The Fiio X5 Thread
Apr 29, 2014 at 5:54 PM Post #8,086 of 19,652
With enough capital this is surely not rocket science. I'm not an Apple fan-boy (not by a long shot!) but the iPod worked and continues to work.

 
There, you answered your own question. FiiO doesn't have the funds that Apple has and won't sell the amount of units Apple would sell, so obviously, they cannot throw as much capital at the development of their "Walkman" as Apple, even if they would want to.
 
Apr 29, 2014 at 6:12 PM Post #8,087 of 19,652
EA Audio/Amazon were honest with me and said I had missed first batch so would probably get it quicker from AV Shop/Amazon. Think it came via Norway but got it pretty much as promised.
 
Apr 29, 2014 at 6:21 PM Post #8,088 of 19,652
Question for mac users:

What do you use to organize, tag and add album art to your files?

I went through and added ALL the tags and album artwork to all the music on my iPod (filled ~160gb) and now I need to do it with my FLACs.

I've been using xACT and Tag but it's a huge pain in the ass.

Am I better off ripping all my music BACK off my iPod and just doing a big mass conversion back to FLAC? Will any problems arise from this, or am I better off using my FLAC files and cue sheets (when available)?

Any suggestions... I jsut with I had something like iTunes that could handle FLAC files for organizing and tagging my music!


I use Kid3 and it works just fine, give it a go and I'm sure you will agree.

I forgot to say that I'm a 100% mac user.
 
Apr 29, 2014 at 6:27 PM Post #8,090 of 19,652
EA Audio/Amazon were honest with me and said I had missed first batch so would probably get it quicker from AV Shop/Amazon. Think it came via Norway but got it pretty much as promised.


I ordered mine from EA and it should have been here today but the post office let me down.

It's piss** me off big time
 
Apr 29, 2014 at 6:28 PM Post #8,091 of 19,652
Apr 29, 2014 at 8:15 PM Post #8,093 of 19,652
subver: I bought Media Rage. It looks like it's from the '90s but does a good job.

[rant]I hate, hate, hate it that XLD doesn't embed the Year tag in FLACs for some reason...[/rant]

Oh yeah, finally got my X5 / S1 combo from MP4 Nation today and have been breaking them both in for the past couple hours. I'm finally getting some brain burn-in with the S1. They sounded really v-shaped at first but seem less sibilant now.
 
Apr 29, 2014 at 9:12 PM Post #8,095 of 19,652
I've tried making a light-green version of the standard fiio x5 skin, and everything has worked beautifully with the exception for the color of the text at the middle of the top status bar. Anybody knows what file I should be looking at? I tried changing the <topbar_text_color>0xFFFFFF</topbar_text_color> in the x5\litegui\theme1\config.ini file, but this one didn't work. Any ideas?
 
Also, the volume number is displayed in orange/red when it goes over 100. I haven't figured that one out either. 
 
Apr 29, 2014 at 9:19 PM Post #8,096 of 19,652
The amount of capital that Apple has the ability to throw into a project and the amount that FiiO can are on two drastically different levels.  While the iPod "worked and continues to", Apple have issued firmware updates all the way back to the original iPod Video days.  Apple, even with all of it's money and engineers are always issuing new firmware and updates for almost all of it products, including some pretty big bugs that slip through the cracks.


While I agree that Apple has more capital and resources the biggest difference is the formats that their players (iPod) can play, not including any IOS devices which have much stronger CPUs and memory onboard with a much more robust OS. I've been using the X3 since it's release and now use the X5 and I've read every single post on both threads as well as most of the other threads containing info on the Fiio DAP's so I'm very familiar with the ups and downs that have come and gone for Fiio. As I see it the two biggest problems that Fiio has created for themselves is:
i) trying to accommodate so many formats of music
ii) keeping the cost of the player down by not spending enough on more internal RAM and a faster CPU.

When one considers that iPods only support 5 formats at a maximum resolution of REDBOOK CD (16bit/44.1kHz) quality and managed with iTunes one can appreciate how much more difficult it is to support 9 or more music formats at all resolutions from very low 32bit mp3 to very high 24bit/192kHz lossless and all of it is managed on the device itself. Not to mention leaving the crucial disk formatting left to the end user (until Fiio included formatting on the device itself) and you have a cesspool of variety just waiting to cause problems. How can they predict what the user is supplying for music formats or how that music was created. What if the disk was formatted improperly? Does that become Fiio's issue or the users? This is how Apple, iTunes,and iPods keep everything running smoothly. They've created an ecosystem that ensures everything runs smooth.

Some of my perspective on the state of firmware and updates:

I'm just a middle aged dude who remembers the good 'ol days of playing music from a Walkman with really crappy headphones and enjoying every second of it. The music sounded horrible and the hiss was quite high, but I could listen to and enjoy my own music on the go, no radio for me. Neat. Simple yes, but not high fidelity. To create a playlist I would spend hours copying songs from one cassette tape to the other to get the perfect "mix tape". When CDs came along I still made mixed tapes because I didn't always like all of the songs on the CD. No previews of songs, no single song downloads, just spent hours at the store browsing music for the enjoyment of it.

We have it so good now that I think some perspective has been lost and the demands that some people put on companies are pretty unrealistic. With the X5 we get outstanding SQ on the go and the experience keeps improving with each update, however there are bound to be some speed bumps along the way for a relatively new entrant in the DAP market. The firmware updates are a way for the company to continue improving their product and I really appreciate that so I don't need to purchase new hardware for new features or fixes. I also appreciate how Fiio is directly interacting and listening to their end user customers and not just pushing out updates that nobody wants. Let's see Apple do that.

I like Apple products by the way. I own pretty much all of what they sell from laptops and desktops to iPhones, iPads, and iPods. I'm not really a Fiio fanboy (I do love the sound from my X5/e12 combo) and I typically don't go around pushing my thoughts on to people who aren't interested in hearing them, but it gets a little tiring when I constantly hear complaints about a company spending a lot of time and resources to improve a product for their past and present customers. If someone doesn't like a product then go buy something else. If you don't want updates go find an old cassette Walkman.

Rant over.

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Apr 29, 2014 at 10:07 PM Post #8,099 of 19,652
  So there is a USB DAC driver for Windows. Does the X5's USB DAC function also work with Linux and Mac (somehow out of the box, without additional driver)? If so, why does Windows need additional drivers?

 
This is common to all USB DACs that run on class 2.
Windows only has native "driverless" support up to USB class 1 DAC (96 kHz 24 bit), so it needs a special driver installed by the DAC manufacturer in order to connect a class 2 device (192 kHz 24 bit and above).
 
Mac OS and most Linux distributions had native class 2 driver support since around 2010, so they don't any additional manufacturer driver installation.
 
Apr 29, 2014 at 10:07 PM Post #8,100 of 19,652
  So there is a USB DAC driver for Windows. Does the X5's USB DAC function also work with Linux and Mac (somehow out of the box, without additional driver)? If so, why does Windows need additional drivers?

 
I don't know whether Linux or Mac will work without a driver or not, but the reason for having a Windows driver is because the X5 / X3 hardware doesn't come with your typical USB receiver chip for audio in the first place (as they are not designed to work as USB DAC originally). To realize the function, basically the firmware needed to be written to emulate the function of an USB receiver chip and therefore extra driver needed to be installed on the PC to make sure they will communicate normally.
 
There is also the reason of Windows lacking USB Audio Class 2 support, which is needed for the X3/X5 USB DAC function to work. Fortunately Linux and MacOS already include them, but not Windows - because they are lazy as it is.
 

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