FiiO DM15 R2R Review

Price

In the UK, the DM15R2R is available for £250 from a usefully broad spread of dealers including ones who sell online so there should be no great issue securing one. In the USA, it can be purchased for $269, while in Australia it will set you back $439 AUD.

At the time of writing you can also find the older DM13 for sale from some outlets but this is not as capable as the newer model so it would best to choose the DM15.

You can also parallel import the FiiO from some online sellers but the savings aren’t huge and your warranty might be an issue.

Design

• Compact but quite solidly made
• Display and remote help dual use
• Inarguably pretty cool

It’s been a (very) long time since I had much to do with a portable CD player but, if my fragile memory serves me correctly, the FiiO is a little larger than some ‘in period’ options.

It does without radiused edges and other little tricks to reduce the overall size but, in a world where you store 1500 CDs in lossless on a micro SD card, the FiiO is only going to be considered portable up a point.

The general standard of build is pretty good for the asking price though. Three finishes are available; black, silver and red and the combination of these anodized sections and the see through top lid look pretty smart although I confess I would be worried about cracking it if I stowed it incorrectly in a bag.

It becomes clear pretty quickly though the FiiO has ambitions for the DM15 beyond you listening on the move. Thanks to their being outputs on the back as well as the front and the means to avoid constantly charging the battery, it is perfectly possible to use it as a desktop device with a conventional system.

It has a small but broadly useable display that allows you to see what it’s up to and small rubber feet to keep it in place. If you have an amp with a spare analogue or digital input, this is an equivalently priced device that can ‘complete’ the functionality and make use of it. To make things easier still, FiiO supplies a small remote too.

There is something else to consider about the FiiO and that it’s cooler than most bits of equipment anywhere near the price.

If you crave being the centre of attention in a public place, I can promise you that taking one of these out on a bus or train will achieve that with bells on. It doesn’t need a clear lid, I’m sure there is no requirement for the display to be orange on black and the host of tiny buttons almost certainly has a more modern alternative but they combine to produce a device that is fun. It’s a world away from a sober black box and much the better for it.

Specification

• Bespoke CD mechanism and servo
• R2R DAC
• USB Input
• Balanced and unbalanced connections
• Bluetooth

FiiO has done a fair bit of work to available CD mechanism parts available to make them function in the context of a portable player. It has to be said that the work seems quite successful too.

The DM15 takes all the firmware revisions of the preceding DM13 and refines the spindle to allow for better fitting combined with less chance of scratching the disc. In operation, the FiiO reads the table of contents quickly and reliably and feels pretty confidence inspiring in use.

It’s read everything I’ve thrown at it except for the embedded CD content on a PlayStation 1 game.

The decoding that this mechanism sends a signal too is wholly bespoke. Inside the DM15, you’ll find a proprietary four-channel, fully differential 24-bit R2R resistor arrays DAC.

It is built using a grand total of 192 precision thin-film resistors (48 per channel), carefully selected for their 0.1% accuracy and low temperature drift. These DACs are something of a FiiO speciality and they are generally the preserve of rather more expensive devices than this.

This DAC is capable of handling PCM to 384kHz and DSD to 256. Such numbers might seem like overkill on a device designed to read a format that tops out at 44.1kHz but there is a reason for it.

FiiO has also equipped the DM15 with a USB-C input that allows it to function as a USB DAC and this means you can make use of all of the available sample rate handling should you wish. It also means that this portable CD player starts to look more sensible as an all-round product too.

At the front you’ll find both 3.5mm and 4.4mm headphone sockets to allow you to listen to the FiiO via a wide selection of headphones in the manner of its ancestors. What you can also do is access the signal via a 3.5mm and 4.4mm connection on the back to use it as a desktop player. If you want, you can connect directly to a power amp or powered speakers too as there is a volume control fitted which is controlled via a small knob on the front panel.

FiiO isn’t done there either. You can turn the 3.5mm output into a coax or optical output to run as a transport into a digital input, making the DM15 one of the smallest and most efficient of its type.

There are some useful nods to modernity as well. The DM15 can transmit over Bluetooth to wireless cans as well as relying on wired connections. The combination of CD player and wireless buds is gently surreal in use but it is stable and works extremely well.

Battery life from the on board cell is quoted at about seven hours and this feels achievable in use with recharging being reasonably brisk via a USB-C connection on the rear.

Performance

• Capable of genuinely enjoyable performance over CD with earphones
• …and wireless earphones too
• USB DAC performance is very enjoyable
• Works brilliantly as a transport too

Leaving aside the retro joy of settling down with the FiiO and a pair of earphones to listen to my 1997, bought on the day of release copy of Dig Your Own Hole by the Chemical Brothers (which, I won’t lie, was considerable), there is a lot to like about how the FiiO makes music.

This is a rough and ready album by design; the rawness is part of the appeal. The FiiO doesn’t remove this edge but it does gently smooth off the roughest elements of it.

Crucially, it does this while keeping the energy and sheer get up and go that Block Rockin Beats should have as a matter of course. Before too long, you have achieved the key goal of stopping listening to the equipment and focusing on the music itself.

Neither is this something that is only achieved when you listen to big electronic dance numbers. Funeral by Arcade Fire is presented with its delicacy and emotional content intact and a genuine sense of the church it was recorded in conveyed in what you hear. Vocals are particularly well handled and the partnership with the Sennheiser IE600 is a very listenable one.

You don’t have to have the cable present though. Pairing the FiiO to a pair of Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 true wireless takes a little bit of effort (although this could just as easily be down to them looking for a previously paired device) but the result is genuinely enjoyable.

The aptX HD signal that the two devices settled as their communication level is enough to keep the fundamental quality of the CD present in what you hear and although decoding switches over to being the sole preserve of the Bowers & Wilkins so some of the refinement of the FiiO is lost but it’s still a very enjoyable way of listening to music even if there is no real difference between it and the same file played via Qobuz and an iPhone.

Even here through, the FiiO isn’t done. Connect the same iPhone up to the USB input and make use of that bespoke DAC and the result is consistently enjoyable. Being at my most critical and wheeling out the latest version of the Chord Mojo 2 to compare, the FiiO is softer at the frequency extremes; particularly the bass depth than the Chord and there is a drop in fine detail.

Across the midrange though, the FiiO is able to bring a warmth and engagement to Poppy Ackroyd’s Resolve that is genuinely lovely. Ackroyd plays the piano in a manner different to almost anyone else; using the lid and strings as part of the performance and the FiiO captures it exceptionally well.

This means that using the DM15 as a slightly bulky USB DAC for a MacBook Pro has become less of an odd feeling than it did to start with. There have been points; with some older recordings in particular, where I have preferred what the FiiO is doing over some of the smaller but notionally more resolving devices here. 

And then, if the fancy takes you, you can disconnect the wired or wireless cans and start making use of the FiiO as a dedicated CD player. Connected to a Cambridge Audio Edge A via the 4.4mm connection (terminating in a pair of XLR plugs), the DM15 isn’t ‘good for a portable player’, it is something that represents meaningfully good CD performance at a bargain price. That it does this while taking up very little space is rather admirable too.

It isn’t done there either. Make use of the adapter that FiiO supplies in the packaging and output the signal via coaxial into a DAC and the result is pretty much going to be as good as the DAC is.

In the ‘old days’, the performance of a CD transport was supremely important because errors that crept into the signal were very hard to undo. Now, modern DACs have formidable error rejection which means that even if the signal coming out the back of the FiiO isn’t absolutely perfect, it’s well within the limits of what the DAC can handle.

The combination of the DM15 and a Topping D900 was genuinely excellent and a reminder of quite how good a CD can be with the right hardware.

Should you buy it?