iFi Micro iCAN SE Headphone Amplifier

I've always been intrigued by the ican, but held off due to my power hungry planar headphones. when I saw the new ican se with 4w of power at 16ohm, I jumped. I'm so glad I did, this is a tremendous amp at this price. first let's talk power. this thing is powerful. I can't find a good breakdown of power output at different ohm intervals, but ifi claims 4w (4000mw) at 16ohm, which is a lot. and let me get this out of the way right now. my hungriest headphones, the planar magnetic alpha prime and mad dog pro, all run super loud in LOW GAIN at about 2oclock on the volume dial. put it in mid gain, and I'm at about 10oclock. high gain and I can barely move the dial away from the bottom. Ifi claims this baby will drive an he-6 well, and I'm inclined to believe it; there's power to spare with this thing. build is excellent. it's a small, light unit, with an aluminum shell. seams are tight, and nothing rattles or jiggled unexpectedly. the volume pot is smooth, but a bit tight. I don't want a finger workout changing the volume! but I won't complain much, at least if I bump the dial my volume won't change. it comes with a wall wart style power cord, and lots of cables and extras. the bass and cross feed switches are tight and flick with a reassuring heft. they feel like they'll last a long, long time. my biggest complain about build would be the gain switches. if you look at the bottom of the unit, you'll see tiny flip switches, like you'd see in a garage door opener. to change gain settings you need the tiny screwdriver tool to change them. it's a metal tool, and tiny plastic switches....I can see overzealous flippers damaging the switches with that metal tool....no I'm not speaking from experience.... PS - when changing the gain, you do it in twos. so when all 4 switches are down, you're at low gain. from the left, flip the next two switches to move into medium gain. for high gain, flip the next two so that all 4 are now up. it's odd, to say the least. once you figure it out though it's simple. but a flip switch like the bass/cross feed options would be more welcome. my current amp inventory is a lyr 2 with gold lion tubes, magni 2 uber, o2, and fiio e10k. all are fed by a bifrost 4490 or dragonfly red, with tidal hd lossless tracks. main headphones I've been using lately are the alpha primes, mad dog pro, hd700, and oppo pm3. so how does it sound? dam good! like good enough that I'm considering selling my other amps and just using the ifi. I'll do some amp to amp comparisons later, let me discuss the general sound characteristics first. ifi tunes this amp to sound like a tube amp with solid state detail. I'm not sure I'd say it's very tube sounding, but it's smooth, and quite detailed. it's got a slightly warm presentation, much like my old asgard 2. but where the asgard was a touch fuzzy from that warmth, the ican is extremely sharp and detailed. it is hands down the most micro detailed of all my amps. I find myself hearing small sounds coming through more clearly with this amp vs my others. for example, on Bryan Adams' "summer of 69", the cymbal crashes coincide with every other hit of the drum. sorry I don't know much about drums, so I can't say which drum he's hitting, but it's tight sounding, not a big bass drum. mid-size drum, tight with a leathery texture. anyhow, the beat goes with this drum hit, which is fast, and the drummer hits the cymbals every other drum hit. on lesser quality dacs/amps, that cymbal hit is fuzzy and indistinct. you might not be able to tell if it's just the drum being hit harder, or if something else was hit with it. better gear more clearly resolve the hit, so that you know for sure you're hearing the concurrent hit of a drum AND cymbal. it's really tough to explain but very obvious when listening. besides being slightly warm and well defined, it's incredibly versatile with many different headphones. I cannot find a pairing I did not like. I even grabbed some headphones I haven't listened to in a long time just to see how they'd sound. I tried the alpha prime, mad dog pro, hd700, oppo pm3, urbanite xl, q701, grado 225e, and a friend's hd650 and 800. all of them sounded really good. the brighter headphones never got sibilant unless the track was really bad. the bassy headphones never got muddy or bloated. the mid-centric headphones were as gloriously mid forward as before, without drowning out the bass or highs. I won't go into super details here because there's no point. everything sounded good. and I'm picky. really picky. like I said, this baby might displace my whole amp inventory. and I've had it for about 3 months, so it's not new toy syndrome working here, I promise. So how are those gimmicky bass boost and cross feed features? Excellent! No gimmicks here; they produce excellent results that enhance the sound characteristics of your headphones, without destroying the overall quality of the playback. So how do they work? well bass boost (ifi calls it xbass) is bass boost, not hard to figure out what it does. It's how it does it that's exceptional. Usually bass boost features tend to muddy up the sound, and bleed into the other frequencies. Usually mid bass is boosted, not sub bass, which tends to deteriorate sound quality. Not here. on the low setting, bass has a subtle bump to the sub bass. It gives extra rumble and depth to the lows. It doesn’t in any way intrude into the mids. It's excellent, and I find myself using it more and more. The high bass setting is significantly stronger. Sub bass really rumbles, and there is a mild mid bass boost as well. again, nothing gets muddy, and things still sound relatively coherent. With strong bass headphones, this setting is just too much. My mad dog pro sounds way too bassy on high. The hd700 isn't too bad, but the bass does tend to get a bit dominant. The hd800 really liked the high bass setting, which surprised me. it hit really hard, but still sounded well detailed and coherent overall. It's hardly accurate sounding, but who cares. It added a lot of fun to the 800's bright nature. Would I keep it on high for long? No, it's a bit too much for my neutral loving ears, but for some songs/genres, it was really fun. I can't stress enough how well this feature works. I've had many fiio amps over the years with bass boost, and they were fun, but negatively impacted overall sound quality. None of that happening here! it's a great feature. The cross feed feature (ifi calls it 3d) is harder to explain, and much more subtle in its delivery. I'll try my best here folks, but google cross feed for a more accurate explanation. So headphones are isolated 2 channel systems. If sound is coming out of the right side, you're only going to hear it from the right cup. it can be very odd sounding to our brains, especially when excessive single channel effects are used (70s/80s rock!). when listening to regular floor standing speakers, even if one channel is only broadcasting, both our ears will pick up the sound. So, cross feed in headphones is taking some of that single channel signal and sending to the other channel. It tries to mimic what listening to floor standing speakers is like. It makes tracks with excessive single channel effects more natural sounding. So, does it work? yep, it's pretty good. but it isn’t a well implemented as the bass boost feature. Why? It slightly degrades audio quality, unfortunately. it brightens the highs and gives them a slightly harsh, and brittle sound. Does it sound bad? Not at all. but the highs do sound best when cross feed is off. But the benefits often outweigh the negatives here, in my opinion. I love 70s rock, and they do some really strong single channel effects. It's odd to hear the singer in just one ear, and the instruments in the other, with no cross feed. Doesn’t sound natural at all. the cross feed feature helps blend the channels, making the tracks much more listenable. Also, cross feed enhances soundstage. The stage sounds more open, wider, deeper, and more distinct. Let me stress though, this is at the expense of high frequency sound quality. The loss in sound quality is so small that I don’t really care, I use cross feed low for most of my headphones. I love the more open and natural sound it provides. I'll give up a bit of high frequency detail for it. as for the low vs high settings, you just have to play with it. it's not like bass boost where low is always the same effect vs high. I find myself switching between low and high a lot on various tracks to find what sounds best. amp to amp comparisons? fine, twist my arm! lyr 2 - first, my lyr is my love, my lady, my baby. I love this amp. but I kinda like the new girl more so far. we'll see how a few more months go. but what I find here is the lyr is smoother, more composed, and warmer. for easy listening it's a better choice. Fine micro detail in the highs don’t come across as well defined with the lyr. I might grab some LISST tubes and see if that affects detail retrieval. Both are powerful amps that can drive anything. The lyr gives more heft and weight to the lows and lower mids. It's a smoother delivery, more tube like. The ican is sharper sounding, and just a tad more analytical. It's highs present sharper details, but those details are a bit harsh sounding when coming from the lyr. It's the classic tube vs solid state sound tradeoff, to my ears. Magni 2 uber - brighter, harsher, less refined, grainier. The m2u is a great amp at its price point, but it doesn’t compare to the ican. The ican just does everything better. Are the differences dramatic? No, not really. But they're noticeable when swapping back and forth, especially the highs, and the grain factor. Their overall presentation is more similar than different, but the ican is just the smoother, more refined sounding amp. The o2 sounds more or less like the m2u, same notes apply. The fiio is completely outclassed here, I won't bother with details. Any drawbacks? Sure, plenty! But nothing major. First, this unit has lots of odd buzzes and static noise when idle. What I mean is, when I have the unit on, and headphones plugged in, and my rca cables plugged into the back, but not into a live (powered on) dac, the ican will produce a lot of low level static noise, especially when touching the rca cables (not the leads). But once I plug the rca cables into the dac and turn it on, it goes silent. None of my other amps do this. do I care? Not at all, it doesn’t affect playback performance. But it's something to note. Also, the gain switches are a pain to flip, as previously noted. And let's be frank here, for all my gushing fanboy praise, this is not a be all end all amp. It's a great amp at a sub $500 price. It compares fairly well below that point, but not so favorably with more expensive amps. I'm not implying that price ALWAYS equates to performance. But I've heard some pretty expensive stuff and the ican would not fare well in comparison. The highs, though detailed, are a bit etched and metallic sounding in comparison to better amps. Bass isn’t as well controlled as other amps (lyr!). and the gain settings are not very well thought out. Low gain tends to work best, but once going to mid and high gain, you often find yourself with no room to adjust the volume. Meaning you gotta keep the dial at minimum, or it gets too loud. But when you go down a gains setting, you have to max out. So you're left with either too much or too little gain sometimes. Not a huge deal breaker, but sometimes annoying. Also, the build, which is great for $300, isn’t up to par with other, similar priced amps from Schiit. And let's not forget, the cross feed feature is a bit destructive to high frequency sound quality. So yeah, despite being awesome, it's not perfect. But at its price point, I'm having a hard time finding anything that sounds as good. and let's not forget the benefit of being able to adjust the sound of your headphones via the bass boost and cross feed features. To me those alone make it a total winner. I'll leave you with this. these are my opinions, based on my sound preferences and firsthand experience with the product. Nothing is fact until you, yourself, take one home and decide for yourself how it sounds. If you have any questions fire away.

This little joy is powerful and crystal clear. I found the Bass extension to be very natural and the 3D effect to bring out hidden tones, voices and notes in songs that I thought I knew well. Almost like taking my music collection and having to start over as each song has become new again. The only really downside for me is when its not playing a source, even momentarily I can hear static that seem to not be present when playing a source. Its not a huge deal but it does make me wonder if any of this is introducing artifacts? To this point however its seems to not be the case... I've only had it a couple of days but I have put a few hours on it and overall I am truly impressed. Other notes, no power switch which I will hazard a guess was intention to keep the circuit warm. Fit and Finish are 1st Class and the accessories that came with it weren't the usual trash you might get with some other names, I found them to be solid performers. Heat generated is warm but not uncomfortable to my touch and overall I almost wish I had gone for the Black Edition as I like this very much and I suspect the next rung up would be even better.

I really wanted to like this amp. It has enough power to drive any headphone and switches for adjusting both bass and surround sound right on the device. Now the bad. I went through two of these amps and neither one worked right. The first one did not even power up so it was sent back immediately. The 2nd had a really bad high pitch buzz unless you had the volume pretty high. I really wish this amp had worked out but for 300.00 bucks I simply was not willing to try a third time hoping for a good one.

This amp has been the crown jewel of my audio chain for many months now. I happen to be a fan of inefficient fostex planar headphones, and for quite a while I could not find anything short of a ridiculous speaker amp that could really wrangle them to life. That, and I either did not have enough desk space for a beast amp that could power my planars, nor was there a compact-enough amp that could power them effectively. Enter the ifi iCan SE. Currently, I own a ZMF Ori Bocote and still have the trusty MK3 Mayflower V1. I also got the TH900 MK2, but it doesn't need nearly the power that the planars do. The MFV1 + iCan SE combo is my current favorite and has been for many months. In certain situations, setting the Xbass to max (3 dots) really brought out some incredibly visceral sub-bass. I always run the gain switches in 24db mode (max power) to get enough headroom, especially with quiet songs. For the MFV1, this means ''9-o-clock for normal songs'' and up to 12-o-clock for quieter material. The ZMF Ori takes a tad more power (it is hungry) 11 and 1-o-clock, respectively, with lots of headroom to spare. Not even my Schiit Lyr 2 (sold long ago) could get that kind of volume from them. I should mention that 95% of the time, I run Xbass and 3D at the default/Off position; but occasionally their use adds to a song here and there. 3D is a really neat feature in that it can alter what you're listening to quite a bit, but that can depend on what you are listening to. While Xbass is of course for Bass boosting, 3D seems to have the same effect on the treble. Its as if the sound stage gets scooped out a bit and high frequencies get pushed forward a bit while subtracting some bass body from the song. Trying out some 3D and Xbass combinations can really add interesting tweaks to songs, fun! The TH900 MK2 with Xbass set to 3 dots is insanity! The amp itself is super attractive and has a great feel, but be warned it does get quite warm if you leave it plugged in..there is no shutoff switch..only con from me. Fortunately, my iCan has been plugged in uninterrupted for over 8 months with no issues. I do not see this amp getting replaced anytime soon, how ifi fit so much power into something so small is incredible. recommended

I've owned 3 versions of this product---the original iCAN, the iCAN with adjustable gain, and this 4W/ch model. I think the previous models were superior. Packing 4W/ch into a compact chassis is a difficult feat, especially at this price point, and I found the results dry and lifeless. Depending upon the resolution of your system, you may find the sound acceptable, and the form factor is transportable if not portable. Spending up to the Burson Soloist MKII will give you more transparent, punchy sound with adequate power for all but the most inefficient headphones.

Every good thing about this amp you may have heard is true. I have two issues, however, that have both been problematic. The main issue is that the first time I bought one of these units, it stopped working (no led lights; no power) after 2 uses. I returned it and bought another (Amazon doesn't sell these; whoever you are buying this from is a 3rd party seller, so if you have to return it, you cannot get a replacement from Amazon, only a refund). Well, the second unit did the exact same thing. I returned it after opening a service ticket on the iFi website did not produce an immediate answer. After a few days, they did finally answer and said it sounded like the power supply or source or whatever they call their wart, was defective. On two in a row. Now I'm shopping for a backup 15 volt wart to use when the 3rd unit arrives. The other problem is that there is no power switch. It's either on all the time (this is allegedly a class A amp by the way) or you have to unplug it from the wall when you aren't using it. So that sucks. In the end, though, these are minor next to the benefit I receive from finally getting my Fostex T50-RP Mk3s to reveal themselves. I have many headphones that my other amps just cannot drive, including the very expensive Oppo HA-1. In my setup, I have this fed by a pre-amp (SMSL M8) DAC and it sounds AMAZING when it works.

At 4Watts per channel, only big, bulky, expensive amps even comes close to competing. These drive my cans superbly and dare I say they sound better than my burson amp (H160D). High power and low THD, the two main things to look for in amps, is what this AMP has. This is portable and well built, and it also comes with fun options. The Xbass is great for low bass cans like the AKG701/2s. These can also be used to drive IEMS without an issues. I highly recommended this Over Bursons or schitt magnis. I do not think the noise and crackling mentioned else where are faults of this amp, rather they are just very good at amping them up as well. I changed my power-brick and cleaned my USB signal (with a schitt wyrd) and they went away. There minor hiss if you do the highest gain (+24) at the highest volume 5~6 O'oclock. For reference I only need about 9~10 O'Clock at medium (+12) gain at for my HD650.

I've been looking for a desktop headphone amp with some real power. My best headphones are "hard to drive" because of high impedance, low sensitivity, or both. I've tried a couple portable, battery amps, and those are great for IEMs, but will not push full size phones enough for me. Based on the ratings, I decided to give the iFi a try. Wow. Power a-plenty. More than enough volume for my headphones. And I'm finding that I like the "3D" sound more than I thought I would. I've always been a fan of cross-feed, and this just works. Worth the $$$, IMHO.