About a year ago, FiiO released their flagship K19 all-in-one which featured a ton of sound enhancements and a myriad of cool features. However, it still had an Achilles’ heel: combining ESS Sabre DACs with a THX-AAA headphone amplifier section, all powered by a switching mode power supply, it didn’t sound the way I imagined a flagship unit should. After publishing my K19 review, a month later I met the quirky FiiO Audio team at the High-End Show 2024 in Munich, and over two days I expressed my thoughts about the future of FiiO. I explained why continuing with THX-AAA circuitry might not be the best idea and why discrete components such as transistors are still preferable, especially in desktop devices. I hoped for a beefier unit with a linear transformer in the future, and I’m here to tell you that finally, the unit I envisioned last year is right now on my table. It’s called the K17, it’s the most exciting FiiO unit I’ve tested so far, and let me explain to you why.
