I listened to iFi’s Rolls Royce inspired music streamer – and it promises a luxury ride for your headphones and hi-fi

If you’re going to name your flagship product after one of the most iconic luxury cars of all time, you’d better make sure it’s ready to live up to its prestigious title.

It’s not the first time iFi has used the word “Phantom” in one of its products – the British brand attached the same moniker to its iFi iCan Phantom headphone amplifier a few years back.

iFi has freely admitted that the name of its new flagship Phantom hi-res music streamer, which also functions as a DAC, preamplifier and headphone amplifier, is directly inspired by the the legendary Rolls Royce of the same name, hoping to infuse some of their latest offering’s DNA with that same blend of style, sophistication and performance in celebration of “quintessential British engineering”.

At £4495 / $4495 per piece, you’d hope so.

We were keen to see if the Phantom could live up to its name, heading to iFi's exclusive launch event at Tower Bridge, London, to take the Phantom flagbearer for a test drive.

Under the hood

Externally, it’s a chic yet unassuming little thing. The iFi is narrower than most standard laptops, with a two-tier design through which the main inputs and connections are housed on the darker plinth and the controls and screen sit above. Speaking of controls, a right-hand rotary dial handles volume, whereas a left-hand counterpart lets you access settings, inputs and the like.

The high-end Phantom has come into this world charged with quite the roster of tasks it must ably perform, acting not only as a preamplifier and music streamer but also as a dedicated headphone amplifier and standalone DAC.

To meet this heady array of tasks, the decidedly compact unit boasts more than 7000 megawatts of power, a healthy array of connectivity options – including coaxial inputs, balanced XLR and RCA outputs and a series of headphone ports including 4-pin balanced, 3-pin balanced, 4.4 balanced and 3.5mm – to meet the demands required of a do-it-all (or nearly all) system.

Flagship technology comes with the flagship territory, with the Phantom boasting JVC Kenwood K2 and K2HD information processing tech for upsampling file rates digitally, as well as four interleaved Burr Brown DSD1793 DAC chips capable of handling files up to DSD2048 (with remastering) and PCM 32-bit/768kHz.

Rather niftily, the new unit also offers a choice of two distinct output topologies – one Class A solid state and one tube-based – depending on your preference. They are accessible via a small toggle mounted on the Phantom’s fascia.

Taking it for a test drive

There are a number of ways to listen to iFi's latest, with our demonstration at the launch event giving us the chance to sample a small handful.

Proceedings kick off with the Phantom acting as a preamplifier and music streamer to a pair of PMC twenty5.24i floorstanders, during which it provides a sharp, snappy rendition of Pharrell Williams’ Come Get It Bae before ably downshifting to showcase its smoother side via MC Jones and Maevy’s jazzy So Glad.

That premium combination conjures, to our ears, a wide soundstage with the aid of the PMC towers, as the various sprinkles of texture and detail on So Glad flit gracefully across that expansive, full-bodied canvas.

Detail levels appear impressive, though as is always the case with tests such as these, it's worth considering how much of the work is being done by the speakers as much as the source feeding them.

The bulk of our personal listening is done via wired headphones, with iFi generously setting up a further four Phantoms, each attached to a different set of high-end cans, including the Sennheiser HD800, the Sennheiser HD 820 and the Final D8000 DC Pro Edition, with a companion iPad playing Tidal as our streaming source.

Naturally, the sound produced depends somewhat on which headphones we select – the Sennheiser HD800, for instance, have a sharper, cleaner profile than the smoother, richer Finals.

That said, it isn't hard to discern the particular characteristics of the Phantom itself shining through to our ears as we work our way from headphone to headphone and from track to track.

Playing Radiohead’s 15 Step, for instance, reveals what appears to be a clear, detailed and spacious sound, with the Phantom showcasing plenty of detail and sketching out the leading edges of notes with a precise hand. Switching to the unit’s tube setting elicits a fuller, warmer sound, yet not to the expense of all that lovely textural insight.

The Phantom once again seems to paint upon an open soundstage, granting tracks an airy, cinematic feel, to the extent that you’d be forgiven for thinking that background vocals flitting across 15 Steps’ tightly orchestrated composition were in fact emanating from somewhere outside of the headphones' enclosure, as though somebody was playing the same track in a neighbouring room.

iFi’s flagship debutante further hints at its seamless feeling of fluidity during our demo period. Tracks such as Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun and Nick Cave’s Night Raid seem to flow easily and naturally as instruments move across that generous soundstage. The Phantom appears to be strong at granting the impression of genuine musical interplay, of instruments being played organically rather than reproduced in a stilted or mechanical fashion.

Rhythmically, the new flagship streamer gives a good impression of sounding precise and punchy, especially when operating in its solid-state amplification mode, all while offering what appears at first listen to be a healthy distinction between small scale dynamic fluctuations.

There are certain tracks we'd have relished the chance to test these facets further – a bit of Hans Zimmer or Ludwig Goransson, perhaps – but we're working with the limits of the tunes we've been provided with for our demo.

We find that iFi's midrange production lends clarity to key vocal performances, yet we’d have liked more time to discern whether the streamer-cum-DAC is able fully to communicate the quirks and emotions underpinning some of our favourite performances.

This feels like a detailed and precise performer, in our first impressions, but does it sometimes stray into the realm of the overly analytical? More testing time would undoubtedly be required to really get to grips with what the new Phantom is capable of.

While our demo time was relatively short, it was capable of leaving an enduring impression. Do-it-all products such as these can often struggle to make good on their myriad promises, yet we heard a strong indication that the Phantom could be as comfortable powering your favourite headphones as slotting into a high-end hi-fi system.

Any firm conclusions would require more dedicated testing in our listening rooms, but it's hard to deny that iFi has produced something interesting for potential users who have money to spend and want a powerful, versatile means of upgrading their home listening setup.

MORE:

Read our recent WiiM Amp Ultra review

Speaker stands are far more important than you might think

Best music streamers: top network audio players tested by our experts