Greetings all! As you can probably guess from my posting in this thread
, I'm new here. This would be my second post, but I must admit I have been lurking around for a little while. I am by no means an "audiophile", or an "audiophilosopher". I just have a love for music! I've been playing guitar for more than 20 years, albeit not professionally. There was a time that I was in a few local garage/bar bands, but that was when I had the energy to work two jobs, go to school, and stay up all night drinking, smoking and playing rock -n- roll. Then get up the next day and do it all over again. I was always broke, but had one hell of a time. I am now older, earn a lot more money, but still play... and drink. Gave up smoking though, with the exception of the occasional cigar. Anyway...
What brought me here?
Recently my beloved old friend died one day. Suddenly. Catastrophically. HD failure. I'm still a little broken up about it. We had spent countless hours together enjoying a wide variety of music, including but not limited to: Classic Rock, Hard Rock, Alternative Rock, Heavy Metal, basically all kinds of Rock, Led Zeppelin (one of the all time greats IMHO, and deserving singled out mentioning), Jazz of many types, Blues (love the blues!), R&B, MoTown, Oldies (although all things considered, probably a lot of my music could be considered "old" to some of you), Elvis (deserves a category all to himself), Folk, ah! let's not forget Classical, even the occasional Country and/or Western genre. Throw in a little Funk, rap, and hip-hop on the rare occasion. My near and dear old friend listened to it all, and more. We've been to many countries together, and no matter what language was spoken I knew I could rely on my old friend to comfort me at the end (or during) of a tough and difficult hour/day/week/month. Until that fateful day when I powered it up at the office and... akin to the windows blue-screen-of-death... it froze. And crunched. And crunched. And crunched (you get the idea). Then displayed "Service required", or some such message. Granted it was nearly full, just a smidge of room left for some more artists/albums/songs. We've been together for longer than my last marriage! And now... this. To be honest, I was fearing this day. Not looking forward to it at all. I swear the day before I expressed this very fear to a friend and colleague! To make matters even worse, my beloved old friend has been discontinued for a few years.
How can I ever find a replacement? There are folks who provide parts to make my old friend new again. But would it be the same? Probably. However, the cost of these parts are more than I originally paid. There are also some units still available for purchase... at 3 to 4 times what I originally paid! Just not acceptable, no matter how much I loved my old friend. So to the interwebz I go... in search of a new friend... hopefully a better friend... well, better sounding anyway. In my interwebz research for this replacement friend, I stumbled upon Head-Fi with the reviews about various DAP's.
Let me make one thing clear about me... I detest all things i-crApple! I refuse to buy i-crApple products! I had one long ago, an iPod classic (1st gen). Biggest piece of $h!t I ever owned! Sold to a friend within a month of purchase. And within that month, the screen was scratched, badly, and i-crApple's software crashed my computer constantly. Never again! I know many people that love and share their love of i-crApple's products, but just not for me. I will NOT be constrained into the i-crApple world of works. But this is just my meager opinion. If you like i-crApple products, then good for you! Just don't preach to me how great they are! So the last thing I was looking for to replace my dearly departed friend was a i-crApple product. I had to have anything non i-crApple! But from my meager knowledge of all things DAP, i-crApple offered the largest storage (latest Classic is at 160GB, and discontinued, I might add).
What was my dearly departed and beloved old friend you ask? (or not, as you may have given up reading this long a$s post already) It was a Microshaft Zune 120GB. Loaded nearly to the brim with music from the already mentioned genre's. I was getting very close to looking for a new DAP anyway, as my music collection is ever growing. It would not have been too long before 120GB was just not enough space. Granted, to my being in a closet for the last few years as far as high resolution audio is concerned, most of my music collection is in standard 44.1KHz/16bit format. As an analog geek/freak from (not so) long ago, I never really "accepted" this digital sampling of music. Especially for Jazz and Classical. But the need for portability and storage had long (not so long) ago allowed me to accept the format.
Then my dear beloved long time friend up and dies on me! As I already said, I head straight to the interwebz for a replacement... And to my astonishment and wonder, the digital age of music has grown leaps and bounds since I've really paid any attention to it. High resolution audio is not only here, it is widely accepted and appreciated! I can now see myself spending every extra penny I have on rebuilding my music collection, at least the music I most love, to this (to me) new format.
So what replaced my near and dear old musical friend you ask? (or not, if your still reading this then hopefully I'm a little entertaining at the least)...
Just before I had to travel to China for a project, as in days before, my dear departed Zune up and dies. A day to do some research on the interwebz, a day (or a few hours) to make a decision on how much I want to spend at the moment. And a couple of days waiting for Amazon to get it to my house. Four days total. That's what I had, exactly, before I had to step on a plane and travel for 26+ hours to where I was going to in China. Decision time...
Still here, reading this critical saga in my life... okay...
I cannot go a day without listening to some tunes. (Yes, I am prolonging the saga). It's a must. It's my wind-down, my wind-up, my every day. It's my stress relief. If I cannot pick up a guitar and play, then I have to listen. On many trips, I do bring a guitar so I can do just that... pick it up and play. But not every trip. And I travel frequently. Sometimes it's just to cumbersome to bring even my portable guitar gear with me. Especially if I am skipping around to various places. It's weight, it's space in an already large luggage case that maybe needed for other things, like tools, clothes, underwear.
So... what did I decide on... I think I've prolonged this long enough... I purchased a FiiO X5 to replace my dear departed friend. The two microSD slots got me excited (maybe a little turned on even). The possibility of 256GB of music at my fingers! And perhaps more with future firmware upgrades! How could ever fill that space up? Trust me, it won't take too long with high resolution audio! As some of you may already know and/or realize. Not that I have a lot of hi-res music at the moment, but that will surely, and quickly, change!
Currently I have one 128GB microSD card almost full with standard 44.1kHz/16bit music. As I am currently traveling in China, I cannot grab my CD collection and start re-burning them to FLAC or some such format. However, I did drop some coin at one of the many HD audio websites and purchased a bunch of Led Zep at 96kHz/24bit. Just had to do it! I love Zep.
I've had my X5 for roughly 3 weeks now, and I must say... I love it! It's not completely different from my dearly departed Zune. There are things about it that I think can be improved upon, but I thought the same things about the Zune. A large music collection (over 20,000 songs, I don't know how many albums/artists) can be a bit of a pain to parse through when looking for a particular artist/album/song that I want to listen to. Regardless, the sound quality improvement over my old friend is very noticeable. Even with my mediocre IEM's. I travel with two sets of 'phones currently, both Bose, one is QC15, the other is IE2's. I must admit that I "purchased" both using miles that I accumulate in my frequent travels, so neither one cost me a dime. I enjoy Bose, I must admit, although I have always understood that they are not the best at sound quality reproduction. My faithful QC15's I will not give up, on a plane (or other noisy environments) they are par none at noise cancelling. As for the IE2's, they are comfortable, even though the sound reproduction is not all that great.
I have already discovered the thread about the X5's ability to mod the theme and found a theme from
AlienInvasion that is clean, refreshing, and most of all... easy to navigate. Harmony 3.1. Although I will admit, that I had to change it up a little to suit my own personal tastes.
And finally there is an end to this post... soon... I am looking for better IEM's. If anyone has any suggestions, just shoot me a PM, or even better just reply to this exhaustively long post
. Currently I am looking at buying Sennheiser IE80 as soon as I step foot on American soil again. At the same time, I took advantage of my airline miles and ordered (using miles only, so free to me
) Sony XBA-H3. Which look a little bulky, but from the reviews here and elsewhere should sound great. I also ordered a new set of Bose IEM's to hopefully replace my QC15's (also using miles, so another free-bee
), they are the QC20's. The QC15's are over-the-ear types, which can be cumbersome when traveling. So I thought I would give the QC20's a try, I've been considering spending the miles on them for awhile but haven't committed until now.
One last mention... I just today received the FiiO E12A (along with the HS-6 stacking kit) that I had asked a Chinese friend of mine to order for me to go along with my newly purchased FiiO X5. And I must say... OMG!!! Maybe I should say it again...
OMG!!! The people I work with in China have been having enough trouble with me on this trip because I always have music in my ears since receiving my X5. Now they are in for real trouble! I can further crank up the volume to my mediocre Bose IE2's and drown out whatever they are talking about! And if that's not enough, I can flip the gain switch on the E12A from LO to HI and completely block out whatever they are asking me. And, no, if you're wondering, I do not understand or speak Chinese. I can speak enough to order a cold beer, find the restroom, say hello and goodbye. That's it.
Okay, this has gone on long enough. I've shared way too much! Why the hell are you reading all this drama anyway? You should be enjoying your own DAP's/Amps/'phones!!
Enjoy the sounds for what they are... a universal language of expression and emotion! Rock on!
and an Ibasso DX90 and some Baldoor Mrice E100 earbuds that I found here thanks to the forum.
Another is that it is just too freaking expensive! And last, I got sick of all the debates and mostly the attitude of people towards other people with different opinions and gear/preferences. It seems to me that here things are more peaceful 
