Symphonium Titan: how much amplifier do you need?

The Symphonium Titan is 3.0Ω with a sensitivity of 79.8 dB/mW, which is 105.0 dB/V. To reach 100 dB SPL — genuinely loud, louder than most people listen — it needs 105 mW, or 0.56 V across the drivers.

That is a demanding load — not impossible from a portable source, but you want a good one. 14 of the 280 sources have at least 10 dB of headroom, 40 more have enough, 31 are marginal and 195 fall short.

Sensitivity here is in dB per milliwatt. Why the unit matters.

Symphonium publishes this as 105 dB/Vrms (@ 1 kHz) — a figure per volt, not per milliwatt. At 3.0Ω the two differ by 25.2 dB, so the 79.8 dB/mW above is that published number converted, not a different measurement.

This is the conversion that online calculators skip. Quote the per-volt number as if it were per-milliwatt and this headphone looks 25 dB easier to drive than it is — which is roughly the difference between a dongle being enough and not being enough.

Symphonium prints the impedance as 3.00 Ohms @ 1 kHz, not as a bare number. Everything on this page is calculated with the nominal 3.0Ω, and the rest of that line is quoted here rather than tidied away, because how a figure is qualified is part of the specification too.

Source: symphoniumaudio.com. How this data was built.

Most people listen between 75 and 85 dB; the 100 dB row leaves room for peaks.

The 15 cheapest of the 280 sources here that reach 100 dB SPL into 3.0Ω with at least 10 dB of headroom and no known hiss or output-impedance problem with these headphones (only 11 qualify, so the list continues with the next best). All 280 sources, judged for these headphones.

Hiss. At 105.0 dB/V these are sensitive enough to reveal a source's own noise floor. The noisiest source in the database, the Schiit Mjolnir 3, would put its hiss at roughly 13 dB SPL in these headphones — clearly audible in quiet passages. Check your own source.

Output impedance. At 3.0Ω these want a source output impedance below 0.38Ω to satisfy the one-eighth rule; 129 of the 192 sources that publish one miss it. Check yours here.

Volume is not the test. Plenty of weak sources will play these loud enough. What runs out first is control on bass peaks, where the current demand spikes well above the average figures in the table. If it sounds loud but soft, that is what you are hearing.

Compared with its stablemates: vs Crimson · vs Giant · vs Helios · vs Meteor · vs Triton · vs Zenith.

Compare any two or browse all 578. Every Symphonium headphone here.