iFi GO blu Review and Measurements

I had effectively no experience with gear at the time but I do still have fond memories of how the Wolfson chip in the original Galaxy S sounded using Voodoo. With how it seems most "nice" phones are omitting the 3.5mm jack it feels like the market is gradually pushing for this sort of device.

Sennheiser HD600 notwithstanding, presuming this would have enough juice to drive the HP-3 and other Fostex biodyna kids well, @purr1n?

 

Yes, there's demand for such products

 

I've had this tiny device for a couple of weeks now and I must say if ticks many boxes for me with iems:
- small device, good battery life, quite a good design (which is always a nice to have)
- LDAC compatibility (also HWA but I've had some bugs with HWA, so LDAC is good enough)
- mic included ! that's just great and an absolute requirement for me. When I listen to music at home and that I receive a call, which happens at lot as I work from home a lot more now, I don't have to take my iems off and plug TWS or something else, I can just take the call with the Blu and it's so convenient
- 4.4 out, just so that I don't have to use adapters as my iem cables are in 4.4
- engaging signature and overall quite good S/Q (I couldn't find a real difference between BT and USB connections to be honest, so I don't bother to use it with a usb cable even when I stay at my desk)

The cons:
- a bit of hiss on my most sensitive iems (ISN H40). Not an issue when music is on though.
- no clip to attach the Blu on a jacket easily.. I had a clip on the Radsone ES100 and it was quite convenient. So i'm looking for a case with a clip for the Blu but couldn't find one so far.

All in all great little device that I use on a daily basis.

 

There are various quality settings with android when it comes to LDAC. Some are lower bit rate but give you better connection quality with less chance of drop outs.

Annoyingly my Galaxy S21 defaults to the "Best effort" version with every Bluetooth connection.

 

On my smartphone it switches automatically to HWA codec (Huawei phone, heh) and I have to put LDAC manually.

Oh I forgot another con for me: the 4.4mm socket is really really tight. Everytime I take my cable off I'm afraid of tearing the whole socket out..

 

Wanted to chime in and say the Go Blu is a delight. I'm not a demanding DAC-o-phile, so I can't add much to what's already been said about this device by more discerning ears. But in terms of usability:

- Good size. Small but not un-usably tiny. (Bonus: fits in the tiny side-pocket on Levis jeans)
- Sane selection of output jacks IMO. 2.5mm is dumb, so I'm glad iFi found room for both a 3.5mm and 4.4mm jack.
- Sane UI. Buttons do what you'd expect just based on intuition. Volume knob does its job great with small increments and good usability.
- The bass boost adds a nice sub and low bass foundation, meaning I don't feel a need to EQ my Moondrop Katos at all.
- Has enough juice to drive said Katos to a totally satisfying level. (Porta Pro's too)




The one negative is probably endemic to any device like this one: LDAC reception is iffy. Having just my body between the transmitter (Nokia G10) and the Go Blu can create enough signal attenuation to create dropouts in the music playback, and that's even with the transmitter doing rate adaptation (not locked into the highest bitrate). I didn't have this problem with a Sony MUC neckhorseshoe thing, but because of where that normally sits, it's almost never going to have a body part attenuating the signal, and maybe its form factor gives it room for a higher gain antenna?

That's the only minor negative I've found so far, and again, I suspect it's caused by physics rather than anything particular to the Go Blu. (Updating the firmware is not exactly fun, but also a not-frequent thing.)

I've had several multi-hour listening sessions and never run the battery out on the Go Blue, so that part of its performance seems great too.

 

Thanks a lot and I'm happy to read that you're happy with your GO blu. Enjoy and in the meantime I'll ask internally about LDAC. Thanks!

 

Has anyone had any problems with the battery in the Go Blu? Mine was at about 40% (per iPhone battery widget), then shut itself off, presumably due to low power. I plugged it in and powered it back on, and it was at 1%. But then it charged to 40% within five seconds and 80% within a minute. Could it be misreporting the battery level to the iPhone? Or is it a bad battery? It has now charged to 95% in 15 minutes, although the FAQ says it will only charge to 80% while in use.

 

It might be either a faulty battery or the circuit that oversees it. If this doesn't get back to normal, can you please let us know here: https://support.ifi-audio.com

Thanks!

 

Having a weird crackling distortion/clipping going on when I run Go Blu on the last two clicks of volume into a line level source on 3.5mm. About 3.4v out. Reducing by two clicks to 3.06v gets rid of it. Anybody else encounter this?

It's more of a minor annoyance than anything since the output level is well more than enough already, but I'm curious if perhaps my unit could be faulty.

 

Nothing of the sort should occur AFAIK, so you may want to let our support know about this: https://support.ifi-audio.com/

 

Just got the Go Blu this weekend. Great product, really like almost everything about it so far. Sound quality is great with all the IEMs I have used with it, the bluetooth connection has worked really well, and the physical volume knob is a nice touch. My only issue is its usability with the CA Andromeda 2020 and Ara, both of which have substantial hiss, particularly the former. Of course, the iEMatch+ solves the issue for the most part, it just adds more things connected to Blu and (slightly) reduces the ease of portability. However, without it I don't know that either of them is usable with the amount of noise that is present. On the other hand, the Sennheiser IE600 is a great match with no noticeable hiss.

 

That's fantastic news about the Pods. I think a muting circuit might be in effect, and is really noticeable upon pausing the music, but only just briefly before it goes silent. However, once you notice it, it is impossible to ignore. Just to add, this is certainly not a dealbreaker by any means, the device is overall wonderful. Just something to consider if using primarily very sensitive IEMs.

 

I picked up one of these and like it a lot, except there seems to have been a bug with that particular unit or all of them, where sometimes the volume gets confused because its' software volume control, not analog, and it would just keep going up no matter which direction I turned the knob, back and forth frantically, which was a horrifying experience until it was full blast and a madly ripped the iems out of my ears.

I retuned the unit to Amazon and got a replacement but I'm honestly scared to use it after that happened twice. Full volume with iems is not fun at all.

I wish iFi would let go of putting 4.4 balanced jacks on everything and use the room for better components like a real volume knob.

Anyone else have this happen to them? Or was it just that one unit? Using it with an iPhone 13 Pro mini.

Cheers

 

I've had two different units and never had that happen. I use android though. That would Def hurt the ears!

 

I've only ever tried the GO blu in store demos several times over the last couple years but it happened to me once. Not a fan. Samsung S20 FE, running whatever release was most recent as of March or April this year. Thankfully I had a high dynamic range piece playing at the time and it was during a lull in activity, so my ears survived (I was using the Solarises at the time so... rather sensitive).

I eventually ended up getting a BTR7 mainly for the higher OI playing better with Andromeda 2020s; not a fan of them out of low-z sources which is a shame because the iFi was very much a more fun listen. Tinier too, and with a better mic.