Setup and Customization

The FiiO R7 offers a rich variety of inputs and outputs so you can decide how exactly to use it. The bare minimum required is the power cable itself, be it AC or DC. I have shown above both cables that come with the R7 given its primary use case as a desktop network streamer/DAC/amp which uses the USB Type-C cable that in turns heads over to an available Type-A on your PC. Make sure the AC power switch is on and then press and hold the top knob button to power on the device. It takes ~23 seconds to turn off the first time and ~20 seconds thereafter. The screen turns on immediately with the older FiiO logo, which incidentally is also present on the back of the device, in addition to the LED rings around the two knobs as seen above. Once you decide on the language of preference the R7 is ready to go in Android mode. Pressing the same button puts it to a screensaver mode where FiiO's "Astrosheep" is the default model.

I recorded the video above using my phone in one hand and operating the R7 in the other so don't expect excellent production quality. The goal here was to mostly show you how responsive the user interface is in the default Android mode as well as what the knobs and buttons do here. The multifunction knob at the top defaults to volume control when rotated and a nice large volume indicator comes up when doing so. Pressing the button for ~2 seconds pulls up the operating mode selector screen where you can use the touch screen or the knob to choose between the various modes seen. This does mean that shutting down the R7 involves a few more steps than usual but I can't really think of a better implementation than what you get here. The analog output selector knob has nothing to do with the system OS or screen although you do hear the relays clicking as you go between the four options here. Note also that the top knob can be configured to be mute/unmute for those wondering, and overall the system is quite snappy and responsive. The screen also gets plenty bright and the 720 x 1280 resolution works well enough on this ~5" display even though this is another point of cost savings compared to using, say, a 1080 x 1920 pixels vertical display.


Given this is a straightforward Android OS with the FiiO skin on top, I was already familiar with the general user experience with the screen itself as well as the various touch screen gestures possible. This allowed for easier recording of screenshots that now come in handy for various GIFs going over the FiiO-specific changes made to the OS. I have not reviewed any FiiO DAP but I assume this is very similar in that regard. It's a clean and minimalist skin with very few apps pre-installed, including the FiiO Music player as well as a FiiO app store itself. You have Google Play Services as well as the Play Store here anyway, and you can also configure the OS to allow APK files to be used too. At this point I had the R7 already connected to my home WiFi network, albeit it seemed to only connect in wireless n (WiFi 4) mode for now rather than wireless ac on 5 GHz—not a big deal for me but your mileage may vary. The shortcuts menu also allows you turn on and pair the R7 to other devices via Bluetooth 5.0 as well as easily select the operating mode here itself if you don't wish to go through the screen. Note that the Roon Ready mode is not seen here though but this is only because there is a dedicated toggle for it! The FiiO R7 also has five gain modes for the amplification stage and is set to the middle "High" level by default which can be changed here too. While a few other shortcuts are self-explanatory, such as turning off dark mode, the "All to DSD" is an noteworthy system-wide change that converts PCM playback to DSD but can cause the R7 to run slightly warmer—more on this later.


Going to the actual settings menu shows a mix of Android options as well as FiiO-specific menus. Some of these were seen before already in the shortcuts menu although there is a whole new segment dedicated to audio settings. Here you can opt for optical/coax outputs, choose the desired low pass filter among three options which don't really do much in practice, force the Bluetooth codec of choice among options ranging from standard AAC and SBC all the way to LDAC and LHDC as well as choose between the LDAC or LHDC playback quality type itself, adjust for channel imbalance, and set the extent of second order harmonics regulation—I found the default level to work best in not overly dampening tones and maintaining a more natural decay. Other settings include whether or not to show the playback rate information on the display, use a dark theme, control the display brightness, change the OS theme and screensaver, customize sleep mode, make the various OS elements and font larger or smaller, allow for gestures or have a second set of on-screen buttons separate from the capacitive buttons underneath the screen, and even change what those buttons do if you wish to go with media playback controls instead. I mentioned before how the FiiO R7 has 64 GB of onboard storage and allows for over 45 GB to be used to your desire, although most will no doubt find the microSD storage (up to 2 TB) as well as the USB host functionality for external storage drives/NAS handy. The R7's OS is a skin applied over Android 10 and do not expect any OS updates here. The only concern, and this is the case with basically any DAP on the market, would be the lack of security updates. Otherwise you can expect to receive firmware and feature updates from FiiO to enhance the user experience with the R7. I do like the project team members get named credit here and you can also see a visual summary of the primary components used in the FiiO R7 where we find out the Android section is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 which is paired with 4 GB RAM.


One thing I did notice missing from, say, HiBy OS used on their DAPs is a system-wide EQ functionality. With the FiiO skin on the R7 at least, you are left to use app-based EQ similar to phones. This means you can of course download your preferred player of choice or go with the pre-installed FiiO Music app that has EQ functionality and profiles as seen above. These come in the form of presets using a 10-band equalizer that can be modified between +/- 12 dB and a visualizer at the top further helps you see what you are doing. In the settings tab is also a lab features menu which includes the option to go with parametric EQ instead. Selecting this updates the app and switches to PEQ in a similar manner, albeit it's not as customizable given you are unable to change the filter type or the Q-factor, let alone the specific frequency. This is not as useful thus and the only benefit would be a preamp setting in the gain slider. FiiO only recently added PEQ to its music player app and hopefully will figure out how to get it actually viable. Right now you are also limited to EQ over wired connectivity or wireless over Bluetooth codecs that are not LDAC—I do not have a compatible LHDC client here to test it out.


There are plenty of other playback and audio options in the FiiO Music app too, including FiiO Link allowing you to control the app via a smartphone as well as FiiO Control allowing the R7 to control/monitor other FiiO sources similar to what I've shown before using my own phone. This makes the R7 a capable control hub if you are invested in the FiiO ecosystem although it's more to do with the Android OS here to where you could do the same with a FiiO DAP (or any other device using Android). I then inserted my test microSD card that contains a few tracks to ensure the app scans all the files and picks up all the metadata and album art too. It worked flawlessly and the "Pure Music Mode" on the R7 is just the FiiO Music app running in the foreground with the rest of the OS suspended.