[Dixter]

Quote:

I'm using an amp that is compatible with my earphone. The problem is its a analogue controlled amplifier that has channel imbalance issues at low volumes. On top of that, having a sensitive iem doesn't help. The amp works perfect with line out attached to an hd 650 though. 
 
The other solution is to buy an amp with digital volume control that has no channel imbalance issues. 
 
The solution I'm looking into right now is to buy a new amp with modded negative gain to help with sensitive gear. 

I'm willing to bet if you were to put into your amp a tone of say 15K Hz and you hooked up an oscilloscope to both out puts you'd see that at low level output the left/right signals are not matched as to voltage level output...   this is either a design flaw or most likely a mechanical problem with your volume potentiometer...  ( you did say it was analog )    One thing you can try out before you decide to get a new amp is to use a potentiometer cleaner called DeoxIT.    You just put some on the pot so the liquid goes into the body and de-oxidizes the wiper mech.  Use it all the time on my Peavy AMPs...  just nature of the beast..  
Another solution for you is to get a couple of in line attenuators and put them in between the amp output and the sensative earphones...that way you have to drive the amp out of the channel imbalance region...     I don't think the X3 is the issue, but it might be bringing the amp problems to the surface a little more than your used to..     The reason it works better with your HD650 is you are turning the volume knob up to a different position...   probably past the oxidized part of the wiper mech of the potentiometer.  Or if its an older amp.. you might be experiencing component fatigue...   caps starting to leak ???

 

[MrScratch]

@serious7: I'm not bashing you, it's a legit question. I understand you have already made up your mind and there's no point in convincing you otherwise so I'll let it go and forget about it. You are convinced that the X3 is flawed in this aspect and it's your right to believe so, end of the story.
 
Getting back to your question, if you use the X3 simply as a transport the actual line level voltage will be set by your external DAC. Keep in mind that if you get a decent DAC it will probably output 2V RMS taking you at the same exact situation where you are now. You'll need to buy another amp, so you should choose an external DAC/AMP combo from the beginning.
 
Quote:

guys the only usb wall charger in my household has this written on it
 
output: 5.0v ~ 1.2a
 
would this be suitable for using with the usb lead that came with the x3?

You bet!

 

[rawrster]

That's the reason why I don't get portable amps anymore. Every amp I've owned or tried in the past with the exception of the UHA-4 by Leckerton has had channel imbalance at the beginning of the pot and when it went away there was almost nothing to work with in terms of volume. The UHA4 had a digital volume control so was able to use that. The X3 from the headphone out works just fine for me

 

[serious7]

Quote:

I'm willing to bet if you were to put into your amp a tone of say 15K Hz and you hooked up an oscilloscope to both out puts you'd see that at low level output the left/right signals are not matched as to voltage level output...   this is either a design flaw or most likely a mechanical problem with your volume potentiometer...  ( you did say it was analog )    One thing you can try out before you decide to get a new amp is to use a potentiometer cleaner called DeoxIT.    You just put some on the pot so the liquid goes into the body and de-oxidizes the wiper mech.  Use it all the time on my Peavy AMPs...  just nature of the beast..  
Another solution for you is to get a couple of in line attenuators and put them in between the amp output and the sensative earphones...that way you have to drive the amp out of the channel imbalance region...     I don't think the X3 is the issue, but it might be bringing the amp problems to the surface a little more than your used to..     The reason it works better with your HD650 is you are turning the volume knob up to a different position...   probably past the oxidized part of the wiper mech of the potentiometer.  Or if its an older amp.. you might be experiencing component fatigue...   caps starting to leak ???

This is a very good descriptive post. You should replace your name to Dexter not Dixter
 
I already confirmed with other owners of the amp that the region I am confined to is expected to have channel imbalance.
 
The amp is new (less than a month old). I'm the first owner.
 
Line attenuators you say? I looked into 3.5 mm to 3.5 mm extension cords with volume control and impedance connectors. Could you elaborate on whether your solution will degrade my listening experience?
 
Quote:

@serious7: I'm not bashing you, it's a legit question. I understand you have already made up your mind and there's no point in convincing you otherwise so I'll let it go and forget about it. You are convinced that the X3 is flawed in this aspect and it's your right to believe so, end of the story.
 
Getting back to your question, if you use the X3 simply as a transport the actual line level voltage will be set by your external DAC. Keep in mind that if you get a decent DAC it will probably output 2V RMS taking you at the same exact situation where you are now. You'll need to buy another amp, so you should probably choose an external DAC/AMP combo from the beginning, instead.
 
You bet!

 
I was actually thinking of getting a dac/amp combo. What's your opinion on  the Leckerton uha-6 series with modded lower gain?
 
 

That's the reason why I don't get portable amps anymore. Every amp I've owned or tried in the past with the exception of the UHA-4 by Leckerton has had channel imbalance at the beginning of the pot and when it went away there was almost nothing to work with in terms of volume. The UHA4 had a digital volume control so was able to use that. The X3 from the headphone out works just fine for me
 

 
You are reading my mind. When I described a digital volume control amp, I was thinking of UHA-4 haha!!! I'm stuck between UHA-4 and UHA-6 with modded lower gain. 

 

[rawrster]

I haven't been in the portable game in a long time. I've been just using my JH5 with my itouch until recently when I got my UERM and more recently the X3. I still have to fix some of my tags for the X3 but other than that it's been good. The UHA4 imo is a good choice at the price level and at that time it doubled as a usb dac/amp for my netbook (which is pretty useless now). However I don't think the UHA6 is digital as I don't see any mention of that on the product page.
 
Does anyone know for album art if the X3 reads a cover.jpg in the folder? I'm guessing it has to be in the tags as some people in here have all their music in one folder..

 

[bowei006]

Quote:

I haven't been in the portable game in a long time. I've been just using my JH5 with my itouch until recently when I got my UERM and more recently the X3. I still have to fix some of my tags for the X3 but other than that it's been good. The UHA4 imo is a good choice at the price level and at that time it doubled as a usb dac/amp for my netbook (which is pretty useless now). However I don't think the UHA6 is digital as I don't see any mention of that on the product page.
 
Does anyone know for album art if the X3 reads a cover.jpg in the folder? I'm guessing it has to be in the tags as some people in here have all their music in one folder..

You need album art embeded/added to the id3 tag directly

 

[MrScratch]

Quote:

I was actually thinking of getting a dac/amp combo. What's your opinion on  the Leckerton uha-6 series with modded lower gain?

 
I don't have experience with Leckerton Audio products, sorry 'bout that.
 
 
On a side note, I've sorted the Artist/Ablum/Song folders in 2 big folders and copied them in my second microSD card (64GB Transcend microSDXC Class 10 UHS-i) and the Category function got screw*ed up again.

The library update takes only a few seconds to complete and I can access the music only by browsing manually. I've separated my library in 3 smaller folders but it didn't work. If I use my SanDisk SD with the one-folder structure the tagged MP3s are back again. Now I'm overwriting my SanDisk card with the same folder structure I've created on the Transcend card to see what happens. I love messing with these things but all those gigs take a lot of time to move around!

 

[Dixter]

Quote:

This is a very good descriptive post. You should replace your name to Dexter not Dixter
 
I already confirmed with other owners of the amp that the region I am confined to is expected to have channel imbalance.
 
The amp is new (less than a month old). I'm the first owner.
 
Line attenuators you say? I looked into 3.5 mm to 3.5 mm extension cords with volume control and impedance connectors. Could you elaborate on whether your solution will degrade my listening experience?
 
Line Attenuators come in many flavors depending on the requirements...    having said that one solution might be for you to contact a custom cable builder and explain that you have an amp that you want to drive harder to overcome the imbalance... as in you want to drive the amp out of the imbalance region...   the custom cable builder can recommend to you several cable impedance choices...  mainly Coaxial cables... as an example..   a 50ohm cable, or a 75ohm cable...  and more choices than those.. or you could even have the builder put in a small resister in line...   all your trying to do is drive the amp out of the lower power region that is causing the imbalance... 

 

[serious7]

Quote:

I haven't been in the portable game in a long time. I've been just using my JH5 with my itouch until recently when I got my UERM and more recently the X3. I still have to fix some of my tags for the X3 but other than that it's been good. The UHA4 imo is a good choice at the price level and at that time it doubled as a usb dac/amp for my netbook (which is pretty useless now). However I don't think the UHA6 is digital as I don't see any mention of that on the product page.

Yea UHA6 is not digital. The goal would be to mod the gain of the UHA6 to -12 DB so that the channel imbalance region can be passed. 

 

[sbradley02]

Quote:

 
Hmmm... I was using GUIformat to do that but I have a different folder structure (root>bigfolder>genre>album>song). Do you have the link to Verbatim's software (can't find it in the official website)?
 
 

http://bit.ly/17dvVie

 

[sandalaudio]

Quote:

a line out is supposed to be a stable fixed 2V output so if everybody was doing that one job right, all lines out would have the exact same loudness. blame apple for lowering all standards in audio and everybody for following.
here you can only accuse fiio of doing it right.
 I get almost the same loudness from my computer(foobar and win volume maxed out) with odac/o2 or with the x3/o2.
x3 has 1.7v on the line out (thx clieos). what is the minimum gain on the c&c? isn't the x3 alone better?
 

 
Just to reiterate on the debates about the line output on X3 being to loud, unusable, etc,
 
The line output on X3 was measured as around 1.71V RMS on 1kHz 0dBFS signal to a standard 10k input impedance load. The impedance of the line output was around 100 ohms (not the headphone output!).
 
X3's line output of 1.71V is quite a bit lower than the industry standard of 2V. For example, my Meridian Explorer USB DAC was exactly 2.01V RMS on the same testing condition. This is the same for most Hi-Fi CD players (my Marantz SACD player was around 2.05V).
 
In some cases, the manufacturer deliberately raises the output voltage to around 2.1V, which makes it sound more "exciting" when you do an A/B test against a standard 2V device without touching the volume knob. (most people don't notice the increase in volume). The X3 will have an opposite effect.
 
Anyhow the X3 should not sound any louder than other good player devices like a high-end DAC or a CD player.
 
A stereo speaker amp usually don't have these issues with gain, since most speakers are built around a standard 8 ohm nominal impedance and 85-90dBSPL. Unfortunately headphones don't have such a convenient standard, so it is impossible for one headphone amp to achieve same comfortable listening volume level on a 3 ohm IEM (which needs low voltage and high current amp) vs. a 600 ohm studio monitor (which needs high voltage and moderate current).
 
Good headphone amps often have gain level switches to handle both types. For example, Lehmann BCL amp (used by Sennheiser for trade show demos) have 3 gain setting switches. Fiio X3 has a high and low setting (this only affect the headphone out and not the line output obviously). In particular on the headphone amps with analog volume, the aim of a good amp designer is to allow you to set the gain so that you can achieve comfortable listening level when the volume knob is around 70% of maximum, so that the knob gang error is minimal.
 
If the headphone amp does not have a gain setting and becomes insanely loud with a tiny turn of the volume knob then it is clearly not designed for the headphones you are using, and the manufacturer didn't think thoroughly enough about adding a gain switch.
 

 

[JamesFiiO]

Quote:

 
Just to reiterate on the debates about the line output on X3 being to loud, unusable, etc,
 
The line output on X3 was measured as around 1.71V RMS on 1kHz 0dBFS signal to a standard 10k input impedance load. The impedance of the line output was around 100 ohms (not the headphone output!).
 
X3's line output of 1.71V is quite a bit lower than the industry standard of 2V. For example, my Meridian Explorer USB DAC was exactly 2.01V RMS on the same testing condition. This is the same for most Hi-Fi CD players (my Marantz SACD player was around 2.05V).
 
In some cases, the manufacturer deliberately raises the output voltage to around 2.1V, which makes it sound more "exciting" when you do an A/B test against a standard 2V device without touching the volume knob. (most people don't notice the increase in volume). The X3 will have an opposite effect.
 
Anyhow the X3 should not sound any louder than other good player devices like a high-end DAC or a CD player.
 
A stereo speaker amp usually don't have these issues with gain, since most speakers are built around a standard 8 ohm nominal impedance and 85-90dBSPL. Unfortunately headphones don't have such a convenient standard, so it is impossible for one headphone amp to achieve same comfortable listening volume level on a 3 ohm IEM (which needs low voltage and high current amp) vs. a 600 ohm studio monitor (which needs high voltage and moderate current).
 
Good headphone amps often have gain level switches to handle both types. For example, Lehmann BCL amp (used by Sennheiser for trade show demos) have 3 gain setting switches. Fiio X3 has a high and low setting (this only affect the headphone out and not the line output obviously). In particular on the headphone amps with analog volume, the aim of a good amp designer is to allow you to set the gain so that you can achieve comfortable listening level when the volume knob is around 70% of maximum, so that the knob gang error is minimal.
 
If the headphone amp does not have a gain setting and becomes insanely loud with a tiny turn of the volume knob then it is clearly not designed for the headphones you are using, and the manufacturer didn't think thoroughly enough about adding a gain switch.
 
 

 
Yes, the output level will be better if it can reach 2V, but it does not make big difference . in fact, we will have to increase the power supply and make the system more complex. after compared with lots of other portable DAPs, we believe that 1.7Vrms is enough . 

 

[JamesFiiO]

Quote:

 
i'd like to know too please james

 
So you guys means the gapless should work in more condition ? 

 

[JamesFiiO]

BTW, I realized one serious question that it become impossible to me to track each question about X3 now. so please help me post any question and suggestion in another thread
 
 

FAQ and Advice of X3

 
 
Also we already put a very detail FAQ inside the X3 but I guess there are quit lots of user have not get through it. so please take a look at the files first there already have some answers. 
 
And just my suggestion, let this thread become a thread that people can find the answer about the SQ. 

 

[CosmicHolyGhost]

Quote:

 
So you guys means the gapless should work in more condition ? 

Yes, please enable gapless even play from the file browser. it will be very convenient. Thanks, James. If you cannot do it on X3, please consider it when designing X5.