[Taveren]

Is that the new thing called "sarcasm"?

It is not far fetched for Fiio to accommodate an upgrade scheme for current X3 owners to send in their current X3 and maybe pa half of the msrp of the new X3 with scroll wheel.

Just my 2 cents

 

[Head-Hunter]

  My second Clip+ is about to die on me in quick succession, and I'm fed up with it.
I'm on board. This seems like the only reasonable upgrade from Sansa's champ. Most players are either too expensive/too big/lacking in SQ for my liking, so I was locked into it while getting more and more frustrated with constant jack failures. The release date can't come soon enough.

This is exactly the problem that I've had with my Sansa Clips, only it's my third that has now failed at the jack in exactly the same way as my last two after only a year of use. This is what motivated me to start looking for an alternative and ultimately to this thread.  Hoping the X1 will be the perfect replacement. I just wish it was to be released sooner because my third clip is now completely unusable and I'm not going to be able to wait until September.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Would be nice whenever Fiio implements the scroll wheel on the X3 v2 then they give an option to existing X3 owners to exchange their v1 units for the one with the scroll wheel if they like.

 
That would not be ideal for a company like Fiio. Companies like Apple can afford to do that because of the huge volume in production, as well as having licensed accessories that they can still earn from having "Made for ixxxx" stamped on it. Fiio has a much smaller production run and it's not like every kid in the world wants an X3 in a nice Belkin case for Christmas.

 

[Taveren]

Point taken on the X3 swap thing. Pardon the OT.

With the current rising numbers of bang for buck iems in the market right now, I am pretty sure the X1 will have a big market. Specially those who want to deep their toes to test hifi waters.

 

[Hapster]

Point taken on the X3 swap thing. Pardon the OT.

With the current rising numbers of bang for buck iems in the market right now, I am pretty sure the X1 will have a big market. Specially those who want to deep their toes to test hifi waters.

Hardly, it'll sound somewhere around exactly like the ipod. The upside is expandable memory, and cheaper. It won't be some magic hifi player at $100

 

[huckfinn]

...with the downside, for fiio, that it can't be rockboxed.....

 

[Exesteils]

Hardly, it'll sound somewhere around exactly like the ipod. The upside is expandable memory, and cheaper. It won't be some magic hifi player at $100

Mostly this.

 

[Saoshyant]

Where are you getting the idea that it'll sound like an iPod?

 

[Hapster]

The dac is basically the same quality.

 

[Taveren]

Hardly, it'll sound somewhere around exactly like the ipod. The upside is expandable memory, and cheaper. It won't be some magic hifi player at $100 IMO

let me fix that for you.
 
And for the record, no one expects a "magic hifi device" as the X1 is marketed as an entry level DAP. but the point is it will be a good starting point for people that enjoy the budget-fi IEMs such as Ostry, Havi B3 and VSD1s.

 

[Hapster]

let me fix that for you.

And for the record, no one expects a "magic hifi device" as the X1 is marketed as an entry level DAP. but the point is it will be a good starting point for people that enjoy the budget-fi IEMs such as Ostry, Havi B3 and VSD1s.

If you'd like to compare dacs and tell me which is better be my guest.

I found similar dacs to what's in ipod nano, but the exact model is probably discontinued.

Let me save you some research: CS35L19 chip

I'd be surprised if it actually sounded as good as an ipod. Like I said, the benefits of this compared to others in its price is expandable memory (kind of a downside since there's no onboard so base price is more accurately $130+ And ability to play other files [but ipod already does 320 and there's no dif between 320 and flac])

 

[Taveren]

If you'd like to compare dacs and tell me which is better be my guest, I'm going on price alone and they're both about $2.

nope sorry I am not really that technically knowledgeable to be in a position to oblige, but from what I have read so far from the other guys here is that though sometimes gears may use the same component but the end result will vary based on the implementation.

 

[Saoshyant]

From what I've read, the current iteration of the iphone still doesn't play 24/96, so the X1 will be an improvement over that.  I don't remember which dac it is using, but I'm fairly sure the current ipod classic is using a cirrus logic chip.  Given there are 910 forum posts for the X1 as I'm writing this, and I don't really want to go through them all to verify, I'll assume the front page is up to date with listing the PCM5121 as the X1 dac, which would be a TI dac.  The amp section if I remember will put out roughly 100mW@32, which I believe should outdo any apple product, too.
 
But for all intensive purposes, given nobody here has listened to it, I'll just hope it turns out to be a good product.  It certainly has some promise.  I just wonder if the used X3 prices will dip low enough to cause some trouble for X1 sales.

 

[originalsnuffy]

I suspect that even if the chipsets were on par with those used by Apple, the sound quality is likely to be a step up.  I never would have believed that firmware could make a big difference, but I was surprised how much better my aging ipod Video 5.5 with the Wolfson chip sounds using Rockbox compared with the Apple firmware.  I can't do an AB properly; but rockbox makes that unit sing in my opinion.  Granted, I generally am playing flac files and not bit reduced files; but it sure sounds good.
 
So my guess is that Fiio can make the hardware perform.  I sure like the E07 Andes and X3 sound (at least with beta 2.14).  Granted, again, I am generally playing high bit rate material.  If you are not playing high bit rate material, maybe these units lose some of their edge.  But I still imagine that Fiio can deliver good sound performance on lossy audio files.

 

[Hapster]

  From what I've read, the current iteration of the iphone still doesn't play 24/96

 
Why is that a problem? ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つhttp://www.head-fi.org/t/716822/why-24-bit-audio-and-anything-over-48k-is-not-only-worthless-but-bad-for-music