🔷 iFi Hip-DAC

That’s very strange. People in the Elegia thread loved the hip-dac + Elegia. But I also saw you changed the pads. Did you try the stock pads? And do you have glasses off when you play them?

I tried with both stock pads and dekoni sheepskin pads. no glasses. Im not sure about others, I only know about myself. The focal elegia only sounds half as good with the ifi hip dac, than with a smsl sp200. the ifi hip dac bottlenecks it too much, thats what I dont like.

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Personally not a huge fan of the hip + elegia myself, imo it gets too sloppy and isn’t really all that technically proficient, not really what I tend to be after with the elegia. I think something like an xdsd or idsd micro bl (nano bl is solid as well) is more acceptable there, but the hip is way too colored and really doesn’t have good control for the elegia imo

Huh. Interesting. Not that I own Elegia but I guess I’ll keep that in mind.

The Hip is not my favorite source for the Elegia but it works well for me as a portable. I tend to like the iFi warmth and the XBass is there when I want a silly lively sound. Mostly it gets the job done for me. I will probably upgrade at some point to either the xDSD or a dedicated DAP. Leaning more towards the DAP route these days.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say the Elegia only sounds “half as good” as it sounds off my other sources, but it’s definitely not as refined as when I listen at my desktop.

question… do any of you use firmware 5.3C with that GTO filter, does it sound better than standard filter? it shouldn’t effect MQA but I just wonder

is the data in proprietary or can I just use any female cable with the right size?

You can use any cable but the problem is that the connection is an odd size that a lot of cables won’t fit.

If it’s anything like the BL then it seems like any third party cable from Amazon should do. I bought one from CableMatters and it works perfectly.

ah well I guess I’ll have to hold them tightly for now.

I dunno if anyone has mentioned this but I thought I’d throw it in here just in case. No pun intended.

I was buying a case for my WD “My Passport” external hard drive and when it came I thought, hmm, that looks like the hip-dac would fit perfectly with all the cords… and I was right! So I bought another one. So, FYI if you carry your hip-dac around a lot and want a small, shock-proof case!

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AWESOME! do you have a link?

Here is the exact one that I bought, though it looks like they’re sold out of most of the patterns. But I imagine you could buy any case that says a “WD My Passport” will fit! There are a lot of other sellers and variations.

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dumb thought but i heard one person suggest put an AQ jitterbug in the mix with the hipdac but the hipdac also recommends a USB 3.0 port when on a computer

Tip: It is preferable to use a USB 3.0 port over using a USB 2.0 port on the PC. (from the hipdac manual revision 1.4)

and the jitterbug lowers the speed to 2.0

Therefore, the JitterBug can be inserted into any available USB port, including USB 3.0 ports of an audio device and USB ports of any device that works at Low, Full, and High-Speed USB.

However, when partnering JitterBug with hard drives that use the USB 3.0 interface, performance will be decelerated to High-Speed USB. (from audioquests website)

what should I do, I want to have the increase in quality from a USB filter but also dunno if the jitterbug will work on the system and if it doesn’t maybe I should go with the isilencer or even without a filter

I bought a BTR5 and was going nuts trying to get it to play master tracks from Tidal over 48khz sampling rate until I was educated that it is not capable of decoding the MQA format Tidal uses. Bluetooth isn’t important to me, so I picked up the hip-DAC so I could finally take advantage of the extra $10/mo I’ve been paying. I eagerly plugged it into my LG G8 and the bitrate lights shine green, indicating “44/48/88/96 kHz” instead of magenta which would indicate MQA. What am I doing wrong? Help please.

Make sure you have the drivers installed: https://ifi-audio.com/firmware/mqa/

You should be on the correct firmware by default unless you got it used and previous owner changed it: https://ifi-audio.com/mqa-firmware/

The video explaining how to do it shows them simply connecting the phone to the DAC (xDSD) with the usb cable, playing a master quality track, and it works (magenta LED). I’ll double check the firmware, but I just bought it new, so I’m not optimistic that will be the fix.

the hip dac bass boost is probably one of the most ESSENTIAL THINGS I HAVE EVER USED

like both my sr80s(which feel like they were made for bass boost) and the 58X (which i previously complained about its bass and its flatness) felt so much more alive and have so much vigor, I have no idea that subbass could hit THIS hard and it feels despite from what many say its a more “subtle” experience it hits like bricks and is just pure power… it gives the grados this nice U shape where the trebel is definitely there as well as the a deep bass… like moodymanns got me going back right now feels so fun

though these grados are REDICULOUSLY easy to power at only around 11 o clock and any louder the trebel hurts like shit

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Nice! Bass boost is one thing iFi has down.

100% agree. Bass boost on the Hip Dac is not subtle. And with leaner sounding headphones it can really make them come alive on the right tracks.