iFi has launched a special edition of its premium iDSD GR 2 DAC and headphone amplifier, the GR 2 MT.
The new DAC has been launched in collaboration with Steve Levine, a Brit Award-winning producer who has worked with the likes of the Beach Boys, Motörhead and Culture Club during his extensive career.
As with its predecessor, at the core of the new iDSD GR2 MT is a Burr-Brown PCM1795 DAC chip working alongside K2HD Technology, a harmonic restoration algorithm built to bring recordings nearer to their original character by “reintroducing subtle detail” and restoring musical tone.
So what’s the difference between this special edition DAC and its standard counterpart? For a start, the GR 2 MT uses a hydrocarbon ceramic circuit board in pursuit of “near-zero signal loss”, an upgrade over the fibreglass cloth and epoxy resin board of the original.
The new model also features “audiophile-grade” tantalum resistors as part of its DAC stage, and uses ‘Audio Note Kaesei’ capacitors as opposed to more standard electrolytic units.
The GR2 MT also comes loaded with two Levine-tuned digital filters which aim to deliver the “balance and emotional potency” of the original record.
(Image credit: iFi)
As before, iFi’s special edition DAC sports a ridged aluminium chassis adorned with an OLED touchscreen and topped with a metal control knob, with the rear side of the "Master Tuned" unit now adorned with Levine's signature.
For physical connections, it features balanced 4.4mm and single-ended 3.5mm inputs and outputs, as well as a USB-C input alongside a combined optical/coaxial input.
For wireless listening, you can also accept a signal from a Bluetooth (5.4) source, with higher codec support coming in aptX Lossless, aptX Adaptive and LDAC flavours.
According to Steve Levine himself: “The goal of any producer is to document the authenticity and emotion behind the artist’s performance. I have voiced the iDSD GR2 MT with this same goal in mind, and I hope you feel that when you listen.”
The iFi iDSD GR 2 MT is available now, priced at £699 / $699 / €729, a reasonable advance on the £529 / $529 / AU$849 of the standard iDSD GR 2 we reviewed recently.
The first play is a big moment for any turntable. You've agonised over exactly which model to buy, possibly lugged it home from the shops, taken time to set it up properly and now, finally, is its time to shine.
But what do you play on it?
It's a big decision, as chances are, this performance will live long in the memory. Get it right, and your new deck will be off to a flying start. Choose a dud, and it could taint everything you play on it subsequently.
Do you go for a well known classic from a band like The Beatles? Something more obscure that only you know and love? A track that brings back memories of a certain time in your life? Or something modern that you've been loving of late, to see how the sound compares to how you've previously been enjoying it?
Whatever you go for, it's not a decision to take lightly.
If you can't make up your mind, we've got plenty of lists of test tracks for your system, from acoustic tracks and movie scores to those by artists like Radiohead and Nick Cave. But that's us. For this month's Ask The Reader, we want to know what you choose.
You can tell us about your favourite first-play tracks in the comments below, on our forum, or on our social media channels. We'll put them all together in a follow-up article so you can see your fellow readers' picks. So let us know!
Every hi-fi fan has an origin story. Unlike comics, most may not start with a planet exploding or a radioactive spider bite, but in our experience, they’re still always interesting.
Whether it’s a specific product, album or concert, we all remember the first time we heard “good sound” and started our never-ending quest for audio nirvana, and it's a fun story to share, especially amongst fellow enthusiasts.
After a month, your responses have come flooding back, and while a few brands pop up on more than one occasion, for the most part it was a free-for-all where every story was unique.
Glorious audio chaos
(Image credit: Chasing The Dragon)
The only real theme we got from reading your replies is that there is no one common starting point.
For starters, despite us asking “which product” got you started, a number of you still went one step back, replying with the piece of music or album that made you want better hardware. Including onsite commenter Ivan Harrison, who bluntly stated, “Dark Side Of The Moon.”
Editor’s Note:To be fair, it’s a great Pink Floyd album. Not as good as In The Court Of The Crimson King, by King Crimson, or Close To The Edge, by Yes, though, at least in my (and most of your) humble opinion.
Even among the people who replied with the product that started it all, there was a disparity, and more than a few unique tales, about custom hardware, Cold War smuggling and more. Take, for example, Jan Sejvl's story:
“A German tourist brought for me through the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia my first real hi-fi gear in the 80s. Gigantic Toshiba receiver with Dual CS 1246 turntable. Loudspeakers, I made at home with [the] help of my friend. The first tones of Queen’s Radio Ga Ga through this system was the very start of a never-ending search for something better. I have to admit I have never [had] such [a] feeling of happiness as I did at that moment in the past.”
And DIY seems to have been a theme for many of our older readers, with more than a few mentioning soldering their own amps out of old motherboards.
“This would probably take me back to a 3-inch reel-to-reel made by GE; I was 11 years old when I got it. That machine made me start to appreciate music. Then when I was 14, I got a 1970 Montgomery Ward's Airline AM/FM Cassette home stereo for Christmas; that was a huge improvement in sound... for me.”
Hand-me-downs were another common theme in your responses, which included a particularly nice one from reader Roony Muck, who said:
“During high school, my friend's parents divorced, and during the aftermath clean-out, his mom gave me a ’70s-era classic Marantz stereo receiver. That, paired with my dad's hand-me-down Celestion Ditton 15s, at the age of 15, was my bar for listening to my music on vinyl and CD. The combination of a warm and expansive amp and tight, accurate and clear Dittons was striking to me at an early age. In my late 20s, I had to travel across the country and gave my Marantz and Dittons to another 15-year-old... Seemed the right thing to do.”
Our hot take
(Image credit: Future)
A love of music and the desire to have the hardware necessary to do it justice can start at any moment. That’s clear from your replies and the diverse origin stories you’ll find among the What Hi-Fi? team – which range from “oh wow” moments hearing classic prog for the first time, to the first speakers that blew our minds sonically. The only thing we’re certain of is that, as we detailed in a previous Ask the Reader column, once you start, it’s very hard to stop!
Panasonic has taken the wraps off two new micro hi-fi systems – one for bigger rooms and budgets, and a smaller, more affordable option.
The SC-PMX112 is the bigger of the two, packing 180W of power from its 13cm full-range drivers, as well as internet radio, Spotify Connect compatibility and a range of digital and physical inputs.
The combination of drivers, dedicated tweeters and bass reflex ports promises "clear vocals, detailed high frequencies and powerful bass". You can also choose from five presets on the EQ, if you want a different sound profile.
The wooden speaker cabinets might suggest a retro approach, but the system has dual-band wi-fi, with compatibility with Spotify Connect and internet radio. There's also Bluetooth for more localised wireless playback, DAB+ and FM radio, and it plays CDs and files via USB. You can also hook up other devices via an optical input and 3.5mm line input, plus there are outputs for a subwoofer and a pair of wired headphones, both of which will widen your listening options.
(Image credit: Panasonic)
The smaller SC-PM302 offers 60W RMS stereo sound, with the same CD and USB playback alongside Bluetooth, DAB+ and FM radio. It still has an optical in and line in, but lacks the headphone and subwoofer outputs of its bigger brother.
It has 10 cm full-range speakers and wooden-cabinet housing. Its colour TFT display is a little smaller than its stablemate's (2.4 inches to 2.8 inches). Both systems come with a remote control.
Both ship this month – they're currently listed as 'coming soon' on the Panasonic website. The SC-PMX112 costs £270 (around $350 / AU$500) and the SC-PM302 £120 (around $160 / AU$230).
AudioQuest’s DragonFly Copper retains all the charm and simplicity of the very first DragonFly we tested back in 2012: a hi-res DAC and headphone amplifier tucked into the titchy dimensions of a USB memory stick.
We marvelled back then at how such a small device could transform your computer into a full hi-fi system, and we haven’t stopped being impressed with subsequent DragonFly models (Black, Red, Cobalt) – all of which received enthusiastic five stars and have woven their way into many of the review team’s desktop hi-fi arsenal.
The new AudioQuest DragonFly Copper claims to be the brand’s most powerful and efficient DragonFly yet. Has it struck gold again?
Price
(Image credit: What Hi-Fi?)
Costing £229 / $250, the DragonFly Copper launches at a lower price than the previous Cobalt did at £269 / $300 back in 2019. The DragonFly Cobalt was a multiple What Hi-Fi? Award winner for many years until it was discontinued, and in its latter years its price dropped down to around £179 / $200.
There are some strong contenders at either side of the Copper’s price. At the cheaper end you’ll find iFi’s Go Link Max (£79 / $79) and hip-dac 3 (£199 / $199), while the Award-winning Chord Mojo 2 (at £395 / $650) remains the steadfast option for those who can pay more.
Build & design
(Image credit: What Hi-Fi?)
We’re delighted that the DragonFly Copper has stuck to its winning plug-and-play design. It’s tiny and easily portable. It is identical in size and shape to the older Cobalt, with only the shiny ‘copper’ finish differentiating the two on the outside.
At one end is a 3.5mm output for plugging in your wired headphones, while on the other is a USB-A connector for connecting to your computer. Using it couldn’t be easier. As before, a USB-A to USB-C adaptor (called DragonTail) is included in the box, so you can use the DragonFly Copper with smartphones and a broader range of laptops.
AudioQuest DragonFly Copper tech specs
(Image credit: AudioQuest)
Headphone outputs 3.5mm
Inputs USB-A, USB-C adapter included
Charging port N/A
Battery life N/A
Weight 25g
Dimensions (hwd) 12 x 19 x 57mm
There’s no volume control, buttons or menu here. The only adornment on this tiny DAC is the dragonfly logo that lights up and changes colour according to the sampling rate of the music file being played: green for 44.1kHz, blue for 48kHz, yellow for 88.2kHz and light blue for 96kHz. It glows red when in standby mode.
Despite the variety of ultra-portable DACs that are available on the market, we think the DragonFly Copper remains a wonderfully unfussy and practical design for instantly boosting the sound from your laptop (or smartphone), and elegant in its simplicity.
Its size means you can keep it anywhere – alongside your keys in your bag, in the mug that holds all your pens, or leave it attached to your laptop without it taking up any meaningful space. Its simplicity means absolutely anyone, even a novice or technophobe, can use it without any barrier.
Our only minor complaint about the otherwise classy and solid build is that this new finish shows up fingerprints quite easily.
So what’s changed? Inside is a new 32-bit ESS Sabre DAC/headphone amp, while better parts and materials are used to help improve performance. The Copper promises twice the output power of any previous DragonFly, while power consumption is reduced by about 25 per cent, all while improving supply-chain efficiency.
We are promised lower noise and distortion than before, and that copper-plated casing isn’t just about looks – it is also designed for improved RF (radio frequency) noise dissipation.
Features
(Image credit: What Hi-Fi?)
The DragonFly aims to handle all kinds of popular file types, from MP3s to WAVs to FLACs. You’ll have noticed by the LED colours that the maximum native file resolution is supported up to 24-bit/96kHz PCM. The Copper will accept 24-bit/192kHz files, but they will be processed at its resolution limit.
This is versatile enough for most people’s desktop music libraries, but there are now rival portable DACs even at this level that can support native 192kHz playback – so why this limit?
For AudioQuest, it was simply more important that the DragonFly Copper worked with every device you plugged it into. So to avoid any potential issues with device compatibility, the Copper uses the base USB Audio Class 1/USB 1.1 standard, which, while having a 24-bit/96kHz cap, ensures that it will have no issues when used with any audio-capable USB port. That means regardless of whether you’re using iOS, Android, Mac, Linux or Windows, new or old, the DragonFly Copper will/should work with all.
Additionally, in such a small package as the DragonFly, AudioQuest found that running at higher sampling frequencies increases noise levels, which tends to have an adverse effect on sound quality. While in a larger DAC this could be solved by separating the digital and analogue sections and shielding parts from the increased noise generated by the higher sampling rate, AudioQuest tells us this wasn’t possible in such a tiny form factor.
For AudioQuest, chasing the higher spec introduced trade-offs that it wasn’t happy with. If your digital library is full of these rarer higher file rates (and DSD files), you will want to consider alternatives, but we think the DragonFly Copper, for this price and its intended use, will be more than adequate for most people.
Sound
(Image credit: What Hi-Fi?)
We plug the DragonFly Copper into both a Lenovo Windows laptop and a MacBook Pro running Audirvana software, and play a variety of local tracks – hi-res FLACs, CD-ripped WAVs and even some lowly MP3s – as well as our favourite Tidal playlists. We also use a wide variety of headphones throughout our testing, which include the Beyerdynamic 990 Pro X, Grado SR325x, Shure SRH1540 and Sennheiser HD 600.
Does the DragonFly Copper improve your laptop’s music compared with simply plugging wired headphones straight into your laptop’s 3.5mm port? 100 per cent. The change in performance is immediate: every song sounds more powerful and dynamic, and musical elements are more precisely and confidently placed in a larger, more spacious soundstage. Layers of detail and texture are unearthed, with voices and instruments sounding full-bodied and substantial, while timing is spot-on.
Playing Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain (in 24-bit/96kHz), we find the leading edges to be crisply drawn, basslines and drum kicks are pulled taut and land with snappy impact, and there’s a good amount of tactility and shine to the guitar strums. Rhythmically, it all dovetails together to sound cohesive in the roomy soundstage. There’s drive and momentum in the repeated chorus – you can hear the fierceness in Stevie Nicks’ and Lindsey Buckingham’s warring vocals – and the drop in near-silence before that iconic bassline hits is appropriately dramatic.
With the DragonFly Copper deployed, that bassline is weighty and satisfying, while still tuneful and fast enough to keep the melody propelling forward.
Play The Curse by Agnes Obel, and the Copper makes it all sound fluid, atmospheric and involving. The breathy layers of her ethereal voice fill up the spacious soundscape convincingly while also sounding intimate; the difference in pressure of the fingers plucking the strings and the movement of the bow across the strings is more apparent.
Compared to previous DragonFly DACs, the Copper sounds cleaner and less noisy, and that darker background allows for more subtlety and depth to the sound, while big dynamic shifts are handled with punch and a greater degree of gradation.
No matter what genre or file type we play – a 24-bit/192kHz FLAC of Tom Waits’ Closing Time album or MP3s of indie-folk demos or a CD-quality Khruangbin album – the Copper handles every kind of recording to the best of its very admirable ability, allowing the songs to flourish in the spotlight.
The grimy, sludgy, distorted guitars in Deftones’ Change (In The House Of Flies) come through with a satisfying amount of muscle and heavy angst, while Michael Giacchino’s orchestral Star Trek (2009) compositions sound rousing and inspiring. The differences in tonal quality between the big thunderous drums and the reedy woodwinds are relayed with a good amount of skill, and the variations between the quietest moment and a sudden loud moment are handled with authority and nuance in equal measure.
The Copper doesn’t shy away from laying bare low-fi or messy recordings, either. The noisy, shriller recording of Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea isn’t scrubbed clean, with those glaring, higher notes coming through with all their shininess intact, but without sounding horribly bright or hard.
Through it all, the DragonFly Copper ensures that everything still sounds organised and has solid footing. Rhythmically, it is quite excellent for its price and type, and so no matter the genre, it holds its own and leaves us hooked to the music, toes tapping and attention rapt.
It’s a similar story when we plug the Copper into an iPhone 16 and Samsung Galaxy S24, although as it draws power from the connected source, it sounds less powerful and less subtle through a smartphone compared with a laptop.
We would also recommend choosing your wired headphones carefully as the DragonFly Copper is more than capable of driving even premium options, and is flexible enough to showcase each headphones’ specific sonic character, too.
The differences between the Copper and Cobalt are pretty much how we found the differences between the Cobalt and the Red. The newer model is crisper, cleaner and more punctual, with a tighter bass and greater finesse, leaving the older model sounding a touch fuller and fuzzier. Both DACs are excellent performers that make music sound exciting and involving; the Copper is simply a more attention-grabbing performer, while the Cobalt now feels like a comfortable old friend.
Give it some good running-in time, and the new Copper will settle in just as nicely.
Verdict
(Image credit: What Hi-Fi?)
We were briefly worried that AudioQuest wouldn’t be making any more DragonFlys once the Cobalt DAC’s stock started winding down. We are very glad that it has, as the new DragonFly Copper is a terrific, tiny, simple device that is incredibly effective at making your desktop-bound music sound a hundred times better.
For its size and price, it’s quite astonishing just how good it is. Highly recommend.
Yes, I have a vested interest in its success, but despite that, I have to tip my hat to our magazine editor, Jonathan Evans, and production editor, Chris Burke, who together with the rest of the team – and some very special contributors – have done a particularly magnificent job with this one.
The bumper issue is packed with features looking back over 50 years of hi-fi history – but also looking forward at what the coming decades might bring to the worlds of hi-fi and home cinema.
And as I flicked through the pages reminiscing about the five-star products of yore, my trip down memory lane took a turn – probably because Paul McCartney’s stellar track Days We Left Behind came on – and I began pondering my personal hi-fi journey and how it was so fundamentally interlinked to the magazine.
What Hi-Fi? is a little older than me, and thanks to my audio aficionado father, I grew up in a household that always had a copy on the coffee table. There were only so many times you could re-read The Beano; so I often read Dad's magazine instead, making it a core part of my hi-fi journey.
First, while I had a cheap turntable in my room, I had yet to persuade my parents to buy me a CD player. And back then, before the vinyl revival, that was a problem for a kid just entering his angsty teenage years.
The local record shop, at this point, had pretty much stopped stocking new records. So I was desperate to get a CD player so that, like my older brother, I could listen to my music whenever I wanted, without having to persuade my parents to vacate the lounge.
Like every '90s kid, I wanted to prove how grown up I was by blasting Smells Like Teen Spirit and Even Flow out of my tiny bedroom, at full volume.
Second, because as a kid raised in a hi-fi household, I wanted the player I got to be “good” – but knew I had absolutely zero chance of getting a separates rack into my room. Even if I did follow my parents’ instructions to clean it and put away my Power Rangers action figures, there just wasn’t enough space.
So when What Hi-Fi?, the audio holy text I’d been raised to trust since I was in nappies, said the Denon was “a great all-rounder, and as comfortable playing hardcore rap as it is a string quartet”, I was sold (and wilfully ignored the fact it cost £300 that I didn't have).
Tiny, but powerful and full of charm, I knew it was going to be the top item on my letter to Santa that year the moment I saw it.
I even remember walking up to my dad with the issue, pointing at the review and saying “I want this for Christmas” with the typical self-confidence (and lack of self-awareness) of a child.
What then ensued was an extended negotiation to decide what I would offer in return for such an impressive prize – assurances on my school grades, chores I would take on, personal contributions towards the gift and the like.
And while my school report meant I didn’t get the Denon, or any other player, that year, or the year after (curse you Sega for your oh-so-awesome Mega Drive), eventually, after I got my act together, I was rewarded with a Panasonic SA-PM37MD micro system.
But even then, I still couldn't help but think back to the Denon, which was the motivation for many a study session and an offer to help clear the gutters or mow the lawn.
I may not have got to listen to it back then but it helped focus my love of music and the need to hear it in as good quality as possible – and it's fundamentally linked to a happy memory, the way hi-fi should be.
Do you have a hi-fi or home cinema memory to share? Let us know in the comments below!
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