Not long ago, we experienced and tested the world's first HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless Bluetooth audiophile headset with built-in R2R architecture DAC module. Now, it has launched a Svanar Wireless LE, which is priced at a price of 1,000 yuan, which can be said to greatly lower the entry threshold for audiophiles. So, how does its quality compare to that of Big Brother?
Product parameters
Charging case weight: 83.7g, can be charged 3 times
Single earbud weight: 8g
Frequency response range: 10Hz~35KHz
Bluetooth version: 5.2
ANC maximum noise reduction: 32 dB
ENC Closed Noise Reduction: Yes
Built-in amp: Yes. Customized Himalaya R2R architecture dual DAC+ headphone amplifier module
Driver: Topological diaphragm unit
HIFI mode battery life: about 4 hours
Battery life in Transparency mode: about 7 hours
Environmental protection: IPX5 life waterproof
Transmission distance: up to 15 meters
Reference price: 2499 yuan (double 11 event price 1998 yuan)
The appearance is "LE", and the light luxury fashion does not lose a point
Judging from the unboxing, the entire Svanar Wireless LE is no different from the Svanar Wireless except for the slightly plain box. Big Brother's iconic light luxury style hard shell imitation leather polygonal "magic box" carrying/charging case is exactly the same in terms of material, appearance and even weight, and the charging performance is also exactly the same - it can support the earbuds to be fully charged three times.
In terms of the appearance of the whole earphone, Svanar Wireless LE is the same bionic cochlear appearance as Svanar Wireless, and the style continues the fashionable cold and luxurious style of the big brother, and the biggest difference in appearance is that in the inner front cavity of the earphone, Svanar Wireless uses carbon fiber composite material with lattice decoration, which is not only lightweight, but also more fashionable in appearance, more skin-friendly to the touch, and has less impact on signal transmission.
The Svanar Wireless LE's internal test front cavity is made of the same silver Seiko material as the outer side shell, and the brass material of the Swan Wired version is still not used, so the impact on signal transmission is still not large. In terms of wearing feeling, after our wearing test, it is also skin-friendly, and the touch has not changed much. In terms of actual wearing experience and appearance, the Svanar Wireless LE and Svanar Wireless can be said to be completely identical, and you can't see it at all.
The following two pictures show the appearance comparison of the Svanar Wireless (top) and the Svanar Wireless LE (bottom), which shows that except for the material change of the front cavity, everything else is exactly the same industrial design, surface treatment, and material. After wearing, it is difficult for outsiders to see which "wireless swan" it is from the appearance.
In addition to the wearing experience, the Svanar Wireless LE is also very good in terms of ease of use and noise reduction.
Due to the continuation of the design of the standard version, the front operating area of the headset is large, the gesture operation is sensitive, and the ANC/call microphone selectivity is good, and there is still very good ANC and call quality. The level of ANC noise reduction is still at the first-line level, and the noise floor is difficult to detect, which is very good.
In addition, the Svanar Wireless LE comes with 8 silicone caps in different sizes, which is still very intimate.
It can be said that the design, appearance, materials, and materials of Svanar Wireless LE have not shrunk in the state of use, and all the characteristics of Svanar Wireless in light luxury design language and materials, and ergonomic wear shape design have been retained to the greatest extent. It's still the best choice for the cool guy to show off on the street.
Acoustic configuration, not at all LE
And in terms of acoustic design and configuration, which audiophiles are most concerned about, has the Svanar Wireless LE shrunk?
We know that the reason why Svanar Wireless is called true Bluetooth wireless audiophile headphones is based on the research of Dr. Bian Fang, the founder of HIFIMAN, who believes that the Bluetooth codec protocol bandwidth is not the core that determines the sound quality of true Bluetooth wireless headphones, and the core is still "the quality of the built-in DAC in most Bluetooth receiver chips." The audio performance of these DACs is poor, not to mention the excessive power consumption typically associated with traditional audiophile-grade DACs", and it was the Svanar Wireless that put a high-quality R2R architecture DAC and a custom headphone amp module into the Svanar Wireless to create the "Wireless Swan" audiophile world of open-fidelity Bluetooth headphones.
So, has the Svanar Wireless LE shrunk in terms of acoustic configuration? According to our communication, audiophiles can rest assured that the Svanar Wireless LE and Svanar Wireless LE have not shrunk in acoustic design!
On the HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless LE, it is still the same as the big brother, using the solution of the R2R architecture DAC+ high-end headphone amplifier chip on the Svanar Wireless.
Therefore, the Svanar Wireless LE with the R2R DAC architecture also achieves the following features:
- Since the number of resistors is much smaller than that of a tandem DAC for the same performance, the LE version can still be very miniaturized and has a standard design.
- In terms of accuracy, it is much higher than that of audiophile headphones with traditional tandem DAC solutions.
- It has perfect linearity, so the noise floor is much higher than that of delta sigma DAC headphones, and the accuracy is not as good as that of the Svanar Wireless LE with R2R architecture.
HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless LE uses the same two custom Himalaya R2R architecture DAC chips as Svanar Wireless (EF400 and EF600 DAC/AMP same chip), one left and right earpiece, with high-quality low-pass filtering and headphone amplifier module, still achieves the amazing sound quality performance indicators for Bluetooth headsets Wireless is exactly the same!
In addition, the 9mm topology diaphragm unit used in the Svanar Wireless is also used in this "LE" version, without shrinking in the slightest. It uses special materials and processes to coat the surface of the diaphragm, so that the diaphragm forms a certain topological shape, and the change of this coating topological shape coating can change the sound adjustment effect. As a result of this process, the HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless LE's 9mm driver, like the Svanar Wireless, has been finely tuned, further improving the detailed expression of the sound.
So, is the Svanar Wireless LE really not shrinking in terms of configuration? Some.
That is, the Bluetooth wireless codec does not support the LDAC protocol, and there is no maximum theoretical codec bandwidth bitrate of 990kbps. However, as we mentioned earlier, Dr. Bian Fang's research and the audiophile-level performance achieved by Svanar Wireless prove that the wireless codec protocol is not the core factor that determines the sound quality of wireless headphones, the core is still the DAC and amplifier circuit, as well as the design, materials, and tuning of the sound generating unit, so to speak, AAC and APTX can still have excellent acoustic performance.
Therefore, HIFIMAN is very confident that the Svanar Wireless LE has removed the LDAC Bluetooth protocol support, which also saves the related decoding circuits and high protocol licensing fees, and can free up some internal space to improve the circuit and acoustic design and tuning. This is one of the reasons why the Svanar Wireless LE can be thousands of dollars cheaper while maintaining the same design and core acoustic components as the Svanar Wireless Standard Edition.
Another "shrinkage" is that the Svanar Wireless LE does not support wireless charging. Since everyone is accustomed to the "wire charge" charging case, this point actually has little impact on daily use, and after cutting it out, the cost saved can also benefit consumers.
OK, how does the HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless LE actually perform, let's hear it!
Connection: The word "stable" is still the same
In order to compare the Svanar Wireless, this time we still used an Android phone as the test connection, and properly examined the sound quality experience when connected to a computer or TV.
As an audiophile-grade wireless earphone, HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless is connected to the LDAC wireless audio codec with high bit rate and high sound quality by default, as long as the connected terminal device supports it.
The HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless LE is automatically connected to AAC CODEC mode, which is currently the most mainstream high-quality codec mode on Android and Apple platforms.
In practice, the HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless LE has a very stable connection as the standard version, with no disconnections or sudden stuttering. In terms of actual use distance, when there is no wall shelter indoors, we walked to a distance of about 14 meters at the farthest, and the headphones are still playing normally in AAC mode. Overall, the headset connectivity is excellent, which is also related to the fact that it uses a flagship-level Bluetooth 5.2 chip.
Sound quality: with the same materials, there is subtle tuning
Now it's time for the sound quality that everyone is most concerned about.
The first thing we do is a quantitative test of the headphones. A complete set of test systems with frequency values from the well-known HeadphoneTest is used. In such a quantitative environment, HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless basically achieves the nominal frequency response range and sound localization analysis performance, and the basic acoustic performance is passable and excellent.
The next step is to test the sound quality with a lossless sound source. We used VIPER HIFI APP, the most popular online lossless music playback platform on Android, for testing. All audio sources are downloaded to the local area for testing.
In order to compare the differences with Svanar Wireless, we used the same track library as in the Svanar Wireless test, and tested the commonly used Cai Qin's "Ferry", Sun Lu's "Lonely Lover", L'Arte Dell'Arco's "Vivaldi: Four Seasons", Jay Chou's "Greatest Works" studio album and many other classic song sources, Alan's 80s vaporwave album, contemporary Chinese pop songs such as "Silk Play", etc. Popular KPOP such as SEVENTEEN's Sara Sara, EXID's "Up and Down", etc., as well as well-known European and American R&B album songs, and added Taylor Swift and Jay Chou's concert LIVE sound sources for a more rigorous separation experience test, covering a variety of music styles as much as possible, to test the "tonality" of this earphone.
Try to choose a high-quality audio source with high bit rate and bit depth of DSD, or a quasi-lossless format such as FLAC
Overall, Svanar WirelessLE retains the general characteristics of Svanar Wireless, but with some minor differences, which should be the result of HIFIMAN's further refinement and tuning of Svanar Wireless for the lack of LDAC Bluetooth codec and the acoustic space vacated.
In terms of bass, HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless LE is also fast, lightweight, calm and clear, but the extensibility and percussion are strengthened compared with Svanar Wireless, but it does not have a tendency to color coloring like some Bluetooth headsets, but is mainly strengthened according to the defects of low-frequency compression ability in the codec compression algorithm.
In terms of midrange performance, the HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless LE still sounds light and lively, with a very strong sense of presence. This is a continuation of the Svanar Wireless' lively, natural, yet neutral approach to sound.
However, there is a big difference not only in the midrange, but especially in the vocals, that is, the Svanar Wireless LE maintains a light and neutral tonality at the same time, the performance of the midrange, especially the vocals, is more mellow, which is more suitable for listening to songs!
In terms of treble performance, Svanar Wireless LE inherits the huge thrust energy of the standard version, very aura, the sound field has momentum, no "hoarseness", and at the same time, for Svanar Wireless after focusing on reductivity, there is a slight feeling of "rushing to the top" performance is limited, Svanar Wireless LE slightly improves the performance of the upper limit of the treble at the same time, and the midrange tuning processing is the same, so that the treble also shows a certain mellow character, and the performance is more modest.
In terms of localizability and sound field, the HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless LE also has excellent resolution and sound field. An obvious example is the treatment of the "toothy" part of the song genre, although the Svanar Wireless LE can clearly separate the details of the singer's singing style from the sound source, but the processing is not too abrupt (some fans say "scratching the blackboard" sense is enough) to affect the overall music.
It can be said that on the whole, Svanar Wireless LE retains the beautiful and transparent sound field characteristics and sense of space of the standard version, but at the same time improves the tuning, in terms of vocal and extreme frequency performance, the processing is more rounded and full, compared with the standard version that pays more attention to the degree of restoration, it is more pleasing to ordinary users in terms of hearing, but it will not appear "too much" of sound coloring treatment, which is very appropriate.
Summary: Lower the threshold of audiophile TWS earphones, but without compromise
As the world's first "youth version" of the R2R DAC architecture TWS earphone HIFIMAN Svanar Wireless, Svanar Wireless LE has not been "downgraded" in terms of design, materials, especially core components and architecture, and is completely at the same level as the standard version. The inappropriate HIFI sound quality performance, at the same time, in some of the sound quality details tuning, a certain degree of differentiation and popular attempts and improvements have been made, and the price has been reduced to the level of other high-end non-audiophile TWS, becoming an excellent choice for "the first true audiophile TWS for young people"!