iFi Audio Headphone Amplifiers

British maker of desktop and portable DAC/headphone amplifiers, launched in Southport in 2012 as the affordable sister brand to Abbingdon Music Research.

Founded: 2012 (launched as the affordable sister brand to Abbingdon Music Research, which had been founded in 2001)
Headquarters: Southport, Merseyside, United Kingdom
Manufacturing: Designed and specified in Southport, built in the company's own facilities in Shenzhen and Dongguan, China
Parent company: Abbingdon Global Group
How to buy: Sold through specialist hi-fi dealers and online retailers
Known for: Desktop and portable DAC/headphone amplifiers, a very fast release cycle, initial-capital product names and a fondness for acronyms

Currently, we have 5 iFi Audio amplifiers in our database. Below you can find the list with their main specs and links to their review pages.

iFi Audio Headphone Amplifier

Model	Watts RMS (8Ω)	Amp Class	DAC	Phono
iDSD Phantom	-	-	Yes	-
NEO iDSD 2	-	-	Yes	-
ZEN Air DAC 2	-	-	Yes	-
ZEN CAN 3	-	-	No	-
ZEN DAC 3	-	-	Yes	-

About iFi Audio

iFi launched in 2012 with a simple proposition: take what AMR had learnt building high-end separates and put it in a box the size of a paperback at a tenth of the price. The ZEN and hip-dac ranges did most of the work of establishing the brand, and the catalogue now runs past fifty products across desktop, portable and in-car. The pace is unusual for hi-fi - iFi revises a line every couple of years rather than every decade - and it is the reason a model number here almost always carries a generation with it.

iFi does not put a founder's name on its about page. What it does say is where the engineering came from: AMR, the high-end house it was spun out of, whose circuits and thinking were shrunk to fit a desk and a price.

iFi is one of the few brands genuinely built around headphone listening at a desk rather than a speaker system in a room, which is why its amplifiers are rated in milliwatts into 32 ohms and have no speaker terminals at all.

Sister brand to Abbingdon Music Research (AMR); the two share engineering and ownership, with AMR at the high end and iFi below it.

Notable models: ZEN DAC and ZEN CAN, hip-dac, GO blu, NEO iDSD, iDSD Diablo, iDSD Phantom.

Official iFi Audio website

ALL AMPLIFIER BRANDS

Links to all amplifier brands in Speaker Decision