Old Fashioned vs Stellaris: which needs more amplifier?

The Moondrop Old Fashioned is 32Ω at 94.1 dB/mW; the Moondrop Stellaris is 36Ω at 102.6 dB/mW. This page is only about what they ask of an amplifier — not how they sound, which no specification on either sheet can tell you.

The Old Fashioned needs 8.5 dB more than the Stellaris to reach the same loudness — 3.9 mW against 0.55 mW.

Every source in the database that drives one of them drives the other. On power, the choice between these two changes nothing about what amplifier you need.

1 source stays below the audible-hiss threshold with the Old Fashioned but crosses it with the Stellaris (Schiit Mjolnir 3).

280 of the 280 sources here reach 100 dB on both. That count is about power only — the output-impedance and hiss lines above are separate questions, and a source can pass this one and fail those.

The gap between these two in decibels does not change with volume — it is a property of the two headphones. What changes is the size of the numbers, and it changes fast: every 10 dB costs ten times the power. The row that matters is the one nearest the level you listen at, and for most people that is nearer the top of this table than the bottom.

The Old Fashioned is more demanding than 79% of the 567 non-electrostatic models in this database; the Stellaris than 44%. Both figures use the same measure as the rest of the site: whichever runs out first against a 2 V, 100 mW dongle, voltage or power.

105 dB is included because forum power figures are usually quoted there or higher. It is also a level that damages hearing in minutes — how many minutes is its own calculator.

Of the 280 sources here, 280 reach 100 dB on both. That is the easy axis. 69 of them also publish an output impedance low enough for both under the one-eighth rule and a noise figure that stays below the audible-hiss threshold with both — the rest either fail one of those or never printed the number at all, and 208 of them are in the second group.

The cheapest of the 69 is the JadeAudio JA11, at $20. It leaves 8.9 dB of headroom on the Old Fashioned and 16.9 dB on the Stellaris, its output impedance is 0.5 Ω against a one-eighth limit of 4.00 Ω and 4.50 Ω, and its noise figure puts the hiss floor 26 dB and 18 dB below the 20 dB SPL this site treats as the point where a quiet room stops hiding it.

Cheapest that satisfies three published numbers is not the same as best, and none of it is about how either headphone sounds. To put either model against a source this page does not mention, or to change the target loudness, use the amplifier matcher.

Each model has a page of its own with the full source list, the hiss estimate and the provenance of every figure above: Moondrop Old Fashioned and Moondrop Stellaris. Every figure on this page comes from what Moondrop published, or is derived from it — what that maker publishes, counted.