The sound in general is balanced/neutral with some warmth mostly its true to its source without adverse coloration. I actually thinks it looks pretty nice in person and feels well built but maybe my tastes are different lol. The iFi Zen range, as well as the Stream and the DAC, features a Zen Blue, Bluetooth box; a Zen Phono, which is a turntable phono stage solution; and a Zen Can, a headphone amplifier. Quality

Whether something like the RME is worth six times more than the Zen Dac is a personal question that only you can answer to yourself. I see two ideal users for the Zen DAC: younger just-minted audiophiles looking for good sound on a budget for nearfield listening, and older ones looking for an inexpensive way to add an MQA DAC and a decent headphone amplifier to their room-based systems. The former will use most of the Zen DAC’s features while a majority of the latter will set it on fixed output and use it as a basic DAC. Both win.

iFi Audio Zen Dac Specifications

GL-850 – Moving up a step, the GL-850 was especially nuanced. (But it took more of the volume overhead than I was comfortable with.) Listening to “My Immortal” again, the song’s soundstage felt dynamic and had very good left-right soundstage size. The treble felt slightly forward, but this could also have been due to better detail retrieval and imaging. Detail and clarity were clearly the best so far. So expect to have to get a longer wire if you have to reach down and under with the USB wire. However, if you use a laptop the shorter wire might be better for you. Sound Impressions Summary In addition, i bought a longer USB lead, longer RCA cables (the ones included in the box are really short) and finally an apple lightening to camera USB dongle thing.( i would have needed these if i’d bought a component unit anyway) The ifi Zen on paper has dazzlingly good feature set for its price. Lots of connectivity is there together with a western company standing behind it. Alas, the DAC portion is yesterday's news and not competitive. Headphone output is low and distorts quite easily.

As there is only minimal vertical modulation remaining at very low frequencies with an an actual cut LP that is playable, we know that “vertical modulation” at low frequencies must be warp.

Dynamic Duo

HiFiMan Sundara | Audio Technica ATH-AD900X | Beyerdynamic T1(v2) | Sennheiser HD650 | Gold Planar GL850 | Heddphone Mangird Tea - Keeping it comparable with “My Immortal” by Evanescence again; The sub-bass was more present, Amy Lee’s vocals were brought to the edge of ALMOST too much in the mix, but perfect for focusing on her technique. Not an equal emphasis on the mids, but there is just so much more detail there that I won’t ever feel like I’m missing anything. While this isn’t the most balanced iem, the Zen DAC V2 controls, and powers things so confidently that it maintains dynamic range without allowing the music to stop feeling cohesive. I don’t have many other DAC amp combo units in my possession momentarily to compare to the Zen DAC but I have this cheap little gem. It has many features including 3 separate inputs consisting of USB, Optical, and SPDIF.

Of course, the most important thing isn’t how it looks, but how it sounds. In terms of overall tonal balance the Zen DAC Signature is very similar to the Zen DAC, with slight improvements in overall refinement and clarity. For the rest of the comparisons I will just refer to the Signature as the Sig. I can't recommend the ifi Zen DAC as long as I have my audio performance elitist hat on. You can choose to do otherwise without said hair covering. The Zen DAC V2 is notably better: still open, smooth and nicely judged in its handling of frequencies, only this time dynamic expression and clarity are confidently taken to the next level, with the bass a little tighter and the presentation slightly more refined too. The Zen Dac is also easily transportable, USB powered, an ideal companion on holidays when you are away from your higher-end gear. I think it is also a great option for many audio enthusiasts as a secondary headphone system at your workplace or bedside cabinet. I really like it, and and the use case is perfect for me. I can absolutely see it as an easy, entry level first unit for not that hard to drive headphones. I have no medium to drive planar here like the Arya v2, so without testing, i would say that if you use something in that ballpark (more demanding), you get to its limits (Arya v3 Stealth should be totally fine, way easier to drive). It sounds clean and doesn't colour the sound. That's good for some headphones, but for others you may want to take the edges off. If you want to upgrade from it / spend more money, i would 100% go for a bit of a more coloured sound (either a clean tube amp (something like the Echo), or an entry level class A amp (like the rebel amp) ), a lot of headphones really benefit a lot from a warmer source.By the way, if you still decide to have a Core Decoder like TIDAL do the initial decode of the MQA file, then use the Zen DAC V2 as a renderer, you will get the same magenta light that was present on the original Zen DAC.

When connected to the static hi fi I have to confess I was not expecting the result I got. I tried it through my own chord 2 qute dac and also through its own on board dac via the analogue output directly into the amplifier. I bought this as an upgrade to my dragonfly red 1st generation. I use it my with Adam audio T5V studio monitors connected to PC. This is my first experience with an external DAC. Basically coming from the days of records and cassettes, class A amplifiers with least THD and IMD, great damping factors, this journey with ifi Zen DAC V2 has been both interesting and exhaustive. So if you have DACs already in your devices, why should you consider buying another? Well, for better sound quality. DACs – essentially tiny chips that convert the audio before it is output through the device’s, say, 3.5mm audio port – often aren’t high quality in such multi-tasking devices, so getting yourself a good, dedicated external DAC device that can more accurately convert digital to analogue, and thus savour more of a stored music file or stream’s data in the process, will make a huge difference to the music listening experience.

Performance

However, there is a slight difference between the two and I did like the Xbass better because it tends to not overwhelm some of my headphones as much as the true bass did. Power Match That would be the Zen DAC V2’s ability to act as a full MQA decoder, as opposed to the V1, which was just an MQA “renderer.” That means the V2 doesn’t need a piece of software like TIDAL or Roon (a Core Decoder) to do the initial “unfold” of the MQA music file. The Tri I3 didn’t care and sounded fine at any setting but the Truebass was too overbearing on them. So let me start by saying I almost return this little GEM of a DAC and now I laugh at myself for my own idiocy. Thanks to iFi Tech Support they finally got me up and running.