Top of line DAC and so much more.
The Pro iDSD Signature is our new flagship reference class DAC and then some! The Signature edition builds on the strengths of the original, multi-award winning Pro iDSD.
It continues to cater for those who love good music delivered at the highest quality.
Use the Pro iDSD Signature as a standalone unit, a DAC/preamp, a network streamer and a headphone amplifier.
A Signature step up
The Signature takes the original Pro iDSD and pushes it even further towards perfection.
The Pro iDSD Signature has:
- a sonically darker background and a punchier bass
- upgraded power -supply components to lower the overall system noise by 300%
- precisely matched NOS GE5670s tubes
- added support for USB1.0 (PS4/PS5)
- a new aluminium remote control
- a top-of the range iPower Elite power supply included
Check out some Listening notes from our Lead Tech here.
Stacked. With tech.
The Pro iDSD Signature uses a quad-stack DAC – 4 x DACs in an interleaved configuration – to deliver exceptional resolution.
The powerful XMOS XU216 X-Core 200 series chipset processes incoming digital data and enables the Pro iDSD Signature to provide state of the art audio support – from MP3, 32-bit/768kHz PCM, DSD512, 2xDXD and full MQA decoding.
Thanks to the Crysopeia FPGA Digital Engine the Pro iDSD Signature brings studio grade DSD remastering to a wider audience. It can upconvert PCM and DSD files to DSD512 and DSD1024.
And all controlled from an app in the palm of your hand.
E-tailoring
The Pro iDSD Signature, like its predecessor, takes sonic tailoring to the extreme.
Listen to the your music to in solid-state, tube or tube+ modes, your choice, all at the flick of a switch.
Our Crysopeia FPGA Digital Engine strikes again as it enables the Pro iDSD Signature to offer several options when it comes to digital filtering. The GTO filter adds gravitas and a new dimension, and while the Bit Perfect, Bit Perfect+, Apodising and Transient Aligned filters give you even more choices to tweak the sound.
The discrete, fully balanced Class A amplifier stage offers adjustable gain.
Your choice. The only choice.
- Stream wirelessly from Tidal, Spotify, Napster, QQ Music and more
- Use Airplay to enjoy playback from your iPhone, iPad or Mac
- Go wired via an Ethernet connection to play from a router or NAS (Network Attached Storage)
- Use DLNA network audio playback with smartphones, tablets, Windows/Linux computers
- Connect to a hard disc drive (HDD)
- Pop in a USB memory stick or SDHC card
And with a variety of headphone outputs – Single-Ended 6.3mm, S-Balanced 3.5mm and Balanced 4.4mm – the only choice is your choice.
Power cleans. Absolute.
The Pro iDSD Signature ships with our flagship iPower Elite.
Coupled with the re-crafted power supply board which offers up to 300x lower noise, the music is buttery smooth.
Within and without – we left no stone unturned in our quest for the cleanest, purest, power for the Pro iDSD Signature (same for Pro iCAN Signature too!)
DACs convert digital information, stored or streamed by computers, into music we can hear through speakers or headphones.
Every device that’s a source of digital sound has a built-in DAC (TVs, games consoles, CD players, phones, portable music players etc). Dedicated external DACs sound much better than standard DACs used in digital devices such as phones.
The Pro iDSD Signature is an MQA Decoder.
This enables you to play back MQA audio files and streams, delivering the sound of the original master recording. The LED glows green or blue to indicate that the unit is decoding and playing an MQA stream or file, and denotes provenance to ensure that the sound is identical to that of the source material. It glows blue to indicate it is playing an MQA Studio file, which has either been approved in the studio by the artist/producer or has been verified by the copyright owner.
MQA rendering technology (used in the original ZEN DAC among other iFi products) connects to an MQA Core signal (such as TIDAL) and completes the final unfold of an MQA file. Usually, the computer has carried out the decoding.
DSD is a very high-quality digital audio format that’s even better than CD quality. The higher the ‘DSD rate’ – DSD64, 128, 256, 512 and 1024 – the greater the amount of music information available, which means better sound quality.
Files can be remastered to higher file rates to improve sound quality. The pinnacle of this is DSD1024. Not many machines out there are capable of this feat.
A solid-state amplifier uses electronics such as diodes and transistors to amplify the music signal. A tube amp uses valves/vacuum tubes to do the same job.
There is a noticeable sound difference between the two methods. Some feel that tube amps create a warmer, more musical tone. Some companies choose to build ‘hybrid’ models that combine the two methods.
Gain is the amount of increase in audio signal strength. Gain is often expressed in decibels (dB).
Galvanic isolation is a design technique that separates electrical circuits to eliminate stray currents that contain noise. Signals can pass between galvanically isolated circuits, but stray currents, such as differences in ground potential or currents induced by AC power, do not pass. This means little or no noise interference to the audio signal from stray currents.
