FiiO has announced its new flagship DAC, the K9 Pro ESS, equipped with plenty of features including Bluetooth.

The announced FiiO K9 Pro ESS is not only a DAC, but a headphone amplifier too. It is built around a pair of THX AAA788+s, which, according to the manufacturer, should effortlessly drive headphones with impedances from 16 to 600 ohms. The DAC section consists of a set of ES9038 Pros, where correct timing is achieved by the XMOS XUF208 decoding chip. Both power supply and the anolog and digital parts of the internal circuitry are separated from each other. The maximum quality via PCM is 32 bit / 384 kHz and DSD up to DSD256. MQA is also supported.

Balanced, if desired

Bluetooth is available to quickly connect wireless sources such as a smartphone. Furthermore, traditional physical inputs like digital coaxial and optical, USB-B and USB-C plus an analog RCA input (headphone amp!) are at your disposal. In terms of output, both RCA and balanced XLR are present, while a regular 6.35mm and a 4.4mm balanced headphone jack are provided too. The FiiO K9 Pro ESS costs $859.