After listening to the FiiO K13 R2R DAC, I can confirm that all the praises it has received from numerous reviewers all over the world are justified — it is indeed an excellent DAC which is really affordable to boot.
When I reviewed its valve-loaded brother, the FiiO Warmer R2R Tube DAC, I opined that it sounded excellent with ballads and jazz standards by the likes of Diana Krall, but was disappointed by the rounded edges of electric guitars when I played Lou Reed’s Vicious. I concluded that the Warmer R2R Tube DAC was fantastic for slow songs, but not so good for rock songs.
So I played Lou Reed’s Vicious using a WiiM Ultra to stream to the FiiO K13 R2R DAC and found out that it had the right amount of ‘metallic bite’ in the leading edges of the electric guitar without sounding brittle and bright.
When playing Diana Krall’s Wallflower, the vocals sounded clear and crisp but lacked a bit of the tube warmth of the Warmer R2R Tube DAC, but it was still pleasurable to listen to the songs.
I feel the K13 R2R DAC offers the best of both worlds — it can play ballads in a clear and enjoyable way without too much warmth and it can play rock songs with the right amount of ‘bite’ and slam.
However, I felt that it sounded a bit soft without any gain adjustment and I had to set it to high gain for reasonable loudness without turning the volume up too much.
At a retail price of RM1,299, it is definitely a best buy and can the heart of a very good-sounding TAS (The Affordable System).
It does not use an AKM or ESS chip, but FiiO’s proprietary four-channel fully differential 24-bit R2R resistor array DAC which is composed of 48 precision thin-film resistors per channel, for a total of 192 resistors across four channels. Each resistor features 0.1% accuracy and low temperature drift (30ppm).
The K13 R2R employs a fully differential architecture that leads to lower noise, and fewer FFT harmonics, resulting in a darker music background. It supports PCM 384kHz/32bit and DSD256.
The K13 R2R offers a NOS/OS mode. NOS (Non-Oversampling) Mode maintains the original sampling rate for decoding while OS (Oversampling) Mode upsamples globally to a high sampling rate of 384kHz. I am not a fan of upsampling, so I left it on NOS mode.
Of interest, especially at this price level, is the inclusion of a 10-band high-precision PEQ Effortless sound customization.
The DAC also offers two types of power supply — a built-in 30W switching power supply protected by an alloy nickel-plated shielding cover, and an external DC power input allowing you to pair it with a higher-performance linear power supply.
Its headphone output has balanced output power of 2400mW+2400mW into a 32 Ohm load. I tried it with a pair of Sony MDR-M1 Professional headphones was totally satisfied with its power and performance.
I suggest that before the greenhorn audiophile auditions more expensive DACs, he/she should give the FiiO K13 R2R DAC a spin first.
The FiiO K13 R2R DAC is available at Red Ape’s physical store. You can also click https://redape.my/product/fiio-k13-r2r-desktop-dac-and-amplifier-r2r-resistor-array-nosos-dual-mode-2400mw-balanced-dacamp-k13r2r?srsltid=AfmBOooZKcnynOdrZqVrCf2Rz_i7aUNJ2j-Yo2c0cz7RjrbBGIkpzk3Y
