iFi ZEN Air CAN Headphone Amplifier Offers Clarity, Reliability, and Muscular Volume

The ZEN Air CAN is a powerful, hi-res home analog amplifier that provides greater headphone enjoyment with any analog source such as your PC, Mac, smartphone, tablet, streamer or TV. Enjoy an improved headphone experience with the ZEN Air CAN.

The ZEN Air CAN is an amplifier pure and simple. It simply takes an input signal from a source such as those mentioned above and creates a larger copy of the original signal before it's sent to your headphones. Think about listening to sound with your hands over your ears and then removing them! Adding the ZEN Air CAN into your system is a little like that – back comes clarity of sound as well as volume.

The ZEN Air CAN comes with three gain settings so that it works well with every pair of headphones or in-ear monitors (also known as IEMs). What is gain? Gain in audio terms refers to an amplifier's ability to increase the amplitude (size) of the signal from the source (input) to the headphones or speakers (output). More gain equals a stronger signal. You will need to adjust the gain depending on the sensitivity of the headphones or iEMs you are using. For example, highly sensitive headphones need lower gain. Play around with the settings. Trust your ears.

The ZEN Air CAN has two different headphone sockets – 6.3mm single-ended and 4.4mm S-Balanced. There are basically two types of headphone – single-ended and balanced. In a nutshell, single-ended is the most common but the balanced option is often considered the better as it offers more power and control of the headphones. S-Balanced technology gives you all the benefits of a balanced connection – lower noise, less crosstalk – but without the need for balanced headphones.

The ZEN Air CAN boasts a couple of sonic tweaks, unique to iFi. XBass is analog bass boost. In other words, it extends the bass response to suit different headphones. XSpace is an analog headphone spatialiser. This opens up your music to give you the spaciousness of a live-concert atmosphere.

As with many other iFi audio products, we've incorporated a custom OV Series operational-amplifier. This top-notch component contributes to the extremely low noise, low distortion (0.0001%) and wide bandwidth.

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.

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.

And, like all Music Direct products, the iFi ZEN Air CAN Headphone Amplifier comes with the 100% Music Direct Satisfaction Guarantee.