Closer Examination

Calling the EarMen Sparrow a portable DAC/amp would be doing it an injustice of sorts as it is effectively an ultra-portable device at just ~4 cm tall and 2 cm wide. I don't have the largest of hands, and even I can palm it easier than David Copperfield can palm a trick coin. One look at the EarMen Sparrow confirms the intent of the product to be as invisible as possible, effectively hiding behind the phone in your pocket. The design language is based on a modern smartphone too, adopting the 2.5D curved glass display many popular smartphone brands love to use. The rounded corners also help it not snag onto something in your pocket, or even a wild cable or two. The Sparrow is monochrome to look at, with a predominantly black finish to the body that has EarMen, Sparrow, and the brand logo under the glass on the front. The body itself is aluminium to keep things light and tight, and the Sparrow comes in at 12 g, which actually makes this feel solid, not like a cheap toy given the small form factor. On the back, we see glass again, which makes this a slippery device to be honest. There is also certification information here, including the Hi-Res Audio sticker, but also the native MQA support, which is one of the unique selling points with the EarMen Sparrow.


Connectivity comes in the form of a USB Type-C port on the bottom (or top, depending on how you use it), with the output on the other side. EarMen fit in not only a standard 3.5 mm TRS port, but also a 2.5 mm balanced output, which is rather cool. This makes the Sparrow a legitimate contender to drive not only IEMs but also most headphones if the output power and DAC back up that potential. More on this later, and I suppose the thing I would have liked to see is the use of a 4.4 mm TRRRS connection instead of 2.5 mm given the former has clearly won the race of balanced outputs in portable media. It would have made the Sparrow slightly thicker, but there is enough room here to still be extremely petite. The provided cables work fine for PC and Android, although you may need an adapter for iOS devices or a whole other cable. Route the Sparrow behind your phone and place the assembly in your pocket to have your favorite headphones/earphones now connected to the device. It does help reduce the need for an expensive DAP, but ultimately is still an expensive solution to the problem created by phone makers in the first place. I don't blame EarMen, though; the company saw a market and seized the opportunity.


EarMen is clearly not the only company thinking as much, with such portable DAC/amp combo units coming out of the woodwork almost daily now. Indeed, seen above is my current collection, of which the Creative SXFI Amp and FiiO BTR5 have already been covered before, and the other two likely will be, too. The EarMen Sparrow is easily the smallest of the lot even considering the part where the ELDA 3098D and Creative SXFI Amp are both wired-only solutions, too. Also, the slipperiness of the Sparrow is clearly evident here since it decided to move out of alignment on the black acrylic backdrop used for the photograph.


Remember that EarMen logo on the front? It actually has a function through a multi-color LED underneath backlighting the logo in four different colors. When first connected to a source, the LED goes through all four colors (white, green, magenta, and red) before settling on a static white if there's a working connection or red if there's something wrong with the connection. Any playing signal sent to the Sparrow changes the LED to green for PCM (Pulse Code Modulation, raw uncompressed files), DXD (Digital eXtreme Definition, also a PCM ), or even your more standard DSD (Digital Stream Audio). I wish there were a fifth color for a higher bit-rate vs. not since PCM, DXD, and DSD encompass quite a large range of audio signals. That having been said, the actual use case for the LED is not all that critical. MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) is a recent lossy compression codec that promises the world and then some, and EarMen have dedicated the magenta color for when MQA files are rendered and "unfolded" natively on the Sparrow.