[d1sturb3d]

I am ok with it too..the ambient temp here is way warmer lol..and as long it doesn't burn a hole in my pocket..

 

[pekingduck]

I concur with James. My X3 runs cooler than my first generation Galaxy Note (when using 3G)

 

[serious7]

Quote:

If you ask me I am okay with that but apparently some others not.
 
Want a device which doesn't get warmer? Get something like fruit device, doesn't do any good doesn't get warm either.

Your statement to me makes it seem like  you are coming up with a relationship that heat dissipation is directly proportional to performance. This doesn't make sense. Heat dissipation is a sign of inefficient design as wasted energy is converted and thrown away. James confirmed that by saying it is a hardware design problem. 
Quote:

 
yes, it is because the amp power. and it will not so hot if you use the line out or digital out of X3. also it depend on the impedance of the headphones and the volume too. 
 
anyway, it will be more easy to share it like " it is hotter than an Galaxy S3 when playing XXX " , and it will not hotter than most dual core Android phone if you can trusted me and not to talk compare with
 
some other DAP which have even bigger power output and a desktop DAC inside.

 
Thanks for the clarification. I plan to use it as a line out so that's a good sign  

 

[JamesFiiO]

Quote:

Your statement to me makes it seem like  you are coming up with a relationship that heat dissipation is directly proportional to performance. This doesn't make sense. Heat dissipation is a sign of inefficient design as wasted energy is converted and thrown away. James confirmed that by saying it is a hardware design problem. 
 
Thanks for the clarification. I plan to use it as a line out so that's a good sign  

 
should be more accurate if you said it is an design issues. yes, hot does not always mean high quality sound but the heat worth in X3. and we can easy change to almost the same design as others , and get long battery life and cooler but lost power and the warm sound.  

 

[serious7]

Quote:

 
should be more accurate if you said it is an design issues. yes, hot does not always mean high quality sound but the heat worth in X3. and we can easy change to almost the same design as others , and get long battery life and cooler but lost power and the warm sound.  

Thanks for the clarification. I like that FIIO is transparent with admitting to design issues in their products. 

 

[cyberalpha11]

Quote:

usually the heat is cames from Soc, DAC , and amp section. also charging circuit when charging . 

Just curious, why can't you add heat-sink or make many grooves all round your casing to increase the total exposed areas so that the heat dissipation can be more effective by mean of air convection?

 

[serious7]

Quote:

Just curious, why can't you add heat-sink or make many grooves all round your casing to increase the total exposed areas so that the heat dissipation can be more effective by mean of air convection?

The cost of changing an initial engineering design at later stages is much more expensive than doing it right from the start. Either it was unanticipated on Fiio's end or they knew it was coming and thought the cost/benefit ratio is not that bad. 
 
That's my educated guess. 

 

[JamesFiiO]

Quote:

The cost of changing an initial engineering design at later stages is much more expensive than doing it right from the start. Either it was unanticipated on Fiio's end or they knew it was coming and thought the cost/benefit ratio is not that bad. 
 
That's my educated guess. 

 
ok, let me explain more, each company/brand have to make decision what they should do and what they should give up when develop a new products, 
 
I think Apple can easy make the best sound quality DAP but it means less battery life, bigger size , expensive price , and yes, hotter, they known they are not going
 
to sell someone like us that take sound quality ahead everything. at the other hand, some brands, they trend to make the best sound quality not matter the battery life,
 
cost, and heat. for example, Sony‘s PHA-1 , the battery life is only 5 hours, do you think Sony lack of the ability to make an DAC/AMP which have 100 hours battery life?
 
 
Another issue about the UI and the firmware, I don't think iPhone can be so great if it can supports so many kind of music, photo, video, in fact, the iTune done almost 90% jobs to convert everything to the same format in PC/MAC, just compare IOS with Android, you got some and you lost some. there are not magic in the world. 

 

[Ultrainferno]

Oh my what did I say...
 
It's not like it gets hot like a lighter guys, it just warms up more than an ipod or another normal MP3 player. You won't get burned, it just feels warm.
Nothing to worry about, seriously. Just worth mentioning and James very well explained why it does

 

[waynes world]

Quote:

Not sure if this has been posted. Headfonia's review of X3.

http://www.headfonia.com/first-impression-fiio-x3-dap/

 
Thanks for the link. I thought that was a good and informative review. Makes me want the X3 even more!

 

[vic2vic]

Quote:

Oh my what did I say...
 
It's not like it gets hot like a lighter guys, it just warms up more than an ipod or another normal MP3 player. You won't get burned, it just feels warm.
Nothing to worry about, seriously. Just worth mentioning and James very well explained why it does

 
A warm player is a nice thing to have with me when I walk the cold Swiss streets during winter evenings 

 

[zzffnn]

To people who want Fiio X3 to automatically separate albums under Artist category:

You may consider manually sorting into a folder structure like "genre -- artist -- album". I have manually sorted my 3500GB (> 8000 albums) of music that way. You should be able to sort over 100 albums per hour.

Automatic album separation on Rockboxed Sansa is not perfect either. For Rockbox to work smoothly, It requires meticulous tagging (metadata) on each and every song. Majority of my songs/albums have been meticulously tagged, but some still ended up in wrong places. 

Manual folder organization (e.g., genre - artist - album) may be easier and faster than tagging, and it is also easier for a DAP to handle (DAP may become slower or unstable when handling lots of tags). You can easily browse folder structure in Rockbox or Fiio X3 anyway. And with manual organization, you can organize albums/songs however you want (e.g., make a folder to contain playlist "meditation").

And regarding operating temperature, we should make sure that we are comparing orange to orange first. One person's "hot" could be another's "warm". Why not just indicate the exact temperature. Also we should compare similar / comparable hardware design or power output. Sansa Clip or iPhone runs cool and Hifiman HM-801 runs hot, but they have very different hardwares and power output. Is there a DAP with similar power output as Fiio X3 but runs cooler?

 

[serious7]

Quote:

 
ok, let me explain more, each company/brand have to make decision what they should do and what they should give up when develop a new products, 
 
I think Apple can easy make the best sound quality DAP but it means less battery life, bigger size , expensive price , and yes, hotter, they known they are not going
 
to sell someone like us that take sound quality ahead everything. at the other hand, some brands, they trend to make the best sound quality not matter the battery life,
 
cost, and heat. for example, Sony‘s PHA-1 , the battery life is only 5 hours, do you think Sony lack of the ability to make an DAC/AMP which have 100 hours battery life?
 
 
Another issue about the UI and the firmware, I don't think iPhone can be so great if it can supports so many kind of music, photo, video, in fact, the iTune done almost 90% jobs to convert everything to the same format in PC/MAC, just compare IOS with Android, you got some and you lost some. there are not magic in the world. 

I'm going to have to disagree with one point. Apple's ui and firmware is infinitely better than what Fiio has. Apple has purposely locked the process of storing music through Itunes. They purposely locked the developer community from designing certain applications. Apple tries to maintain complete control over everything that is made on their platform. If it was open like the Android OS, then any third party developer can design an application that achieves video/music/ playback like Fiio X3 can (and I believe Android has mostly done this from what I can tell). 
 
Apple is a locked ecosystem which they are doing this on purpose. It's not by design limitation. It's a corporate functional requirement. 

 

[bowei006]

Quote:

To people who want Fiio X3 to automatically separate albums under Artist category:

You may consider manually sorting into a folder structure like "genre -- artist -- album". I have manually sorted my 3500GB (> 8000 albums) of music that way. You should be able to sort over 100 albums per hour.

Automatic album separation on Rockboxed Sansa is not perfect either. For Rockbox to work smoothly, It requires meticulous tagging (metadata) on each and every song. Majority of my songs/albums have been meticulously tagged, but some still ended up in wrong places. 

Manual folder organization (e.g., genre - artist - album) may be easier and faster than tagging, and it is also easier for a DAP to handle (DAP may become slower or unstable when handling lots of tags). You can easily browse folder structure in Rockbox or Fiio X3 anyway. And with manual organization, you can organize albums/songs however you want (e.g., make a folder to contain playlist "meditation").

And regarding operating temperature, we should make sure that we are comparing orange to orange first. One person's "hot" could be another's "warm". Why not just indicate the exact temperature. Also we should compare similar / comparable hardware design or power output. Sansa Clip or iPhone runs cool and Hifiman HM-801 runs hot, but they have very different hardwares and power output. Is there a DAP with similar power output as Fiio X3 but runs cooler?

Yep yep yep
 
Manual folder creation. Artist folder doesn't do what you want? Make your own.

 

[vic2vic]

Quote:

To people who want Fiio X3 to automatically separate albums under Artist category:

You may consider manually sorting into a folder structure like "genre -- artist -- album". I have manually sorted my 3500GB (> 8000 albums) of music that way. You should be able to sort over 100 albums per hour.

Automatic album separation on Rockboxed Sansa is not perfect either. For Rockbox to work smoothly, It requires meticulous tagging (metadata) on each and every song. Majority of my songs/albums have been meticulously tagged, but some still ended up in wrong places. 

Manual folder organization (e.g., genre - artist - album) may be easier and faster than tagging, and it is also easier for a DAP to handle (DAP may become slower or unstable when handling lots of tags). You can easily browse folder structure in Rockbox or Fiio X3 anyway. And with manual organization, you can organize albums/songs however you want (e.g., make a folder to contain playlist "meditation").

And regarding operating temperature, we should make sure that we are comparing orange to orange first. One person's "hot" could be another's "warm". Why not just indicate the exact temperature. Also we should compare similar / comparable hardware design or power output. Sansa Clip or iPhone runs cool and Hifiman HM-801 runs hot, but they have very different hardwares and power output. Is there a DAP with similar power output as Fiio X3 but runs cooler?

 But operating the X3 in in this way ("manual navigation")  you lose gapeless play 

 
As far as I understood the X3 is reading the tags quite well, so probably it's only a matter to improve how tags are used to structure the navigation (hopefully in the next FW upgrade).