INTRODUCTION

   The market may be filled with many good wireless earphones and the rather new and compact true wireless models but the truth of the matter is that almost all of the high-end models aimed towards demanding audiophiles are still wired which means that if you'd like to use one such model wirelessly you will need to pair it with a audiophile grade bluetooth transmitter/receiver. Still it's not easy to pair an audiophile level set of earphones with an equally good bluetooth transmitter/receiver mainly because there aren't really that many in the market to begin with. FiiO is well aware of this so last year they released their top of the line BTR3 Bluetooth Headphone Amp (shortly after their mid-end BTR1K) which was aimed towards demanding consumers and audiophiles alike and today we decided to check it out and see just how good it really is.

   FiiO was established in 2007 and has experience in researching and developing countless portable music products of different types, and sell FiiO-branded products through sales agents worldwide. The brand name FiiO is composed of Fi (fidelity from HiFi) and iO (number 1&0), representing the real feeling and convenient life that digital brings to life. Meanwhile, the Chinese “飞傲” is the transliteration of FiiO, indicating the positive and innovative spirit as thriving as spring. FiiO is focused on product quality, adheres strictly to ISO9001 standards in quality management and works hard to attain the lowest repair-related product returns rate. FiiO designs, produces and sells high-quality products at favourable prices to those who love music and style; our high-resolution digital audio players, portable headphone amplifiers, DACs and earphones have all received praise from the majority of users. Several products from FiiO have created record sales in their respective product segments and have received countless awards including iF Design Award, Reddot Award, EISA Award, VGP Award, etc. FiiO places great importance on users' needs and ceaselessly pursues perfection in product design and manufacturing, to supply users with the best audio products at the best prices.

   There are several reasons as to why the BTR3 is currently the flagship Bluetooth transmitter/receiver/amplifier by FiiO. First it's the very first of its kind to support all Bluetooth audio codecs such as AAC, SBC, aptX, aptX Low Latency, aptX HD, LDAC, and LHDC so not only is it 100% certain that your music player and/or smartphone will be supported but you also know that you can get LDAC compatible devices to use with it. Second, it's based around the low-power Qualcomm CR8675 premium tier Bluetooth v5.0 SoC (supported profiles: HFP 1.6, A2DP 1.3.1, AVRCP 1.6, HOGP 1.0, FMP 1.0, PXP 1.0, BAS 1.0 and TPS 1.0) which offers superb audio quality not only because of its support for various state of the art technologies by Qualcomm (truewireless technology, broadcast audio technology, aptX audio technology, 2-mic cVc noise cancellation technology and 24 bit audio data path) but also thanks to the 120MHz Kalimba DSP (digital signal processing). Third it also comes with the AK4376A 32-bit stereo DAC (digital-to-analogue converter) which supports a sampling frequency of up to 384KHz, -107dB distortion and an extremely high 124dB Signal-to-Noise ratio. In addition to all of the above the BTR3 also features an aluminum alloy body wrapped in 2.5D glass, 300mAh lithium-ion rechargeable battery pack (up to 11 hours of music playback when using the AAC codec), USB-DAC support, built-in microphone, NFC (near field communication) and an RGB LED status light which changes color according to the current type of connection (Blue for SBC, Cyan for AAC, White for LDAC/DAC, Green for LHDC, Purple for aptX/aptX low latency and Yellow for aptX HD). The BTR3 also supports Siri IOS commands and can be used with the FiiO Music App.