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IFi Audio announced yesterday an upgraded version of their “balanced” DAC, Pre- and HP-Amp NEO iDSD, called - who will wonder about that – NEO iDSD 2. I tried to have a short preview on the documents but gave up on quick & short and allow myself to show you more details on the available information than I was expecting this morning. The device is announced at 899 Euro/USD/GBP. I need to excuse my typo, initially I wrote 699.

[EDIT] My summary on the NEO iDSD (Version 1) reads like this

" Personally, I’d love to see
- a more potent HPA as we know from the micro iDSD series,
- a fully balanced design including a dual mono DAC chip implementation,
- a filter selection option (which may arrive with an alternative firmware flavor),
- an USB port with iPurifier technology built
- and an analog input.

These are desired features we already are accustomed to by the existing iFi audio portfolio. If they would be available, the NEO iDSD could have been described as the unit you have wished for.
Presenting to their customers a potent adaptive solution to use the 4.4mm balanced output sans paying extra for new can cabling, providing a better USB cabling length and perhaps more functional remote possibility via BT could be considered the icing on that cake."

That's a lot and Ifi Audio fought an uphill battle to get better, to be fair, it's quite difficult if you already own the "King of the Hill"

UPHILL!

If you hadn’t been convinced on the first edition of the NEO IDSD because you missed these 8 A’s:

-    - A 10MHz clock via BNC (75 Ohm)

-    - A “single-ended” analog input via unbalanced 3.5mm

      - A better design for the remote control

      - And more intuitive-functional buttons on the device itself

      - A filter selector option - the device now (as seen already with the interim Performance Edition) allows to select between 4 filters of choice

      - A five-times more powerful headphone amp for both – unbalanced and balanced outputs - max. 2.832mW/5.551mW @32 Ohm

      - And 4 different gain settings from -12dB up to +16dB

      - An app on Android and IOS for setting up the device and manage OTA updates.

this device will be right up your alley.

Even more when you are that kind of Bluetooth enthusiast that was waiting for BT 5.4 and the 2022 introduced APTx Lossless codec in a brand-new DAC/PRE- & HP-AMP.

I can see that some of the critical points I’ve amended with my 2021/22 review of the first gen NEO iDSD had found open ears chez iFi.
And I really like that!

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DOWNHILL!

There are some other points which may have not been inside their development budget and I may still feel that I would be good with investing close to the 4 digits’ mark if they  would consider to work on the following points.

1.  Cabling
In my review from 2021/22 I have written about the odd cabling situation when using the device in an upright standing mode, and I am still not convinced having the power cable on the top end of device will prove very comfortable.

The cable situation in regard of the supplied extras is still scarce - no balanced cable and no 4.4mm adapter are supplied with this edition. However, the power supply seems to be upgraded to the iFi power 2, which I assume may have at least 9V / 1.5 A

2. The hardware side

- the collection of Bluetooth codecs is upgraded to the 5.4 standard and  enhanced by the 2022 AptX lossless codec, which - from the data I have seen - seems to be even closer to almost lossless than the LDAC or AptX HD codecs we know. Even this may occur as an important milestone, you will find out only in a couple of month (or years - if you are rational like me with your smartphone renewal) if the performance will suit your ears.

This is a generic problem of early adaptors and in my view not really a first mover advantage I may conclude.

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- I actually would have hoped that iFi would step ahead providing a BT output to wireless cans and pods, but my search of the documentation couldn’t confirm that.

- I could see that adding a HDMI arc option or AES/EBU would bring this device in another league.

- the fully balanced DAC/PRE still seems to hide inside a marketing-fog of “twin mono topology” which may or may not be different from what we know as dual mono design topology.

- They use for example still one single Burr Brown DAC chip which may or may not be a proprietary design for iFi only, because no-one else (including TI/Burr Brown) uses the term “Burr-Brown DAC chip’s four-channel True Native design“ except of this website, which seems to be a grab-site of ancient iFi-Audio web information (according to a search with Brave indicating the “ “search term with -iFi).

- I would have wished for a well-known and anticipated solution like we had with the iFi Micro iDSD BL, sporting a true dual mono design with dual mono DAC, dual Mono analogue stage and dual mono pre-amp as a basis for this balanced design.

3. The TI Burr Brown DAC chip chart: iDSD

Looking at TI’s chart about their standard offers on DAC chips, I can’t directly conclude that iFi may still use chips from the BB 179x series as they did with iFi Micro iDSD BL (BB 1793). At least for me it isn’t obvious when they call it 4 channel & true native DSD design.

4. Loss of accessories

We can note the lack of additional iFi accessory like iPurifier3 and Spdif iPurifier2 compared to the Performance Edition, which were a welcomed add-on for that product.

As always, it’s a personal choice if you like a device or not ...
Me personally can’t say that I would go this route, even I love my iFi products absolutely for what they are and for what they deliver.
Ifi, I am still feeling you can do better, even without Thorsten Loesch. Perhaps straighten up the portfolio could help to avoid too many overlaps?

Cheers, Tom

Here are the ifi documents which are the basis fort this blog entry. I didn't touch a NEO iDSD v2..

NEO-iDSD-2-Briefing-Deck.pdfNEO-iDSD-2-Briefing-Deck.pdfNeo-iDSD2-User-Manual_Ver22.pdfNeo-iDSD2-User-Manual_Ver22.pdfPRESS-RELEASE-–-iFi-NEO-iDSD-2-Global.pdfNEO-iDSD-2_QSC_V8.pdf