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The Topping DACs provide an excellent alternative to the usual actors in your review. The E50 (DSD/PCM and MQA audio decoding balanced and non balanced outputs) or it's cheaper sibling E30 are great budget DACs. I made many A-B-A comparisons between the two, and as you would suspect, the two DACs sounded quite similar, whether listening to MQA or Non-MQA streams. Going in to the sound department, the Zen V2 has a very distinguished sound signature, a tad dark with a great level of warmth in all frequencies. Bass is just slightly accentuated but not in a bad way, it makes a more musical experience. Midrange is lush and treble is very soft. This results in a very enjoyable experience with headphones such as the HD 560s, that has a bright profile and its treble is a bit to hot for my taste. With iFi's Zen Dac V2, I can enjoy all my albums without worrying a piercing treble response. In addition, it preserves a very good technical level, so you don't loose any detail or relevant information, it's just presented in a different way. I can give testimony that this filter does remove some of the rough edginess of the sound quality and gives the audio a smoother characteristic. Balanced Outputs But in all. this unit out performed other more expensive like units. This DAC also has a balanced port if you should choose to (pay a lot) for balanced cables (it’s a 4.4mm plug just so you know). In all though, I am happy with the performance.
But what about when you’re at home and just want to relax? That’s where the Zen DAC comes in. The Zen has a warmer sound characteristic compared to the Hip DAC. Not that the Hip DAC has no warmth its just that the Zen DAC is warmer. Just the type of sound signature you need when you want to relax. A sound signature that is not harsh, too intense, offensive, or piercing. The iFi Zen is a USB only DAC headphone amplifier combo intended for desktop use. It has many of the features iFi DAC amps are known for but at a reduced price and with a different look from iFi’s past products. The iFi Zen DAC V2 remains one of the best ways to upgrade your desktop headphone system.” ’What Hi-Fi?’ 2023 award-winner. Both provided a somewhat warm sound with nice detail throughout the treble and midrange. Tonal balance is excellent on both. There’s really no part of the audioband that’s given undue attention, so they both get out of the way and let your headphones do their thing. Since the core functionality of the Zen DAC V2 is pretty much the same as the original, I won’t do a full breakdown here. You can read my original Zen DAC review for that.SOLUTION: (Thank you, Connor at iFi) Go into system preferences on the Mac after plugging in the ZEN, find the “SOUND” option and select the iFi option instead of the internal MacBook speakers…………DONE. Therein lies my idiocy – never even occurred to me.
In addition, i bought a longer USB lead, longer RCA cables (the ones included in the box are really short) and finally an apple lightening to camera USB dongle thing.( i would have needed these if i’d bought a component unit anyway)
Home Hub DAC
While I could use the Zen and my other iFi DACs to power my over the ear headphones with wonderful sound, the performance I’m getting from the 4.4 balanced headphone input clearly is an experience that is unique to the Zen. I can’t really explain it, but for that fact alone, it makes the Zen a real keeper for me. Now it was a matter of finding a “dignified” i.e. above-average good DA converter / headphone amplifier for the high-tech headphones, which upgraded them as a link in the audio chain, i.e. made the great performance it contained, audible without loss .
OUR RATING: (0-10 scale. 8 or higher numbers represent best of industry. For the final score calculation, each category is given a (undisclosed) weighting and is tallied for final score. Although perfect 'fairness' is unlikely, our system tries to be as unbiased as possible. Compared to other iFi offerings, this is quite a simple DAC to operate. Install the necessary software if you have a PC, plug in the DAC, and voila! Macintosh is simply plug-in-play, however DSD must be transmitted via DoP. Although Roon doesn't recognize the iFi ZEN DAC V2 as ROON READY, Roon spots the DAC and you can configure it as a USB device via the Roon control panel very easily. (Want true ROON READY ethernet/wifi connectivity? The iFi Stream is easily added and is the subject of an upcoming review)Tonally, this is a well-judged unit, having just the right degree of smoothness at high frequencies to prevent low bit rate or thin-sounding music streams from getting annoying. We like the openness of the presentation and its generally even-handed nature.
The ifi Zen on paper has dazzlingly good feature set for its price. Lots of connectivity is there together with a western company standing behind it. Alas, the DAC portion is yesterday's news and not competitive. Headphone output is low and distorts quite easily. My set up was using the RCA output at fixed gain connected to Yamaha RXV757 at the aux input. Pristine sound is amplified and is heaven to experience for music lovers.The Power-match is a gain switch with settings for low impedance/ high sensitivity in ears, and for higher impedance or Lower sensitivity over-ear models. Most other vendors refer to this same option as a gain switch and it is not uncommon for Amplifiers to support 2 or more levels of gain to allow for better matching of output to headphone type. I will say that with sensitive headphones I found it best to leave this in the lower position as some hiss sneaks in when put into the higher gain mode. The bottom line is: no matter what music I listened to, it had just a little more detail and depth when I listened to it on the Zen DAC V2 versus the V1. The Wrap Up As there is only minimal vertical modulation remaining at very low frequencies with an an actual cut LP that is playable, we know that “vertical modulation” at low frequencies must be warp.
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