Shooting from the hip

The hip-dac2 replaces the inferior DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter) and amp circuitry in smartphones, tablets, PCs, and Macs to vastly improve headphone sound.

Connect your playback device via USB, plug in your favorite corded headphones or in-ear monitors, and the hip-dac2 delivers a sound brimming with bold dynamism and fluid refinement.

The Burr-Brown DAC chip is selected for its fluid, highly ‘musical’ sound quality and True Native architecture.  Together with iFi’s custom circuitry, this enables the hip-dac2 to deliver excellent sound quality across digital audio formats, including bit-perfect PCM, native DSD, and MQA.

The upgraded crystal clock eradicates jitter (digital distortion), using iFi’s GMT Femto precision clocking system. This maintains the integrity of the digital signal until conversion to analog and enhances sound quality.

MQA decoded

Thanks to the XMOS 16 core tech, the hip-dac2 is now an MQA Decoder rather than a Renderer only.

This enables you to playback 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.

Power hungry? hip-dac2 it!

The hip-dac2’s amp circuitry, like the original, is of balanced (differential) design.

The circuitry incorporates a range of high-quality components, carefully selected for their performance in an audio context, including a custom iFi OV op-amp, TDK C0G class 1 ceramic capacitors, a precision low-noise power supply IC from Texas Instruments, and a high-quality analog volume pot.

The amp stage can deliver 400mW into a 32-ohm headphone load, ensuring compatibility with a wide range of headphone and earphone types with power to spare. Even high-impedance headphones are handled with ease thanks to output voltage of 6.3V into 600 ohms (from the balanced output).

Switchable sonics

The amp stage features switchable gain, which we call PowerMatch. This matches the level of drive to the load presented by the headphones, by adjusting input sensitivity and thereby signal strength. Use the lower setting with high-sensitivity headphones. If your headphones require more drive, use PowerMatch to increase gain.

XBass is another user-selectable feature – a sophisticated form of ‘bass boost’ that enhances low frequencies without muddying the midrange, particularly useful with earphones and open-back headphones that may lack deep bass. It operates entirely in the analog domain rather than messing with the digital signal via DSP.

Get connected

There are two USB ports – Type A for audio data and USB-C for charging.  The Type-A port features a male connector to provide greater mechanical integrity than a USB/micro USB port commonly found on other DAC/headphone amps.

Two outputs are provided – a 3.5mm socket for headphones with a single-ended cable/connector and a Balanced 4.4mm output enabling headphones equipped with balanced connectivity to take full advantage of the hip-dac2’s differential amp design.

In addition, the 3.5mm output benefits from iFi’s proprietary S-Balanced circuitry, cutting crosstalk and related distortion in half when used with regular, single-ended headphone connections – this is especially beneficial with high-sensitivity in-ear monitors.