Tangzu Zetian Wu: how much amplifier do you need?

The Tangzu Zetian Wu is 16Ω. The shop listing this figure stands on prints a sensitivity of 100.0 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 1.0 mW to reach 100 dB SPL, or 0.13 V 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, 275 have at least 10 dB of headroom and another 5 have enough. 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 18 dB harder to drive than the rest of this page assumes. The converter explains the difference.

Tangzu, as the shop reproduces it, publishes a sensitivity of 100 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 100 dB is per milliwatt, the figures on this page are right as they stand. If it is per volt, the real sensitivity is 82.0 dB/mW — 18 dB lower at 16Ω — 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.

One caveat about the source. Almost everything in this database comes from a document the maker published. This entry does not: the figures above stand on someone else's product page — Concept Kart, a retailer — and not on any page Tangzu publishes. Shops usually copy the factory table faithfully and this one may well be exact — but a shop can also carry an old revision, and if Tangzu changes the number there is nothing here that would notice. It is the weakest provenance on this site, which is why it is written on the page rather than left in a footnote.

Tangzu's own catalogue no longer carries this model; it lists a later Legend Edition, which is a different earphone with different drivers and is not a substitute for it.

Source: conceptkart.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 16Ω with at least 10 dB of headroom and no known hiss or output-impedance problem with these headphones. All 280 sources, judged for these headphones.

Hiss. At 118.0 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 26 dB SPL in these headphones — clearly audible in quiet passages. Check your own source.

Output impedance. At 16Ω these want a source output impedance below 2.00Ω to satisfy the one-eighth rule; 35 of the 192 sources that publish one miss it. Check yours here.

Compared with its stablemates: vs Fudu Verse 1 · vs Li Zhi · vs The King Wukong · vs Tianpeng.

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