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

Hey everyone,

Two days ago I received the strangest headphone I’ve ever seen in my life,
and the hardest to drive, by far.

Meet the:

Contents

Lily Audio Genesis One

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

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Let’s start with the driver type it uses: a Piezoelectric Driver.
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 one.
This is what it actually looks like while it’s playing

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1. Speed

What makes this driver special?
Speed. Speed. Speed.

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

The company says it’s faster than electrostatic drivers.
After a lot of research, I came up with this ranking of every headphone driver type I know, by response speed,
from fastest:
1. Piezoelectric
2. Electrostatic
3. Ribbon
4. AMT
5. Planar Magnetic
6. Dynamic

2. Impedance: it changes with frequency!!

We’re used to headphone impedance being more or less fixed
(I say more or less because it does change, just very slightly),
for example 50, 80, 300 or 600 ohm.

But this driver behaves in a really strange way.

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

They also wrote the formula and the data needed to calculate it.
That’s when curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to know how much the driver’s impedance changes at the main frequencies,
but your brother here doesn’t understand a thing about math.
So I gave the data to AI and let it do its thing, and the numbers were a shock:

46 thousand ohm at 20 Hz 😵

3. Power needs

I won’t hide it, its power needs took me a while to get my head around,
because I was surprised the company recommends running it straight off a speaker amp!!!
Word for word, they write: Class A, Class AB, Tube, and OTL designs are excellent matches.
They list a few headphone amps too, but their main recommendation is a speaker amp.
They say the minimum voltage it needs is 10Vrms,
and to get its best performance you need an amp that can deliver 20Vrms.
The text from the company’s site:
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 calculate how many watts or milliwatts it needs, and that was the second shock:

At 110 dB (no human can stand listening at that level, it could burst your eardrum)
all it needs is 6 milliwatts!!!!!

I also asked it to compare it with the Susvara.

Thank God, my amp can put out 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 plenty of headroom.

Even so, I expect the headphone will perform better on a stronger amp. That’s just a feeling, partly based on what some YouTube reviewers say.

Moving to a speaker amp

As luck would have it, when I built the HPI interface I mentioned in my last review, I decided to move from a headphone amp to a speaker amp, since the interface lets me connect any headphone (after doing some math to pick the right components for the interface) that suits the headphones I’ll use.

And thank God, there’s a speaker amp getting crazy praise, so I decided to take the risk and try it. It’s expensive, but if it works out and sounds and performs the way people say, it’ll be my dream amp!!!!
I know that’s a strong word, but that’s really how it is (if it happens). Why do I say that?
Look at what it gives me:

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

2. I can use it with my speakers and it drives them easily.

3. It’s two devices in one box. What I mean is:
it’s an Integrated Amp + Power Amp,
and you choose what suits you through the inputs on the back.

4. It has a button that lowers the gain by -20db. That’s really useful for me as a headphone user.

5. It has Tone Control: bass + mids + treble, plus a button that bypasses it completely.

6. The amplification inside is separate, so each channel is handled completely on its own. The only shared part is the huge 1200w transformer, so it’s Fully Balanced.

7. It’s High-Current, which helps a lot with planar headphones.

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

9. All the parts inside are really good quality. I won’t call them high-end, but for the price they’re top notch,
based on the research I did.

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Unboxing

Here are some photos from when I received the shipment

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Specs from the official site

Measurements

Its frequency response with every pad option:

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

Treble control

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

Funny enough, I was planning to do it on my own box, but I was stuck on how much reduction each resistor I pick would give. They published the data, but the reduction they chose is way too much for my taste,
except the first step, which is: -2.5 dB
and they list the total resistors they use:
4 parallel resistors (100, 150, 200, and 250 ohms) per channel

So I did my math and worked out exactly which resistor values I need and how much reduction each gives.
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 and German made. They didn’t publish anything about theirs,
they only explained the wiring, which is called Parallel
and mine is Series.
Based on my research, it’s better in several ways, including: both the positive and negative sides see the same resistance, heat and protection are spread across both ends, and it’s the better option sonically.

Sorry, I know the explanation can make your head spin, so I won’t go deeper, and don’t think I’m some genius who knows everything. I spent about 3 months learning and researching this.
What matters to me is that the result is better in every way with my method. The downside is that it costs many times more than theirs.

On top of that, every part I use is high-end,
even the selector, the part that picks the level, I’m using this one

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

Best regards,
IEM World

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