psikey
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2008
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I too was happy with how smooth the whole FW update went, and how the interface operation feels better fleshed out than when I had the X7 on tour with beta FW. I'm glad FiiO waited to release this internationally, but it's a bit of a hit and miss for me still.
Gapless playback works perfectly. 'Play through folders' is really nice to have and one of my favourite features of the X5-2, but there have been a couple hiccups so far. Sometimes it works and sometimes not - yes, when using folder playback - a toggle off/on of the option fixes it. Also, once the playback 'plays through' to the next album folder the 'back' button takes you to the first album folder that was playing before it 'played through' to the next. Kind of annoying. The back button should always take you one directory above the current playing track. Speaking of tracks, +3000 songs (16/44.1 to 24/192 lossless, mostly ALAC) on a 200gb Sandisk mSD card formatted in the X5-2 (FAT32) updated in no time. About 25 tracks every 0.5-1 second.
Obligatory Pink Floyd pic
Listening to this with the JH Angie balanced right now in that pic. FWIW I can't reliably tell any difference between balanced and SE on the X5-3. Could be because the cable change takes some time, the bass attenuators may be slightly different between cables, or FiiO simply did a good job on the SE port that the balanced port isn't a 'night and day' difference. Actually, good job FiiO on the implementation of both SE and balanced! I'll be doing all my testing SE from now on with the tour unit I have, and yes, I hear some small hiss with SE and balanced to the JH Angie (17 Ohm, 117dB SPL/mW sensitivity) when the music isn't playing. The Noble K10 I have is more sensitive and I suspect the hiss will be slightly worse. It's not a large amount of hiss, but it's there if you listen for it.
When I get mine background hiss is the first thing I will listen for with my 9 Ohm SE846's.
I did buy one of those iFI Audio iEMatch things based on recommendations on Head-fi and unlike the 75 Ohm impedance adapter I have, it does eliminate/reduce hiss without any noticeable SQ change to my ears. Will try with both.