So for my unpaid work in a store I am given a discount to buy whatever I want from that store and I am looking for an end-game headphone amp. So if you would get to have one of this for your entire life to use it on your headphone what would you chose? for context my current DAC is a Qtest and in the end will (hopefully) be upgraded to a Rockna Wavelight after I deal with amp and streamer.
0 voters
If the iFi is free vs other options for you, isn’t that kinda a no brainier? Couldn’t complain about getting something like that for free lol
What part of “free” isn’t grabbing your attention?
Going to have to keep echoing what’s been said already. Hard to argue with getting an iCAN Signature for the exceptional price of free. Even if you for some reason don’t like it, you can always sell it for pure profit and buy something that more closely suits your preferences.
Only reason I could see to get something other than the ifi would be if you have susvara and want to drive them to their best with the benchmark but otherwise the ifi is the better Allrounder
Selling it means I lose money. They do not have a show room, so I didn’t try the amps. Since I plan to keep these for a very long time, I was considering paying a little extra. Sparkos I can mod with op-amps, AHB2 has all the power I will ever need, and iCAN is cheap.
I never heard anyone powering an iCAN with a Ferrum PSU. I know their amp is about the same price and it really benefits from the upgrade, but didn’t heard anyone upgrading the iCAN PSU .
Sure, but if it was free to you, it’s still free money back correct?
You can, although that really is mainly designed for their own opamps, so I don’t know how fruitful it would be messing with opamps in there tbh. I never messed with them when I had one in house so I can’t comment, but I’d imagine that their own opamps would probably end up sounding the best (simply because it was designed around them specifically, from a company that’s known for making opamps)
Really any of these amps fulfill a power requirement for most all cans, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it that
Sooooooo, is it actually free? Or basically free as in really cheap?
Would be an interesting test. I think the signature now ships with their ipower elite which is ifi’s flagship psu, but I bet you could take it farther with something like the ferrum or other psu in that range (although if that benefit would actually justify the cost would remain to be seen, could end up being a case of money better spent elsewhere in the chain or on a different amp)
I guess an important question would be what headphones are you going to be running on these amps, or planning to run on them? IMO it’s pretty critical to make sure they properly match well with the amps before pulling the trigger on something. You already know what dac you’re looking towards, and I think that could be a good pairing with all of them, although it’s going to be very forward with the benchmark or sparkos
The Hypsos has the Pro iCAN and the iDSD as an option in it’s menu, I just checked on mine. So I see no reason why you couldn’t use it with the Signature.
the discount covers it’s entire price it is actually free, but since I am looking at it as end game, I don’t look at financial aspect that much and I am willing to put in some extra money just not have to worry about the amp part.
My best headphone so far is Arya, and I plan to get Atrium, Thror, Ether C, and maybe Stelia. I am not sure I will ever go for Susvara because that will require 6-9000Euro in amplification alone. Maybe if my life takes a drastic upturn but that’s a different story for another time. 
Honestly, because of that, I’d still go for it first. Because if you don’t like it, you can sell it and still get free money back to put toward something else. And if you do like it, then there you go lol
I’ve only tried the arya and ether c on the pro ican, worked pretty well if you wanted something to focus on overall slam and impact, warmth and richness, and nice macrodynamics. Although personally I thought resolution was a bit lacking for the price point, can sometimes get muddled, and spatially wasn’t that impressive for me, and I think from an overall technical perspective that really wasn’t their focus and they place more focus on something a bit more “fun”. I would personally say both the sparkos and benchmark offer a greater level of technical ability, although neither are as warm and rich as the ifi. Bass boost is great, 3d is only worthwhile for specific recordings (such as mono recordings remastered into stereo or recordings where they just shove instruments into either left or right).
I should say I’ve not tried the signature, and only the older pro ican, so hopefully they have improved the technicalities of the unit (although to what extent I’m not sure).
I would say if you did want to go for a different direction, imo out of those options I’d take the sparkos over the benchmark, but I never personally found the benchmark that impressive lol. It has the technicalities (somewhat), but it’s so inorganic, mechanical, and emotionless it just doesn’t sound convincing/realistic or engaging to listen to. In their effort to try and be extremely uncolored, they basically made something that sounds really colored lifeless and unrealistic to me lol, which is NOT what uncolored/transparent should sound like in my mind. The sparkos goes for a more neutral signature and somewhat similar goal but feels more convincing in it’s overall presentation and more engaging to listen to (and does have the technical edge to my ears)
Ha yeah, it’s a super needy headphone lol. Although you could consider a hekse to get some of that but not require that level of source
I am not an expert in high end amps, but I voted for the iFi Pro iCAN. I own the original version before the Signature series. I bought it used and it is still the most expensive piece of Head-Fi gear that I ever bought.
It is AWESOME! It is a magical combo with the HE6se V2’s and I only use mid-gain at 12:00. Bass boost is a very useful tool. It transforms the HE6se’s and adds a little kick to the Grado’s. The 3D sound effects are less useful, except with certain headphones (again, the HE6se’s).
Shortly after I got it my Liquid Platinum just became redundant. I just picked up a Rebel amp on trade, but I can see, in a month or two, the Pro making that redundant too.
It is a really capable amp with all my headphones. I like variety so I keep a few others around just for different sound signatures to play with.
But if I could only have one amp, it would be my little Swiss army knife, the Pro iCAN.