iFi Audio xCAN Portable Headphone Amplifier
I’ve taken longer with this review than I’ve taken with any other to date, and it’s for good reasons. (Though I’ve enjoyed the extended listening time because of it.)
But first, for those of you who just want to know if I consider it a worthy buy without caring about the “why”, then, “Yes”. I consider the xCAN to be a very worthwhile travel companion for people both commuting/traveling and those who just need a solid mid-Fi portable audio solution with an extremely reasonable footprint for the performance and features offered.
That said; I will now go into the “why”.
A couple of years ago, I reviewed the iFi micro iDSD. And that portable DAC/Amp completely surpassed what I considered possible for a portable DAC and amplifier to be capable of
near-
desktop-class power output! The features offered (“3D”, “XBass”, “IEMatch”, “Polarity Match”, etc..) were completely beyond anything that I had ever auditioned. So needless to say, I ran right out and immediately bought one that day.
This winter, iFi approached me to review the xCAN, which I wasn’t expecting to be surprised by after using their new xDSD, which among other things, shrinks the size of the iDSD, and adds Bluetooth connectivity. So a new headphone amplifier with Bluetooth connectivity initially left me feeling a bit underwhelmed. However, once I started to put iFi’s xCAN amplifier through its paces, I realized that I had sold their new offering woefully-short.
Simply put, the xCAN not only enables you to listen to your music while untethered but augments the convenience by providing you with the ability to listen to your music via balanced audio as well. Yes, I have other balanced audio sources and even a tiny portable ES100 from Radsone that I use regularly. But none of them can power my more demanding headphones on the road/in the air like the xCAN is able to.
Truly “portable” at only 131 grams, the xCAN provides mobile audio with a 2200mAh battery which is rated up to eight hours, (I averaged a bit over six hours as I was regularly testing it with more demanding headphones.) But the best features to me personally, are the xCAN’s balanced (2.5mm TRRS) and single-ended (3.5mm TRS) inputs and outputs.
Traveling with your phone is great and relatively “transparent” since most people now carry their phones with them 24/7. But if you want to step-up your audio experience beyond “low bit-rate” music streaming services and MP3, then getting more power into your hi-res capable headphones than the typical smartphone can muster is a great way to do so. Enter the xCAN.
Now, while I still LOVE my micro iDSD, calling it “portable” is a bit of a stretch. (It's better described as "travel sized".) It DOES operate on battery power, but its long, metal chassis stays in my laptop bag on the plane as there usually isn’t room for it anywhere else, and it certainly doesn’t fit in a pocket unless I’m bundled up in a coat. However, the xCAN is about half the length of my micro iDSD, and noticeably thinner as well. And thanks to its Bluetooth connectivity, (Which remembers up to eight devices!) I don’t even need to have cables running into my laptop bag anymore. An added bonus is the xCAN’s support for AAC, aptX, and aptX Low Latency codecs, the latter of which is perfect for syncing audio to videos I often watch on my phone, laptop
or tablets.
MANY thanks to Lawrance and all the amazing people over at iFi for making this review unit available to me! I had the opportunity to evaluate "real life" usage of the xCAN on both short and long flights, (5 hours in the air as well as airport time.) cab rides, train trips, and shuttle commutes. In EVERY way, the xCAN performed like a champ. Plenty of power for iems and Bose Quiet Comfort 25 headphones (Wired connection), lots of battery longevity, and great ease of use without the need to have my phone attached! (A great convenience when a call comes in and you don't have to hold up a bunch of inter-connected devices just to hold a business conversation.)
LOOKS
The xCAN sports a matte, anodized finish. The controls are also fairly straight-forward - A huge, rotating knob adjusts the volume and also doubles as the “POWER” and “mode” selector. A long-press of the button powers on the xCAN, initially lighting the button up in the color of the selected mode. The two modes being: (GREEN light) “Analog” mode, (You connect to your audio source via an included interconnect cable.) and (BLUE light) “Bluetooth” mode, which pairs with your phone or other Bluetooth-capable media device wirelessly. Short-pressing the button will toggle mute on and off while rotating the knob will change the knob’s color to indicate the color of volume level. (Approx. 100 volume steps, with colors ranging from blue to red to indicate volume of -101dB to +12dB).
An XBass II 3-way selector switch on the rear of the unit allows you to toggle between “Bass”, “Presence”, and both “Bass” and “Presence” settings. Lastly, a “Settings/Bluetooth” multifunction button doubles as a Bluetooth pairing/phonecall HOLD control and a quick way to toggle between “3D+”, “XBass II+”, “Both enabled”, and “None enabled” settings.
CONTENTS
The xCAN ships with both balanced and single-ended interconnect cables and a USB A-to-C charging cable. Also included is a simple, soft, velvet-like carry bag to help keep those darn fingerprints off your shiny-new amplifier.
POWER
iFi reports the xCAN’s power output to be up to 1W into 32 ohms in balanced mode, and 380 mW into the same load in S-Balanced (single-ended mode), with a THD+N measurement of .005% and .006% respectively and an SNR of about 120 dBA. Now even though these ratings show the xCAN to be clearly less powerful than my iDSD micro, I found it to be more than powerful enough for even my power-hungriest full-sized headphones.
The xCAN drove Sennheiser HD650s, & 800s, as well as my Beyerdynamic T1 ver. 2 cans well beyond “too loud” before hitting maximum volume. While at the other end of the spectrum, my most sensitive IEMs gifted me with nothing but inky-black silence when no signal was being transmitted.
SOUND
Neutral - So far as I can tell, when all “effects” are disabled, the xCAN brings nothing to the sound. It just makes it louder. Odd as it sounds, I like this. When I’m comparing headphones, the last thing I want is to try and “compensate” for my source. Near as I can tell, the source is what you hear. Now when you want to have “fun”, then there’s the assortment of “Presence”, “3D+”, and “XBass II+” to play with in order to sculpt-in your preferences concerning soundstage, airiness, and “thump” so that you can just kick back and listen to your songs the way that you want to hear them. While I’d need truly claustrophobia-inducing small sound-stage headphones to convince me to use “3D+”, it’s nice that it’s there when needed. But the “XBass II+” feature gets used quite often with my leaner bass headphones when I want to balance them out a bit for relaxation rather than analysis. (I’m looking at you, you belovedly-clinical Etymotic ER4SRs!)
CONNECTIONS
I tested both the xCAN’s balanced and single-ended inputs and outputs, and I heard nothing but extremely clean sound. I was amazed to find that the xCAN sounds virtually as good in Bluetooth mode as it does when fed signal via cables! To be clear, I wasn’t 100% sure that I could reliably tell the difference between the two...
CONFIGURATIONS
1) Bluetooth connection: Samsung Galaxy Note 8 - TIDAL streaming service (“MASTER” quality)
2) Unbalanced connection: iBasso DX90/OPUS #1s/Lenovo A12 Android Tablet/Dell Inspiron 5675 (Windows 10/Foobar 2000/Tidal (“MASTER” quality)/ JRiver Media Center 24) - FLAC 96kHz/24-bit, DSD 2.8MHz
3) Balanced connection: OPUS #1s - FLAC 96kHz/24-bit, DSD 2.8MHz
Headphones:
Inexpensive: Sennheiser CX300 II, Koss Porta Pros, UE Super.Fi 3s, Tin Audio T3
Mid Range: Sennheiser HD-650, JVC HA-SZ2000, AKG 545, AKG 550, Kanas Pro, BGVP DMGs, One More Quad drivers
Higher end: Beyerdynamics T1 ver. 2, Sennheiser HD-650 & HD-800, and Etymotic ER4XRs/ER4SRs
PREFERED CONFIG
Opus #1s -> balanced-in to iFi xCAN -> balanced cable to Kanas Pros (for mobile/on the go) and balanced cable to Beyerdynamic T1 ver. 2 in a hotel room/office
Reward: Hotel Room Relaxation Time!!