If you thought that review had too many word whiskers, donāt watch Josh Valourās review on this stack lol
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Minimal overlap, I emphasize. For one, he EQs just about everything. Iām not anti-eq but I think he takes it to an extreme. In his Elegia review he recommended using the Hip-Dac to power them, I overall agreed (great pairing) but thought he missed an opportunity to take that one step further by using a Zen (standard Zen) and a more powerful amp to try the bass boost. IMO the Hip-Dac bass boost + Elegia sounds really good but is a little sloppy. The Zen + Asgard 3 + Elegia is stellar though. In the video posted hear he praises the 6XXās mids. Admittedly Iām in the minority here because the 6XX midrange doesnāt work nearly as well for me. Again, I think heās a quality reviewer, very thorough, and does a good job teaching. I just have different tastes.
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Oh okay. Minimal overlap in tastes and the like. Makes sense. I thought you were disagreeing with something in particular he pointed out in the Zen video which would be pretty alarming.
Also minimal overlap means gear he and I both have experience with. Heās heard WAY more stuff than I have. But on those that Iāve also heard I have different impressions than him. Not always though. I agree with his overall assessment with the standard Zen being smooth and pretty good for the price. Overall, he and I both agree the Elegia is a pretty good headphone. And yeah, I like his approach to reviewa. Very professional.
This is kind of the reason I see his content. While audio is subjective, as an engineer I want some information and a lot of what he says make kind of sense to me, although I do think it sometimes get too complicated.
I also donāt know if I agree with him in taste as Iāve heard less than him (and less than you most likely), but I think his description on what he looks for is so clear that I know what to consider and what to adjust from his reviews.
In a side note: what happened to the world where the drop version is actually more expensive?!?
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so many word whiskers indicates to me they were struggling to find things to say.
One should also note that Julie from ifi pointed out another significant difference between the Drop Zen CAN signature and the āordinaryā Zen CAN in the Drop discussion:
"Good news too is that we are including our top-of the-line iPOWER X power supply as standard (incl all those who have already ordered in July). "
(this also applies to the Zen DAC Signature Drop version)
I am not very susceptible to power supply voodoo but the ifi iPower X (5V/3A) sells for about 100 EUR which is a quite a step up from the ifi iPower 5V (about 50 EUR) which is (was?) included in the Zen CAN āLaunch Editionā while the Zen CAN non-launch-version seems to have no power supply at all in the package. If you are a fan of the power supply/purifier/etc. products from ifi, this might actually compensate for the 100 USD price difference between the Drop-version and the ordinary Zen CAN.
I actually own the Zen CAN and the Zen DAC (also a 4.4mm interconnect for balanced operation) and I am quite impressed by the performance of the Zen CAN. It fills a niche between my other amps. The Zen DAC is however not to my liking and too undefinedā¦ it is convenient however to have both units connected in balanced mode with this small interconnects. Nevertheless, I ended up soldering a 2x3pin-XLR-to-4.4mm cable to connect the Zen CAN to my RME ADI-2 DAC and to a SMSL SU-8 DAC which are both a much better pairing and fitting my taste.
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I think we are of the same opinion of paring the Zen DAC with the Zen Can. I donāt think that combo brings out the best out of the Zen Can. I think the Zen Can is more capable of an amp than what the Zen DAC delivers. It pairs pretty well with other DACS as you have discovered with the RME.
I posted on the custom cable gallery thread my xlr adapter so I can use the Zen Can with my other DACs.
Ah I see. Your cable looks much nicer than mine 
. The problem is that it is a bit difficult (actually impossible) to find 4.4mm-to-XLR cables with female XLR connectors. Also some of the commercially available 4.4mm-to-XLR(male) cables simply have no ground connection from the XLR-pins to the 4.4mm-Sleeve. Until this type of balanced connection with the 5pole 4.4mm cables for active components (and not for headphone cables) is more established, it is much safer to solder them yourself.
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you just contradicted yourself. please clarify? 
Did I contradict myself? Ok. What I meant is that the Zen CAN is performing very well in terms of sound quality, output power, noise floor, and even in the āXbass/3Dā modes but not driven to its full potential when using the ZenDAC as DAC.
Donāt take me wrong; the ZenDAC is a nice DAC/amp for desktop use etc. but as DAC not on par with other DACs I own.
The Zen CAN sounds really great with many of my headphones when fed by better DACs.
I wonder then if the Signature DAC would be different in any way.
I am not an expert but this emphasis on ābetter parts usedā for the ZenDAC Signature Drop version actually implies that the circuitry itself is the same as the normal ZenDAC and thus presumably very similar in sound performance (probably just measuring a bit better). But I might be wrongā¦
As I already mentioned, I do like the ZenDAC for light desktop use but I would not buy a āsignatureā DAC for 250 USD (plus tax etc.) with USB-input only. There are better options out there.
I am always wondering why a company like ifi which is selling lots of products for ācleaningā the digital transmission is not offering SPDIF/Toslink connection for electrically decoupled devices for this ābetterā signature DAC. I do own (and like) other ifi products besides the two Zen products (ifi Micro iDSD and the iDSD Nano ā¦ neither micro nor nano but that is off-topic) so I am not bashing the company but I am afraid to say that the ZenDAC Signature looks like not really worth it - unless you are a fan of the iPower-X power supply.
The ZenCAN amp however is a great product and the ZenCAN Signature 6xx version might be really great for owners of the HD6** series (I also own the HD660s and the HD6xx).
This is back on Drop for anyone interested and willing to wait till Nov. 11th for it to ship.
In case you want a balanced ZEN DAC+CAN stack but not to spend 90 USD for the interconnect, you find cheap (and available) alternatives from DELOCK on amazon DE and UK (10EUR/19GBP):
and
I have the 0.5m and 2m ones and a 2m extension and all 5 poles are connected in all of them (i.e. the ground/shield is linked as well) and they work with the original ZenDAC and the ZenCAN.
Of course, they are just cheap cables and nothing fancy but they work as they are supposed to.
EDIT: the UK one is out of stock alreadyā¦ but they are available on ebay as wellā¦
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I donāt know if it was mentioned already, but the 4.4mm balanced OUTPUT on the back of the ZenCAN is not a line-out but a pre-out with all gain and EQ settings effective on it. I.e. if you really wanted to you could add a balanced EQ or 3D effect for your 6xx or whatever headphone you have by including this amp in your (balanced) signal chain to another amp. Of course I do not recommend it since this would have all the disadvantages of double-amping, noise, distortion, saturated signals, etc. ā¦ but some might want to play around with it this way.
The pre-out is also not muted when a headphone is plugged in the ZenCAN - hence it is a bit of limited use for active speakers in my opinion.
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I appreciate what youāre saying here, @theFritz, I just want to clean up one linguistic thing so we donāt confuse people:
Using the pre-out is not double-amping. āDouble-ampingā refers to connecting the output stage of an amplifier to the input stage of a second amplifier. This way of connecting can be very dangerous for both amplifiers. If you connect the Zen CAN to a second amplifier by using the Zenās pre-out, you are not doing this, and itās perfectly safe. However, your points about potentially adding extra noise, distortions, etc. still stand because the signal chain has been complicated. I hope iFi has a ZenCAN dac on the way that adds their bass boost and 3D feature on just a DAC so you donāt have to route signal through their amplifier if you want to try out those features on an external amp you already have. 
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You are perfectly right; It is not really double-amping and you will not blow up your amp(s) that way but it is still not the best idea to do it this way if you are looking for āimprovedā sound quality.
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the 4.4 balanced connector on the Zen CAN is not outputā¦itās balanced input for the Zen DAC or Signature DAC, whoās 4.4mm connector is actually balanced out.
Zen CAN also has RCA input for pairing with a non-balanced DAC.
Zen DAC / Signature DAC has RCA output as well, which can be used as a pre-out or to a single ended amp.
mmmā¦I just realized why the Signature CAN and DAC are so expensive. I knew they came with a power supply, which is an add on for the original Zen DACā¦but itās not just the iPower they included with them, itās the iPower X, which is twice the price of the non-X iPower.
so with the added cost of premium components and the iPower Xā¦explains the cost differential.
alas, even though the price is now justified based on a cost equationā¦the performance difference between the Drop Signature and IFi non-Signature versions isnāt enough to give the Signature versions an edge to warranty real consideration.
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