Introduction

The British audio brand iFi Audio is most known for its variety of DACs and headphone amplifiers at various price points. It has released quite a few products recently too, including portable Bluetooth DAC/amps such as the GO blu we saw before, in addition to more hefty and powerful portable sources such as the excellent micro iDSD Signature. Common to both, and indeed all of iFi’s product lineup, is the use of analog signal processing and no software / app controls. The company would rather show off its engineering prowess with customization settings onboard the device itself. These include options such as XBass and XSpace that are neat to try and enhance the user experience for many, and another thing common between them is the use of Burr-Brown DACs that tend to play a slightly warmer sound signature—at least in the more mainstream lineup—compared to the likes of the ESS and AKM DACs used in sources coming out of China. All three iFi reviews on TechPowerUp thus far have been on portable sources and today we go all the way up to iFi’s flagship desktop DAC/amp.

The iFi Pro iDSD Signature is not your everyday DAC/amp, and indeed calling it just that would be doing it a disservice. As with the FiiO R7 we recently checked out, this is also a network streamer in addition to offering legitimate professional use case I/O and functionality that makes it a great fit for a music recording and mixing studio just as much it would be at the top of an audiophile’s dream source chain. Don’t expect to see XBass here or even a warm-tilting sound, the Pro iDSD Signature is more about delivering to you the best possible audio quality in various formats. There’s a quad-stack DAC inside in addition to both solid state transparency and vacuum tube synergy. This is an update to iFi’s Pro iDSD DAC and, while there are headphones outputs anAd potentially enough power for most headphones, iFi released this in late 2021 alongside the Pro iCAN Signature for those who want a stack which does it all. While we do not have the latter here, there is already so much to cover with the Pro iDSD Signature that it took me a couple of months to fully appreciate everything. Thanks to iFi for loaning a review unit to TechPowerUp and we begin with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications