FiiO’s carbon fibre DAC is desktop-spec and perfectly pocketable

FiiO's been awfully busy this summer, having launched its M21 Hi-Res Audio player in June and the K15 desktop DAC in July. Now there's a brand new desktop-spec portable DAC and headphone amp for upgrading your mobile music and driving even the most demanding headphones and IEMs.

FiiO says that this is a desktop-grade portable DAC, and that's largely down the use of the ESS Sabre Pro ES9027PRO. That's normally destined for full-size desktop DACs, but FiiO has managed to cram it into something considerably smaller.

The FiiO QX13 is available in two materials: aluminium alloy for the titanium colour option, and 21-layer carbon fibre for the black version. Both have a hardened 1.9-inch IPS display.

The DAC may look like a 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith in press photos, but it's extremely small in real life. It's roughly the size of a small box of matches at 64.2 x 30.7 x 13mm.

FiiO QX13: key features and pricing

The Sabre Pro chip has an eight-channel differential audio architecture and is used in parallel mode here with a pair of ultra-low noise ES9312 regulators and four INA1620 op-amp chips. FiiO claims this significantly reduces crosstalk.

There are also a further two low-noise, low-distortion OPA1962 op-amp chips.

The DAC has native MQA decoding and supports DSD512 and asynchronous 768kHz/32bit.

Although this is a portable device there's a custom desktop mode that can draw from powered USB devices such as laptops. There are six levels of output power, with the QX13 capable of delivering up to 900mW per channel into 32 ohms.

The input is USB-C and the outputs are standard 3.5mm and balanced 4.4mm.

Perhaps the most impressive achievement here is the price. The QX13 is £199.99 / $219.99 / €329 (about AU$410) in black and £219 / $239 (about €294 / AU$451) in titanium. It's available now from the likes of AdvancedMP3Players.