Thanks to volunteers' efforts in beta testing firmwares 2.01 through 2.07, official firmware version 2.20 for the X5 is now available!
http://www.mediafire.com/download/a4e8ebruvccihi0/X5_FW2.20.zip
The following changes and improvements were made to firmware 2.20 compared to FW2.0:

A. New functionality

1. Added support for .m3u and .m3u8 playlists
2. Added support for album art for whole folders (e.g. front.jpg, cover.bmp, folder.png)
3. New lockscreen mode added (3 in total)
4. Added support for more LRC song lyrics formats (UTF-8 without BOM, Unicode).
5. Added display of machine serial no. in System Settings->About X5.
*For new X5s only. Machine serial no. won’t be shown for existing X5s upgrading to FW2.1

B. Improvements

1. Fixed issue where the first two seconds of the first song played on turning on the X5 are skipped.
2. Fixed issue where song info of the last song remains on display if the next song played does not contain ID3 info.
3. Improved browsing speed in Browse Files when there are a lot of music files in directories.
4. The description “EQ: Normal” is changed to “EQ: off” for better understanding.
5. Fixed issue where connecting / disconnecting headphones / line-out / etc. during playback may cause the X5 to hang.
6. Reduced chance of duplicate album, genre and artist listings by making scanning of these metadata fields case-insensitive.
7. Fixed issue where rewinding a track from near the end becomes ineffective because the X5 skips to the next track (playback is now paused while fast forwarding / rewinding)
8. When “update media library” is set to Auto mode, the X5 will now update the media library whenever a TF card is inserted or removed.
9. After media library update, the number of songs catalogued will be shown in System Settings->About X5.
10. Added clear dialog of “DTS format not supported” when the X5 encounters unsupported DTS 5.1 channel sound files.
11. Various other bug fixes.

Looking forward to everyone's feedback

Update 2014-08-18
I'm sorry I didn't provide more info on playlists the day the firmware was released. Basically there are a few things you need to know about them:
1. M3U playlists stored on the SD cards are accessed via Browse Files, not Browse by Category->Playlists.
2. M3U playlists have the following limitations:
a) each entry should not reference a drive letter (because this firmware is capable of reading relative paths, but refers to the two drives as TF1: and TF2:, which no playlist creation program would create)
b) playlists should start with a line saying #EXTM3U. (I know that (a) and (b) are kind of contradictory so I'm working on getting the devs to drop (b) as a requirement)

In the meantime here are the recommended methods for creating playlists on the computer:
Method for adapting existing playlists for the X5
The X5 can read playlists with relative pathing and thus is compatible with most existing playlists that do not reference the drive letter at the beginning of each track reference, with one caveat. The term "#EXTM3U" needs to be added to the beginning of the playlist by editing the playlist file in a text editor.



Method for creating playlists for the X5 in foobar2000
New playlists compatible with the X5 may be created using foobar and a text editor as follows:
1. Connect the SD card for the X5 to the computer (e.g. by connecting the X5 itself with the SD card inside in Storage USB mode)
2. Load the songs desired from the SD card into a new playlist and save the playlist as a M3U8 file in the root directory of the SD card.




3. Open the M3U8 file in notepad. Check that no drive letters are mentioned at the beginning of each line, and add the line "#EXTM3U" to the beginning of the file.



Method for creating playlists for the X5 in iTunes
If using a windows PC for playlist creation, foobar2000 is recommended over iTunes. If using iTunes on the Mac, the custom playlist export program created by fellow X5 user, JeremyLaurenson, is recommended:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/728503/submit-your-dap-specs-please-i-am-creating-dapper-a-mac-itunes-to-dap-converter

Sweet!  Updating now.  Very happy to see the new lockscreen!

24 bit files still glitches. Something like transfer problem or corrupted file. I Have class 10 microSD with 15MB/s benchmarked transfer, so the problem is on the X5 side

I still have high-res files (APE) that are not playing on the X5 while they play perfectly fine on my computer.
 
Also, I thought someone has addressed these issues below and they had already been fixed. However, it seems like those problems still persist in this version. Correct me if I am wrong. I didn't pay much attention to the beta updates but I somehow have the impression.
 
1) When browsing music in folder menus/playing music, holding the the upper right button will bring you back to the main menu, whereas quickly hitting the upper right button would bring you to the previous folder that you were browsing (suppose you have branches of folders). However, after holding the upper right menu and have gone to the main menu once, when you are at the now playing page, hitting the upper right button will no longer bring you to the folder page, but the main menu instead. This makes it difficult to navigate when you have many folders within folders. If holding the upper right button always brings you back or forth between the main menu and now-playing-page, while hitting the upper right button will always bring you to the previous FOLDER (which is the folder that the song currently playing is located or the last folder that you have browsed), this seems much more efficient and intuitive.
 
2) When holding either volume buttons in lock screen mode, the song currently playing will be skipped to the next or previous song. This makes it very annoying that x5 would accidentally skip songs when you intended to mere raise or lower the volume. At worse case, maybe the buttons were accidentally pressed in the pocket. In comparison, it seems that accidental volume change is less annoying than accidental song change. At least for me.

Thanks again, Joe, James & FiiO!!

limecoke said:

I still have high-res files (APE) that are not playing on the X5 while they play perfectly fine on my computer.

Also, I thought someone has addressed these issues below and they had already been fixed. However, it seems like those problems still persist in this version. Correct me if I am wrong. I didn't pay much attention to the beta updates but I somehow have the impression.

1) When browsing music in folder menus/playing music, holding the the upper right button will bring you back to the main menu, whereas quickly hitting the upper right button would bring you to the previous folder that you were browsing (suppose you have branches of folders). However, after holding the upper right menu and have gone to the main menu once, when you are at the now playing page, hitting the upper right button will no longer bring you to the folder page, but the main menu instead. This makes it difficult to navigate when you have many folders within folders. If holding the upper right button always brings you back or forth between the main menu and now-playing-page, while hitting the upper right button will always bring you to the previous FOLDER (which is the folder that the song currently playing is located or the last folder that you have browsed), this seems much more efficient and intuitive.

2) When holding either volume buttons in lock screen mode, the song currently playing will be skipped to the next or previous song. This makes it very annoying that x5 would accidentally skip songs when you intended to mere raise or lower the volume. At worse case, maybe the buttons were accidentally pressed in the pocket. In comparison, it seems that accidental volume change is less annoying than accidental song change. At least for me.

Click to expand...

1. Unfortunately, while we all know this is the desired behaviour, I've been told by the engineers that implementing it is rather difficult in the current case. However, I note that turning the scroll wheel anytime in the Now Playing screen will bring you a quick menu of all the songs in the current folder (or, e.g. album, supposing that you selected the current song via the Albums selection of Browse by Category).

2. This was a conscious design decision. On the one hand, holding a volume button to advance to the next or previous song gives you functionality that would otherwise be unavailable when the screen is locked; on the other hand, we believe that accidental volume change by your pocket is the more undesirable outcome, especially if the volume accidentally goes UP.

Are you going to update the manual to take into account the changes?

Hi FiiO,

Thanks for another great FW update, the X5 becomes better with every release.

It's a bummer that I find myself so often in the root of my music library and that this is difficult to solve but even with the small flaws I recommend the X5 wholeheartedly.

A small question: I like the extra Lock Screen-3 buttons, but why haven't you removed them form the volume buttons; they still (annoyingly) skip a track foreword and backwards.
I assume that this can easily be changed? I prefer a long volume press to slowly increase/decrease the volume so I don't have to press it multiple times but I can imagine that you don't want to implement this to prevent hearing damage.

Overall Great Work!

My wish list for the next FW update:
- Equalizer for High-res files >44.1 KHz
- Customizable menu rotation setting for the main menu only (clockwise / anticlockwise)
- Album art display when browsing an artist's album list
- file / folder copy from OTG USB to internal Micro-SD card

emklap said:

Hi FiiO,

Thanks for another great FW update, the X5 becomes better with every release.

It's a bummer that I find myself so often in the root of my music library and that this is difficult to solve but even with the small flaws I recommend the X5 wholeheartedly.

v 2.07 Beta has been available for a long time so can you tells what the difference between V 2.07beta and V2.20 is?

Click to expand...

There's the additional lock screen for starters...

Hi
Great to see the release, however for me there is now a bug which was not present in v2.07b.  When turning on the X5, after the welcome screen the following screen appears:

 
This clears quite quickly and the system then runs normally.  However when the the system is closed down and the USB cable is connected to the PC, after the welcome screen this abnormal screen appears and locks up the X5 and the PC reports unknown USB device connected.  The USB cable must be removed and a soft reboot is needed to start the machine.  If the X5 is running normally then when connecting the USB to the X5 it goes straight to USB Storage mode and the drives are mapped.
When the closed down X5 is connected to a USB charger again, after the Welcome screen the abnormal screen appears and then it goes into charging mode.
Anyone else having this problem?
Regards
Jeremy

I'm seeing the same screen. Haven't tried with USB, but identical otherwise

Very nice update!
Great to see my FLAC file albums now play the songs in correct Album sequence!
Very nice!
Thanks guys!

Thanks for this update, it’s very nice!
 
But I have several questions:

- Where are stored the playlists created? I can't find them on the SDcard.
- When I create a playlist in the root directory of the SDcard I can't find it in the category "playlist" 

.
- Why when I go to "Play by category" the upper left button of the X keygroup is used to switch between "All songs", "Album", "Artist", "Genre", "Playlists" ? It’s useless, It would have been better an option like to "Add this Album to a playlist", "Add this Artist to a playlist" or other…
 
The Fiio X5 Player would be the best player in the world for me if all those little details would have been fixed !
 
Anyway, thank you for very much for your quick answer

.

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Hello
I'have upgraded to ver 2.20.
Fine.
But how do I create playlists. ??
I don't see any new user guide.
Thanks