Ifi Hip-Dac Portable Balanced Dac Headphone Amplifier For Android, Iphone With Usb Input Only/Output
iFi Hip-dac Portable Balanced DAC Headphone Amplifier for Android, iPhone with USB Input Only/Outputs: 3.5mm Unbalanced / 4.4mm Balanced (Unit only)
- ✅ PORTABLE DESIGN - Your music will never stop with up to 6 hrs of battery life and a slim, lightweight design perfect for carrying in your pocket wherever life takes you
- ✅ HIGH RESOLUTION AUDIO - From Spotify to Tidal MQA to MP3 and beyond, play any high res audio format with native digital to analog conversion so you can listen to any song the way the original recording was intended
- ✅ POWERFUL AMPLIFIER - Suited to your style, listen to in ear monitors or drive over the ear headphones with 400 mW max power output from the on-board amplifier
- ✅ EASY CONNECTIVITY – Connects directly to your smartphone with the USB Input, and works with balanced 4.4mm or S-Bal 3.5mm headphone plugs for ultimate convenience and versatility
- ✅ HIGH TECH – Power Match and XBass offer adjustable analog enhancements to customize your listening experience without compromising the digital conversion
Brand : IFI
Category : Electronics,Headphones, Earbuds & Accessories,Amplifiers
Rating : 4.4
ListPrice : US $255
Price : US $240
Review Count : 1145
SalesRank : 0
iFi Hip-dac Portable Balanced DAC Headphone Amplifier for Android, iPhone with USB Input Only/Outputs: 3.5mm Unbalanced / 4.4mm Balanced (Unit only)
- I love this little gem! It works well with both my iPhone 12 Pro Max and my iPad Pro 2019 version. Bought the Apple CCK to lightning and the ifi USB -C connector to female USB-A connector at the same time as I bought the hipdac. The connections are quite secure on both and the sound is absolutely top notch. I have used and tested Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon HD, and Apple Music. All worked wonderfully with the appropriate colors showing up on either side of the ifi hipdac’s volume which is wonderful to the touch. Two caveats, The volume knob can be quite sensitive, especially in a pocket. I use a hair tie to hold the hipdac to the back of my iPhone case and this seems to eliminate the issue but just be forewarned. The other is there is only a slight difference between the color Green which covers PCM up to 24/96, and Yellow which is PCM 24/192 and above. Just a very small difference and if you try you can see a slight dimming which I suppose is Yellow. MQA does light up Magenta as it should.More about the sound. I’ve used three headphones with the hipdac so far; Oppo PM-3, Beyer Dt-990 Pro (250 ohms), and my favorites, the small $75 emu purpleheart wood cans from Drop. I have a balanced 4.4 mm cable on the way to use with my reference open back Senn HD600s, I’ll update on that later. First of all this little jewel has a lot of power. It drove the Beyers to insane levels, albeit with the high gain switch deployed. And it was quite a joy to utilize the bass boost as well, but only on certain songs as it could bloat quickly if there was too much bass in the original mix. But useful nonetheless. With the Oppos I had to use the ifi ematch+, which I already had on hand, to get the best results. High gain and occasionally the bass boost, helped me really enjoy the PM-3s a great deal and at the moment this is my favorite pairing while stationary. But I move around the house a good deal and here is where the little emus are outstanding. For the last 4 years, though I own too many headphones, I have relied on the emus and two LG V20s, in airplane mode with WiFi reengaged, running UAPP to play music from Tidal and Qobuz. Alas, my V20s both started to reboot quite regularly whilst playing music. As they are both four years old and T-Mobile hasn’t updated Android in over two years, I finally gave up the ghost. Sooo, I had to resort to my iPhone for mobility. Hence the purchase of the hipdac. Sometimes things really do seem to work out. On low gain at about half volume the sound from the emus is outstanding! I never knew the emus could be so detailed. Highs and lows sound far better than I would imagine from past experience. Anyways, I am one happy camper these days. And the hipdac even makes lossy music sound good. I use the Live Music app to access the Grateful Dead’s concerts and more from Archive.org. Listening to Matrix recordings the music does not sound compressed at all. Frankly I am stunned at the quality. I have over 2 TBs of legally downloaded music that I have accumulated over the last twenty years but who wants to pay the premium for larger storage on a new iPad when this DAC/amp streaming from the iPhone sounds just as good as the 24/96 downloaded files playing through the Onkyo HiFi player even as good as that app is. Sound in one word, impeccable!I’ve seen some folks complain about battery life, but I have not any issue with the hipdac in this respect. Now I’m not trying to play music for 8 hours at a time, though I respect those who try to do so during a full work day. I usually max out at 3 hours, then place the hipdac in standby, and come back for another 2-3 hours later on, and then finally another 1-2 hours before bedtime. So 6-8 hours of usage a day with roughly 2 standby periods in between, and I’ve never seen anything but green on the battery indicator at the rear of the unit. It takes about 2 and a half hours to charge to white and then for the light to turn off.In summary, this little hipdac floats my boat. As someone who plays in both the shallow end and the deep end in the pool of headphones I couldn’t be any happier. I have tried other dongles that did okay including one that did MQA. But this piece of kit is a home run IMHO! Highly recommended!UPDATE: 7/10Received balanced cables to use with Senn HD 600s and Meze 99 Classics. The Sennheiser cable upgraded the 600s to the point of quite enjoyable listening on the go. For well recorded music in Hi-Rez this is a wonderful pairing and let’s the HipDac really shine.It was the Meze cable that turned my world upside down. I’ve always liked the 99 Classics but would more than occasionally find them bloated on the low end. Not any more! Using Meze’s own balanced cable with the HipDac took the 99s to levels of incredible clarity with deep taut bass that I wouldn’t have imagined from past use. Love, love, love this combo with both the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the iPad Pro 2019 version. As the Meze’s I have are beautiful to look at, as well as touch, having their sound elevated to beyond reference level is a blessing. With the Meze 99 Classics, HipDac , balanced cable, and USB connector, you’ll spend around $700. But if you want beautiful music from your phone or tablet, this combo will keep a smile on your face!
- Could not get it to work probably May
- Very good quality sound and build. Would purchase from them again?
- This is a very musical, warm sounding DAC. I\'m quite fond of it most of the time, almost all of the time. The XBass feature, as many have noted, is more than a gimmick or just a boost; it is a boost, but it is executed amazingly well and interferes with mids and the rest of the music far, far less than you may be expecting. The low-end just gets \"juiced\" and I find myself using it an unexpected amount to be honest. Very detailed, rather wide and spacious, with an ever so slight warmth; this may or may not appeal to you. I enjoy it.The form-factor is smaller than you might think; it\'s just a bit larger than the average palm. It has 3.5mm single-ended (regular stereo mini) output jack, and a 4.4 Pentacon balanced output jack (I have an 2.5mm adapter in that jack permanently as I do not own any 4.4mm terminated cables, but I do have a few in 2.5mm). Fit and finish is quite good as well. The machined volume knob (with on-off switch at the counter-clockwise end of its travel) is excellent, perfectly dampened and just the right size. It has a USB-C female port for charging ONLY, and a USB-A *male* port for data ONLY.Now to my two complaints:Part 1... it will not/cannot run bus-powered, e.g. it draws no power from its USB-A data connection and is intended to run either A) on battery or B) with the USB-C charging port connected to power. You can connect the power connection to a second USB port on your laptop (this won\'t work for a mobile device since they obviously only have one port and run on battery themselves) but it will not supply enough power to sustain the Hip Dac indefinitely. In my experience doing this slows the drain but it *will* eventually drain and need to be connected to 5v higher amperage power adapter at some point.Part 2... the battery life is, frankly, abysmal. The initial claims and (now corrected) manual itself states up to 12 hours of runtime; that was publically walked back to 8 hours by iFi in the months that followed release. To be very blunt however, I have yet to come ANYWHERE near to even 8 hours. My runtimes have been 5 hours at the most and sometimes as little as 3 hours. This is unfortunately also simply \"standby\" time as I\'ve more recently noticed that simply having the unit turned on (I can\'t say whether it will do this if *disconnected* while turned on) and connected to my laptop, just sitting there not playing audio, it last not half a day (4 hours at most). That runtime is, like I said, abysmal and especially given the initial claims. The only good news here is that it can go from a flat battery to full charge in under 3 hours (closer to 2 hours in my experience with a 5v 1.8amp charging adapter)... So, there\'s that. But considering how little runtime it lasts, I should hope it can charge quickly.I won\'t mince words here - the device sounds outstanding for the most part and is a reasonable value, but I do NOT consider this a portable device. It is significantly underpowered and my review would be incredibly different if it packed a much larger capacity Li-ion, OR if it could run bus-powered. My only other wish is that it had even a single analog audio INPUT to allow it to run in Amp-Only, by-passing the DAC. It could be near perfect were this the reality. As it stands, for portable use I am continuing to use a trusted older portable amp (one which offers up to 40 hours of runtime!) in combination with an extremely low-profile dongle-DAC which can-and-does run bus-powered off the device it\'s connected to. Does it sound as good???? Honestly, almost.. very nearly as good. But the total package is half the size/weight of the Hip Dac and can run, literally, double/triple/quadruple the time.Summary: The iFi Hip Dac is an AMAZING, small, well-built desktop (or chair or sofa) DAC/AMP, which you can take on the go if need be... Just don\'t go too far.
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