IFi ZEN CAN — Desktop Analogue Headphone Amplifier

Your headphones will sound like never before with this all-analogue headphone amplifier.

Nitro for your headphones. Fully-balanced. 1,600mW.

ZEN CAN sports many features usually reserved for high-end headphone amps. The ability to drive tough headphone loads, the balanced circuit design, the low levels of distortion, and versatile sonic tailoring options to optimize — all highly unusual at such an affordable price tag. 

• Balanced, dual-mono analogue circuit design
• High-quality, discrete circuit components
• Capable of driving even tough headphone loads
• Four-step adjustable gain – 0dB, 6dB,12dB, 18dB
• Switch on the optional 3D dual-analogue matricies to compensate for in-head localization and enhance soundstage
• Switch on the optional ‘XBass’ analogue EQ adjustment to rebalance bass-light headphones
• Includes basic 5V power supply

All analogue

As an all-analogue headphone amp, the ZEN CAN has no digital input of any kind, USB or otherwise. It connects to any audio source with an analogue output, such as the headphone output from a DAP (Digital Audio Player), a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, or the RCA outputs from, say, a CD player or phono stage. 

ZEN CAN is frequently combined with the ZEN DAC to upgrade the DAC’s basic headphone amp stage. It could also be paired with the ZEN Blue to add Bluetooth reception. 

As well as a headphone amp, ZEN CAN doubles as a preamp to feed a power amp and speakers or a pair of active speakers.

Gain as you please

Beside the power button and input switch resides a control for selecting the appropriate gain. Four settings in six dB steps – 0dB, 6dB, 12dB and 18db – enable the amp to precisely suit the connected headphones; unity gain (0dB) is useful to ensure low noise with sensitive in-ear monitors, while the higher gain settings make the most of tougher headphone loads, delivering excellent dynamic headroom.

Sonic tailoring

Next to the headphone sockets is a button to engage the latest versions of iFi’s ‘XBass’ and ‘3D’ sonic tailoring options for headphones. XBass adjusts frequency response to enhance low frequency performance – particularly useful with open back headphones that ‘leak’ deep bass. 3D compensates for the ‘in-head localisation’ effect that often occurs when using headphones to listen to music that was mixed using a pair of speakers, effectively widening the headphone soundstage to deliver a more speaker-like experience. Both XBass and 3D engage purely analogue processing and may be bypassed entirely if preferred.

Circuit highlights

The ZEN CAN’s circuitry is a balanced, symmetrical dual-mono design – a topology usually reserved for high-end headphone amps. Balanced circuits have long been championed by renowned high-end audio electronics engineer John Curl, now a technical consultant for iFi, given their ability to reduce noise within the signal path. Curl has worked closely with iFi’s in-house technical team, headed by Thorsten Loesch, to produce an analogue circuit of exceptional quality for a device of this kind.

ZEN CAN offers prodigious drive capability for such a modestly priced headphone amp, delivering 1600mW (7.2V) into 32 ohms from the single-ended output, with 15V+ available to loads of 300 ohms or more through the balanced output, ensuring the ZEN CAN takes even current-hungry planar headphones in its stride.

Perfect pairing

Combine and stack ZEN CAN with ZEN DAC for a great little desktop head-fi system. Use the iFi 4.4mm interconnect cable for the best balanced performance, or connect with the included RCA cables. 

Dimensions: 158 x117 x35 mm | 6.2″ x 4.6″ x 1.4″