- IDSD Valkyrie is IFI’s high -end DAC to date
- It is $ 400 / £ 400 more expensive than the previous flagship, Diablo 2
- … but it also has 44% more power
At this point, IFI Audio will be forgiven (the excellent sister company of Abbingdon Music Research, based in Southport, the United Kingdom) has existed for decades.
Actually, IFI was only formed in 2012, but in its brief mandate of 13 years, this pleasant audio outfit has already brought us some of the best DAC of portable headphones that we have tried. Even a quick look at our most recent IFI reviews is proof that this brave specialist firm does not rest on its laurels.
So what new and affordable piece of excellence in high resolution audio you have for you today? Well, how to put this?) This newest offer is not like your IFI go link of less than $ 100 max.
No, this is a solid step: towards the heavens, so to speak. If the word ‘Valkyrie’ remembers both magic and the idea of rubbing the shoulders with gods in the great halls of Valhalla, that is what Ifi wants you to think. Because although IDSD Diablo 2 of IFI was, ahem, diabolically expensive, this is very north of that.
IFI IDSD Valkrie: What elevates it a lot above the rest?
The main piece of technology you need to know in IDSD Valkyrie of IFI is K2HD. This is the renowned Jvckenwood coding solution that aims to restore the warmth and emotion of analog recordings to digital music (often considered a colder or more clinical listening). Valkyrie offers this technology in two flavors: ‘K2’ mode and ‘K2HD’ mode, where the first retains the original file resolution.
The following is the DSD 1024 remastering algorithm of IFI, fed by a codified custom FPGA (which means ‘Programmable field of fields’). Here, you can choose between the ‘normal’ configuration, in which the DSD signals pass directly to the DAC and PCM signals that pass through a digital filter selected by the user, or ‘remastering’, with options for Remaster to DSD512 or DSD1024, also known as high resolution audio.
In the main conversion from digital to analog, and Valkyrie wears a Quad Dac architecture, less than four Burr-Brown interwoven. He also obtains six digital filters to choose from, which include Apoding, Gto, perfect, standard, minimum and transitory bit aligned, which gives him more ways to explore the nuances in his music.
Valkyrie also presents unique IFI advantages, such as XBBASII (to expand the low end), Xpressence and Xspace. It also houses a 20,000 mAh battery for portability, with 18 hours of continuous game time, with a quick charge via USB-C in just 2.5 hours.
Ifi tells us that, unlike other products, Valkyrie uses switching analog circuits for its EQ modes, instead of digital signal processing (DSP). Because? It is an additional offer to preserve audio quality and allow a more natural frequency adjustment, with less phase and distortion change.
And could it be said that the biggest business here? Force. The IFI IDSD has a maximum 5,700MW output to drive the most hungry headphones of energy. And for clarity, that is approximately 44% more power than the aforementioned IFI IDSD IFI.
Ah, and if you are not using cable headphones, the best absolute quality in Bluetooth codec is compatible, including LDAC, APTX without losses and APTX adaptive.
Prices? Yes, but prepare. IFI IDSD is available as of today (March 25) with a price of $ 1,699 / £ 1,699, so around au $ 2,704, taking that American figure as an estimate, and knowing that devil 2 launched with a $ 1.299 / £ 1.299 / AU $ 2,199 rate.
How good is the IFI IDSD Valkyrie? We are working on that, we promise you.
