From reincarnating the cassette player to shoving a DAC inside a mechanical keyboard, Fiio isn’t unafraid to get creative with its products, but its two latest launches tread more familiar territory: the M23 portable audio player and K19 headphone amp and DAC.
The former slots into Fiio’s range of digital audio players towards the more affordable end, but still offers a suite of features that’ll catch the eye of the on-the-go audiophile. It combines two AKM DACs, the AK4191EQ and AK4499EX, which means it can play hi-res files at up to 24-Bit 384kHz and PCM/DSD256, while MQA support is also on the menu.
For those with suitably equipped wireless headphones, the M23 can transmit hi-res tracks over aptX HD Bluetooth and LDAC, but it also works the other way, so you can receive audio from a Bluetooth device and use the player as a DAC/amp. The option to power it over USB means the M23 can function as a desktop device, which enables a ‘Super-High’ gain mode that delivers a hefty 1000mW per channel at 32 ohms.
Running on batteries it should last around 10.5 hours between charges, with 64GB of onboard storage to fill with files. If you run out of space for all your hi-res tunes you can expand it with SD cards up to 2TB.
A 5.5-inch touchscreen on the front allows you to navigate its Android operating system, with apps from Tidal, Qobuz, Apple Music and Deezer giving you access to those lossless streams.
Those who prefer a more traditional wired arrangement are catered for by 3.5mm single-ended and 4.4mm balanced headphone outputs, plus both single-ended and balanced line-outs.
And, speaking of headphones, FiiO’s second new launch is a desktop headphone amplifier and DAC, packed with inputs and outputs.
You can feed audio into the K19 via coaxial, optical, USB-C, HDMI, and HDMI ARC, while it can be piped out again through 6.35mm single-ended, 4.4mm balanced, 4-pin balanced XLR, dual RCA line-out, and balanced 3-pin XLR outputs. Audio passes through dual 8-Channel ES9039SPRO DACs and dual 8-Channel THX AAA 788+ amps so you can plug in almost any pair of headphones and it can deliver up to 8000mW of power output.
A 31-band Parametric Equalizer (PEQ) lets you fiddle with the performance to your heart’s content, but whatever you plug into it FiiO reckons you’ll get an “impressively musical, detailed, and expressive sound” out of it.
The FiiO K19, which will be available to buy this month, comes in either black or silver and will set you back £1249 / €1300 / $1300, while the M23 follows in April in either Blue Titanium or Stainless Steel for £649 / €700 / $700.
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