Fiio m15 is Sold out on Amazon and aliexpress.
Did Z drop a positive video on his patreon or something?
Lol confirmed. He did. And I think the price went UP!?!
- looks at specs and pricing, sees itās literally impossible for him to justify* added to the ignore list
I watched Zeosā review in spurts when I was able to today, and while I generally agree with him, as someone who owns this Iād like to temper some of his praise and offer up a few observations.
Reviewing it after 9 hours of use really doesnāt give the best sense of battery life and a lot of the quirks imo. Iāve run the battery down just about every day for the past 2 weeks, and if you are using balanced you get closer to 8-9 hours than you would 15+. If you run balanced and use the over-ear setting itās more like 6 hours. Which is fine. But itās not limitless play like it was suggested.
The bass calmed down a lot after a week. Itās still very strong, but much tighter than it was out of the box. Say what you want about burn in being entirely mental, but this sounds different today than when I received it. Iāve seen numerous posts on other forums about DAPs in general needing substantial burn in, with one specifically pointing to the number of OP Amps in the M15 as a prime example of a device needing burn-in. I donāt know whether the science was valid, but I noticed a change in any case. Again, 9 hours of use wouldnāt have sounded the way it does today, and Iām a little surprised he was so positive based on that small sample size. I was a lot more critical in my first few days than I am today.
This thing gets freaking hot. If you want to play videos off youtube, you can lock to dim the screen, but you canāt turn the screen off without stopping playback (that I can figure out anyway). After about 45 minutes audio playback stops and a message pops up saying that the device is too hot, and must cool down before resuming use. I couldnāt have watched Zās review of the M15 on the M15 in one sitting. Itās a minor annoyance, and if I need to watch a video on youtube my phone is fine for that. There seem to be some alphabetization issues for some people with the way they tag their songs, but itās not killing me. There are some tracks I have to search for a little more than others, which can be annoying.
The M15 sounds really incredible. Itās wide, and has great instrument separation, but it is definitely on the warm side. Paired with my Empyreans or with my Atlas iems, it can get to be a little dark for my tastes. But paired with some of my brighter headphones and iems, I think itās really great. Is it worth it? Probably not. But itās pretty damn good, and gives me a lot to be happy about while accepting my early adopter tax.
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I was a little surprised by how quickly he came to a conclusion about it.
One thing to note from the video - Zeos seems to think that running balanced isnāt even necessary with this thing because it outputs so much power.
At 300ohm that would be 70mw output without going balanced. That could save on a lot of battery life, unless you have a particular reason that you would need more than 70mw at 300ohm, which totally exists, but is actually pretty rare if Iām not mistaken.
The thing getting hot is a little worrisomeā¦also the lack of dedicated control for the output is a little disappointing. Is there a clear way to know the difference between high gain plus āNot over ear modeā and over ear mode plus low gain, low gain plus over ear mode, etc, etc?
I donāt really get the issue with searching for tracks. Isnāt it the same as the other Fiios? They work in a pretty straightforward way as far as I can tell.
I still think itās a value with just how much damn power the thing can put out while also BEING a DAP. Zeos was taking Modhouse Argons on a casual walk and powering them totally.
Iām glad youāre happy with yours, but I wish you werenāt and youād sell them to me. lmao
Thatās true, but if you have a balanced device, 9/10 times it will preform better balanced, so I would consider taking advantage
You can do that with a m11 or something, the actual power argons take is overstated, you can run them off a phone, and it will sound like decent. The m15 has plenty of power balanced to get a good experience
Okay, somebody help me make sense of this then.
What kind of power does this suggest I could get at 300ohm balanced or unbalanced? I donāt really know how to go about deciphering this.
This is m11 pro btw
I always try to go balanced with iems if given the choice, and thatās what had me looking at DAPs in the first place. I have a Mojo, but itās not balanced, and I was noticing my Andromedas sounding way better off of my THX 789 with a 2.5 balanced cable connected to a XLR adapater. The M15 has power, but I would use the over ear mode even on an easy to drive headphone. The over ear mode makes a big difference. Both that and the high/low gain toggle are accessed by sliding down a quick access menu from the top of the screen. Because the volume dial gets jostled in your pocket, I always turn volume to min and slowly raise it up to listening levels, and I try to remember to toggle off the over ear mode when I finish listening with headphones.
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Or else horrible things will happen.
I can almost tolerate a high-volume blast with over ears, but it feels so much more aggressive when you have iems in.
I donāt even want to think about it. Iām having a physical reaction to this thought and itās not a good one.
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The good news is itās a mistake you donāt usually make twice
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Another thing to point out. It took me about 7 tries to successfully scan all the tracks from my 512gb card. There is an annoying bug where it will report as complete when its not, and you can only fix it by removing and reinserting the sd card to start the scan again. I was missing hundreds of tracks, so it was impossible to see where the scan failed, but for full disclosure they do allow you to scan files/folders individually so its easier to see where things went wrong if you added to your library incrementally. Iād think starting fresh with a full 1-2tb sd card may be a test of patience
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Lastly, Iād recently found a newfound use for the THX 789 once I started using iems more. Thatās basically what Iāve reduced my use of the 789 to-a desktop iem port because of the low noise floor. I will continue to use it for the Atlas, but my neutral/treble leaning iems will get much more use on the M15
Thatās something that should not happen on devices.
More likely headphones or iem are on different position or some audio setting has been changed.
Maybe been to noisy environment etc. Multiple other things.
Anyways. Looks a bit of a āflawā in my mind UI side.
Minor changed or updates would have made it grand.
Got my Hart cables today with 4.4 interconnect so I can run my Focals balanced off the M15. Iāll repeat all the praise everyone has given @brux. I wasnāt sure how this system worked until had it in my hands, and itās as great as everyone says it is. 4.4 balanced with Clears and Elex with hi gain and over ear settings and the Focals are both giving me way more slam than I was getting before
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Made my own review, if youāre interested.
Complained significantly about ergonomics and physical interface.
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Anybody got thoughts on m15 vs kann alpha?
I hadnāt checked in awhile, but UAPP is now supported on the M15. So happy to never have to use the Tidal app again