These expensive daps donāt make sense when you can buy a brand new LG V20 for $100 on eBay
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Law of Diminishing Return.
Donāt knock it unless you have actually tried it.
Well, for $900 more it better be over the top compared to the M11 
I just find it hard to spend that kind of money on a DAP, when I can use my Xduoo-xd05 plus ($250) and get and incredible sound. And probably better than the M15 and still with $650 left.
But great you got the M15, it IS a great DAP for sure.
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Finally got a chance to see it in person today. The first thing that stood out to me was the weightā¦it was like 2.5x the M11 (with a case on too).
Sounds great out of the 2.5mm and the volume knob was a lot better than I had initially thought.
Pictures donāt really do it justice though, it really is a nice-looking unit.
BGGAR prefers the M11 PRO over the M15. The way he presents it, you just sit with the thought: āthe biggest differences between the 2 are the price and the THX part of the PROā
im tempted on buying the m15 or m11 pro. but my biggest problem is relying on spotify for my music lol
I remember the comments saying that the M11 Pro is much better on price to performance.
They can both play Spotify fine.
Felix
Fiio M15 VS M11 pro
I know some folks are wary about the single Micro SD card slot but the slot itself is designed to take cards that hold up to 2 tb of music
Or curated extended playlists/album selection
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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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