Digital Processor Reviews

...Europe's version of Schiit?

I suspect that it's darn nice tweeky stuff made [in China] which begs the "Service" question.

My Local Service Guy is say'n that a whole lot of this gear is intentionally unserviceable.

If we Readership are Traditional Audiophiles that like to Own Traditional Audiophile Gear like PS Audio, Schiit, PASS and even Audio Research should we even be considering Sino/Euro Headphone stuff?

Question: Would you rather have this iFi device or a $2,5OO Horn Loudspeaker ?

Tony in Michigan

ps. I'm invited to a Active Pair of JBL S9900 Install.

Whenever I search for any audio equipment review on Google search, if that equipment was reviewed by Stereophile, it is shown at the top of the list .......... Congratulations Stereophile ......... Keep Stereophile great :-) ...........

Troy in Michigan what are you smoking? Ifi is the less expensive arm of AMR Abbingdon Audio Reserach a company founded in the UK in the early 2000s. The idea of AMR was to employ cutting edge design, parts and technologies and offer their products at reasonable pricing compared to good made entirely in Europe or the USA.

AMR produced some very good gear including the amazing AMR CD 77 CD player which was one of the finest sounding players made in that time period.

AMR and conversely Ifi's products are no more difficult to service than any esoteric brand of gear.

Ifi has produced some really fanatastic products allready and these products have been sold although through somewhat limited distribution for years.

We congradulate Ifi on the review and perhaps we will sell this dac thank you Stereophile for pointing out what a cool piece this is.

Troy Ifi products are very well made and tend to be quite reliable, Ifi is trying to re-establish themselves after chaning their distribution model of having a number of different importers. The audio distribution game is a tricky one and even good products can sometimes be overlooked.

Dave Lalin, President
Audio Doctor NJ

First of all, Tony, most of the world's goods from many different manufactuers are made in China. Also in terms of performance if the Ifi gear is better than the Schitt wouldn't you want to purchase the better sounding product regardless it is is made in the USA or made in China?

As per good or better than a Schitt or a Mytek it is up to the listener to determine that for themselves. In the comparison to Schitt you would have to purchase a Dac, a headphone amp, a preamp and a separate streamer to compare. the Mytek Brooklyn Dac is excellent but the new Brooklyn Bridge with the streaming option is $500 more and doens't use any tubes, the Mytek does have analog inputs which is a plus if you need that function.

Just because Schitt is "made in America" does that mean all the metal work, boards and parts are sourced from the USA? Unless you take apart a Schitt product and find out where all the parts were sourced from you don't know where the parts originated from and the percentage of American labor in it. Also many US companies make money distributing parts sourced from all over the world.

The reality of today's modern world is most of the highest performing value to dollar products are all designed in the UK or Europe or the USA, and built in China, it is sad but true reality of the modern world's supply chains and manufacturering costs vs the need to generate profit for a company. In the case of affordable products it may be impossible for a company to sell a product produced in the USA for what many people in the market want to pay for it.

Look at JL Audio a famous Subwoofer company out of Florida they have said that their products are assembled in the US, but parts are sourced from all over the world and then which parts and what percentage are actually made in the USA?

We believe in supporting American companies too but as mentioned before sometimes it is nearly impossible to offer a great sounding and affordable product that is actualy made in the USA from parts also sourced and produced in the the USA.

For most of the high end companies like Krell, Mark Levinson, Mcintosh, which are American companies affordable products are still in a completely different price strata then products from companies which make more affordable gear which is usually sourced from Chinese or Mexican or Malyasian or Vietnamese or whaetever parts and subassemblies come from.

If you want a premium product with the performance of a premium product and the higher price tags associated with a Krell, Mcintosh, Mark Levinson Ayre, Boulder, ARC or CJ product that is fine but don't tell me that your friend who wants to purchase a $500-1,000.00 ampliifer is going to be able to find one from any US company.

As per reliability most high end gear without moving parts or which don't generate lots of heat will last for a very long time regardelss of who makes them and where they are made.

I don't know what guaranties you are looking for from Ifi, but again if the product performs for Herb or for you or for me and the company is a good company and Ifi has been in business for years, what other guarranty would you want? As humans the only guarranty you have is Death and Taxes. Love, Happiness, World Peace, are all open to interperation.

Dave Lalin,
Audio Doctor NJ

I want it 'correct' - ie: the closest to how the recording studios intended it to sound. That is the very MEANING of HiFi. And it appears from Herb's review that direct - bit perfect - NOS is the only one that does that.

So why all the rest? And then we can also switch in a couple of totally spurious tubes to mess up the sound even more. (Tubes are fine if used as the concept of the whole design, like McIntosh, but not when just added in to 'alter' the sound.) The end result is that it will be so far away from High Fidelity we had just as well replace our entire system with the cheapest 'mass market music system' we can find. This DAC gives me the impression that Ifi use a 'scattergun' approach - fit every gimmick you can in the hope that buyers will like at least one of them and discard any thought of fidelity to the source.

As a partial reply to Dave Lalin, Ifi arose from the market failure of AMR and makes a whole lot of gimmicks such as USB and S/PDIF so-called 'purifiers', 'signsl regenerators', 'earth defenders' :), 'silencers', galvanic isolators, and power 'improving' boxes. Everything except an elixir of life :). God only knows how it will sound if you fit all of this stuff. AMR itself failed in their chosen (high priced) market fairly rapidly, though on their website they prefer to say 'We stepped back". Now they make nothing at all though they 'promise' an assortment of fancy cables (and nothing else) "early in 2019".

Amr got good reviews because their products were audicious attacks at building state of the art products designed in the UK and built overseas to bring the cost of the best down to a much more reasonable price point.

As per Tony yes it is wonderful to build in the USA, but again I ask you how many parts, subassemblies or cases that are used by some manufacturers actually outsourced from non US sources?

Many of today's top audio brands all own production facilities in China including B&W, Tannoy, KEF, Dali, Golden Ear, Definitive and many, many more.

The entire concept of supply chain outsourcing is mirrored in those wonderful highly lauded products from a tiny American company called Apple, you ever see a US sourced Ipad, Ipod or Iphone, yet Foxconn continues to produce superb products.

In the case of the Ifi products they are very well made and some of their products are absolutely fantastic especially for the price and didn't Herb prefer the Ifi dac or rate it just as highly as the Schitt reference dac and the Mytek.

So if the Ifi product sounds better and is well made you are not going to buy it beacuse it is made in Asia?

Tony trade protectionism doesn't work, we would love to see everything made in the USA but for many industries that ship has sailed and we sell a number of US brands including Mytek which is made in Poland, CJ whose Teflon capacitors Teflon comes from the Middle East because they are the only one making Teflon for this application, ARC and Mcintosh are owned by the Italians.

Our philsophy is to find and endorse supperior products if they ae designed in the UK and built in China like B&W, and Kef, and Tannoy and Quad, and a zillion other companies who really cares, the lion's share of the profits are going back to the owner of the company anyway.

Unless the entire world figures out how to out build Asia in terms of quality for the price which means huge investments in automation you will see this trend for many years unless you want to pay double or triple fot similar performance designed and sourced in the USA or Europe.

Dave Lalin, Audio Doctor NJ

I keep wondering if iFi and Company are worth my time "investment".

What is so dam important about iFi that we need to keep an eye on them?

Tony in Michigan

Nice words on Sun Ra. His Arkestra, even without him, remains a thing to experience. I recently discovered "The Sun Ra sextet (Live at The Village Vanguard) on Qobuz. It sounds amazing on good old 16/44. Other favourites: "Sound Sun Pleasure", "Lanquidity", "In Some Far Place", "Disco 3000". etc. etc.

Guys if Herb perfered this Dac over all the other really well rated Dac's in this list and the company seems to be able to deliver a quality product who cares it is is built in Asia?

Again the Mytek is made in Poland, the Holospring is also Chinesse made from a company who is actually from China, at least with Ifi the parent company is in the Uk.

These are the realities of modern supply chain, Sandy Gross's Golden Ear speakers are well made and provide a lot of value for their owners, sure it would be nice if Sandy could make them in the US but for what he charges the product would have to get way more expensive.

One should judge if the product is a good product does it sound great or not is it reasonably priced, does it have the features that I want and purchase appropriately.

Dave Lalin,
Audio Doctor NJ

After listening to a colleague rant about how everything is made in China, I suggested we do a walkthrough of his home and see exactly how much he'd have to do without if it wasn't for Chinese (or other cheap Asian offshore) manufacturing. About a third of his clothing, gone. All of his shoes. All of his electronics. Both of his phones.

We then played "let's buy American" or at least EU. Showed him my shoes - all my shoes are made in the US by a company that ONLY makes shoes in the US. I own a lot fewer shoes, since they cost $450 a pair, but I'm good trading off volume for values at least in clothing. I've made that choice for a number of things I buy, and in every case there's no doubt I'm trading off quantity for that "buy American" thing. ($50 plain white t-shirts... but since I only need three...) But he'd still be without a TV, cable box, router, washer dryer... etc. I've worked on M&A stuff, got to know a lot of the Chinese buyers of American companies, and even the stuff you think is built here, is built here with parts that weren't. As the McMurtry song goes, We Can't Make It Here Anymore.

I'm also old enough to remember "Japan junk" and "Korean junk." Made in Japan is now seen as a mark of quality - camera buyers prefer camera lines that are assembled in Japan to those assembled in Thailand or China. At 2x the price. People pay premiums for Korean appliances.

As to iFi - I've known their stuff since they first came out. Have abused daylights out of a few of their small DACs over the years, with the only problems being when I didn't RTFM. (you know, the manual.) In the few cases, they responded to me quickly, and kindly. (They didn't say RTFM...) In electronics, I abandoned the values, because otherwise I wouldn't be listening to music right now.

Frankly it's really hard to maintain "buy American" in clothing - and it's the limit of my willingness to spend hard earned dollars on principles. And impossible in most other products.

I represent iFi audio for pr and would like to thank Herb Reichert for his fine review of the Pro iDSD and of course to Stereophile for running it.

As some background, AMR stands for Abbingdon Music Research. Founded in 2000, they were known mostly in the UK for high-end two channel audio products. The brand is still very much alive and in fact, is coming out with new models in 2019. www.amr-audio.co.uk

In 2010, the company saw a need for high performance products in personal audio so they developed a new brand called iFi audio. iFi has a wide range of personal and desktop audio products and solutions. The Pro iDSD is at the top end of the range and iFi also has affordable headphone DACs and amplifiers starting at $199. iFi audio is sold throughout the world.

iFi is headquartered with AMR in Southport, England. They have a dedicated factory in China where Co-Founder and Chief Designer Thorsten Loesch is based. In the U.S., iFi has a fully staffed sales and support office in Yorktown, Virginia.

iFi will be at CanJam NYC Feb 16-17 so for those coming to that event, please stop by and say hello.

Peter Hoagland
Warrenton, VA

I just had a connector on my $150 retail privately obtained iFi piece accidentally break off. While replacement of the connector is physically possible, in the U.S. it's not something they do: instead they do an exchange, in this case for $60. I can live with that, but from the standpoint of convenience, the other end of that connector, which is stuck in an also privately obtained $6000 PS Audio dac port, is getting serviced under warranty for the cost of shipping, in total for less. While I would love to have as good or better sounding hybrid tube dac, vs. an all digital unit, PS Audio does fabulous SQ firmware updates, and there is something to be said for the convenience of direct purchase auditioning and especially service.

Btw, I'm not finding a Level 3 Kitsune Spring dac at their site, unless it's the KTE model.

iFi has been around for a decent amount of time all the while issuing very well made, excellently engineered, very cost effective products. To attack iFi specifically because of their Asian connection smacks of xenophobia at this late date in the era of outsourcing.

You guys have written such a scintillating review of the Pro iDSD and it only warrants a class B rating in your recommended components list? I have heard the benchmark and it’s sound quality is nowhere near the likes of the Pro iDSD... How do you guys rate your products exactly?

Quote:

You guys have written such a scintillating review of the Pro iDSD and it only warrants a class B rating in your recommended components list?

I had the same reaction, and am wondering how the iFi SQ (with latest firmware upgrades) compares to some of the A+/A products.

I'm considering getting either the iFi or one of the PS Audio products (Directstream Junior/Senior) mainly to receive input from HQ Player (via ultraRendu) for use with Roon. The iFi Pro is much less expensive than a new DS Senior. The iFi is not Roon-ready, but seems to be more flexible for purposes of combining with HQ Player. The ultraRendu is Roon-ready, so the iFi's lack of this feature would not be a complete show-stopper.