quiet. No background noise or hiss heard even at 100% volume. Despite my MX 581 being low impedance, I did not hear any hiss or background noise using them contrary to what I’ve been told. Bass wise, it did get a bit more solid and less muddy. I can’t really comment much on mid as the DT 990 Pro possess quite a laid back mid (a lot actually haha). They still sound recessed even when plugged to my Little Dot MKII with Mullard M8161 tubes so I was not expecting much there. But I did noticed thicker and more detailed sound overall. Treble doesn’t hurt as much as the Shonyun 306a surprisingly produced sweeter treble. ‘Acid rain’ sounded good with this combo. In Beethoven 5th Symphony the 3rd movement by Carlos Kleiber, around 1:57 onwards where the cellos sounded like they were being played at a distant corner from the violins, the distant did grew further with the amp. Just when I thought I've listened enough of what I reckoned as wide soundstage, the amp surprised me again.

Conclusion

Aesthetically the headphone amp pleases me with its blue light illuminating the Shonyun logo and the simple & slick design are definitely a plus. At the same price with Little Dot MKII, the Shonyun 306a easily beats the MKII (with stock tubes) almost on every aspects. If one does not favor the nuisance of rolling tubes and wants to enjoy music on the go with high or mid impedance headphone, this amp is probably meant for you. I’ll probably be getting one for myself if I didn't get myself caught with these tube rolling. Though I kindly suggest to pair the amp with more neutral sound headphones as I heard the amp fare well with AKG K701.






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  Atma-Sphere Music Systems, Inc.  


Topic - Shonyun 306A - AngryRiver 01:34:24 04/05/14 (0)

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