The GO bar’s smart alloy case sports physical buttons for precise volume adjustment plus controls to select between various sonic tuning options. A column of coloured LEDs provides a handy guide to the format and sample rate of the digital audio currently playing, and whether XBass+ and/or XSpace are engaged.
At one end is an asynchronous USB-C input and at the other a pair of headphone outputs.
Despite its diminutive size, the GO bar’s analogue circuitry sports a balanced circuit design with symmetrical twin-channel output stage. This reduces noise and crosstalk in the signal path by fully separating the left and right channels. This is usually found in larger and more expensive amplifiers.
The circuitry is packed full of high quality discrete components and special attention has been paid to power supply filtering too, dramatically reducing signal noise introduced through the USB input.
Purity and power
The amp’s design combines sonic purity with power.
- 475mW into 32 ohms
- 7.5V into 600 ohms
No headphone amp of such a diminutive size can match the GO bar’s ability to drive tricky headphone loads or work with a wider variety of headphones.
The GO bar also incorporates two power tuning technologies:
- iEMatch – attenuates power to suit high-sensitivity headphones and IEMs, it removes background noise and increases usable volume range
- Turbo – ramps up the gain by 6dB to satisfy more power-hungry headphones
*Please note that the GO bar may not work with iPhones up to and including 6S when the phone battery is low (<30%).
To celebrate Their 10th anniversary, iFi have created an eye-catching special edition of the GO bar.
Limited to 1000 pieces, the 10th Anniversary Limited Edition GO bar is smothered in show stopping gold-plate and boasts:
- A copper chassis for enhanced build quality and shielding
- Enhanced power supply filtering
- A weight of 64g, 40g more than the original
Specifications...
- Input: USB C
- Formats:
- PCM: 44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/192/35
- DSD: 2.8/384kHz 2.8/3.1/5.6/6.1/11.3/12.3MHz
- DXD: 352.8/384kHz
- MQA: Full decoder
- DAC: Bit-Perfect DSD & DXD DAC by Cirrus Logic
- Headphone Output:
- Balanced: 4.4mm
- Unbalanced: 3.5mm
- Output Impedance: <1Ω (BAL/UnBAL)
- SNR: 132dBA / 108dBA (BAL/UnBAL)
- DNR: 109dB(A) / 108dB(A) (BAL/UnBAL
- THD + N:
- Balanced: <0.002% (6.5mW/2.0V @ 600Ω)
- UnBAL <0.09% (100mW/1.27V @ 16Ω)
- Frequency Response: 20Hz - 45kHz (-3dB)
- Power Consumption: <4W max.
- Dimensions: 65 x 22 x 13.2 mm
- Weight: 28.5 g
