iFi Audio GO bar is a USB-C compatible dongle that integrates both digital to analogue converter and a headphone amplifier in one small and portable dongle. Such devices became immensely popular lately, mostly because of their tiny form factor and the fact that their usage spectrum can be really, really wide. You can connect such a dongle to your phone, tablet or a PC and get a serious gain in the sound quality. Improvements can be especially significant – also in the terms of being able to drive more demanding headphones – if you opt for a more ambitious device like the one here. Since in the case of the iFi Audio GO bar, we can definitely see that it occupies the higher end of the dongle market with the price tag of 329 GBP/EUR/USD. Yet the thing with GO bar is that it sports a few really unique features that are not to be easily found anywhere else, even in the world of the bigger-than-dongle portable converters with built-in amplifiers.
This definitely has something to do with the fact that it’s made by the company that often puts interesting – and actually useful – features into their products. Not that long time ago, we did a review of the iFi Zen Stream digital transport. And it had almost astonishing functionality for the price. Not to mention its sonic prowess that was far beyond the asking price. Therefore, our expectations for a GO bar are, let’s be honest, quite high. Especially when you can easily find in the marketing materials the sentence that it’s the “best bar none”. And when you additionally consider that it has a really powerful – for such a small contraption – headphone amplifier inside. Headphone amplification circuit in the GO bar can, according to the manufacturer, deliver up to 475mW into 32 ohms impedance and a whopping (again, for such a small device) 7.5V of voltage swing into 600 ohms. These are some serious numbers, especially for a device so diminutive in stature. And they also mean that in reality – the GO bar can be seen as the dongle that would be the one to go for when more demanding headphones can come into question. And this also shifts a bit the way we can perceive it, since it’s not only a “small dongle” anymore in the terms of a sheer performance. But rather a more capable DAC/headphone amp that just happens to have that tiny form factor.
What’s even more interesting, there are other intricate details that just may make the GO bar even more alluring to those technically savvy enthusiasts that are looking for a solution that is small yet capable. And customizable – more on that later – at the same time. That’s why we’ll take a closer look at it and see what it actually has to offer. Since, as we all know, at the end of the day – it all boils down to the combination of everyday usage and sonic capabilities.
A dongle or a featherweight DAC and headphone amp?
The whole idea of a dongle that would contain a digital to analogue converter together with a headphone amplifier (or some kind of an analogue audio out) is not new. And has actually been on the market for many years now, usually in the form of some el-cheapo devices that were marketed as “external sound cards”. Yet those newer audiophile versions showed up more or less together – when considering the timeline here – with the emergence of the streaming services that people nowadays so often use on the go. You see, the thing with all those devices like to GO bar is the fact that all that (alleged) sound quality is put into a thing that has a really, really small form factor. In case of the GO bar its dimensions are 65 x 22 x 13.2 mm (or 2.6″ x 0.9″ x 0.5” if you prefer Imperial) and the weight equals to 28.5 grams (which is almost exactly 1.0 oz). So, it’s actually smaller than all those more or less portable DACs. iFi actually calls it “top-of-the-line ultraportable USB DAC/headphone amp” and I believe that this is the relevant one-line description of what it really is.