INTRODUCTION

    Battery powered portable DACs have been gaining popularity this past decade and well, if you're a really demanding consumer they are the easiest way to improve audio on the go. Yes, the good models are not that small since they do require larger rechargeable battery packs (among other electronics) but still "sacrificing" your entire pocket to get the best audio possible out of your portable device is not a serious drawback. The only question is which battery powered portable DAC to get your hands on and well, you can't go wrong picking one by the top manufacturers in the market. iFi audio is certainly among them and today with me i have their latest hip dac 3 Portable USB DAC & Headphone Amplifier.

    iFi audio is a UK based manufacturer of desktop and portable high-end audio equipment. Innovative high-end audio should be available to everyone, everywhere, so iFi uses the latest technology, materials and consumer feedback to provide an audiophile quality listening experience at an affordable price. You listen to music, we listen to you.

    The hip dac 3 is the successor to the award winning hip dac and hip dac 2 flask-shaped DACs released in 2019 and 2021 respectively which this time over is offered with a housing made of aluminum and with their new titanium shadow color (according to them it’s exclusive to the hip dac 3). Inside the compact aluminum chassis iFi audio has placed a 16-core XMOS low-latency processor (2000MIPS/512KB) together with a Burr Brown true-native DAC (true balanced circuit design), custom OV OP amp, TDK COG capacitors, analogue volume pot and an 2200mAh lithium polymer rechargeable battery pack. This hardware configuration gives the hip dac 3 decoding support for Hi-Res PCM/DXD content of up to 32-bit/384kHz and of course up to DSD256 (MQA format is also supported). iFi audio has also equipped the hip dac 3 with a power knob, LEDs (change color according to audio format, sampling rate and battery life), 3.5mm port (280mW at 32Ω), balanced 4.4mm port (400mW at 32Ω) and two USB-C ports (one for audio and one for device charging – DC 5V). Finally, iFi audio has added several of their technologies to the hip dac 3 including IEMatch (audio normalization), PowerMatch (higher gain) and an XBass (richer bass). Not having tested the hip dac 2 means I can’t really do a direct comparison with the hip dac 3 but still let’s see what it’s capable of.