- FiiO has launched a slim-looking DM15 R2R portable CD player
- Player, USB DAC, Bluetooth transmitter, desktop source – it goes a long way
- Priced at $269 (around £200 or AU$409)
Physical music is having a moment right now, right? Could products be emerging as some music lovers (and certain musicians) abandon the increasingly expensive Spotify streaming service to return to old-school, tangible, pleasurable, human-curated music?
Some facts: the brilliant Walkman cassette featuring We Are Rewind’s Duran Duran was released the day Spotify Wrapped came out, yesterday (Wednesday, December 3), and this gorgeous FiiO portable CD player was released today (Thursday, December 4), a day later. Oh yeah, and FiiO appears to have leaked its own response to the iPod Shuffle, also released yesterday…
Coincidence? I’ll leave it to you, but some could They say audio product manufacturers are looking to music fans for an alternative to what they’ve seen and heard lately.
Meet the FiiO DM15 R2R, a true Swiss Army knife in music playback, and in the image above, it’s connected to the new FiiO FT13 that we just reviewed (and actually really liked).
How high resolution can you go, FiiO?
You probably know that typical 16-bit/44.1kHz CD resolution is the starting point for high-resolution audio, but the FiiO DM15 R2R can do better than that. It will play CD-Rs in addition to regular CDs; Supported CD-R formats include WAV, WMA, FLAC, AAC and MP3, so if you have a few discs archived (or someone burned you a disc in 2001 and you’d love to play it again), this player can handle it.
As a DAC, FiiO says it will play music with up to 32-bit/384kHz PCM and native DSD256. The coaxial output, meanwhile, promises up to 24-bit/192 kHz. And the optics? I thought you’d never ask: 24-bit/96 kHz.
Basically, if you want a portable CD player that doubles as a USB DAC without looking like a cute retro toy, this might be the one. It even comes with an included infrared remote control for when you’ve set it up to work well with your speakers, across the room.
It’s the successor to the company’s surprisingly popular DM13 that arrived late last year, and while it looks much more sophisticated, it’s also more expensive, at $269 (which is around £200 or AU$409) versus the $139/£139 (or around AU$275) price of the first generation. model. Another sign of the growing popularity of CDs? Probably.
What do you get for the money? A compact aluminum chassis plus a transparent top so you can see the record as it spins: so far, so much classic. But the innards have been leveled out a bit for 2025: the rechargeable battery should last for seven hours of playback, and it now features FiiO’s proprietary R2R DAC (which is why the player gets its name; this time, nothing to do with reel-to-reel playback and recording).
The D15 R2R can function in multiple ways: as a regular portable CD player, as a standalone Hi-Fi system (via its optical and coaxial ports), as a USB DAC and as a Bluetooth transmitter. You also get two headphone jacks (3.5mm and 4.4mm balanced), but the 3.5mm will also work as a line output.
Do you want to use your Bluetooth headphones or headphones? OK, aptX, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive, and aptX Low Latency are all built in, and there’s an anti-shake switch to minimize the chance of CD skipping if you’re playing music while on the move.
CDs aren’t the only physical music format set to gain traction in 2025. Cassette tapes (see FiiO’s lovely option and even We Are Rewind’s Elvis-themed Walkman from earlier this year) are continually making a comeback, but so are those lovely silver CDs from my youth. Hurrah!
And when players are as versatile and legitimate as the new FiiO DM15 R2R, there is absolutely no need to be tied solely to CD playback either.
The best music players for all budgets.
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