Micro iDSD Black Label: A Different Flavor of Review The iFi Micro iDSD Black Label is a tremendous value in a portable DAC/headphone amplifier that also very capably doubles as a DAC in a high-end home audio system. I recently had the pleasure of having two weeks with this DAC as part of...

I think you are missing a big part of what the iFi line is about. By producing units that are more single purpose focused, the company can both keep price points down and release more updates than if it were offering full all-in-one solutions. This is particularly true of the Nano and Micro...

If I had to guess, it must have been a bigger than expected challenge to produce a product in this price range that can noticeably outperform the iDSD Micro in terms of sound quality and you certainly can't come out with a "Pro" version that sounds just like your Micro version. That is even...

Does anyone have a view whether this will be the sonic equivalent of the Sonica DAC? Is there any reason to believe it could sound better than a Sonica?

If what you are suggesting were true then playing hi-res PCM, DXD or DSD files directly on the Sonica would be a waste of time as it would treat all of them the same as 16/44 and start from there. So to be clear, are you suggesting that a) an ESS/Sabre DAC doesn't treat an incoming 16/44 file...

Thanks, but that is just referring me back to my own post at Computer Audiophile. ;-))  I agree that there is a lot of complexity involved here and as far as I know there hasn't really been a good clear discussion of all that is involved.  Norton is one of the folks who prefers the internal...

Here is a quote directly from the developer of HQPlayer: "All modern DAC chips are delta-sigma designs, meaning that PCM input needs to be converted to high speed bit-stream. As said earlier, DAC chips typically convert PCM input first to 352.8 or 384 kHz PCM using a digital filter of varying...

  That just means that you likely don't fully understand what goes on inside a DAC.  Most DACs convert everything (including PCM) to DSD512 or higher internally.  What filters they use in doing so can greatly impact the music.  Using a software package that carefully lets you choose great...

  Although the overall catalog may be small here are more than 100 DSD512 titles: www.nativedsd.com/homepage/quad_dsd_music   Separately, the way that many of us use the DSD512 capability is by having software such as HQPlayer upsample everything we listen to to DSD512.  In many DACs capable...

Over at Computer Audiophile this is probably the hottest DAC on the market (the DAC8 DSD that is).  The secret seems to be feeding it DSD512 material through HQ Player or other upsampling software.  With that as an input ut seems to be besting DACs at more than twice its price and everything in...

I can't help but wonder whether the care you are putting into an otherwise "hardware complete" product argues strongly for more separation of DAC hardware from user-customizable D-to-A software.  Ultimately the rest of the signal chain and our choice of speakers will interact with whatever...

Unfortunately, I think MQA is boxing all of us into a corner.  If you subscribe to Tidal, the benefits of full MQA unfolding and decoding over the normal 16/44 bitstream are probably a sonic upgrade.  On the other hand if you are using software like HQPlayer and its superlative filters to...

Very interesting as it is not on their website and I haven't yet received my catalog.  Does it say anything about shipping status? 

Yes, the term is "vaporware" but I definately do not feel that is what iFi were doing here.  

In fairness to iFi, we don't really know how long competitors products have been on the design board as they usually don't get announced and we certainly don't get any input into their design.  I would also guess that a fair number of the ancillary products that iFi has announced over the last...