The Fiio X5 Thread
Nov 16, 2014 at 4:55 PM Post #13,593 of 19,652
Sorry for a late response.  Old strat pickups were staggered.  Maybe, just guessing, he liked his 1st and 2nd strings to be closer to the polepieces for an edgier tone.  JAT
Just trying to shuffle the thread.


Hendrix playing right hand guitars left handed? I read a biography that said his father would beat him when he caught him using his left, saying it was the devil's hand, so he would play lefty on the right handed and flip the guitar around when his dad showed up...it also helped that it was easier to find right handed guitars and he was dirt-poor when he started playing. The habit stuck...

I like Hendrix a lot, but don't have him on my X5 as with headphones and the way his albums were done, I get annoyed hearing the guitar on one side and the drums on the other (see? Back on track :))
 
Nov 16, 2014 at 5:17 PM Post #13,594 of 19,652
I like Hendrix a lot, but don't have him on my X5 as with headphones and the way his albums were done, I get annoyed hearing the guitar on one side and the drums on the other (see? Back on track
smily_headphones1.gif
)

 
FYI - Many (or most) Hendrix ablums are available in Mono for your listening pleasure. Also, you can easily convert Stereo recordings to Mono with Foobar2000 and many other free programs. 
 
Nov 16, 2014 at 5:32 PM Post #13,595 of 19,652
FYI - Many (or most) Hendrix ablums are available in Mono for your listening pleasure. Also, you can easily convert Stereo recordings to Mono with Foobar2000 and many other free programs. 


Indeed, I just haven't bothered to leverage Foobar for that yet...maybe this evening I'll do a couple...

I have also toyed with the idea of a stereo to mono switch box for my headphones, but that's a tad overboard I think.
 
Nov 16, 2014 at 6:05 PM Post #13,597 of 19,652
Somebody here reported  getting a beta a few weeks ago, as I recall (directly from Fiio to resolve a problem), but nothing since.  James posted yesterday or today that they are working on X3 and X5 firmwares and X1 would have to wait a bit.  He didn't specify exactly what might be changed/improved.
 
Nov 16, 2014 at 6:35 PM Post #13,598 of 19,652
Don't know, if I'm the only one, that found this... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4377ajo5rkpd5/X5
Fw 2.30 ist available here a for few days. As it is in fiios official repo on mediafire it seems to be no beta. I installed it but could not figure out any changes. Still limited to 5800 indexed songs, btw.
 
Nov 16, 2014 at 6:44 PM Post #13,599 of 19,652
Hendrix playing right hand guitars left handed? I read a biography that said his father would beat him when he caught him using his left, saying it was the devil's hand, so he would play lefty on the right handed and flip the guitar around when his dad showed up...it also helped that it was easier to find right handed guitars and he was dirt-poor when he started playing. The habit stuck...

I like Hendrix a lot, but don't have him on my X5 as with headphones and the way his albums were done, I get annoyed hearing the guitar on one side and the drums on the other (see? Back on track
smily_headphones1.gif
)

 
Check out "People, Hell and Angels" from 2013 - amazing music and the best Hendrix recordings you might ever hear. This is from All Music:
 
People, Hell and Angels is a collection of quality studio tracks recorded (mostly) in 1968-1969 as the Experience was coming to an end and Jimi was renewing his friendships with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles, who appear here as sidemen on most of these tracks. The surprising thing about this set is not the sound quality (which is exceptional) or that these all sound like finished tracks, but the fact that even avid Hendrix bootleg collectors are unlikely to have heard most of this material.
 
Nov 16, 2014 at 8:01 PM Post #13,600 of 19,652
I unfortunately have stopped listening to Hendrix, as my...ahem.... lifestyle changed a while back and I don't get the same enjoyment from him that I used to.  I had the first three albums on British vinyl, and they sounded incredible compared to the American releases (better vinyl and less pressings from each pressing master).  Loved Electric Ladyland, especially on dark nights in the
right ...frame...of....mind.  I have the CDs now, but just can't get into them anymore.  My loss.
 
Nov 16, 2014 at 8:55 PM Post #13,601 of 19,652
  I unfortunately have stopped listening to Hendrix, as my...ahem.... lifestyle changed a while back and I don't get the same enjoyment from him that I used to.  I had the first three albums on British vinyl, and they sounded incredible compared to the American releases (better vinyl and less pressings from each pressing master).  Loved Electric Ladyland, especially on dark nights in the
right ...frame...of....mind.  I have the CDs now, but just can't get into them anymore.  My loss.

 
Completely get it because I didn't get into a lot of Hendrix' stuff I guess because I've never been in the "right state of mind", but I find People, Hell and Angels a lot more accessible - it's more like Gary Clark Jr type blues (only better I think) than traditional free-wheeling psychedelic Hendrix
 
Nov 16, 2014 at 9:59 PM Post #13,603 of 19,652
X5 Stuttering issue:
 
I have posted on this thread about problems with the X5 "stuttering" or skipping when playing 24 bit high resolution Flac files.  I can now report that the issue of the stuttering has been solved, although I'm not sure I would say the problem is fully resolved.
 
I have all my music in two 64 GB ADATA micro sd cards in my X5. There are about 3,500 individual tracks, all in artist/album folders.  Most of my music is from CDs ripped directly to Flac on my Linux machine.  Some of my music is 24 bit 96 khz and 192 Khz albums from HD Tracks, along with some DVD audio discs ripped to 24 bit Flac.
 
All of the ripped 16 bit 44.1 khz flac from CDs play perfectly on the X5.  The sound quality from some of the well mastered CDs is quite stunning.  But many of my favourite 24 bit High res files will skip or stutter randomly on payback.  No amount of formatting or re-copying fixed the problem. The unpredictability of the stuttering was itself part of the problem - it became impossible to listen to some albums without holding my breath, waiting for the next glitch.
 
Finally, out of desperation I bought another micro sd card, this time a SanDisk Ultra 64 Gb.  Both the old ADATA and the new SanDisk are class 10, but the SanDisk claims to have faster read and write speeds (at twice the price of the ADATA).  I transferred all of the offending 24 bit High res files (and regular stuff) onto the SanDisk.  I can now report that the stuttering no longer occurs with the same material on the SanDisk micro SD card.
 
Now this is the part I find interesting; I put the ADATA SD Card into my Blackberry Z10 phone and loaded the Neutron Music Player app (great program btw).  All the high res files that were problematic on the Fiio play perfectly on the Neutron player using the old ADATA card.  My tentative conclusion is that the Fiio has a limited amount of buffer memory and SD card read speeds can become critical when playing higher bit-rate recordings, my assumption is that the Blackberry/Neutron combo allocates more buffer memory and is not affected by the lower SD card read speed.  The Neitron player reports the playback rate for recordings in Mbs (Megabits per second) A 16 bit CD quality Flac runs at 1.4 Mbs, whereas a 24 bit 96khz file plays at 4.6 Mbs, while a 192 Khz file is 9.2 Mbs.  I would consider this to be a design flaw in the Fiio - for an otherwise great package intended to play high resolution source material, I would have built in more system resources, especially system memory. 
 
My final observation - the Neutron music player sounds great!.  It gives up very little to the Fiio; perhaps a little bit of clarity and definition and a line out, but it has a host of other features that are absent from the Fiio. One of those features that I have come to appreciate is the ability to choose and adjust crossfeed - this has a big impact when listening with headphones and it is a feature that should be added to the X5 firmware; unless somebody can figure out how to port Neutron to the Fiio.
 
Nov 16, 2014 at 10:28 PM Post #13,604 of 19,652
Funny- I had stuttering issues on my SanDisk card (a 64, 10), like I had an old CD Walkman without the memory and it was being shaken.  This was on an iBasso DX50.  Switched to the Adata Premier 10 and problem solved.  When I moved to the Fiios, I bought two more, have never had a problem.  I have close to 2,000 songs in a few hundred folders on one card, a mix of 16/44 and 24/various up to 192, and about twenty folders of DSD files on the second card.  Never a single issue.  I don't think the issue is with the X5, as my DSD files are quite large.  And I've got some 24/192s that are up around 150-200mb a song.  If there was an issue such as you describe, I would be experiencing it.  
 
Nov 16, 2014 at 10:53 PM Post #13,605 of 19,652
Could the brands be coincidence and the files on the cards be slightly different?

For example, I modified some tags in MediaMonkey and expected it to update those files during syncing, but it didn't (due to certain settings). Loading a fresh card from MediaMonkey got the fixed file tags though and therefore solved the issue. Hope that makes sense - not sure if it's relevant here ir not
 

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