I admit it. My job is to focus on sound quality, usability, value, and durability. But I sometimes see an audio product that I want to own because it looks awesome. At CES 2025, I saw Fiio’s KA15. It’s a tiny mobile headphone DAC/amp. It sells for $110, but it’s $90 on Amazon today.
This little, all-aluminum, baby blue and silver gadget has it all for a headphone DAC. It’s also available in a serious Midnight Black. It supports PCM up to 32-bit/768kHz and native DSD up to DSD256. It has dual Cirrus Logic CS43198 DACs, a companion app, and a web interface. These give you a 10-band parametric equalizer. It has 4.4mm balanced and 3.5mm unbalanced headphone jacks. It has an ultra-low THD of 0.0004% and up to 560 milliwatts of power per channel (in desktop mode). Perfect for getting the most from your lossless, hi-res audio. It works via wired headphones or IEMs.
It’s even UAC 1.0 compatible for plug-and-play use with game consoles like the Nintendo Switch. The 3.5mm headphone jack also works as an S/PDIF output. Use it to pass decoding from your PC to a third-party DAC.
Fiio packages it with a USB-C to USB-C cable and a handy protective case. And yet, despite these great traits, I want one. The built-in 0.96-inch color LCD has a whimsical spinning audio tape animation.
Yes, the display can deliver valuable info like sampling rates, mode, and volume level. And I donβt care. I want to look down and feel silly joy. Those virtual cassette reels would respond to the movement of millions of ones and zeroes.
Laugh or scoff if you will. But, Fiio (pronounced fee-oh) is onto something with its nostalgia-inspired design. The company isn’t stopping at digital realism. It recently launched a retro cassette player and a CD player to meet a demand for physical audio formats.
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