EarMen Eagle Review

earmen eagle review headfonia

Today, we are reviewing the last DAC from EarMen, the Eagle. It is selling for $119 USD.

 

Disclaimer: EarMen sent us the Eagle free of charge, in exchange for our honest opinion.

About EarMen

Founded in 2020, EarMen aims to offer Portable High-Performance Audio Devices for All. A ballsy motto, for a relatively unknown brand, but if you dig deeper, there is more than meet the eyes.

Earmen Logo Headfonia

In fact, behind the Chicago based company lies Auris, a brand known for their high-end amps, acclaimed by listeners and reviewers. This allowed EarMen to kickstart pretty fast, with two great DAC/AMP – the Tr-Amp and Sparrow – all designed and produced in Europe (!).

And if the Sparrow intends to overcome the Dragonfly Cobalt, the new Eagle is supposed to tackle the Dragonfly Red, for cheaper.

Good news, today, we are fast-checking.

The EarMen Series

As usual, we are gonna take a quick tour of EarMen’s range. A small catalog at the moment, but as they say, quality over quantity!

EarMen TR-AMP

The TR-AMP is a battery-powered DAC/AMP. If the name may seem a bit weird at first, you have to remember that EarMen also released a DAC before that one, the Donald DAC. So I’ll let you put Donald and Tr-Amp in the same sentence, so you get the idea.

It’s a bit bulky, but at the same time pretty quirky, as iFi’s product, for example. It embeds a Sabre 9038Q2M chip which is able to decode PCM streams up to 32bit – 384kHz and DSD up to DSD256.

Even better, the DAC can drive multiple headphones at the same time, with two available outputs (6.35mm + 3.5mm). Moreover, at the rear of the device, you’ll find an RCA port, made to feed a power amp (line-out) or an integrated amplifier (pre-out).

Lieven reviewed it a few months ago, here is an excerpt:

  

   

EarMen Sparrow

As the name suggests, the Sparrows aims directly at the DragonFly series from AudioQuest. Why? Because Sparrows eat… Again, you get the idea.

More seriously, the EarMen Sparrow is a portable DAC/Amp, based on the new Sabre 9218 Pro chipset. 32bit-384kHz playback, DSD256, and MQA support, all in the palm of your hand. The design is neat, build quality is great, and lightweight construction allows you to carry it everywhere. 

EarMen Sparrow

EarMen Sparrow

But, the main advantage of the Sparrow against its direct competitor, comes in a simple feature: dual headphone output, single-ended + balanced. And, that makes the device one of the few with a true balanced output in this class range, with the iBasso DC01 (almost 4 times cheaper, not as good nor powerful) 

Again, Lieven reviewed that one, here is his thoughts:

EarMen with the Sparrow promised a lot but they also delivered in all possible ways. For only $199 you get a US/EU product with a single-ended as well as a balanced output, and especially the latter one is magical.

 

EarMen Eagle

We introduced the EarMen Eagle earlier this month on Headfonia. If you have already read our presentation (thank you !), you can directly get to the next page.

earmen eagle headfonia

If you haven’t read our First Look Sunday, here is a quick summary :

  • it’s cheap, €119
  • it’s small, not as as small as the Sparrow but really small
  • I like the design, aluminum case with a glass-panel on each side

That said, it’s time for us to get more “intimate” with the Eagle

The article continues on Page Two, after the click here

4.3/5 - (207 votes)
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A nerdy guy with a passion for audio and gadgets, he likes to combine his DAC and his swiss knife. Even after more than 10 years of experience, Nanotechnos still collects all gear he gets, even his first MPMAN MP3 player. He likes spreadsheets, technical specs and all this amazing(ly boring) numbers. But most of all, he loves music: electro, classical, dubstep, Debussy : the daily playlist.

4 Comments

  • Reply April 21, 2021

    César Martínez

    estoy muy interesado en adquirir este dac/amp earmaen eagle, ¿como puedo adquirirlo?

  • Reply October 8, 2021

    deeapk

    hi,
    can u please share driver for windows 7.i cann’t able to find anywhere.

    Thanks & Regards
    Deepak

    • Reply October 26, 2021

      Lieven

      EarMen = Wasapi.There are no Asio drivers for Windows

  • Reply January 13, 2022

    Matthew

    Great review. Can the Eagle output a line-level signal at 2 Volts to an external amplifier, basically working as a pre-amp. Also, would the noise that you described using your CIEMs be amplified using this method?

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