Hi
 
At the level of Euro500 incl VAT
 
The mini is Euro1,000 incl VAT.
 
For what it does though - it will be off the charts good. 

ifi audio said:

  Hi
 
At the level of Euro500 incl VAT
 
The mini is Euro1,000 incl VAT.
 
For what it does though - it will be off the charts good. 

Click to expand...

Thanks!  Ok so the pricing for both is still around what I had expected then so that's good to hear. and for something that's 'off the charts good' , that's relatively small price to pay!

There is now officially a new driver version on the IFI web site v2.20.0. You still need the new firmware for the Nano by sending E-mail to support. You can open a ticket on the web site as well. My pervious firmware version was 3.30 and the new version is 4.
The new ASIO drivers are just fantastic! I am now able to stream DSD directly without the overhead of using DoP with J.River 19. I was able to turn off the DoP option in the ASIO driver and still able to play DSD files with sound that I could not do before. Also I am now able to use the PCM to DSD156 real time conversion option in J.River in native DSD streaming without DoP that I also could not do before. That is one with big difference IFI ASIO and WASAPI but there is more, much more.
With the ASIO driver now have buffer size adjustments and 7 different USB streaming modes! Starting from minimum latency to Extra Safe.  The default seems to be safe on my system. I am planning on experimenting with this.  When I check the firmware change log I did not know that there was improvement in load balancing between the eight cores of the XMOS chip!
The best news is that the SQ of the new ASIO driver is OMG. Before with the old driver and firmware the difference in SQ between the ASIO and the WASAPI driver was not always easy to tell apart. With the new ASIO driver the SQ just leapfrogs over the WASAPI, The ASIO driver is sharper, cleaner, and more dynamic in DSD mode. The real time conversion of PCM to native streaming 2xDSD is far better than before and the soundstage just opens much more. I have listen to Bach B Minor Mass for over 30 years and have attended 5 live performances of Bach B Minor Mass and have 18 recordings of the same piece. When I listen to my updated Nano iDSD with the B Minor Mass it became an OMG moment.
With increased detail retrieval I no longer see the point of wishing I had a $6K DSD DAC!
 
P.S. It is hard to imagine what the SQ of the micro will bring to the table after the Nano!

john57 said:

  One change I made with the Driver was to move the USB streaming mode from safe to Reliable one notch up. I no longer getting any clicking or very brief static noise at sampling rates changes or format. Another bug squashed!

Click to expand...

i wonder if this problem will be fixed on macs, too. i'm not a fan of the noise/clicks when i go from DSD to flac or vice-versa. my only issue with the nano.

ifi audio said:

Some more pics....cant let the Japan press have all the exclusive!





 




 




 




This the unit that is going to Germany, the High-End Show at Munich this Thurs>Sun. If you are in that neck of the woods, you are welcome in Atrium 4, room E109.

Bring your own headphones or listen using the Audeze LCD-2s or another nice headphone that we use.

 

Click to expand...

Your beautiful! Your beautiful, is true ~ xD

is it just me or do the colors on the RCA outputs look switched? isn't red usually for the R and white for the L?

kugino said:

  is it just me or do the colors on the RCA outputs look switched? isn't red usually for the R and white for the L?

Click to expand...

You are not alone, I'm with you! 

kugino said:

  i wonder if this problem will be fixed on macs, too. i'm not a fan of the noise/clicks when i go from DSD to flac or vice-versa. my only issue with the nano.

Click to expand...

I really like the native 2xDSD streaming processing from PCM to DSD. Much better than the old drivers which made 2xDSD softer than DSD64. Only certain USB streaming modes work well on my system. For example the relaxed mode the sound will cut out or stutter. Low Latency will work but I get a warning on low buffers regardless of buffer size. I am leaving the USB streaming mode on Reliable for the time being and it is very quiet during mode switching. The more I listen the more DSD files and native 2xDSD streaming processing from PCM to DSD shines on the Nano iDSD. I am impressed.

kugino said:

  is it just me or do the colors on the RCA outputs look switched? isn't red usually for the R and white for the L?

Click to expand...

Not the first time I have seen this happening before.

Red and White and Left and Right.
 
No need to panic, the joys of prototypes!

john57 said:

 
There is now officially a new driver version on the IFI web site v2.20.0. You still need the new firmware for the Nano by sending E-mail to support. You can open a ticket on the web site as well. My pervious firmware version was 3.30 and the new version is 4.
The new ASIO drivers are just fantastic! I am now able to stream DSD directly without the overhead of using DoP with J.River 19. I was able to turn off the DoP option in the ASIO driver and still able to play DSD files with sound that I could not do before. Also I am now able to use the PCM to DSD156 real time conversion option in J.River in native DSD streaming without DoP that I also could not do before. That is one with big difference IFI ASIO and WASAPI but there is more, much more.
With the ASIO driver now have buffer size adjustments and 7 different USB streaming modes! Starting from minimum latency to Extra Safe.  The default seems to be safe on my system. I am planning on experimenting with this.  When I check the firmware change log I did not know that there was improvement in load balancing between the eight cores of the XMOS chip!
The best news is that the SQ of the new ASIO driver is OMG. Before with the old driver and firmware the difference in SQ between the ASIO and the WASAPI driver was not always easy to tell apart. With the new ASIO driver the SQ just leapfrogs over the WASAPI, The ASIO driver is sharper, cleaner, and more dynamic in DSD mode. The real time conversion of PCM to native streaming 2xDSD is far better than before and the soundstage just opens much more. I have listen to Bach B Minor Mass for over 30 years and have attended 5 live performances of Bach B Minor Mass and have 18 recordings of the same piece. When I listen to my updated Nano iDSD with the B Minor Mass it became an OMG moment.
With increased detail retrieval I no longer see the point of wishing I had a $6K DSD DAC!
 
P.S. It is hard to imagine what the SQ of the micro will bring to the table after the Nano!

Click to expand...

fantastic insights of the new firmware, currently I don't have a nano but eagerly waiting for the release of the micro. I already purchased some native classical DSD recordings so i cant wait to listen into them.

roamling said:

  fantastic insights of the new firmware, currently I don't have a nano but eagerly waiting for the release of the micro. I already purchased some native classical DSD recordings so i cant wait to listen into them.

Click to expand...

Seems like someone is more excited than me xD I haven't download DSD yet~ Part of it because my PC running out of storage though 

It is quite opportune that with the latest firmware update, we thought we would add this update for you. When we say the iFi XMOS software is optimised in-house, we REALLY mean it. Do NOT use the latest firmware on any other iFi product except for the iDSD and under no circumstances try to flash another non-AMR/iFi product that uses XMOS as it will be bricked.
 
Without further ado.
 
Software Design Team's Notes (1)
 
Thorsten and his team have been getting all the limelight so we thought we might introduce you all to Mark, Gordon and his team as they head up the software side of things. They are good guys and dont get as much press as they "only" do the software.
 
 
 
iFi-XMOS solution: all out 8-Core CPU and Ground-Up Coding
With software design, when it comes to the usability factor, Apple is the undisputed king.
 
No, we cannot match Apple, yet we can still try our very best to improve the usability factor as much as humanly possible with each and every new product.
 
The micro iDSD is no exception. It really has an unprecedented level of software optimisation at both the XMOS and the microprocessor levels. As a typical user, he or she will never see but we sure hope they hear it ().
 
Starting from the XMOS chipset, we are employing the very latest U-series XMOS Octa(8)-Core chip.  

 
Traditionally for USB audio, the 6-core chip is more than enough, however we are packing in a lot of extra features and XMOS internal clock optimisations hence the two extra cores are required. 
 
This is like a Dual-Core versus a Single-Core computer, no comparison when it comes to benchmark tests and in use.
 
 
XMOS Programming – CPU Load Optimisation
There is the XMOS USB platform and there is iFi XMOS USB platform.
 
The micro iDSD uses an Octa(8) core XMOS chip (not the common 6 core).  In our experience, to have the best audio performance, the loading of each core needs to be optimised.  However, the XMOS development tools do not provide us with a tool (think Task Manager in Windows) to monitoring the real-time loading of each core and every core. As a result, we just went ahead and developed our very own real-time load monitor for the XMOS.
 
We then used it to analyse the loading of each core of the stock XMOS platform for all the sampling frequencies and data formats (PCM and DSD).  What we found out was that loading was not optimised for best audio performance.
 
Loading of an XMOS core before optimization

1. Overall, a very unevenly spread and with some very high loads. You can see some have hit their "peak."

 

 
We then went on to perform a full optimisation (took us a few months to punch through) on the core loading. Now we can sleep better at night knowing that the XMOS running on all iFi products is fully-optimised for audio and we can hear the results easily (we hope you can too).
 
Loading of an XMOS core after optimization

1. lower and smoother loading for each and every core.
2. especially for the audio-related cores, the lowest and the smoothest.

 

 
We hope you liked this.
 
More to come - next, the XMOS Star Clocking Scheme.

this xmos optimization . what type of ifi audio range use the newest octacore xmos chipset?
 
is it only the upcoming micro and mini idsd or all ifi dac implemented this?