Part IV Three-in-one Flagship: Define the Ultimate Form of FiiO Portable Player in the Future
Before the M15 Launch Event, we had announced the slogan as "four flagships". At that time, many people thought that there would be four independent products. In fact, in addition to the flagship neckband sports Bluetooth cable, the other three flagships refer to the three-in-one M15-flagship player, DAC/Amp and Bluetooth receiver.
In fact, from the X3 generation, the functions of HiFi portable players have evolved very quickly. According to most commonly-used scenarios of audiophiles, we have first added functions of USB DAC, and then Bluetooth transmission and WIFI. In the past year, Bluetooth reception function has been added. The usage scenarios and functions of HIFI portable players have become more and more abundant.
However, for products like FiiO M11, M11 Pro, these functions are actually dependent on software due to the cost limited. So there are still some regrets and inadequacies. For example, the sampling rate and bit depth supported by the USB DAC function are limited, the format of Bluetooth reception is also limited, and the latency is relatively high.
Therefore, we decided to combine our extensive experience in DAC/Amp and Bluetooth receivers, as well as current popular players like the M11Pro, applying the professional XMOS chip and Qualcomm CSR8675 Bluetooth chip to the M15.
When the M15 is used as a music player, it benefits from the most powerful processor in Chinese players, third-generation FPGA algorithms, dual AK4499 DAC chip and powerful analog amplifier circuit. Thus it has amazing functions and performance.
When the M15 is used as a USB DAC, , it can support up to 768KHz/32Bit and native DSD512 decoding thanks to the addition of the XMOS chip.
When the M15 is used as a Bluetooth receiver, in addition to the CSR8675 Bluetooth chip, the DAC chip and analog amplifier circuit sections share the M15’s powerful configuration, so that it perfectly supports formats consisting of SBC/AAC/aptX/aptX LL/aptX HD/LDAC.
Under these efforts, the M15 has achieved the ultimate goal as a portable music player, portable USB DAC/Amp, and portable Bluetooth receiver at the aspects of function and performance. At the same time, it has also expressed our attitude to the market and users on the future development of players. That is, for a portable player, not only can it play native music, but also it should be a multi-scenario and multi-functional music device, achieving the ultimate goal at all aspects and be an integrated personal music collection center.
The M15 is also a very meaningful product and the world's first powerful product with such design. FiiO has summed up more than ten years of experience in portable audio devices and more than thirty years in the field of HIFI.
This is FiiO's expectation to the future and an inheritance of the past.
By the way, I would like to explain why the M15 does not support HWA format. The M15 adopts the CSR8675 chip, and our BTR3 has already supported HWA reception. So whether it is hardware or technical requirements, the M15 has no problem to HWA support.
However, some careful Huawei users may notice that since the end of last year, new versions of Huawei mobile phones do not support HWA. What would be the reason of it? In the past, it was inconvenient to discuss it for some commercial reasons. But now as many people get to know it, it would not be a secret anymore. If you are unclear, you can take a look.
1) HWA can be regarded as an alliance, and the leader was Huawei. At the beginning, a lot of brands, even some brands that had nothing to do with Bluetooth codec, hardware, software and application had been persuaded to join the alliance in order to enlarge its influence.
2) Although the leader was nominally Huawei, the real nucleus team (LHDC Bluetooth codec technology) was actually a Taiwanese company.
3) After the promotion of HWA, apart from a small amount of Chinese players supporting it at the launch end, only Huawei mobile phones were available. While the supporting receiving device was only few of Huawei’s Bluetooth IEMs which made no sense because they did not belong to HiFi field, and some Bluetooth receivers like BTR3 made by FiiO HiFi manufacturers.
From my personal point of view, it would be difficult to popularize HWA which is kind of a technical standard whose popularization absolutely relies on mobile phone manufacturers. However, those renowned phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Apple are impossible to use Huawei's standards. As for Qualcomm's aptX, it became popular because CSR has already been successfully popularized before the acquisition of Qualcomm. And LDAC, to be honest, although all Android phones support it, it is still at the end of the world. Because there are too few receiving devices support it.
4) As a high-definition and high-bit-rate Bluetooth audio codec technology, HWA has the shortest transmission distance and weak anti-interference ability under the same conditions due to its high bandwidth. So there are still many improvement spaces in user experience.
Therefore, no core technology at hand and plus the HWA was still imperfect at technology and user experience, it was no wonder that Huawei would give it up. Since the alliance leader Huawei had left it, it made no sense for us to support it.
