Source: Press Release, Last Accessed: 2020/01/30

Smartly dressed in petrol blue with a touch of copper, the go-anywhere hip-dac portable USB DAC/headphone amp is designed to slip discretely into a pocket and offers an extensive hi-res specification that belies its eminently affordable £149, (€159, $149) price tag.
According to the press release, the hip-dac replaces the DAC and amp circuitry in smartphones, tablets, PCs and Macs to vastly improve headphone sound.
The DAC features the Burr-Brown chip that iFi uses extensively in its products, offering PCM, native DSD and MQA compatibility. Hi-res PCM and DXD audio data is supported at sampling rates up to 384kHz, alongside DSD from 2.8MHz to 12.4MHz (DSD64, 128 and 256). Thanks to the Burr-Brown chip’s True Native design, PCM and DSD take separate pathways – this enables both PCM and DSD to remain bit-perfect in their native form right through to analogue conversion.
The hip-dac features iFi’s GMT femto-precision clocking system to maintain the integrity of the digital signal until conversion to analogue, while USB interfacing is via an XMOS chip, which is programmed in-house. Users can even download and install different versions of iFi firmware to experiment with different digital filters if they wish.
Headphone amp is of balanced design by renowned electronics engineer John Curl, now a technical consultant for iFi. Curl has worked closely with iFi’s in-house technical team, led by Thorsten Loesch, to produce an analogue stage of exceptional quality for a device of this kind. The circuitry incorporates a range of high-quality components, including a custom iFi OV op-amp, TDK C0G class 1 ceramic capacitors, a precision low-noise power supply IC from TI and a high-quality analogue volume pot. The headphone amp has a nominal power rating of 400mW and is capable of delivering over 700mW from the balanced output depending on the impedance of the attached headphones.
The amp features PowerMatch to match the level of drive to the load presented by the headphones and a sophisticated form of bass boost (entirely in the analogue domain), particularly useful with earphones and open-back headphones that may lack deep bass.
There are two USB ports – Type A for audio data and USB-C for charging. Unusually, the Type A input features a male connector, rather than a typical female port to provide greater mechanical integrity. Two outputs are provided – a single ended 3.5mm TRS and a balanced Pentaconn 4.4mm. The hip-dac’s 2200mAh battery lasts for around 8 to 12 hours of playing time, depending on volume level and how power-hungry the connected headphones are.
The new device comes bundled with three USB cables: a USB-C OTG (On-The-Go) cable; a USB Type A cable; and a Type A to USB-C charging cable. With its petrol blue, 102x70x14mm, extruded aluminum enclosure, the hip-dac has a high-quality look and feel with a color that is bang on trend – the Pantone Colour of the Year 2020 is also blue. The hip-dac is available from February.

For more information: https://ifi-audio.com/

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