iFi ZEN Air DAC - High Resolution DAC - 6.3mm Output - MQA Renderer - High Resolution Music DAC

Just got mine today, sound is FULL & ALIVE, No worries about the presumed noise from not using overly expensive power supply, I have zero noise, although i am not a headphone user, nor will i be, i have quality, large 3 way bass reflex speakers, along with vintage sony amp, which are linked to my PC tower, not a gamer, only interested in Music sound, not a gamer.Read in one review that noise can happen if too many usb ports are in use, well I am using most of mine, yet zero interferance, thankfully. can't imagine ever having to climb higher up the price ladder with regard to quality music sound, now that i have this device. Super simple connection using supplied usbcable & in my case 2 RCA cables from my amp into the unit, i have previously always used twin phono from amp to a single 3.5 jack to system/sound card, already had twin phono to twin phono , so no need to buy anything. Had to restart PC for couple of my music players (Pot player + WMP) to output sound.Cannot imagine anyone requiring the bass boost, this device is FULL sounding.Had been looking at various expensive sound cards which are said to be a bit iffy with drivers, so very pleased to have opted for this gem at a 3rd the cost.Full, clear, well defined sound, yet smooth, no harshness at all, Fabtastic!Update since having it a few days:Although playing music fine i would keep getting Aidio rendered error when clicking on youtube videos, which i new was relating to the unit, as i'd previously never encountered that & having to restart computer to remedy the problem as suggested is just a nuisance i wasn't prepared to put up with, after searching online about it & pottering around i realized that changing usb port solved it, for a time, but came to conclusion that usb cable simply wasn't sufficient for the unit so opted to buy a 5v power supply & as i had no intention of paying for the high priced recommended power supply, got a basic one here on Amazon for £5.99, i had read that others had used a basic unit also with success, it arrived lastnight and all was well, no noise or anything, however i got up this morning and had no sound at all? even though it was working fine lastnight, i opted to troubleshoot sound on my win11 & after a couple of steps it opted to Reinstal driver which had it working again, so im not Positive i required the power supply, but feel better having it & hope this info is of use if anyone encounters similar.Really superb clear full sound, i've found myself playing lots of songs in my collection i hadn't for some time, as they all sound so Alive and renewed now, music enjoyment is greatly elevated:) Whatever you listen to. Well, yet another update, it seems that my issues were relating to win11 speaker properties/system, where you must deselect Exclusive box, or it will not allow more than 1 device to output sound, which is why i was getting an error attempting to play youtube video, when music was playing, also need to select highest audio output of 38400hz, as windows will default to far lesser output, so it now seems power supply was not required & usb would have been fine & not the cause of my issue.Does anything ever go smooth:) jeez

I spent ages deciding wether to buy another hifi separate cd player or to move into the 21st century and get a DAC. My old Technics CD player was really good but I hadn’t used it for a long time and when I recently plugged it in it finally decided to start skipping and jumping. I thought the way round this would be to carefully clean the laser mechanism which I did. Sadly it didn’t make any difference. Even though the Technics was in first class condition it had this fault and I tried everything to sort it out to no avail. So at that point I was faced with the choice of buying a new CD player which would cost me between £250-£400 or biting the bullet and moving over to the new way of working.I looked at lots of price tags from the sort of £60 small metal box gadgets up to the sort of £500 semipro range and for my purposes I decided I only wanted to spend up to about £200 so again having reviewed the market, I decided to make the move buy this particular model. I’m so glad I did because the sound quality is absolutely mind blowing. It’s fantastic and far better than I ever remember my technics CD player being. The other good thing is that I can play my PC games using this device as the sound processing unit. Now whilst the DACs and the electronics on motherboards are okay most of the time for a lot of people, if you want to move to a really, really high end sound you need to buy either a very good soundcard, which itself can cost between £200-£300 or an external device like this particular model. So, that was the two things I needed - high-quality CD rips and excellent sound for PC based gaming. So this device fitted the bill 100% for both I and I can’t complain at all at the price of £99. It is amazing. So what do you get for £99 well basically in the box there’s a few stickers some super small printed instructions. A guarantee card a QuickStart guide the dac itself and probably the shortest USB cable that’s ever been produced. I was expecting a fairly decent, but nothing out of this world unit and to be honest I wasn’t disappointed because if you imagine a small sky Q type box which is very very well made that’s the sort of thing you get yes it’s plastic but it’s extremely nicely put together. It’s got a lovely volume control knob which is spun aluminium the sockets are gold plated it looks really good even though it is plastic so when you hold it it’s got a nice dimpled tactile feel and everything about it feels high-quality apart from the material which high grade is plastic. The unit itself is a lot smaller than I expected. It’s about 6 inches long by about 4 inches deep and an inch and a half high. It sits on your desk and it’s so small you can forget about it so if you are short on space, this is the perfect unit for you, but don’t let that make you think it’s not really good because it is. I love it as I said sound quality build quality both brilliant it plugs in it just plays no configuration needed. Literally USB goes into PC and in my case RCA outputs straight to my hi-fi amp and it works instantly I didn’t have to do a thing. Windows 11 automatically recognised it and set that up as my new audio device and it’s just a case of turning up the volume knob and time Bobs your uncle so really, really love it everything about it is perfect if I had to knock any marks off it would be like half a mark or maybe a bit less for the USB cable that is included it is so short, it’s about a foot long, which for all intents and purposes is pretty useless so my advice would be if you can. Id buy this unit by a USB cable at the same time. It’s not a standard do a bit of research get yourself a decent USB cable, and apart from that you should be cooking with Gas! Also, the device has something called extra-base which is like a low frequency boost but it’s not muddy. It’s really solid. It gets the base pumping and it worked across a range of music types so that kind of sealed the deal for me. I certainly will be hoping this thing lasts me for a long long time. Not sure how long the guarantee is probably only 12 months but if it stays as good as it is now I’m going to have a happy time with this unit enjoy!

A real upgrade to an onboard PC DAC, and much more detailed & energetic than any budget DAC. You will only hear the benefit with top end headphones or a very precise amp/speaker setup. My PC's DAC is great for general high quality sound, but the Zen Air allows my audiophile headphones to work at their full potential when listening to the best sound files.

I have an A320M motherboard with a DAC that is sub-par and an amp that doesn't make my HD560s's loud enough, even though they have such a low sensitivity. This DAC/AMP solved that issue as it gets loud without power-match and ear deafeningly loud with it on while having no noticeable distortion. The XBass+ is a cool feature to have especially with songs that seem to lack the low end on open back headphones like my 560s. It does however produce audible distortion in vocals on some songs that already have a good low end presence without it on like "All of this" by Jorja Smith. Haven't experienced clipping sound or the DAC going to "sleep" as mentioned by other comments. I am using the latest drivers on IFI's site and the 7.4C firmware with the GTO filter(cant really hear much of a difference though from how it was before I installed any firmware). The volume knob feels really sturdy and the build quality is decent even though it is plastic. All in all, very satisfied with the product!