- FiiO has released a svelte-looking DM15 R2R portable CD player
- Player, USB DAC, Bluetooth transmitter, desktop source – it does a lot
- Priced $269 (so around £200 or AU$409)
Physical music is having a moment right now, isn’t it? Could products be springing up in the wake of some music-lovers (and certain musicians) leaving Spotify’s increasingly expensive streaming service to return to old-school, tangible, feel-good, human-curated music?
Some facts: We Are Rewind’s Duran Duran-themed sparkly cassette Walkman launched the day Spotify Wrapped dropped, yesterday (Wednesday December 3), and this gorgeous FiiO portable CD player launched today (Thursday December 4), one day later. Oh yes, and FiiO seems to have leaked its very own answer to the iPod Shuffle, also launched yesterday…
Coincidence? I’ll leave that with you, but some might say that the makers of audio products are seeing music fans in search of an alternative to what they’ve seen and heard lately.
Meet the FiiO DM15 R2R, a veritable Swiss Army knife of music playback – and in the image above, it’s hooked up to the new FiiO FT13 we just reviewed (and liked very much indeed).
How hi-res can you go, FiiO?
You probably know that CD’s typical 16-bit/44.1kHz resolution is the starting point for hi-res audio, but the FiiO DM15 R2R can do better than that. It’ll play CD-Rs as well as normal CDs; supported CD-R formats include WAV, WMA, FLAC, AAC and MP3, so if you’ve got some archived discs (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’ll play music at up to 32-bit/384kHz PCM and native DSD256. The coaxial output, meanwhile, promises up to 24-bit/192kHz. And the optical? Thought you’d never ask – 24-bit/96kHz.
Essentially, if you want a portable CD player that doubles as a USB DAC without looking like a cute retro toy, this could be the one. It even comes with a bundled infrared remote for when you’ve set it down to play nice with your speakers, across the room.
It’s the successor to the firm’s surprisingly popular DM13 that arrived late last year, and while it looks a lot more high-end, 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-gen. model. Another sign of CDs’ increasing popularity? Possibly.
What are you getting for the money? A compact aluminium chassis plus a transparent top so you can see the disc as it spins – so far, so classic. But the innards have been levelled up a little for 2025: the rechargeable battery should be good for seven hours of playback and it now features FiiO’s proprietary R2R DAC (which is why the player is so named – nothing to do with reel-to-reel playback and recording, this time).
The D15 R2R can work in multiple ways – as a normal portable CD player, as a Hi-Fi separate (via its optical and co-ax ports), as a USB DAC and as a Bluetooth transmitter. You also get two headphone jacks (3.5mm and balanced 4.4mm), but the 3.5mm will also work as a line out.
Want to use your Bluetooth earbuds or headphones? That’s fine, aptX, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive and aptX Low Latency are all onboard, and there’s an anti-vibration toggle to minimize the chance of your CD skipping if you’re playing music on the move.
CDs aren’t the only physical music format gaining traction in 2025. Cassette tapes (see FiiO’s own lovely option and even We Are Rewind’s Elvis-themed Walkman from earlier in the year) are making a continued comeback, but so are those lovely silvery CDs of my youth. Hurrah!
And the thing is that when the players are as multi-skilled and legit as the new FiiO DM15 R2R, there’s absolutely no need to be tied solely to CD playback either.
The best music players for all budgets
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becky.scarrott@futurenet.com (Becky Scarrott)
