xDSD
Buy
xDSD
Buy
iFi audio xDSD
Our portable DAC and headphone amplifier will improve the sound quality of your music.

Whether you are listening via headphones on the bus or via your system on the sofa, the award-winning xDSD makes your music sound better.

Wireless. Wired.

The xDSD is for people who love to listen — on the go or at home.

You choose wireless via Bluetooth® or wired via USB or SPDIF.

Apple or Android, DAP, games console or TV, just connect the xDSD and enjoy the ultimate audio experience.

iFi audio xDSD

Hi-Res. Future-proof.

The xDSD plays high-quality digital audio file formats up to DSD512. Listen to your favourite tracks as they were meant to be.

In love with Hi-Res streaming? Listen to Tidal HiFi and Spotify Premium with ease.

The xDSD is also MQA ready straight out of the box. Use with Tidal ‘HiFi’ on your computer or mobile.

And it’s fully Roon tested for easy set-up.

Bluetooth freedom

The convenience of Bluetooth® means your headphones connect to the xDSD, leaving your phone or chosen device wire free. Pop the xDSD in your pocket and it’s business as usual but with much better sound.

The xDSD boasts both aptX™ and AAC™ Bluetooth® for CD-like quality. With standard Bluetooth®, the sound quality drops by 30%, not so with the iFi Bluetooth® implementation. Just a little iFi magic for you!

iFi audio xDSD

Superior sonics

With amazing amplification, driven by 500 mW of power, the xDSD handles almost any headphones and it easily partners up with active home speakers.

And, of course, we’ve included our exclusive optional ‘sonic fine-tuning extras’ to add further nuances to your listening.

xBass+® cleans and restores the bass to give you a richer, deeper sound and 3D+® opens up your music to bring a live-concert atmosphere into your living room.

Perfectly balanced

iFi’s exclusive S-Balanced technology means that you gain the advantages of a balanced connection even when using an unbalanced one.

On headphones this means lower distortion, less interference, and reduce crosstalk.

xDSD by iFi audio

Smart. Stylish.

The battery lasts up to 10 hours and ‘smart’ tech ensures you enjoy optimum listening time adjusted according to your usage. The xDSD has a separate USB charging socket.

And finally, with its metallic chrome finish and elegant, ergonomic design, based upon the Japanese Zen garden, it puts the ‘x’ back into sexy.

Hi-res audio support is state-of-the-art with True Native® playback. It handles PCM data to 32-bit/768kHz, DSD up to DSD512 and single and double speed DXD.

Thanks to the Burr-Brown DAC chip’s four-channel True Native design, PCM and DSD take separate pathways – this enables DSD, as well as PCM, to remain ‘bit-perfect’ in its native form right through to analogue conversion. This is not the case with all DAC devices from other brands – even if DSD compatibility is stated, many such DACs convert DSD signals to PCM.

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Connect your phone or device wirelessly via aptX™ and AAC™ Bluetooth®.  Whatever your device, we’ve got it covered. Read more on iFi’s take on Bluetooth® here.

We use the USB Type-A connector as it provides a more stable audio connection for better playback and because of the OTG cable for Android and CCK Lightning to USB cable for Apple. The 3.5mm coaxial/TOSLINK combo SPDIF input allows connection to older DAPs and CD players.

Battery life is up to 10 hours. Charging is via the separate USB charging cable included.

The Burr-Brown True Native® chipset means file formats remain unchanged or ‘bit-perfect’. This means you are listening to music as the artist intended in the format in which it was recorded.

At iFi we use Burr Brown extensively in our products having selected it for its natural-sounding ‘musicality’ and True Native architecture. Our experience with this IC means we know how to make the most of it.

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Listen to Master Quality Authenticated audio straight out of the box. Connect to Tidal Masters and check the option to stream MQA.

Our video tutorials on You Tube show you how.

iFi’s exclusive S-Balanced® circuit delivers maximum performance from single-ended and balanced headphones alike.

See our Tech Note to dig deeper.

Support

USB Input: up to PCM768kHz & DSD512 (24.6/22.6MHz)
SPDIF Coaxial and Optical Input: up to 192kHz/24Bit
Dynamic Range: > 113dB (A)
Volume Control: -101dB…0dB in 1dB steps
Output power: > 2.82V/500 mW @ 16 Ohm
> 3.7V/270mW @ 50 Ohm
> 3.8V/48 mW @ 300 Ohm
> 3.8V/24 mW @ 600 Ohm
Line out Level: > 2.1V @ 0dBFS (& 0dB Volume)
THD &N (1V/16R): < 0.005%
Output Impedance: < 1 Ohm
Battery: 3.8V/2200mAh
Dimensions: 95 (l) x67 (w) x19 (h) mm
Weight: 127g (0.28 Ibs)
Warranty period: 12 months

Reviews

IFI Audios X-DSD Hi-Res Bluetooth Portable usb dac headphone amp MQA/DSD !

Watch the full review here…

YouTube

(Click name to read original review)

Compare

micro iDSD BLxDSDnano iDSD BL
Primary useTransportablePortablePortable
Headphone Output6.3mm3.5mm3.5mm
iEmatchYesYes / AutoYes
3D MatrixOn / OffOn / Off-
XBassOn / OffOn / Off-
Max. power4,000mW @ 16 Ohm500mW @ 16 Ohm285mW @ 30 Ohm
Output Impedance<1 Ohm (Direct)<1 Ohm (Direct)<1 Ohm (Direct)
<4 Ohm (iEmatch) <4 Ohm (iEmatch) <4 Ohm (iEmatch)
Battery playback6-10 hours6-8 hours6-8 hours
Inputs
Bluetooth (aptX / AAC)-Yes-
USBYesYesYes
SPDIFIn / OutIn-
Line OutRCA-3.5mm
DACBurr-Brown (Dual)Burr-BrownBurr-Brown
FormatsPCM768 / DSD512 / 2xDXDPCM768 / DSD512 / 2xDXDPCM384 / DSD256 / DXD
Filter switchBit-Perfect / Min Phase / StandardListen / MeasureListen / Measure
MQAYesYesYes
ClockLow-jitter crystal clockLow-jitter crystal clockLow-jitter crystal clock
DAC (Digital-to-Analogue Converter)

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.

DAP (Digital Audio Player)

A DAP is a device like an iPod or an MP3 player that stores and/or plays back music digitally.

DSD (Direct Stream Digital)

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.

Spotify Premium

Spotify Premium allows you to listen better quality music. It’s all about bitrates. The bitrate is the amount of data processed over a certain amount of time. The higher the bitrate, the better the quality.

On normal Spotify you listen at 96kbps, the ‘standard’ bitrate on mobile or at 160kbps, ‘standard quality’ on desktop and ‘high quality’ on mobile.

With Spotify Premium, you get 320kbps which is ‘high quality’ on desktop and ‘extreme quality’ on mobile. Basically, more bitrates for your buck.

MQA (Master Quality Authenticated)

MQA is an award-winning British technology that delivers the sound of the original master recording. The master MQA file is fully authenticated and is small enough to stream or download. More here.

Tidal Masters

Tidal is a subscription-based audio streaming platform, similar to Apple Music and Spotify, but with lossless-quality audio. Tidal Masters is the section with the highest-fidelity music streamed including some files in partnership with MQA.

Lossless-quality means that no music quality is lost in this format.

AAC

AAC is one of the most commonly-supported Bluetooth codecs in the wireless headphone and speaker markets. It’s also the default audio compression codec used by Apple’s iTunes and YouTube and is supported across both iPhone and Android smartphones.

Balanced 'v' Unbalanced

Let’s talk headphone cables.

An unbalanced headphone cable has a left + and right + wire, for each respective side. The other, the third – wire is shared by both left & right channels. As this is shared, this gives rise to undesired coupling noise which is commonly referred to as ‘crosstalk.’

A balanced cable has the same left + and right +. But it has a separate left – and right -. With totally separate wiring ‘crosstalk’ is negligible.

Therefore, a balanced connection is the superior headphone wiring configuration.

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