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I wanted to post my thoughts on the Zen Air Dac. I also have the Can I'll be covering soon too!! For now, here is the Dac:
iFi Zen Air DAC
I wanted to give everyone my written impression/review of the Zen Air DAC. This is mostly all covered on my YT Channel video as well, which I will link at the bottom.
This was sent out from iFi for my thoughts and opinions, however, I am not being paid to say anything in particular. Big thank you to iFi for allowing me some time with this!!
What is it?
First of all, the Zen Air DAC is a budget series (the Air series) of the Zen line of iFi products. It's the lighter version of the Zen Dac V2.
It retails at just $99, so great starting price for a hi-fi Dac.
Build
The build is all plastic and it's a pretty hollow feel to it as well. That makes it light weight of course but also made it so I didn't want to stack a heavier amp on top of it (probably fine but just my own thought). The volume pot is a plastic gold casing (which I found out because the casing had fallen off when I got this in to review) and the actual pot is all solid black. By the way, I am not faulting iFi for the casing falling off, I truly believe that was shipping or even the person that had it before me. Things happen. The buttons are solid plastic as well, but perfectly fine.
In the Box
As for what you get: You get the unit, 1 usb-b to usb-a cable and then 1 dc5v to usb-a cable. The dc5v is to a usb-a so that means you will need to plug that in to either a wall adapter or a powered usb port. Both cables are pretty short. I understand shorter cables can be better for audio quality, but I would have liked to have seen at least a 3ft cable. Even Schiit uses 3ft cables on their desktop units. It just gives you more space options for your desk. Thankfully I have collected many cables over the years so I already had a longer usb-b cable to use in its place.
Connections and Specs
Starting with the back of the unit, you will get a set of RCA inputs, usb-b for power/pc connection and then the dc5v for strictly power. You do not need to plug in both of the dc5v and usb-b if you are going to a computer or laptop with power. The dc5v really is for a more portable solution to drive its own power.
*Note that there is no on/off switch here*
Then going to the front you will see the LED on the far left (it will color match depending on file format being fed). Then there is a power match button. I found this button to be necessary with headphones but not the IEM's I had to test. After that we get a 6.3SE output for your headphone/iems.
Lastly, you will see the XBass button. Many iFi devices come with this and usually a mixture of xbass/xspace. This one is just xbass however.
Technical wise, the DAC is a Burr Brown multibit which you find on many other ifi products. It can decode up to 384khz, fully native DSD256 as well as MQA. MQA is a Tidal exclusive thing, so the LED's may not work on other streaming services outside of Tidal or Qobuz. Not a huge deal, but something to note if you like the lights matching.
The amp is a OV series and said to have extremely low noise. It's 230mw @32ohm or 36mw @300ohm. So it can drive harder to drive headphones albeit not a ton of power. Remember though - this is $99.
Sound Pairings
One thing I wish I would have worded a bit differently in my video is about the sound. I do believe that DAC'S (and amp's) can add flavor to the sound signature of the headphone/iem but not to the extent of always being a game changer. With that, I do find the Burr Browns to add a warmth to the tuning and I called it a bit relaxed/lazy. Lazy in that "lounge around" sense.
For example: I used my lovely Meze 109 Pro's on this dac/amp and found them to be a bit less analytical (and they are not what I would call analytical to begin with) and smoothed out in the treble more. The signature of the 109 Pro is still there and not altered, just lazied out if that makes sense. These are super easy to drive headphones, so not an issue for this unit.
Then I used my Focal Radiance (also easy to drive) and found the same thing. The Radiance doesn't have a ton of treble energy to begin with, so this was perhaps mellowed out a bit more. Bass was still present and full on the Radiance but possibly, ever so slightly, not as punchy/engaging. It's also possible that volume match wasn't happening exact as other units, so I don't really fault this much.
I did try my Atriums on this unit. I don't see anyone buying a $99 unit like this to power a 2k+ headphone, so I take this with a big grain of salt. It relaxed the Atrium but also took away some of the nice details I get from them. Of course I had to use the power match button and I got the volume pot to probably 1-2 oclock. So yeah, not surprising there.
Lastly, my IEMS tried were the Tinhifi T3Plus and my new Salnotes Zero. Both sounded great on this unit. Both did not need power match and both are easy to drive. This is budget meets budget so it made sense to me this would work together.
Couple of issues
The one big issue I took with this unit was the functionality of the Xbass button. I don't have a measuring tool for this at my disposal but I would love to know what the boost is on this one. It is way overdone in my opinion. I used it on all of my headphones and just found it too much. It vibrated the cups of my Radiance and literally started to rattle my Aeon 2 Noires! I quickly turned it off with that experience and no damage done thankfully. I realize those are both bassier closed backs anyway, but still. So I also used it on my less bassy headphones and they just didn't handle it well. The boosting I think is just too high and this is unique because typically the xbass button is subtle not drastic. Could have been my unit as I haven't looked into this too far...but needless to say I did not enjoy that.
The 2nd small issue was the volume pot. I found that at very low volume I barely heard anything. I had to give it a bit of juice to hear it start to kick in. Possibly this is the gain kicking in (when using power match) or just how the Potentiometer works. I'm no expert on this, just my own personal experience.
Also, ironically, I didn't feel as though the sound produced out of my headphones had as much air to them with this pairing. That was one thing I noticed pretty much universal. In some cases this could be a good thing if a hp/iem has too much I suppose.
Conclusion
So, my final thoughts are not in big favor of the iFi Zen Air Dac. To be honest, I looked at this strictly as a single unit because I tried to think of it as someone that can't spend over $100 to get a dac/amp in one. I do like the unit enough as a Dac only, just not a total package. Can it suffice? Sure it can, but since I've had the opportunity to hear many other units it didn't stand out in any way as an aio.
Parting words
Stacking this with the iFi Zen Air Can was a different experience. As in a more positive experience which I will share very soon!
Thank you for your time in reading this. If you would like to see my full video I'll link it below!
Thanks for trying it out and every opinion counts! Thanks again!
