Audio brand iFi's new flagship DAC/Amp is enormously powerful and delivers DSD1024 upsampling, multiple audio enhancers, aptX Lossless and LDAC.
Available now, it's priced at £1,699 / $1,699 / €1,699 (about AU$3,489).
Audio brand iFi has announced a new flagship portable DAC/amp, the iDSD Valkyrie – and it promises "thunderous amounts of sonic control".
Inside its compact casing there's a quad-DAC architecture and 5,700mW of peak output power for the hungriest of headphones.
There's more to the Valkyrie than sheer power, though. It has four Burr-Brown DACs in a hybrid multi-bit configuration with the Philips TDA1541A, an iFi favourite. And it also includes the latest Qualcomm Bluetooth chipset with aptX Lossless and Hi-Res Audio via LDAC.
iFi Valkyrie: key features and pricing
The Valkyrie uses JVCKENWOOD's K2HD technology, which promises to restore the warmth and emotion of analogue recordings to your digital audio. There are two modes here, K2 and K2HD – the former preserving the files' original resolution.
In addition, the Valkyrie has iFi's bespoke DSD remastering algorithm powered by a custom-coded field-programmable gate array. There are two options here: normal, where the DSD signals are passed directly to the DAC and PCM signals are routed through a user-selectable digital filter, and remastering. That latter option gives you the choice of remastering to DSD512 or DSD1024.
The company says it's similar technology to the tech used in Sony's mastering studios, delivering increased resolution, reduced distortion and detailed sound "akin to a professionally mastered recording".
You can personalise the sound further with the six digital filters – Apodising, GTO, Bit Perfect, Standard, Minimum and Transient Aligned – and there are also three analogue processing features called XBassII, XPresence and XSpace.
XBassII recovers lost bass frequencies, XPresence enhances the midrange and vocals for more presence, and XSpace widens the soundstage. Those features are designed with open- and closed-back headphones in mind, and the Valkyrie also supports high-precision IEMs with xMEMS drivers.
You'd think that a device with such high output power would have a fairly short battery life, but iFi has thought of that too. The portable amp comes packing four 5,000mAh batteries for a total 20,000mAh of mobile power, delivering a promised 18 hours of continuous playtime. A full charge takes 2.5 hours.
The iFi iDSD Valkyrie is available directly from iFi and from its Elite dealer network. The RRP is £1,699 / $1,699 / €1,699 (about AU$3,489).
