iFi Audio - ZEN DAC

Before upgrading to zen dac amp, I was using my built in sabre dac of my clevo laptop. I always felt something was missing from built in dac. i have some experience with fiio and schiit DAC before but was not entirely happy with them. Zen is an all in one Dac that can basically fit in with all my uses.It is capable of driving my fiio x2,m560 and iem like kz zs10pro and tin t2. It is also my primary speaker dac connected to my old akai vintage sound quality. As far as its features are concerned it is one of best at its price point not going to ellaborate on that but the soundquality is what gor me surprised. It is one of the cleanest dac amp i have heard in my life. The amp section is great for most of the mid fi headphones and iems out there. It has its limits though and i could hear it when i push the volume dial to its limit. Include bass boost option is nice as well just giving the right amount of bass without messing with the rest of signal.Overall I think Ifi has given a dac that punches way above the price point

Firstly I would like to point the build quality, which is incredible. The volume knob is sooo smooth. It sounds as great as it has been built. Although the bass is a little higher than usual with Truebass turned on - for which I was skeptical at first - it simply makes it much more enjoyable to listen without it sounding any less detailed. I used to have Fiio K3 which is highly recommended as well, but zen sounds different kind of fun and immersive with Sundara. In contrast to Fiio where I had a little trouble with power output, this unit has enough power in Unbalanced out, both of which run just on USB. If you want a great combo under 15k, this should be your first choice.

Hello All,
Its been a good buying experience with Headphone Zone, the delivery was quick and the products is also untouched.
Coming to the quality of the product- it feels like heavy duty material, fits and finishes are nice. Very good balanced sound quality.

Couple of important point to share->[Tested only with the RCA out to my AVR]
1>it does not come with latest firmware so updating the latest firmware(GTO version) is recommended, read the instruction before updating...be careful while you do this. -- Link to download https://ifi-audio.com/downloads/
2>The sound quality is good without the update, its more of warmer sound signature with limited sound stage, but when I update the firmware the experience is amazing , it has got much detailed and crisp output, the sound stage widens up, its actually better than my AVR internal DAC.
3> if you want little more juice add 5v power supply(not available out of the box), the sound quality further enhanced for me.
4> The pre-amp is also good, the true base produce tight and subtle bass- never knew my speaker is capable of producing that deep bass :)
but my personal preference is the direct sound bypassing the pre amp circuit, enjoying every bit of it.

Thank you and have a great time.

I have an AKG 712 paired with Audioengine D1. I chose the Zen on the recommendation of a youtuber Stu from homestudiobasics and reading reviews from his blog. So I would suggest you to read it from his blog for the technical stuff. I chose this amp for the truebass functionality and balanced output which is lacking in the Audioengine D1 and is in the same price range. I couldn't fully appreciate the sound quality of the balanced output due to lack of proper 4.4mm to 3.5mm adapter. The quality from the unbalanced 6.35mm output is awesome. It is powerful enough to bring out the dynamics of the AKG. The truebass functionality doesn't suppress or muddy the mid range which is good. If you are looking for an amp/dac less than 15k look no more than the zen.

It’s good. It will be better and great if Headphonezone along with reviewing products on YouTube, do a tutorial about the connections etc.

Purchased this 2 weeks back along with a pair of beyerdynamics dt990 pros. They get the job done, i was worried that they might not be able to power the dt990s given the higher impedance power needed, but these are an amazing pair. It supports a variety of lossless formats such as Flacs(PCM), DSD and MQAs. I seriously couldn't find music of such different formats to justify its purchase, it supports plug and play with any OS, although with windows I had to tweak a few settings to ensure that I was running on the highest frequency band (notice the yellow led instead of green in the picture).
It is great for music and movies and works okay with games as well (tweak a bit inside game settings for the optimal settings), supports RCA out as well which can connect further to an AMP or a pair of speakers (nothing too crazy, wont support anything higher than a bookshelf speaker).
The sound is great, the digital connection doesn't leak any noise into the system, even plugging my normal earphones/headphones sounded so much better than just directly through the PC. Build quality is quite premium and sturdy. A goto headphone dac/amp (which can also power speakers if needed) for anyone looking to start with their headphone audiophile journey.
Bonus points for headphonezone for answering doubts/questions that I had, you can trust their experts :)

https://youtu.be/MIOsA3US9M8
This^ video says it all :)

Wonderful. What it is offering in the price range is simply wonderful. HPZ delivery was fast. I pair them up with my HIFIMAN DEVA and ATH M50X. The "truebass" functionality is like butter. It boosts the bass without muddying the other frequencies. I have upgraded the firmware to 5.3C which has the GTO filter. It opens up the music more. Very hard to beat at this price range.

This thing is built like a tank and I absolutely love the volume control knob. It is extremely smooth with no resistance whatsoever.
Since it is a DAC/Amp, it does not have earth shattering power, but you can drive anything except the highest impedance headphones with it.

I have a Sennheiser HD 599, and although it is not the most difficult headphone to drive(50 ohms impedance and around 95db sensitivity) it gets loud enough at a quarter volume on high gain.

The sound is clean and there was no noise distortion that I could perceive.

A word on the LED indicator for audio quality: you will need to set your computer's audio output correctly (24bits/192KHz) for the colour to change from green to yellow, for audio files with greater than 96KHz sampling rate.

Overall, it is a great starter dac/amp and I would recommend it to anyone starting out with the hobby.