The FiiO S9 crossed my sights when we were looking for high quality small portable speaker to add to the products offered by Micca. The small speaker market is filled with cheaply made products using tiny metallic cones that looked and sounded horrible. As an audio enthusiast, I could appreciate that good sounding small portable speakers are a tough design goal due to the triple-constraint of low power, small enclosure, and small cone area. On paper, the FiiO S9 appears to address these challenges in creative ways, so I was cautiously optimistic as I received the first batch of products at our Virginia office.
In the box along with the FiiO S9 are a USB Y-cable, a 3.5mm male-male audio cable, and a short but well written user's manual in both English and Chinese. The S9 consists primarily of a white enclosure made from what looks to be very high quality plastic, accentuated with a black cloth grill on the front. There is a single port-like opening in the front, but it does not actually provide any acoustic output as the real ports are on the back of the speaker behind each driver. Also on the back is a compartment for four AA batteries, a USB jack for power, and a 3.5mm input jack. The top of the S9 has four buttons for power, +/- volume, and mute. In all, it's a neat, tidy and intuitively designed product that looks to be of very good quality and elegant in design and appearance. Underneath this well put together exterior lies the technology that FiiO has employed to address each of the three constraints mentioned earlier.
Before going further into the hardware aspects of the S9, I spent a couple of weeks listening to it in place of my main computer speakers (Creative Labs Z2300). I also used it with a variety of portable sources, including notebooks, various MP3 players and a couple of music-capable cell phones.
At first listen, the FiiO S9 immediately impressed me with the rich and full sound it produced – I grinned uncontrollably and knew that we had found exactly the small speakers that we were looking for. Not only does the S9 playback over a frequency range wide enough to qualify as high fidelity, but it does so evenly and smoothly, with plenty of quality and definition. The sound is airy and effortlessness without any harshness or strain. The most beautiful part of the output is the mid-range, with both male and female vocals coming through sounding very intimate and believable, loaded with detail and resolution. So often, the mid-range of small speakers are sacrificed in order to makeup for shortcomings in other areas, but not so for the S9. The highs from the S9 are also done right, adding well controlled sizzle in all the right spots without being harsh. The treble parts of instruments and vocals therefore sound very natural. The S9 probably does not extend all the way flat to 20kHz, but it should be good for a honest and high quality 13-15kHz, which is plenty for listening to most music types in a casual setting.
The bass section of the S9 deserves separate treatment. The FiiO S9 can't perform magic, so it is unable to produce real bass in the bottom octave. But what it does produce is incredibly good for its size and power. When placed on a desk thus benefiting from the base-plane reinforcement, I would say that the speaker does an excellent job of reaching down to about 100Hz and then rolling off after that at a characteristic 12dB/octave slope, giving the listener a “hint” of 60Hz on its way down. I would best describe the S9 as having a lean sound characteristic similar to British speakers, with well defined and bass that is very musical and well controlled. Even at high volume, the bass is taught, even, and punchy.
Speaking of high volume, the S9 can reach pretty shocking playback levels that makes you wonder what normal speakers are doing with all that power if something this small with only 3.6 Watts can rock so hard. The clean output ceiling of the S9 is perfectly capable of filling an office or bedroom with loud music with peaks in the low 90dB range.
The next part needs to be heard to be believed: the FiiO S9 produces honest to goodness imaging. You read that right – the S9 projects a sound stage with vocals, instruments, ambiance, the whole nine. If you didn't think small speakers would be capable of real stereo performance, you need to give the S9 a listen. With the S9 placed on a desk, the sound stage was projected about 12 inches above it, just below nose level. It's not particularly wide, but it's there and very real. I don't know how FiiO managed to accomplish this at the price level of the S9, as it takes proper (i.e. expensive) amplifier and enclosure design, as well as tight driver tolerances with excellent left/right channel tracking and matching to achieve good imaging results.
So after two weeks of extended subjective listening with a good variety of music and playback environments, I came away thoroughly enamored by the FiiO S9. It's a breath of fresh air that something so compact can perform so well while offering a classy understated look. The S9 truly sets the bar for what a small speaker is capable of.
Product Discussions
