[superjohny]

Hi all, I believe i really have a weird situation that I just bought a susvara and currently have a Fiio M17.

While the enhanced overear mode of M17 may drive susvara to some loudness, I am thinking to pair that with a speaker amp, Benchmark AHB2.

so now i have M17=〉benchmark ahb2=> susvara. getting a decent DAC and preamp(holo audio Spring 3 with preamp) is in my plan but i dont think I can afford all of them at one time. dac might have to wait and i dont want to get a seperate preamp.
so i am wondering if i can use M17 as a preamp to adjust the volumn into speaker amp so I dont blow up susvara.

Does this actually work?

 

[Pictograms]

I don’t know with the M17 but I used to do this with my paw-gold plugged into a Bryson amp.
Does the M17 have a adjustable line out?

 

[superjohny]

interesting idea Pictograms! I never knew lineout can be adjusted, which i looked up but still wasn't sure what does it mean by "line outputs with fixed or variable signals", but certainly said preamp. gonna keep digging.

Inputs/Outputs and Connectivity

The M17 features desktop level connectivity as it includes a great variety of inputs and outputs to cater for many different convenient use cases as you can see in the following diagram.
The 3.5mm and 4.4mm headphone outputs can be individually configured as line outputs with fixed or variable signals.
The USB type C and coaxial inputs are bidirectional and can be used either as digital inputs or outputs.

A few examples of connectivity are:
As a digital transport with an external DAC (USB/coaxial output+DAC)
Reading files from a hard drive storage (DC+USB 2.0+hard drive+headphones)
With Bluetooth headphones
(Bluetooth transmitter+Bluetooth headphones)
As a fixed line output DAC or preamplifier
Play music as a PC DAC or from an external CD transport.
(USB DAC input or coaxial input)

 

[Pictograms]

Well, that definitely seems like the M17 would work then. With my player I did try veritable line out and also the regular phone out and preferred the variable line out.

A word of warning though, be carful that you do not accidentally turn off variable volume. It can just be a single setting to turn off/on.