Reddit mentions of Premium In-Ear Monitor Earphone Protection Hard Case Bag

I've been playing with the new AudioQuest Dragonfly Red the last few days – distributors got them about a week and a half ago, and mine came in on Wednesday. Magnolia stores in Best Buy don't have them yet (and it doesn't look promising that they'll get them soon, from what employees are saying), so you've got to order this one online. The Red is the $199 model

There's enough power here to properly power anything I've thrown at it. 2.1 VRMS output is more than enough to power everything I've got, but nothing too power-hungry, for sure. There's no published current stats, which is a bit disappointing, but my Q701 and NightHawk both sound great out of the Red, and they're both headphones that get good volume but anemic sound unless amplified, and the Red sounds great with them both.

The mobile compatibility is why I bought the Red. I like my Fiio Q1, but it's a bit bulky to use with the iPhone unless you have a rubber band. Why nobody has made DAC/amp attachment cases for the iPhone (minus just DIYing your own velcro attachment or something) is baffling. The Red works perfect out of my iPhone, and it's small enough that it fits along with the original CCK and a small eartip pouch in this IEM case for my ATH-IM02: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015DMDSM6/ - that alone makes this a perfect mobile companion, that you can easily keep it in a case with your IEMs.

While the output impedance isn't published yet, the 1.0 and 1.2 were known to have sub-1 ohm impedances. There was some confusion with published stats that the 1.2 had 12 ohm impedance, but this was misreading a spec sheet. Which, is annoying on manufacturers' parts that when they list the output impedance, they say which impedances the amp is for, without saying what the impedance is. Silly hogwash. But, no issues with damping factor here that I can tell.

The IEM performance certainly could be better, as there's not a whole lot of headroom on Windows with the hard-coded 2 volume step increments. Using 3RVX for smaller increments helps a lot, though hardware volume seems a lot louder on Windows than iOS to begin with. There might be a very light hissing that you'd really have to listen for. Like, it's very low, and I'm not entirely sold that it's not just hearing the air conditioner (Texas sucks). Whatever it is, the noise level is low enough that unless you're extremely picky, it shouldn't bother you.

Compared to my Sound Blaster E5, the DAC sounds more revealing when using this as a line-level output, and I prefer the sound of this better as a DAC than the Sound Blaster E5's line out regardless, just based on how it sounds. The built-in amp is fine, but the O2 sounds more revealing than the amp here does, though the Red seems slightly warmer on subjective tests. It's hard to complain about the amp performance though, I certainly wasn't feeling like I was losing a whole lot jumping between the two amps.

I will say that I notice there is a certain softness to the highs with cymbal hits and whatnot that I can't quite tell if it bothers me, if it's just a byproduct of noisy power, or if I'm just used to how things sounded on my Sound Blaster E5 as a DAC with my O2 amp? I've picked up a JitterBug and in testing right now, it might be better, but I'm not in the same environment, so this is a TBD.

I haven't tried out the Black yet, but I'm pretty impressed with the Red as a solid all-in-one solution for the cost. I can't tell you if this is $100 better than the Black (and I feel like I'm still too much of an audio noob to explain the differences of DACs and amps) but the Red looks pretty slick, and I'm enjoying the sound and convenience of it.

ive seen a few guys around here using this case
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but i imagine something like this will provide you ample protection
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