Unbeatable HD Bluetooth Streaming from Your Phone, Tablet, or Computer
Get maximum sound quality from Bluetooth audio with the ZEN Air Blue from iFi Audio. The ZEN Air Blue is a high-quality Bluetooth audio receiver. It converts Bluetooth audio streams from smartphones, computers, or tablets into an audio stream suitable for headphones, amplifiers, and powered speakers.
The ZEN Air Blue will give you the maximum sound quality from your device, because it operates at the highest audio resolution level of any Bluetooth system. The Bluetooth system inside ZEN Air Blue has been upgraded by iFi to avoid the 40% drop in audio quality you typically experience with standard Bluetooth compared to wired audio.
Quality Components Extract the Most from Each Stage
The ZEN Air Blue's iFi Bluetooth implementation doesn't use a standard SOC (System On a Chip), as seen in many other manufacturers' Bluetooth gear. It uses a combination of quality elements to extract the most from each stage. The Qualcomm chip routes the raw, digital Bluetooth signal to a specialized Sabre DAC chip to convert the signal from digital to analog. Any jitter is eliminated using iFi's GMT femto-precision clock system to deliver Bluetooth that is a cut above.
A key advantage of the ESS Sabre DAC chip is its Hyperstream architecture with integrated Time Domain Jitter Eliminator, which delivers vanishingly low distortion and a high 112dB dynamic range. Additionally, Texas Instruments low-noise ICs offer great unity-gain bandwidth, very low noise and distortion, high output drive capability, common-mode and power supply rejection ratios of over 100 dB, wide maximum-output-swing bandwidths, and high slew rates.
TDK C0G (Class 1 ceramic) capacitors offer high stability and low losses for resonant circuit applications. Getting ever closer to the theoretical ideal of pure, frequency-constant capacitance, these capacitors reduce capacitor-induced distortion to vanishingly low levels. They are pricey, but are a valuable addition to iFi products.
Confident Compatibility
The ZEN Air Blue supports any current Bluetooth stereo audio codec (signal) available on the market today, including SBC (standard Bluetooth used by most audio devices), aptX (better than SBC, widely used, found in Android devices) and AAC (better than SBC, widely used, found in Apple devices). It also supports variations on an improved aptX, including aptX HD, aptxLL and aptX Adaptive, along with LDAC (extremely high quality, designed by Sony) and LHDC (extremely high quality, designed by Huawei).