A Renowned Hi-Fi Company’s New Headphone Amp Is Overkill In All the Right Ways

The stunning amp is designed for on-the-go audiophiles.

Published March 26, 2025

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Updated March 26, 2025

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iFi Audio is a British-based hi-fi company best known for its relatively affordable portable audio players and desktop amplifiers. The brand’s newest amp, the iDSD Valkyrie, is a step in the other direction — it’s anything but cheap.

iFi iDSD Valkyrie

Customized hi-fi

The iFi iDSD Valkyrie is the company’s new flagship portable DAC and headphone amplifier — it’s the brand’s most expensive audio device to date. It’s designed for discerning audiophiles committed to listening to the best quality audio on the go … and who are willing to lug around a nearly 2-pound portable device with them.

The iDSD Valkyrie’s headline feature is that it’s integrated with K2HD technology, which the brand says “restores the warmth and emotion of analog recordings, ensuring your digital audio never sounds cold or clinical.” It offers this in two modes, K2 and K2HD, the former of which preserves the files’ original resolution.

Additionally, the iDSD Valkyrie gives the listener numerous other ways to customize the sound, including six digital filters, various EQ modes, iFi’s signature analog processing, or DSD remastering (for remastering files to DSD512 or DSD1024).

Headphone compatibility galore

The iFi iDSD Valkyrie is a portable powerhouse. It features a quad-DAC architecture based around four Burr-Brown DACs and maxes out at 5,700mW of peak power, which is approximately 44 percent more power than iFi’s previous flagship DAC/amp, the $1,299 iDSD Diablo 2.

This means that the iFi iDSD Valkyrie should be able to drive even the most demanding dynamic and planar magnetic headphones. It also supports xMEMS, an innovative driver technology, and should be compatible with many of today’s elite in-ear monitors (IEMs).

For those with high-end wireless headphones and earbuds, the iDSD Valkyrie works them, too. It has built-in Bluetooth and supports aptX Lossless, aptX Adaptive and LDAC files, so it can stream the highest-resolution audio currently offered over Bluetooth.

Also, the iFi iDSD Valkyrie features four separate 5,000mAh lithium-ion batteries — that’s a total of 20,000mAh — promising up to 18 hours of juice. You, therefore, don’t need to worry about it draining power from your laptop or smartphone either.