Ifi ZEN DAC 3: The Modern Day Jukebox

The DAC/AMP category has been one of the best fields of innovation in the past few years. Brands like ifi, Questyle, iBasso, and Fiio have all been competing against one another to produce better and better amps at more affordable prices than ever before. Although this may not be the best for these companies, the real winner here is the consumer. Entry level DAC/Amp combos are improving constantly. Ifi's Zen DAC ($229) isn't the newest realease, but it's still a popular option when looking at affordable desktop DACs. Let's take a look at the ifi Zen DAC 3 to see how it stacks up against the competition.

What's in the Box?

• Zen DAC 3
• RCA Cable
• 3.5 to 6.3 mm Adapter
• Quick Start Guide
• Instruction Card

Layout/Ins and Outs

Before I talk about the layout, I just wanted to take a brief moment to mention the aesthetics of the Zen V3. To me there's a retro futuristic look. The aluminum accents and arching curves make these devices perfectly stackable with other ifi products. Visually speaking, it's reminiscent of a futuristic looking jukebox. The knobs and buttons work sensitively and don't feel cheap.

The center of the front panel is the volume control which can be activated or de-activated with a "variable" or "fixed" switch on the back panel. An LED behind the volume control tells you what type of file is being amplified. The 2 buttons to the left of the volume control are the "x-bass" setting and the "power-match" setting. "X-bass" boosts the low end of your listening device and the "power match" section is the high gain setting for your DAC. The front ports support a 6.3mm (1/4in.) single-ended cable or 4.4mm balanced cable.

The back panel has another balanced 4.4 mm output right next to the aforementioned volume bypass. There's a single-ended RCA and usb-c input to finish out the ins and outs. The option of a power supply is useful due to the fact that it won't leech power from a laptop if that's what you're using to power the device. I didn't notice any difference to audio quality or volume while using it both ways. I wish that ifi provided the user with a 5V power supply and didn't sell it separately. Nevertheless, it's easy enough finding a budget power supply to avoid draining your battery when using this device.

Design

To get this out of the way quickly, I was able to easily power the 'hard-to-drive' planar magnetic Audeze LCD-5 (90dB/1mW). I'm not one to play music very loud (I try to stay between 70-80dB) but I rarely had to turn the volume dial above 12 o'clock. With 210mw at 32Ω from the single-ended outputs and 390mw at 32Ω for the balanced outputs, you won't need external amp unless you have very insensitive headphones and want to drive them very loud.

The Burr-Brown 4-channel chip allows PCM and DSD data to take different pathways before being converted to analog information. Handling 768 kHZ PCM/512 DSD at 32 bits, you wont have to worry about signal loss. I'm not a genuis when it comes to these topics, but most of the music we're listening to maxes out at 16-bits of information. There's a great article explaining the limitations of 32-bit streaming and why in a practical application, the most we information will get to about 21-bits of useful audio. Regardless of this digression, the amp has adequate signal-to-noise ratio and very little background noise when using high quality equipment. The ifi Zen DAC 3 supports MQA for lossless streaming.

Soundstage - iFi ZEN V3 Review

I personally have a pet-peeve describing sound-staging as holographic, so I'm going to be width and height by calling them wide or tall. In that respect, there's good width to the amp that I heard while listening to open-back headphones. The accuracy of headphones like the LCD-X and ultra-wide HiFiMan Arya Organic stayed in-tact. Stereo-imaging did not bleed from driver to driver the way it does with other entry-level DACs. It was also pretty easy identifying where sounds sat in the sonic image with respect to closeness and depth.

For the impressive imaging and width of these headphones, I have to say that the height of recordings did sound a little more compact than it does on other amps. There isn't too much nuance in the tallness of sounds, and noises don't have the stage-like quality that high-end amps do. I'm not disappointed at this considering the that these are only $229, and I'm not comparing this to a $1000+ piece of hi-fi equipment. For the sake of transparency, it makes sense to mention this when talking about the staging. There's a touch of tallness in music, but it's not breathtaking or stadium-like at all.

Listening Impressions

I tested a few different pairs of headphones with the DAC. I used the Audeze LCD-5 and LCD-X, Sennheiser HD800s, and HifiMan Arya Organic. I've already listened to each of these headphones on different DACs/DAPs/amps. The only headphones here with a strong frequency character is going to be the Arya. The rest are relatively neutral with some bumps along the way. Notably, all of them had a slightly warmer color to them that was added by the amp. Even with "X-bass" off, there was a push in the lows and low-mids.

The Audeze LCD-5 and LCD-X both had a nice width and were easily able to be driven. The LCD-5 was the least sensitive out of all of these, but sounded great with the high-gain setting on. I never had to go above 12 o'clock to drive these to my liking. The bassiness on here isn't overpowering, but adds some nice depth to some of my favorite pairs of cans. I used a balanced-XLR into a 1/4in. Audeze adaptor. I never felt like I needed more power to make these sing. I preferred listening to them without the bass-boost, but fans of bass will be happy keeping it on. If I were to take an educated guess on how much it raises bass volume, I'd say around 8dB.

The Sennheiser HD800s is unbelievably clean sounding. I tested the "fixed" mode because I was trying to see if they would distort in any places. These are the most sensitive headphones out of the bunch, so I assumed they'd be the first ones to distort. Although I wasn't comfortable at this level, the sound quality wasn't impacted negatively. Even loud songs with lots of feedback like "Still Burning" by Incendiary had no issues.

The super bright HifiMan Arya organics sounded much better to me with this DAC than they typically do through a regular amplifier. Although a lot of people laude the Arya Organic for being a headphone that punches above it's weight class, I've always found them too bright and sibilant at times. The "X-bass" setting evened the frequency response out for me drastically. Although I agree their a good pair of headphones for the price, they aren't necessarily what I look for in a frequency response. That being said, if you're looking to warm up a pair of headphones or are just looking for more bass in your set-up, this is an excellent option.

Summary

The Zen DAC 3 is incredibly useful and versatile. It's relatively transparent, but the bass-boost setting really brings out a lot of clean low end. I wasn't very impressed with the height of the soundstage, but it undoubtedly keeps headphones wide quality. For $229, you'll be able to power relatively insensitive headphones at manageable levels. Since it only requires a USB-C to power, you'll be able to use it on the go or at home.

Get the ifi Zen DAC 3 and all the other products I mentioned at Audio46.