iFi Zen Air Blue HD Bluetooth DAC

iFi ZEN Air Blue DAC Offers Amazing Sound from a Compact Chassis with a Terrific Price

Despite its small chassis, you can enjoy maximum sound quality from Bluetooth audio with the ZEN Air Blue DAC — at an unbelievable price. 

This premium Bluetooth audio receiver converts Bluetooth audio streams from smartphones, computers, or tablets into an audio stream suitable for headphones, amplifiers, and active loudspeakers (which run on their own DC power). The ZEN Air Blue DAC allows you to experience remarkable sound quality from your device (smartphone, computer, or tablet) because it operates at the highest audio resolution level of any Bluetooth system. 

The Bluetooth system inside has been upgraded by iFi to avoid the 40% drop in audio quality that listeners typically experience with standard Bluetooth designs (as compared to wired audio). 

The ZEN Air Blue DAC is the ideal way to wirelessly connect your smart device to a sound system for superb, high-resolution performance. Just connect your laptop, smartphone, or tablet to the ZEN Air Blue via Bluetooth, and connect the ZEN Air Blue to your amplifier or active speakers via the RCA connections at the back, and you’re ready to rock.

All current and future Bluetooth audio formats are supported. This includes aptX and aptX HD, aptX Low Latency, aptX Adaptive, LDAC, and LHDC — high-res Bluetooth codecs created by Sony and Huawei respectively — AAC, Apple's favored format, and SBC, the standard Bluetooth codec. Basically, whatever device you are using for streaming music via Bluetooth, the ZEN Air Blue has got you covered.

The iFi Bluetooth implementation does not use a standard SOC (System On a Chip) approach, as seen elsewhere. It uses a combination of high-quality elements to extract the most from each stage. The Qualcomm chip routes the raw, digital Bluetooth signal to a specialized Sabre DAC chip to convert the signal from digital to analog. 

Any jitter is eliminated using the GMT Femto-precision clock system to deliver Bluetooth that is a cut above. The design features a discrete ESS Sabre Hyperstream DAC chipset with a time-domain jitter eliminator, a discrete oscillator, and a 112dB dynamic range for discerning listeners. 

Premium Build Quality 

The Texas Instruments low-noise ICs offer great unity-gain bandwidth, very low noise, and distortion, high output drive capability, Common-mode and Power Supply Rejection Ratios of over 100 dB, wide maximum-output-swing bandwidths, and high slew rates. The TDK C0G (Class 1 ceramic) capacitors offer high stability and low losses for resonant circuit applications. Getting ever closer to the theoretical ideal of pure, frequency-constant capacitance, these capacitors reduce capacitor-induced distortion to vanishingly low levels.

Technical Specs