PENON TAIL

The Tail is fashioned from aluminum, and is very solidly built. One side of the dongle is painted white, while the other faces are highlighted in a catchy gold tint. This dongle is very light, weighing in at around 18 g. Coupled with portable and compact dimensions, it easily fits in a pocket or small bag. Sonics are clean and transparent. Bass is textured and speedy with no obscuration of the midrange. There is a mild upper treble roll-off and some rounded note-edges to shave off sibilance and fatigue. Overall, it has a pleasant tonal balance that should please most consumers. In technicalities, this DAC/AMP has good soundstage width, though depth and height are about average. It isn't the most micro-detailed dongle, and imaging is relatively accurate for a sub-$100 dongle.

https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/the-penon-tail-portable-cirrus-logic-headphone-amplifier.26574/reviews#review-33655

The Tail has a very neutral, clean signature with powerful bass output, that also delivers the kind of forward midrange performance Penon has become known for. Sub bass in particular is quite elevated and bass texture is impressive, but midbass is kept in check to prevent excessive warmth from robbing the presentation of its’ neutrality, though the Tail never sounds cold or clinical. It should pair quite well with most IEMs you throw at it, but there’s enough of that Penon flavour that it’s easy to recommend.

https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/the-penon-tail-portable-cirrus-logic-headphone-amplifier.26574/reviews

Very simple dongle DAC, lacking creature comforts but excelling in sound. PROS: Neutral, well-controlled sound with good soundstage that lets your IEM's sound really shine through. Dead simple. Love the orange color! CONS: No independent volume control which limits precision volume control with phones. No markings for volume and play/pause buttons or gain slider. Too much text for my taste (would suggest making the entire case that lovely orange and printing only on the top face: Penon logo + Penon Tail and nothing else). SUMMARY: I really miss independent volume control and markings for the controls and would've taken away two stars for those if it weren't for the excellent sound quality.

GREAT job on the sound Penon. Please release an upgrade model with independent volume control and markings for the functions!

One final suggestion for Penon is to release a Bluetooth DAC/Amp with this sound signature and LDAC. I'd buy that in a heartbeat!

Tail unleashes the full potential of your source. Using various iem,s , sound is wide and lots of well defined layers. Using planar cans, tons of power to achieve rich sound.

Highly recommend giving this a try.

At less than 10,000 yen, this is amazing, it has better attack than xduoo link 2bal and fiio k7, and the sound field is wide, clean and natural, and it goes well with any earphone and is easy to use.
I use it with M3ultra, but it is much better than using DAP alone.
The downside is that there
seems to be no firmware update.
When using 4.4, depending on the earphone, it is easy to get annoyed just by turning on the volume.