iBasso DC-Tonfa | Portable DAC and Amp

A New Dongle King?

Excellent DAC/Amp. Power in spades for my Apple 17 Pro Max and iPad Pro M4. It has a natural, analog-like not so digital sound that I suspect is a characteristic of its R2R implementation. There are lots of dongles out there now…I’m glad I waited. Nice design and pretty to look at. No regrets.

Good product for the price with some +

In short the performance matches the price tag. With some strong suits and some improvement that can be done. Compact, affordable and offer a nice taste of the R2R magic. The mentionable pros are: super smooth vocal, and reasonable stage. Any singer that you love but just can’t bear their few high notes or sibilants, try play on this. This little thing will smooth it out for you. Like polished surface, smooth, shiny yet not aggressive. And for the cons, there is a very lack to volume or richness on any sound materials, no matter it’s vocal, acoustic, eletronics, everything feels lacking the thickness. It is smooth, it is a little thing that doesn’t want to impress people with muscles, and it is good for the price.

Mini DX270

I’ve been listening to tonfa for about 6 hours and it’s surprising how close it sounds to dx270 with iems. Tonfa has the same natural r2r texture of dx270 and retains 90-95% of the technical performance. Comparing NOS on tonfa to dx270, tonfa is slightly warmer with more bass and slightly more intimate staging. DX 270 has better sound quality overall but it’s a hard to quantity the difference with how close they are sq wise. VS DC elite: tonfa has a natural effortless presentation and is less neutral with a subtle warmth and r2r texture. DC elite is more technical with more micro detail and slightly wider staging, Tonfa wins on stage depth easily. With better volume control, screen and MagSafe case Tonfa is the better choice imo.