I saw this while browsing Fiio's retro line of audio toys and I was like... I would like to listen to FM Radio!
I haven't heard fm radio since the late 90s, I think, so it would be fun to listen to random music instead of just looping my psybient albums over and over lol.
The RR11 sounds great on my headphones! I've never heard FM radio sound so good. The device itself is very well built, and pretty simple to use, and can be used as a desktop DAC as well. The DAC mode, surprisingly, had no latency when gaming.
I live in a concrete shell of a room amidst an entire residential area filled with tall concrete buildings and it picks up radio stations with nary an issue.
Controls wise, the on/off switch and volume knob are one at the top of the deivce, and it is very nicely dampened. Feels expensive!
The left side has a switch for choosing the FM bands, and the other side a scroll wheel that moves a needle on the front that shows you roughly what frequency you're at.
I think this scroll wheel feels great, but it does move through the bands pretty quickly, and I have some stations that are very close toegther, it's easy to miss the one I wanted. Thankfully, there's a led on the front that lights up once it picks up a radio staion.
Another switch below that lets you choose if you want it to be a FM Radio, or a desktop DAC. The last switch below that enables two "Magic Bass" modes. The manual mentions position one is for bass enhancement, and position two for 3D surround sound. TBH while there is an audible change in the different positions, I can't really say the bass has been enhanced or if the music becomes more 3D surround lol.
The radio comes with a pair of earbuds, Fiio's JF11.
The ones I got are terrible, not sure if they were damaged in shipping or something. But I tried on my BTR17 and Motu M2 and they all sounded like it was all mids with boosted highs and no bass at all. I guess Fiio added them as not many people own wired headphones/earbuds these days, and having something in the box is better than nothing as the RR11 does not have bluetooth. But this does a big disservice for whatever DAC/amp they use in the RR11, I _really_ like the sound output! It is night and day using the JF11s and my own headphones/iems. Please buy any budget earbud/headphone/IEM promoted by your favourite headphone youtuber, likely any of them kidney punches the JF11 into orbit easy. Seriously, I am writing this review just to warn off how terrible those earbuds are, and how they stop the true quality of the RR11 from shining through.
The RR11 requires its custom usb c cable, and that cable needs to be plugged into the PC in a specific direction!!! You can see the arrows on the housing - you need to point them away from your PC and into the RR11. Don't loose it if you have it! Mine's staying in the box lol.
Next, the RR11 does not charge using my PD Charger. I have to use a non-PD charging brick or a usb port on my pc to charge it. Fiio does include a (very short) USB A to USB C cable. That cable works with my PD charger, but I'm not sure if the usb a port on my pd charger actually has PD support.
Finally, this device uses a built-in battery, and I don't see any easy way to open it for replacements. I'd much prefer to have it powered by a AA/AAA rechargeables.