IFI Zen Blue 3 Bluetooth 5.4 Lossless HiFi Transmitter and Receiver

Muy buena marca y buenas prestaciones , le falta una buena guia de conexiones para personas no tan profesionales, creo que el equipo da más de lo que uno supone

Buen receptor de Bluetooth. Para los que sean perfeccionistas del audio, vale la pena el dinero empleado. Yo solo la uso para la reproducción en streaming y se nota la diferencia de calidad del sonido.

The WiiM Ultra will pair with Bluetooth headphones. However equalizer settings in the WiiM Ultra are not applied to Bluetooth output. The Zen Blue 3 provides a way to have equalizer settings in the WiiM Ultra applied to a Bluetooth signal output, for use with Sony WH-1000XM4 and Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless headphones I own. As well it supports high definition codecs for use with both of these headphones, which the WiiM Ultra doesn't offer. The headphones needed to be setup first with their respective apps on a smartphone, and then disconnected and forgotten on the phone, as the Zen Blue 3 won't connect to the headphones if another device is already connected. The SPDIF outputs of the WiiM Ultra can be adjusted to match the requirements of the Zen Blue 3 and Bluetooth headphones. Both bit depth and sample rate to the SPIDF optical or coax outputs can be adjusted, which is ideal for connecting to the optical or coax input on the Zen Blue 3. The bit depth can be set to 24, but for the Momentum 4 headphones the sample rate needs to be set to a maximum or 48Khz, as that is the max sample rate for aptX Adaptive codec. For LDAC the max sample rate is 96Khz. The max supported sample rate on the USB input is 96Khz but no adjustment is required and not possible on the WiiM Ultra. Volume control on Bluetooth headphones and ANC still function normally. However, next song using the touchpad on the headphones doesn't work. You must use the WiiM Home app or remote control to skip to the next song, pause or stop playback. Removing the headphones from your head won't pause playback. The Zen Blue 3 will function as a DAC, providing a balanced analogue audio signal to the Zen Can headphone amp, for high quality sound on wired headphones. Equalizer settings in the WiiM Ultra are applied. In the WiiM Ultra the max sample rate can be set to 192Khz for SPDIF optical or coax output, when in DAC operation mode of the Zen Blue 3. However, as one reviewer has already noted, when using the DAC function, the first half to full second of a music track is often cut off. I did upgrade the firmware to the latest at the time of writing this review, V1.61, but this issue wasn't fixed. Also, in the time between tracks there is sometimes, (infrequently), a ping sound from the left channel which hopefully won't get so loud that it would have the potential to cause hearing damage. Overall I'm happy with the Zen Blue 3. I'm happy that it supports high definition audio for use with my Bluetooth headphones. I'm happy that settings are saved between uses, so that I don't have to reselect the codec I want to use each time. Until the issues mentioned above are fixed, I'll use the DAC output from the WiiM Ultra to drive the Zen Can amp, instead of using the DAC output of the Zen Blue 3. Printing the user manual was a big help in setting it up. You can find that manual on the ifi-audio product information page. Scroll to the bottom and click on Support.

This was a necessary addition to my SONY STR-AN1000 AVR which only supports LDAC and SBC BT audio codecs. Since purchasing the BW Px7 S3 headphones which support the APTX family of codecs I was connecting with SBC only. Using the receiver's Zone 3 RCA audio outputs I'm able to connect with all the APTX codecs and pairing was a breeze. The ability to stream in APTX Lossless and Adaptive from my apps and networked files was well worth the upgrade. The unit is solidly built using aluminum casing and has excellent range with it TX function. It also acts as a receiver and DAC but I'm just using it for BT transmission. There are several other units on the market right now that are cheaper but I chose the iFi Zen Blue 3 having prior experience with their phono preamp and appreciate the build and sound quality of their products. I won't go into setup as it's dependent on your equipment and use case but I had little trouble getting everything up and running. It works as advertised. The only thing I did notice was the need to boost the volume from your output a bit higher than you normally would on both your receiver and the blue 3. I suggest going over the instructions for using multi-zone audio outs on your receiver which can get tricky when using a zone 3 output.

Very nice look design, easy pairing and almost very good sound for a compact unit Very happy with it