iFi Audio Zen CAN Headphone Amplifier

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.

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

Audio recordings are made for speakers and when played back on headphones, the sound is always driving you nuts by being only in your head. 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)

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.

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 even at low volume