Schiit Fulla E Headphone DAC/Amp with Mic Input for Gaming and Communications

10/10

It works, has plenty of power to drive my HD 6XXs to a point it hurts to listen. No buzz or hiss as far as I can hear but im also not driving iems with it.

Replaced an Astro A40 base station, doesn’t have the mixer slide like the Astro, but the new headset needed more umph so to speak, very nice construction, would buy again.

Performance on higher quality headphones is less impressive, which should be expected here. Pretty decent value for a budget setup. Dont have a range of mics to test, so hard to say if that aspect is just a bonus of good quality or an actual upgrade.

The Fulla E replaced the (problematic) Fulla 4 which replaced the Fulla 3. I have a Fulla 3 and while it was okay, it seemed to have a slightly narrower soundstage than nicer DAC/amps, a bit less clarity and detail on the treble side of things, and a bit of a compressed sound in some cases. The Fulla E fixes all of that and sounds every bit as good as nicer devices. It also works with Switch and PS4/PS5 now, which is neat, and has an optical input for other consoles and devices that support that. There isn't much else to say about the sound quality except that it is great, doesn't seem to color the sound in any particular way, and has no real negatives. The mic input is... fine, I guess. It seems to be the same as what was on the Fulla 3, which is to say that it isn't the greatest but neither is it particularly bad. The biggest problem there is that they still insist on putting this awful, overly-aggressive limiter on it instead of just trusting users with a gain control. If you really want a good-sounding mic input for your headset, get something else. If you just want people to be able to hear you on calls, this will do that. I wish they had stuck with a 3.5 mm output for the headphones, but they do at least include an adapter, so it's not the end of the world. And I guess I'd rather have to adapt to 1/4" instead of adapting down to 3.5 mm, so it's fine. They were never going to please everyone regardless of the size they went with, so whatever. And finally, even though the power output is technically less than the Fulla 3, it's still way more than anyone really has need for. With my HD560s, I can set Windows volume to 50% and I still wouldn't turn the volume knob on the device above half. If I had some really inefficient headphones, I could see the extra power being useful, but this is a device aimed at gamers who will mostly have efficient, low impedance headphones and IEMs, so this amount of power is mostly just annoying. I can't go above like 8 o'clock with my IE 300 IEMs (and that's with Windows at 50%), so there's still very little in the way of actual usable volume range there. Schiit has always had a thing for more power and it's a bit frustrating when this could have half as much and still be more than enough. The good news is that it's a 32-bit device, so lowering the Windows volume shouldn't noticeably reduce dynamic range, so at least there are options. All in all, for the price, it's probably the best way to get a nice DAC and amp all in one package. Couple that with support for Switch, PlayStation, and anything with an optical output and it's truly a great bargain.