Fiio D3 - Page 9

Reading through this thread I see that ACDOAN mentions using the D3 on some older Blu-Ray players and improving the sound, but I am curious as to how and if the D3 connected to a newer Blu-Ray player would improve the sound. I have a Sony BDP-S59 connected via optical to a Harman Kardon SB30 soundbar.Is it worth getting a D3 and using it between the player and soundbar?

The Budget D3 can take either Optical/ Coaxial output from some El cheapo Bluray or DVD player and using the analog ouput of the D3 connected to a home stereo receiver or integrated amp, that will result a better SQ but as far as using the soundbar for stereo I simply dunno.

 

I recently bought a FiiO D3, not knowing about the revision 2 issues.  The output was unlistenable, with distorted bass and mids and non-existent highs.  If you can't guarantee that you're not getting a D3MO2 variant (see http://hifiduino.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/inside-fiio-d3/), you're better off avoiding the D3 all-together.

I haven't bought the D3 yet as I still wanting to know if will improve the sound coming out of my blu-ray/is better than the DAC in my blu-ray, but I do know that there are fake FiiOs out there. All legit FiiOs are serialized on the side of the box the product comes in. Check your box and see if it has a serial number. If so just return it for a refund or exchange.

Well, as noted in the thread I linked to initially, this does not seem to be a fake product. The FiiO guy did not say anything about the bad audio quality, so I have to assume that this is indeed a design fault on their part:-/ But I can assure that the current model, the "D03K Taishan" sounds just fine. If it's an Improvement on another decent DAC, I dunno.

So has anyone here tried to swap out the opamp? i just might try this.

I tried and killed the poor thing while prying out the old opamp --- soldering pads are gone and I'm not sure where they led (no microscope at hand). should have followed the advice to just clip the pins and solder over it. Or should just have left it alone. Maybe I'll try to rig the opamp using some bypasses, but for now I'm fed up; have other things to do. Stupid. Plain stupid. If someone would make a nice high-res picture of her D03K board with/wihtout the opamp to enable me to see where the traces are supposed to go when they are not ripped out by careless weekend-soldering ...

You can get good results with this device, motherboard SPDIF> headphone amp

I'm pretty sure i want to try and switch out the opamp. Seems like cutting the leads off the old one is the way to go. Anyone know the easiest way to do this? exacto knife?

The d03k is the new version. I think it's almost exactly the same as the d3, with the only difference being the opamp.

It has better channel separation too. One of the first reviews says that the d3 had weak channel separation, so this problem should be solved. It also has a 3.5mm output; probably one can drive some iems with that.

I won't be able to try it for a few weeks, because now I have a much better audio-gd, and don't want to mess with the cables, but in a few weeks I'll post my impressions.
 

I plan to buy several FiiO D3 to be used in my living room for DAC purposes.

Can you guys tell me which is better, D3 or the newer D03K.

From what I read D3 has Wolfson WM8805 and the D03K has some Cirrus CS8416. To my understanding CS8416 isn't as well regarded in audio community as the Wolfson is.

So, which should I look in to? In Amazon.de I can find the FiiO D3 for 33,99€ a piece and just contacted the seller regarding the question whether or not it is actually the D3 or the newer D03K, but the item article says WM8805 though so..

In ebay I could find FiiO D03K for 34,80€ a piece from a "top seller".

Please advise since I don't know jack about DAC chips.

Edited by lagittaja - 9/18/12 at 4:18am

Just read the post above yours.

Hi all! I' considering buying this dac to connect to a Little Dot IV. The sound comes from a laptop first, but i don't know if it has any optical out. But the idea would be:

Computer->D3->LittleDot IV.

What are my options to connect the pc to the D3 dac.

 

regards,

The D3 only has optical in and digital coax in. If you dont have those outputs on your laptop you might want to consider something else that plugs into usb and has rca outs.. Otherwise you'd have a usb device that has optical or coax that feeds into the D3, which feeds into the amp.

A toslink cable is made that will plug into just a headphone jack, and it works fine from any of my pc's  Just make sure the cable you get is meant to fit a headphone jack on one end.  Fiio recommends you don't use the amplified out directly to your cans.