This audio streamer promises "a world's first for home audio" – iFi brings the studio to your Hi-Fi

iFi has announced a new premium DAC, network streamer and headphone amp: the iDSD Phantom.

Based on the iDSD Pro, it's a premium product with very high specification, including studio-grade DSD2048 conversion, a rebuilt streaming engine, and "markedly greater" output headroom.

That headroom is provided by a powerful Class A headphone amp that delivers an impressive 7,747mW of peak output, and it's teamed with a quad-DAC architecture and iFi's audio enhancement technologies.

The updated streaming engine delivers 768kHz/DSD512 digital audio from services including Qobuz Connect and TIDAL Connect, and the Phantom also works with external hard drives and NAS drives.

Its companion app has been upgraded to support Wi-Fi linking for connection to the Phantom from anywhere in your home.

iFi iDSD Phantom: key features and pricing

One of the big selling points here is the Phantom's studio-grade DSD2048 conversion via iFi's Chrysopoeia FPGA mastering engine. This uses proprietary remastering algorithms and reduces jitter to deliver a clean, stable and precisely timed signal to the conversion stage, with the bitstream then converted to analogue using the same modulator that would be used in DSD recording.

As the brand explains: "No digital filtering or volume control is applied to DSD – the latter is handled in the analogue domain, preserving the signal’s purity."

At DSD2048, the 1-bit stream is sampled around 90 million times per second for exceptionally low distortion and extraordinary sonic fidelity.

The Phantom is the latest iFi device to feature JVCKenwood's K2HD restoration technology, which brings back musical harmonics lost during the production/encoding processes.

And iFi's own XBass Pro and XSpace Pro can shape the sound to suit your particular preferences, with the former delivering fully analogue variable shelving EQ that can deliver increased bass on open-back headphones without clouding the mid-range.

The quad-DAC architecture features four interleaved Burr-Brown DSD1793 DACs in a custom interleaved configuration, delivering what iFi says is "superior low-level linearity". The output stage uses real-time circuitry switching of the discrete J-FET solid-state and NOS GE5670 tube stages for three distinct user output topologies.

The iFi DSD Phantom is available now from ifi-audio.com and select retailers with a price tag of £4,499 / $4,499 / €4,695 (about AU$9,005).