Penon Serial: how much amplifier do you need?

The Penon Serial is 18Ω. Its maker prints a sensitivity of 103.0 dB and never says whether that is per milliwatt or per volt, so this page reads it as per milliwatt — on that reading it needs 0.50 mW to reach 100 dB SPL, or 95 mV across the drivers. If the figure is really per volt, it needs far more.

That puts it in the easy category. A phone, a laptop headphone jack or the cheapest USB dongle will drive it to painful levels. Of the 280 sources in the database, 280 have comfortable headroom. The cheapest portable source that does the job is the Apple USB-C dongle (US) at $9.

This maker printed a decibel figure and no reference unit, so the number above is shown exactly as printed. Everything below reads it as per milliwatt, which is the commoner convention on a sheet that omits the unit — if it is really per volt, this headphone is about 17 dB harder to drive than the rest of this page assumes. The converter explains the difference.

Penon publishes a sensitivity of 103 dB and does not state whether that is per milliwatt or per volt — the spec sheet simply stops at the number.

Both readings are given here so you can judge for yourself. If that 103 dB is per milliwatt, the figures on this page are right as they stand. If it is per volt, the real sensitivity is 85.6 dB/mW — 17 dB lower at 18Ω — and everything above understates what these need by that much. The per-milliwatt reading is the one shown, because it is the more common convention on a spec sheet that omits the unit; treat it as an indication rather than a specification.

Source: penon-official.com. How this data was built.

Most people listen between 75 and 85 dB. The 100 dB row is the one worth planning around: it gives you headroom for dynamic peaks without designing your system for a volume that would damage your hearing in under fifteen minutes. The safe listening calculator puts numbers on that.

Every source in the database, judged at 100 dB SPL into 18Ω. “Headroom” is how much power is left over above what the headphone needs — 10 dB means ten times the required power, which is what you want for dynamic peaks.

Hiss. At 120.4 dB/V these are sensitive enough to reveal a source's own noise floor. The noisiest source in the database, the Schiit Vali 2+, would put its hiss at roughly 28 dB SPL in these headphones — clearly audible in quiet passages. The hiss calculator lets you check your own amplifier's noise figure.

Output impedance. At 18Ω these want a source output impedance below 2.25Ω to satisfy the one-eighth rule. 35 of the 280 sources here miss it, the worst being the Bottlehead Crack (OTL kit) at 120.0Ω. Above that threshold the source starts shaping the frequency response. Check yours here.

Or open the comparison tool to put any two models side by side, or browse all 578. Or see every Penon headphone in the database, and how much of what this site says about them came from Penon’s own documents.