High-fidelity audio components manufacturer iFi audio, announces the iDSD Valkyrie, the company’s flagship portable DAC/Amp designed with the capability for the user to shape their own sonic signature.
The Valkyrie is designed for customisation with K2HD Technology, DSD Remastering, six digital filters and iFi’s signature analogue processing. With quad-DAC architecture, 5,700mW peak output, lossless Bluetooth, and 18-hour battery life, iFi states the Valkyrie is unmatched by any other portable on the market.
The Valkyrie takes tools once reserved for the world’s top mastering houses and delivers them directly to the end user.Inspired by the artistry of mastering engineers, the Valkyrie features a bespoke DSD Remastering algorithm, powered by a custom-coded FPGA.
Users can choose between the ‘Normal’ setting, in which DSD signals pass directly to the DAC and PCM signals go through a user-selected digital filter, or ‘Remastering’, with options to remaster to DSD512 or DSD1024. Similar to the technology used in Sony’s mastering studios, DSD Remastering improves the audio quality of any file by increasing resolution, reducing distortion, and delivering a richer, more detailed sound – akin to a professionally remastered recording.
Valkyrie is built using JVCKENWOOD’s K2HD Technology, which restores to digital, the warmth and emotion of analogue recordings, ensuring your digital audio never sounds cold or clinical. K2HD Technology is designed to restore music closer to its original master, infusing it with rich, natural harmonics that are normally lost during digitalisation. The Valkyrie offers this technology in two modes, ‘K2’ mode and ‘K2HD’ mode, where the former preserves the files’ original resolution.
The Valkyrie also offers six digital filters, including Apodising, GTO, Bit Perfect, Standard, Minimum and Transient Aligned and complementing its digital customisation suite, the Valkyrie features advanced analogue processing features that are unique to iFi such as XBassII that adds back lost bass frequencies, XPresence that adds a touch of mid-presence to the sound to deliver more upfront midrange and XSpace, also found across iFi products, enhances the audio by creating a spacious sound field, adding depth to the more two-dimensional two-channel experience.
The Valkyrie is built around four Burr-Brown DACs in a hybrid multi-bit configuration, drawing from iFi’s long-standing experience with the legendary multi-bit Philips TDA1541A and as pioneers of Lossless Bluetooth, iFi has equipped Valkyrie with the latest flagship Qualcomm chipset to deliver CD-quality audio via aptX Lossless, and Hi-Res playback via LDAC.
The Valkyrie delivers approximately 44% more power than iFi’s current flagship iDSD Diablo 2 when driving current-hungry 16Ω headphones, with up to 5,700mW peak output power – or 2,258mW RMS. The Valkyrie can drive the hungriest of headphones all in a portable body, so you can take your premium audio set up with you, wherever you go.
To power all its advanced features, the Valkyrie battery configuration consists of four 5,000mAh lithium-ion batteries, totalling a 20,000mAh for up to 18 hours of playback on a single charge. The batteries are charges via USB-C taking just 2.5 hours to recharge.
The iDSD Valkyrie is available to purchase from ifi-audio.com, or through our Elite dealers for £1,699/$1,699us/€1,699 and $2,499 CDN. iFi is exclusively distributed in Canada by Erikson Consumer.