- FiiO has released a sleek looking DM15 R2R portable CD player
- Player, USB DAC, Bluetooth transmitter, desktop source – it does a lot
- Price $269 (so around £200 or AU$409)
Physical music is having a moment right now, isn’t it? Could products emerge in the wake of some music lovers (and certain musicians) abandoning 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 sparkling cassette Walkman launched the day Spotify Wrapped dropped, yesterday (Wednesday, December 3rd), and this beautiful FiiO portable CD player launched today (Thursday, December 4th), a day later. Oh yeah, and FiiO seems to have leaked its very own response to the iPod Shuffle, which also launched yesterday…
Coincidence? I’ll leave it up to you, but some power say that audio product manufacturers see music fans looking for an alternative to what they’ve been seeing and hearing lately.
Meet the FiiO DM15 R2R, a veritable Swiss army knife of music playback – and pictured above, it’s paired with the new FiiO FT13 we just reviewed (and actually liked).
How high resolution can you go, FiiO?
You probably know that CD’s typical 16-bit/44.1kHz resolution is the starting point for high-resolution audio, but the FiiO DM15 R2R can do better than that. It plays CD-Rs as well as normal CDs; supported CD-R formats include WAV, WMA, FLAC, AAC and MP3, so if you have 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 will 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.
Basically, if you want a portable CD player that doubles as a USB DAC without looking like a cute retro toy, this could be it. It even comes with an included infrared remote for when you set it down to play nice 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 a lot more advanced, 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 increasing popularity of CDs? Possibly.
What do you get for your money? A compact aluminum chassis plus a transparent top so you can see the dial as it spins – so far, so classic. But the guts have been expanded a bit for the 2025: the rechargeable battery should be good for seven hours of playback, and it now has FiiO’s proprietary R2R DAC (which is why the player is the way it is – nothing to do with reel-to-reel playback and recording, this time).
The D15 R2R can function in several ways – as a normal portable CD player, as a separate Hi-Fi (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 also doubles as a line out.
Want to use your Bluetooth earphones or headphones? That’s fine, aptX, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive and aptX Low Latency are all built in, and there’s an anti-vibration button to minimize the chance of your CD skipping if you’re playing music on the go.
CDs aren’t the only physical music format gaining traction in 2025. Cassette tapes (see FiiO’s own delightful option and even the Elvis-themed We Are Rewinds Walkman from earlier this year) continue to make a comeback, but so do the lovely silver CDs of my youth. Hooray!
And the thing is, when players are as versatile and legitimate as the new FiiO DM15 R2R, there’s absolutely no reason to be tied down to CD playback exclusively either.
The best music players for all budgets
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