Sound Analysis.

The sound of the Honey H1 surprised me a bit when I first heard it. Before then I had used the HA 2 amp a few times and always felt that the resulting sound was a little too bright for my liking and leaned more towards a clinical/analytical sound. The Honey H1 on the other hand is fully Musical, capital “M”, with a slightly warmer sound that is engaging and thoroughly enjoyable. Not the last word in transparency, in my opinion, or pure technical performance, but no slouch either.

The Honey H1 has good technical performance, but where it goes from “performance” to “Performance” (capital “P”) is when we look at the overall package. The Honey H1 is extremely powerful and so I put its power to what might well be the ultimate test by using the Empire Ears Wraith. The Wraith are an anomaly, a freak of nature, a paradox you can shove in your ears. They are among the most sensitive IEMs I have ever used with an impedance of only 4 Ohms and a sensitivity of 117 dB/mW (141 dB/V), yet to drive them to their full potential requires a lot of power. When I say a lot, I mean A LOT. Even the very powerful and expensive Lotoo PAW Gold Touch does not have enough power in my opinion to fully engage the EST drivers and provide the treble extension the Wraith are capable of. Neither does the (on paper) more powerful Shanling M8 in Turbo mode, which is Shanling’s way of creating a new category above high gain with a special animation to show off it is super-duper high gain when you engage it. Makes you feel like you are doing the audio equivalent of “ludicrous speed”. Okay, getting side tracked here because that was just so silly it could have become an audiophile meme.

Anyway, the Wraith need “mucho power” and yet they will pick up hiss that is nigh-on inaudible. In fact, I found that if I looked really hard, I could pick up a tiny hint of hiss from the LPGT with them. So little that I was never sure if it was really there or if I was just imagining it. Yet with the Honey H1 there was not even that. Total silence while I was using the Wraith from the balanced out on high gain. The power at this point is so silly high for the Wraith that I was doing a balancing act with the volume of my source (Qobuz from a 2020 MacBook Pro and Shanling M8) and the Honey H1 both at almost the minimum I could put it. I think this shows that Dethonray did an amazing job in managing all that power to provide a really, really clean background. Without doubt one of the very best available. This is where I find the Honey H1 shows Performance well beyond its price point. A huge range of power that unlike figures given by other manufacturers, is really there and very well managed. My only regret is that I did not yet have a balanced cable available for my HD650 to see how well that is driven from the balanced out. Single ended is in my opinion not powerful enough to drive them adequately, as the sound lacks bass control and has a brittle treble response. I do expect that from balanced the Honey H1 might do a really good job, even if it might not be as good as a fully dedicated desktop source. I will certainly test that when the opportunity arises.

Conclusions.

The Dethonray Honey H1 is an excellent USB DAC/amp. I dubbed it “MVP” because its sound signature is Musical, highly enjoyable and engaging, it is Versatile thanks to its small size and wide range of power, and it offers Performance by delivering that power perfectly cleanly and providing good technical performance in terms of sound. It is a very small package that I have greatly enjoyed using with just a few minor issues, such as the tricky to use volume dial, jumps in volume level, a 4.4mm balanced socket that might not work optimally with all 4.4mm plugs and of course the firmware updates being Windows only. Beyond that it is a joy to use and can deliver something similar to desktop performance in a perfectly portable package. It also looks great and will sit very nice on an office desk so you can sneak in audiophile performance without anyone taking offence because you have blocked your colleague’s vision with a big tower of boxes and cables sticking out all over the place. I feel that with the Honey H1, Dethonray have produced a highly interesting USB DAC/amp at a very competitive price point.