The Weirdest Headphone You’ll Ever See Just Arrived… Its Impedance Goes Over 46,000Ω! Yes, 46 Thousand Ohms 😅

Hi everyone ,, and good evening everyone

Two days ago the weirdest headphone I’ve ever seen in my life arrived
and the hardest one to drive, period

Let me introduce you to :

Lily Audio Genesis One

https://www.lilyaudio.com/genesis-one

---

Let’s start with the type of driver it uses, which is : Piezoelectric Driver
and the company calls it : CrystalCore™

This is the first time I’ve tried this type of driver – and as far as I know it’s the only headphone that uses it
This is what it actually looks like while it’s playing

---

So what makes this driver special ?
1 – Speed .. speed .. speed

What do I mean by speed ?
I mean how fast it starts moving, how fast it stops, and how well it follows the signal

The company says it’s faster than electrostatic drivers
and after a lot of research I came up with this ranking of all the headphone drivers I know, based on how fast the driver responds
Starting from the fastest :
1 – Piezoelectric
2 – Electrostatic
3 – Ribbon
4 – AMT
5 – Planar Magnetic
6 – Dynamic

–––––-

2 – Its impedance :
changes with frequency !!

We’re used to headphone impedance being pretty much fixed
(I said pretty much : because it does change too, just by a very small amount)
for example : 50 or 80 or 300 or 600 ohms

But this driver behaves in a really strange way

The company published the headphone’s specs and says it’s 300 ohms, but they have a whole section explaining that it’s not fixed and keeps changing ( every frequency has a different impedance from the one before it ) and they wrote that it behaves like a capacitor !!
Honestly this really pulled me in and I kept digging until I got to the bottom of it
They show how its impedance changes at three frequencies :

And they wrote out the formula and the data we need to calculate it
At this point curiosity was killing me, I wanted to know how much the driver’s impedance changes across the main frequencies
But your brother here doesn’t understand a thing about math
So I took the data, gave it to AI and let it do its thing, and here’s the shock from the numbers

46 thousand ohms at 20 Hz 😵

–––––-

3 – How much power it needs :
I won’t lie, its power needs took me a while to wrap my head around
because I was surprised the company recommends running the headphone straight off a speaker amp!!!
Word for word they wrote : Class A, Class AB, Tube, and OTL designs are excellent matches.
and they list a few headphone amps for it , but their main recommendation is a speaker amp
and they say the minimum voltage the headphone needs is 10Vrms
and to get the best performance out of it you need an amp that can deliver 20Vrms
The text from the company’s website :
For the best listening experience, we recommend pairing the Genesis One with amplifiers capable of delivering a clean, high voltage swing, ideally 20 Vrms
and they say the headphone can handle up to 80Vrms

I did the same thing and asked AI to calculate
how much voltage it needs

I also had it work out how many watts or milliwatts it needs – and here’s the second shock

So at 110 dB (no human can stand listening at that level) your eardrum might actually burst
all it needs is 6 milliwatts !!!!!

I also asked it to compare it with the Susvara

Thank God, my amp can go up to 19Vrms

It drove it really well with the volume knob at about 3 o’clock
and the preamp at 40 out of 60 steps / so I still have a decent amount of headroom left, no problem at aaaall

Even so, I think the headphone would perform better on a stronger amp / this is just a feeling, and it’s also based on what some reviewers on YouTube say

And by a happy coincidence, ever since I built the HPI interface I mentioned in the previous review, I decided to move from headphone amps to speaker amps, since the interface lets me connect any headphone (after doing some calculations to pick the components for the interface ) that suit the headphone I’m going to use .

And thank God there’s a speaker amp getting insane praise, so I decided to take the risk and try it even though it’s expensive, but if it works out and its sound and performance are what they say ,, it’s going to be my dream amp !!!!
I know that’s a big word but that’s really how it is (if it happens) ,, why did I say that ?
Check out with me the features it’s going to give me :

1 – How much power it can put out :
Pure Class A 80W 80W
Class A and B 350W 350W
That’s many times more than the most power I could ever need with any headphone : I won’t even use 20% of it
and more importantly this unit can give me up to 52Vrms, which covers what the headphone needs more than twice over

2 – I can use it with the speakers I have and it drives them with no effort .

3 – It’s basically two units in one box ,, what do I mean :
it’s an : Integrated Amp + Power Amp
and you can pick whichever suits you through the inputs on the back of the unit

4 – It has a button to lower the Gain , it takes it down -20db : this feature is veeeery useful for me as a headphone user .

5 – It has : Tone Control = controls for the bass + the mids + the treble / and there’s a button that lets you bypass them completely

6 – The internal amplification is separate = each channel is handled completely on its own / the only thing they share is the huge 1200w power transformer, meaning the unit is Fully Balanced all the way .

7 – The unit is High-Current, which will help me a looooooot with planar headphones .

8 – Its measurements, if they’re accurate : SNR up to 125dB in Direct Mode and THD around 0.015%.
meaning you won’t hear any noise / but I won’t believe that until I hear it myself .

9 – All its internal parts are veeeery good quality – I won’t say high end ,, but for the price they’re tooooop
based on the research I did .

---

Let me take you on a tour with some photos from when I first got the shipment

---

Specs from the official website :

Frequency response measurements with all the pad models :

Honestly I tried all the pads : and the best by far are number 1 and 2
while 3 and 4 are unusable for me ..

And I see the company made a small device a few days ago to control the treble using resistors (because with this driver you can control its treble this way )

Funny enough, I was planning to do this on my own box but I was stuck on how much reduction I’d get with each resistor I chose, and they published the data, but the reduction they went with is veeeery high for my taste
except the first step, which is : -2.5 dB
and they listed the set of resistors they use :
4 parallel resistors (100, 150, 200, and 250 ohms) per channel

So I did my math and figured out exactly which resistor values I need and how much reduction I’ll get :
I’ll have 4 options :
about 0 to −0.5dB
about −1 to −1.5dB
about −2.3 to −2.5dB
about −3 to −3.5dB

The resistors I use are high end, made in Germany – they didn’t publish anything about their resistors
they only explained the wiring method, which is called Parallel
and my method is Series
and from the research I did it’s better in several ways, including : the positive and negative sides both see the same resistance value, and the heat and protection are shared across both sides, and it’s the best one sound-wise .

Sorry, I know the explanation makes your head spin and I’m not going to go deep into it, and don’t think I’m some genius who knows everything – I spent about 3 months learning and researching this topic
What matters to me is that the result is better in every way with my method, the only downside is it costs several times more than theirs

On top of that I’m using all high end parts
even the selector = the part that picks the adjustment level, I’m using this one

---

And that brings us to the end of the article
Sorry for the long post .. I just wanted to explain everything 🙂

Regards
Naif

In the market

No listing for this product right now.

Alert me when listed