The neutral tonality of the Tone2 is highly revealing. The vocals are centered, clear and precise.
#TONE2 ELECTRA 2 REVIEW PRO#
The Tone2 Pro offers an adequate body and the instruments do not feel light or artificial. The midrange is clean, accurate, and neutral.
#TONE2 ELECTRA 2 REVIEW PORTABLE#
Well, portable has its limitations and you can’t expect everything from a device that is just a little bigger than a credit card. My Hifiman Deva really likes power and if I pair it with the Tone2 Pro, it does not offer the same bass authority it offers with the Atom+ stack. One thing that I noticed here though, yes, it provides enough power to drive 150-ohm headphones but that’s pretty much it. It doesn’t overdo and emphasize the bass range to create an artificial excitement factor, it just reflects your gear to your ears. If you pair it with the Sennheiser & Drop’s HD58X, you get rounded, powerful, and full-bodied lows. For example, if you pair it with the Etymotic EVO, you get a very precise, fast, and tight bass response that is on the lighter side of the scale. The lows are clean, tight, and dependent on the pairing. Let’s divide the sound section into few subsections to get a better hold of the SQ. Technically, it is not as good as its pure desktop rivals, such as the JDS Labs Atom+ DAC & AMP, however, for portable use, it is a very good competitor at this price. The Tone2’s resolution is good and it offers plenty of details.
It was a very rare circumstance, 2-3 years ago. I’m glad that we’re now at that part of the era where a $199 device can successfully provide a colorless, resolving presentation. I can color it all I want via headphones and IEMs but a DAC should be as transparent as possible in my opinion. After all, isn’t this the sole purpose of DACs? Anyway, I know that some of you like their signature with some spice, some warmth, however, I like mine just like this one. It does not emphasize any band over another and it does not color the signature of the device you pair it with. The Tone2 Pro has a flat and colorless presentation. Additionally, the output impedance of the hp outs is under 1Ω. The Tone2 Pro has a single-ended output of 2 volts and balanced output of 4 volts. If you don’t have balanced cables and thinking about getting this DAC, I would recommend you to get some, it’s worth it. I fed my 58X without any issues from the 4.4mm BAL headphone out and it was quite satisfactory even at low gain. The single-ended 3.5mm headphone out performs worse, it dishes out 125mW into a 32Ω load and 35mW into a 150Ω load. Its 4.4mm BAL headphone out can dish out 211mW into a 32Ω load and 167mW into a 150Ω load. The Tone2 Pro is a powerful device when you think about how small it really is. Let’s see if this becomes a new standard in the upcoming years or not. I’d prefer 3-pin RCAs instead of hefty 3-pin XLRs honestly.
#TONE2 ELECTRA 2 REVIEW FREE#
Khadas states that their balanced RCA jacks and plugs are covered under a protective patent ( CN211265767U ) and this patent is meant to keep this standard free and open source for all 3rd parties to utilize for their own benefit. In my opinion, it is especially nice if you are designing a compact and small DAC where the saved space of inputs/outputs can be re-purposed to improve the audio circuitry. It is backward compatible SE RCAs and it takes much less space compared to XLR-3pin plugs. Khadas managed to divide and increase it to 3 paths so each jack and plug incorporates 1 ground pin and 2 signal pins. As you know, normally, RCA has 2 signal paths, positive and ground.
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