This is a review and detailed measurements of the ifi hip dac combination USB DAC and portable headphone amplifier (with battery). It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $169 from Amazon including Prime shipping.
I don't know why ifi thinks this is a "hip" dac as the enclosure is a generic one offered by others:
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Unusual here is inclusion of a balanced, 4.4 mm headphone jack which is nice. A bass boost function is provided which is also not present in other products.
I was surprised that I could not get the unit charged through its standard USB port but had to use USB-C:
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As you see ifi continues to use male USB connection so has to provide you an adapter. Have not been a fan of its thick cable even though I understand their motivation.
Ifi Hip DAC Measurements
I started testing in balanced mode. Output was a healthy 6+ volts in high gain so I dialed that down to 4 volt and got this dashboard:
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Wow, we are so used to exceptional performance in this class product that this level of distortion really stands out. SINAD of 70 dB lands the hip dac at the bottom of our 330+ DACs tested:
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Unbalanced out has a max of 3 volts so I adjusted that to 2 volts and results were the same:
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So for here on, I am going to use balanced output adjusted to 4 volts except power tests where it is at max.
Noise level is much more decent than distortion:
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The reconstruction filter is both slow and doesn't attenuate enough:
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Jitter spikes are not that visible but this may be due to high noise floor:
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Linearity is not acceptable in this day and age:
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It should be able to easily do 20 bits.
IMD distortion test shows that the output saturates early and allows distortion to rise:
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Multitone which is run at lower levels does better as a result (than our dashboard):
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Sweeping against frequency shows flat, high distortion:
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Key here is power versus distortion into high and low loads. Let's start with 300 ohm:
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While distortion rises good bit, there is also a lot of power available which is nice.
In low gain, we don't have a lot of power but do have distortion:
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The xBass enhancement goes too high in frequency in what it boosts:
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Without xBass activated, response is dead flat to 20 kHz so all the talk about the BurBrown DAC having mellow/laid back sound is nonsense. If anything, its high distortion can make things sound a tiny bit bright.
Finally, channel balance was surprisingly poor:
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The sample you get may be different though.
Ifi hip dac Listening Tests
I started with my Drop Ether CX headphones using balanced mode. Here, I could only get to moderate levels beyond which, audible distortion set in especially with bass notes. As a result, turning xBass on severely degraded the sound causing me to listen at very mild volumes. Switching to Sennheiser HD-650, it sounded very good and was able to get quite loud. xBass effect was a bit much but not too bad if used at lower listening levels.
Conclusions
There are a lot of arrows pointing against the ifi hip dac. It doesn't look hip and has a very low performing DAC platform with high distortion. What saves it is that it has a lot of power with high impedance loads using balanced outputs. Even without balanced, it can drive headphones like Sennheiser HD6XX. So if that is your application, it may do. Otherwise, the game has moved on way, way past where ifi is. Company needs to build a new DAC platform to be in the running.
I can't recommend the ifi hip dac.
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