The New iFi Audio ZEN Air Series

iFi Audio’s ZEN Series have been quite popular due to the combination of features and relatively low prices. 

The new line includes the ZEN Air DAC, ZEN Air Blue Streamer, ZEN Air Can Headphone Amplifier and ZEN Air Phono Preamplifier. All four models share the same case shape as their ZEN brethren but instead of a brushed aluminum chassis, the Air Series uses a polymer shell with each model being a slightly different shade of gray.  Internally, the new line takes the functionality of the corresponding ZEN product and distills them down to the core elements while simplifying some of the circuitry to help lower costs.    

The ZEN Air DAC differs from its ZEN counterpart by omitting the switchable fixed/variable preamp switch and the 4.4mm jack on the rear panel, and there is now an USB Type-B rather than the 3.1 version of the Zen DAC.  On the front, a 6.35mm port and an XBass+ switch are added for use as a headphone DAC/Amp. So while the ZEN Air DAC retains the ability to use it as a preamp and as a headphone amp, it is more limited in comparison to its big brother.  Internally the ZEN Air still uses the Burr-Brown chip that iFi has long favored in their product line and supports up to 32-bit/384kHZ PCM, DSD 256, and MQA rendering. This is the first place we see the cost saving as the ZEN DAC v2 in the current catalog uses MQA decoding rather than rendering.  

The ZEN Air Blue takes a similar approach in that the only output is a pair of RCA jacks on the rear panel. This was the most common use of the Zen Blue so iFi omitted the coaxial, optical, and 4.4mm balanced outputs to save money. The plus is this allowed them to simplify the output section and use an ESS SOC to handle the analog side while retaining all of the Bluetooth connectivity of the original. The Zen Air Blue still supports aptX HD, LDAC, LHDC, aptX Adaptive, AAC, and SBC. 

The ZEN Air Can again simplifies the circuitry so while we see what looks like a balanced input on the rear panel and on the front face-plate, a closer inspection shows these to be iFi’s proprietary S-Balanced connectors that allow the use of headphones with a balanced cable while not providing the fully balanced circuitry of the Zen Can.  The power is slightly reduced as well with an output of 1200mW with a 32 ohm load. The good news is that the Zen Air Can is still a Class A amplifier and still utilizes iFi’s “stealth mode”  linear power regulation and noise filtering. It also still has 3 input options (all analog) and supports three gain levels as well as XBass and XSpace functions.   So while slightly lower powered and single ended only, the ZEN Air Can still offers the functionality of the more expensive ZEN Can which will have a lot appeal for consumers. 

Vinyl listeners are not left out of the loop here with the brand new ZEN Air Phono that differs from the ZEN Phono by using a simpler power supply and omitting the balanced outputs.  The supply is isolated to a single section of PCB and is designed to provide clean 15V DC power without the added expense of the power supply design in the ZEN Phono that effectively acted as an isolation transformer regenerating the power from the mains to clean up any imperfections it introduced.  The connections are RCA input and outputs along with a grounding post for connection of your table’s ground wire. Gain levels have been reduced from the 4 on the ZEN model to a two-position switch for moving magnet or moving coil with 40dB and 64dB of gain respectively.  The plus side is the Zen Air Phono retains the -82dB SNR ratio of the ZEN Phono MC circuit which makes it one of the best measuring phono preamps available in its price range.