If you are familiar with iFi Audio, you will appreciate their passion for reducing the noise and degradation that can build up as digital music passes through a USB audio chain. The iPurifier3 encapsulates everything the company has achieved to this end and throws in a host of new features.
 
Following on from 2015’s iPurifier2, the latest model is slightly larger at 69 x 19 x 20mm (LxHxW), but this allows for all new components including a further optimised version of its award-winning ANC (Active Noise Cancellation) system adapted from military radar defence technology.

Also under the hood of the iPurifier3 you will find OS-CON capacitors that feature a low Equivalent Series Resistance (ESR), excellent noise reduction capability, ideal frequency characteristics and a long lifespan. You also get Tantalum capacitors which have superior frequency and stability characteristics and high-precision MELF resistors. These resistors are said to possess excellent accuracy, stability, reliability, and pulse load capability. Naturally, all of this would amount to very little without the new copper-alloy shielding. This excellent EMI shielding isolates devices and cables to block radio frequency electromagnetic radiation.

In practise

Having an impressive sounding spec list is one thing, but knowing what everything does is another. In the iPurifier3 it’s iFi’s ANC2 system that is the key. Working as it does when used in air defence radar technology, it identifies noise frequencies and then generates identical but opposing frequencies. This actively cancels all the incoming noise, like a refined version of what you find in noise cancelling headphones. In comparison to the Common Noise Filter, ANC decreases noise by 100 times – that’s 40dB – thereby enhancing the fidelity of background and inner resolution of audio recordings by several levels.
 
Another core element is Rebalance. iFi Audio says this removes the DC offset in a USB audio signal to ‘re-balance’ it. The benefit here is that it noticeably decreases the threshold of background noise and helps to achieve an overall noise reduction of 40dB on the input signal and a levelling from 100mV to 5mV on the audio band through the USB signal. Additionally, REclock, is a ‘3-in-1’ feature that re-clocks, re-generates and repeats the USB audio data stream to further eliminate jitter.

Where does iFi Audio find all this tech? iFi benefits from the breakthroughs in audio technology by its sister company, Abbingdon Music Research. Together, both companies are ahead of the pack when it comes to new high-resolution formats such as PCM, DSD and DXD.

Available from July 2018, the iPurifer3.0 USB Type A and Type B sells £129 (€149).

For more information visit iFi Audio.