iFi Audio ZEN CAN Headphone Amplifier

Full Description

Hi-Fi News - Outstanding Product

"The 'can-do attitude' pun is obvious, but entirely apt. This is a little amp that delivers a lot!"

A revolutionary analogue headphone amplifier. Your headphones will sound like never before.

Passionately designed balanced amp with latest 4.4mm Pentaconn connectors for input and output. Each Panasonic ECPU capacitor features some 3,500 layers of ultra-thin dielectrics less than 0.5μm thickness. This gives class-leading Equivalent Series Resistance (ESR), low impedance (other than at the desired capacitance) as well as frequency stability and vanishingly low distortion. A total of 6 pieces are used. TDK C0G (Class 1 ceramic) capacitors offer high stability and low losses for resonant circuit applications. They are pricey but are a perfect addition to our products.

Getting ever closer to the theoretical ideal of pure, frequency-constant capacitance, these capacitors reduce capacitor-induced distortion to vanishingly low levels. iFi/AMR ‘OV’ series stands for ‘Operationsverstärker’ (German for Operational Amplifier). The ‘OV’ range ICs use HCOFC (High Content Oxygen Free Connectors) copper lead-frames and 4N gold bond-wire which are streets ahead of mainstream commercial chips that use inexpensive aluminum bond-wire and low-grade/low-cost copper in the lead-frames. Containing four independent FET opamps in a ‘folded cascode’ internal design as also found in the ‘HDAM’ circuitry of certain high end speaker amplifiers,

Balanced to thrill

The ZEN CAN has trickle-down Class A discrete balanced circuitry from iFi audio’s flagship Pro iCAN. With 15.1v @300 Ohms on tap, it has serious power that will make even difficult-to-drive headphones thump to the beat.

Ace of XBass

Behind XBass is our active EQ circuit which meets a common gripe with headphones head-on, a lack of bass.Open-back headphones in particular, let all frequencies (especially those precious bass frequencies that the drivers generate so little of) leak freely out of the back instead of trapping and redirecting them back to your ears.

• Class A discrete output buffer The flagship Pro iCAN using Op-Amp (OV2637A)
• FET input Avoids loading volume control – low distortion/noise
• SE inputs (1M Ohm) Ensures loading of the source so always in Class A operation
• Output amplifier gain of four steps +6dB perfect for headphone matching
• A fully-discrete and balanced amplifier audio circuit The full symmetric dual-mono headphone amplifier with gold-plated 4.4mm balanced connection
• Class A Discrete Circuit that has come straight out of the iFi’s flagship headphone amplifier, the Pro iCAN
• OV series operational amplifier Another example of a top-notch component used to get extremely low noise, low distortion (0.0001%) and wide bandwidth
• TDK C0G (Class 1 ceramic) Capacitors offer high stability and low losses for resonant circuit applications
• Sonically superior – richer, deeper The XBass analogue bass correction system corrects for the missing headphone/speaker bass response
• ‘Out of Head’ listening experience D Holographic® dual-analogue matrices place the artist with you in the room, not inside your head

Inputs

Max Output

THD & N

SNR

Max. Input