- Class A Discrete is a circuit that has come straight out of the iFi’s flagship headphone amplifier, the Pro iCAN, which at £1,699 is 11 times the price of the ZEN CAN.
Nitro for your headphones.
Fully-balanced. 1,600mW. Battleship headphone amplifier.
52x more power. Pump up the volume.
Laptops and smartphones have a really low power output of <1.0v. On a good set of headphones you’re always running out of juice. You never get to really hear what they can do.
Use a laptop, phone or DAC to feed your music to the ZEN CAN and connect your headphones. Pumping out 52x more power, now you’ll hear what you have been missing.
Balanced to thrill
The ZEN CAN has trickle-down Class A discrete balanced circuitry from iFi audio’s US$1,699 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.
- Class A discrete output buffer from 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 in +6dB perfect for headphone matching
Brings the venue to you.
Audio recordings are made to be listened to via speakers. When played back on headphones, the sound feels limited to being ‘inside your head’. It does not have the spaciousness it was meant to have.
Our 3D special sound circuit solves this:
- Stereo image that is truly out of your head, in front with height, width & depth
- Without colouration or loss of resolution
- All analogue circuitry (i.e. without costly and complex digital signal manipulation)
Satisfies all listeners.
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.
XBass equalisation is a much more elegant solution to bass correction than seen elsewhere. It consists of active and passive components and its frequency response curve corrects their low-end response problems with precision.
Packed with premium goodness
Underpinning the Balanced and Active EQ circuitry are:
- Panasonic ECPU capacitors
- TDK C0G (Class 1) ceramic capacitors
- iFi/AMR ‘OV’ ‘Operationsverstärker’ series op-amps
- MELF resistors
- Texas Instruments low-noise ICs
- muRata capacitors and
- Tokyo Cosmos Electric Co. (TOCOS) multi-track potentiometer, with exceptional channel matching (use above 11 o’ clock)
Features
- A fully-discrete and balanced amplifier audio circuit. The full symmetric dual-mono headphone amplifier with gold-plated 4.4mm balanced connection. Premium engineering is more expensive but lowers the noise floor to a whisper-quiet levels.
- As with many other iFi audio products, we’ve incorporated a custom OV Series operational-amplifier. This top-notch component contributes to the 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. Getting ever closer to the theoretical ideal of pure, frequency-constant capacitance, these capacitors reduce capacitor-induced distortion to vanishingly low levels. They are pricey but are a perfect addition to our products.
- Sonically superior – richer, deeper. The XBass® analogue bass correction system corrects for the missing headphone/speaker bass response. An ‘Out of Head’ listening experience. Our 3D Holographic® dual-analogue matrices place the artist with you in the room, not inside your head.
Specs
| Inputs | 4.4mm Pentacon BAL RCA L/R Socket SE 3.5mm Jack SE |
4.0V nominal @ 0dBFS, 24 kOhm Zin 2.0V nominal @ 0dBFS, 1 MegOhm Zin 1.0V nominal @ 0dBFS, 1 MegOhm Zin |
| Max Output | Balanced | >15.1V/385 mW (@ 600 Ohm) >11.0V/1890 mW (@ 64 Ohm) |
| S-E | >7.6V/196 mW (@ 300 Ohm) >7.2V/1600 mW (@ 32 Ohm) |
|
| Output Impedance (HP) | BAL SE |
<2 Ohms <1 Ohm |
| Zout | Line out | <200 Ohms |
| THD & N | Balanced S-E |
< 0.0007% (4V out, 600 Ohm, 1kHz) <0.006% (@ 100 mW/1.27V 16 Ohm) |
| SNR | Balanced S-E |
>120dBA (@ 15.2V) >118dBA (@ 7.6V) |
| Max. Input | Balanced RCA 3.5mm |
7.4V RMS 3.8V RMS 1.92V RMS |
| Gain | 0dB, 6dB, 12dB and 18dB | |
| Frequency Response | 20Hz - 20kHz (+0dB / -0.03dB) | |
| Power consumption | No Signal Max Signal |
~5W ~13W |
| Input voltage |
DC 5V/2.4A AC 100 -240V 50/60Hz |
|
| Dimensions | 160(w) x 117(d) x 35(h) mm 6.3" x 4.6" x 1.4" |
|
| Net weight | 515g (1.14 Ibs) | |
| Warranty period | 12 months |
