Fiio M15 Review (Digital Audio Player)

[dmac6419]

Oh m11 m11 pro m15 full decode mqa as well

 

[noel_fs]

Could you test the "all to DSD" feature?

reminds me of ps audio xd....

 

[Rottmannash]

I wish Amir could test the Hiby R5. Methinks it could measure fairly well. And it's on sale for under $250.

 

[direstraitsfan98]

Love Vicious Delicious...

 

[amirm]

Could you test the "all to DSD" feature?

No, I don't have any DSD test signals. And at any rate, I returned this today.

 

[Veri]

No, I don't have any DSD test signals. And at any rate, I returned this today.

It was some "conversion to DSD" mode noel meant, it upsamples to DSD128 I believe, with noise shaping involved.
But since you returned it already I guess it's too late now

 

[ExUnoPlura]

Fiio M15 came with the play store available, so why would you have to sideload?I have the M11 wifi and LDAC works just fine.oh FYI m11 m11 pro and m15 comes with Tidal and Qobuz already loaded.

I got one in July, I believe, and the Roon/Qobuz apps came via Fiio. There was some question at the time about whether Qobuz was passing full FLACs or was limited by the Android audio codecs, as well.

 

[blse59]

Long time DAP user here but it seems more and more to me that an audio USB dongle is the most proper solution.

Bingo! Tempotec Sonata hd pro. Save yourself over $1200, lol. You get full functionality of your phone and full selection of software to choose from.

 

[dmac6419]

Bingo! Tempotec Sonata hd pro. Save yourself over $1200, lol. You get full functionality of your phone and full selection of software to choose from.

I use my phone for making calls and other things,but not as a dedicated music player

 

[Atratusnex]

I got BLON03

my condolences

 

[Veri]

my condolences

They're actually not bad at all, very well tuned.
https://headphonedatabase.com/oratory?ids=54 compare to Oratory1990 InEar target. Quite close.

 

[Rottmannash]

my condolences

A little IEM snobbery on a Sunday morning.

 

[Nango]

Bingo! Tempotec Sonata hd pro. Save yourself over $1200, lol. You get full functionality of your phone and full selection of software to choose from.

Well, before I use one of those dongles I need to know by how much mA it drains off the phones battery, this is crucial. If it consumes more than 25-30 mA it is senseless. The vast majority I have seen so far consume around 50 mA. So 8 hrs play time or 16 hrs does matter a lot.

 

[Atratusnex]

They're actually not bad at all, very well tuned.
https://headphonedatabase.com/oratory?ids=54 compare to Oratory1990 InEar target. Quite close.

i owned them briefly and hated them... sound and comfort where both ...suboptimal for me

 

[Aclii]

@amirm do you remember in which mode was 3.5 output tested ? If I remember correctly 3.5 output has 2 analogue modes LO (line out) and PO (power/headphone out) so I think with LO mode you can get better results if connected to an external headphone amp. A bit disappointed by the results of M15 to be honest, I have M11 Pro and seems that it measures even worse than that.

 

[Rix403]

Could you test the "all to DSD" feature?

reminds me of ps audio xd....

I’ve tested this off and on. To my ears, what I found is if I have a complex piece of classical music and say the violins are a bit fatigueing, it seems to round that edge off when used with Stellia. Otherwise, with most other music, I don’t seem to hear any changes. I also found when used as a USB dac, the music seemed to be more detailed with a better image.

 

[Inkey31]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Fiio M15 DAP. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $1,300 including Prime shipping on Amazon.

The M15 runs Android but also has a dedicated, player mode (which I did not test). It feels substantial like most DAPs:

View attachment 105933

When I powered this unit up, I was pleasantly surprised by owner's installation of Roon. Fired that up and found it quite nice to have for around the home given the fact that I am a Roon user. Alas, while there was some kind of upgrade going on, Roon constantly stopped and could not fetch my music. So performance -- Wifi or CPU -- is not that great or at least anything getting close to a modern mobile phone.

I don't know which version of Android it is running. I had a hard time navigating it as I could not figure out the back button, etc. Not a huge deal but was not as close to my regular phone as I wished. This is as much Android's fault as is Fiio's.

Nice suite of jacks are provided for both unbalanced and balanced:
View attachment 105934

And of course one of the main benefits of these players is the hardware "VCR" controls:

View attachment 105935

Fiio M15 Measurements
For testing, I used a USB jack and put the unit in USB DAC mode. This allowed me to run my full suite of DAC and headphone amp tests. So let's start with the former, using the unbalanced headphone out:

View attachment 105936

This puts the performance is very good category:

View attachment 105938

Balanced performance was a bit worse:
View attachment 105937

Intermodulation versus level showed an "IMD hump" which is strange as this is an AKM DAC chip not ESS:

View attachment 105939

Note how in this case balanced performance is much better as far as noise level. Not sure why it is reverse of dashboard.

Dynamic range at 4 volts is excellent:

View attachment 105940

Performance at 50 mv output for sensitive IEMs is above average:

View attachment 105942

Jitter performance is very good other than broadening of our main tone that indicates low frequency random jitter:

View attachment 105943

The impairment is totally inaudible though due to its nature and exceptionally low level. The performance here is much better than any USB dongle.

Multitone distortion shows rising noise in low frequencies:
View attachment 105944

We see the same thing in THD+N vs frequency:
View attachment 105946

Linearity test is nailed indicating very good accuracy:
View attachment 105947

A number of filters are provided:

View attachment 105949

Most important test here is power availability so let's test that using 300 ohm load first:

View attachment 105950

Balanced output is quite good for a portable device at 64 milliwatts. Unbalanced is a quarter of that which while not terrible, is not that much power at 16 milliwatts.

Strangely again, unlike the dashboard, the balanced output is superior as far as noise level. And even with the "IMD hump" performance is desktop class in both noise and distortion.

Power naturally increases a lot when testing into 32 ohm load:
View attachment 105953

Varying the impedance from 600 to 12 ohm we see small load dependency:

View attachment 105956

Fiio M15 Listening Tests
Using balanced connection to my Drop Ether CX, there was plenty of power, dynamics and detail. Given the difficulty many portable products have in driving this headphone, this is a very good result.

Using unbalanced connection, I had just enough power for Sennheiser HD650.

Conclusions
The Fiio M15 targets desktop class performance and it almost gets there. In absolute there, i.e. SINAD and Dynamic Range, it is there already. But there is a mid-level distortion that is unfortunate.

Overall, the Fiio M15 manages to best just about any dongle or phone you would use instead of it and handily so. So I am going to put it on my Recommended list.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Did you measure this in pure music mode? Can you measure this pure music mode even?

 

[ReaderZ]

Oh no I just realized this is ak4499 *2.

Like 2 threadrippers in a laptop, when they could have just used a 5800U.

 

[D4nte85]

i have a x5 (first gen) and an x7 mark2, and both got a lot of firmeware issues and the digital knobs died very fast, so i wouldnt recommend fiio in general even if they sound nice ...

 

[Alek1000]

Or you could get a HiBy R3Pro DAP for less than a 200$.

you could also get a bottle of vodka for $500 and forget what a DAP actually is!