John Darko
iFi Audio wants to pull on our collective coat about a more unusual type of portable audio product. The UK company’s awkwardly-named UP Travel is a small – and light (25g!) – Bluetooth receiver and transmitter. Press a button to flip out the ‘switchblade’ 3.5mm plug and power on the device. Move a switch on the side to set its operational mode: RX (receive) or TX (transmit).
Two typical use cases:
1) Connect the UP Travel to an aircraft’s in-flight entertainment system to have it convert the armrest’s analogue audio output to digital and transmit it wirelessly to one or two pairs of Bluetooth headphones.
2) Connect the UP Travel to a car entertainment system’s auxiliary input to use it as a Bluetooth audio receiver.
iFi is keen to point out that UP Travel will decode to analogue what it receives over Bluetooth using a dedicated Cirrus Logic DAC chip and clock — and not the DAC found in the average system-on-a-chip. “The UP Travel is the only device in its class that uses true Hi-Fi grade architecture,” says the press release.
However, that same press release says nothing about the ADC used by the UP Travel when in transmitter mode. Perhaps that ADC is part of the UP Travel’s Qualcomm QCC51xx Bluetooth chipset.
Codec support? SBC, AAC, aptX (HD, Adaptive, Low Latency) and LDAC run in both directions, but LHDC/HWA only in receiver mode. A long press of the codec button tells us which codec is currently in play; further presses allow us to cycle through the available options.
Side note: the press release mentions of ‘Hi-Res Bluetooth’ are oxymoronic: no Bluetooth codec can currently transmit or receive hi-res audio without first discarding data. They are all lossy.
iFi says the UP Travel’s internal battery is good for up to 10 hours of playback with firmware updates installable via iFi’s Nexis app. This natty little device also features a “built-in mic with cVc noise & echo suppression” for phone calls.
Pricing: US$99, €99 or £99. But hold on. It’s not shipping until 31st July. In the meantime, you can read the UP Travel’s quick-start guide here.
Further information: iFi
