Feature A New Chip! FiiO Portable HiFi Music Player M11 Plus Is Officially Released!

[whitedragem]

@FiiO does the above mean that DSD is essentially passed though "bit perfect" with no DSP or oversampling?

This would be wonderful when using the M11 Plus in USB DAC mode, as I use HQ Player for upsampling and output PCM to DSD, and would welcome a high quality device that takes that DSD data stream and plays it back unmodified! Yes DSD would pass through ‘unmoddified’. Sometimes a PLL process to match USB (and bluetooth) clock chip handling can happen, but ‘resampling’ would not… (meaning that the USB controller usually uses the 48khz branch clock chip, using a Phase Lock Loop to handle all incoming (timing) sources.) DSD will be passed through as ‘RAW as can be’. (any DAC box builders care to contribute….?)

Also: Does M11 Plus support 48k bitrates (48/96/192 etc...) or only 44.1/88.2/176.4 etc...? Pertinent to this question: The M11+ branch have DUAL ‘femtosecond’ clocks. (one for each branch of multipliers). Many other manufacturers will use ONE femtosecond clock chip, and due to the ‘high precision’ of femtosecond rates, use ONLY ONE CLOCK CHIP (of the high quality ‘femtosecond’ variety). The M11+ (family) use TWO femtosecond clocks, and is a definite reason to use an M11+ as a transport (/know that the M11+ DAC chips are ‘well fed’ due to FiiO paying the piper regarding GREAT clock chips.)

And my last question: May we expect to see this new edition M11 Plus available on Amazon soon? That would be my preferred way to purchase it.

Thank you for putting up with my questions!

FiiO using DUAL FEMTOSECOND clocks, for handling 44.1khz (and its multiples, such as 88 and 176khz) & 48khz (and its’ multiples, such as 96 and 192khz) is fairly rare, and practically unseen at these pricepoints. (whilst I don’t dismiss that there may be a few other parts, historically, offering dual femtosecond clock chips, in this ‘lower price point market segment’; they might do so simply for marketing and/or may not have a total circuit design (such as FiiO board layout in these 6th generation(?) parts and power isolation and shielding…..and…; FiiO are owning the market for budget price point ‘world class transport’ with the M11+ range!!)

 

[LoryWiv]

FiiO using DUAL FEMTOSECOND clocks, for handling 44.1khz (and its multiples, such as 88 and 176khz) & 48khz (and its’ multiples, such as 96 and 192khz) is fairly rare, and practically unseen at these pricepoints. (whilst I don’t dismiss that there may be a few other parts, historically, offering dual femtosecond clock chips, in this ‘lower price point market segment’; they might do so simply for marketing and/or may not have a total circuit design (such as FiiO board layout in these 6th generation(?) parts and power isolation and shielding…..and…; FiiO are owning the market for budget price point ‘world class transport’ with the M11+ range!!)

I am not certain if you are confirming that the M11 Plus does have the dual femtosecond clocks or just stating that it's rare. Please clarify, and thank you @whitedragem!

 

[whitedragem]

I am not certain if you are confirming that the M11 Plus does have the dual femtosecond clocks or just stating that it's rare. Please clarify, and thank you @whitedragem!

M11+ uses ‘dual FEMTOSECOND clock chips’. 1xfemtosecond ‘accuracy’ clock handling 44.1, 88.2, and 176.4 AND 1xfemtosecond clock for handling 48, 96 and 192khz sampling rates…
I suppose this is the modern world and I should keep those multiples going up to 352 and 384khz (respectively)..

2x clock chips at ‘femtosecond’ level accuracy
(‘twas my reason for buying one!!)

At this price point, the ‘norm’ typically is either 2x ‘lesser’ accuracy clock chips, OR 1x femtosecond clock that synchronises ‘accurately enough’ for both families of ’sampling rates’.
2x femtosecond clocks as used in the present FiiO ‘M’series lineups is pretty awesome. Makes the FiiO DAPs a ‘better transport than most will ever care to own’…

 

[LoryWiv]

M11+ uses ‘dual FEMTOSECOND clock chips’. 1xfemtosecond ‘accuracy’ clock handling 44.1, 88.2, and 176.4 AND 1xfemtosecond clock for handling 48, 96 and 192khz sampling rates…
I suppose this is the modern world and I should keep those multiples going up to 352 and 384khz (respectively)..

2x clock chips at ‘femtosecond’ level accuracy
(‘twas my reason for buying one!!)

At this price point, the ‘norm’ typically is either 2x ‘lesser’ accuracy clock chips, OR 1x femtosecond clock that synchronises ‘accurately enough’ for both families of ’sampling rates’.
2x femtosecond clocks as used in the present FiiO ‘M’series lineups is pretty awesome. Makes the FiiO DAPs a ‘better transport than most will ever care to own’…

Impressive, thanks for clarifying!

 

[Pelilin]

i just bought the m11 plus and this is my first time owning DAP. Anyone willing to tell me how it compare to the old LTD version in term of SQ?

 

[LoryWiv]

i just bought the m11 plus and this is my first time owning DAP. Anyone willing to tell me how it compare to the old LTD version in term of SQ?

I have no experience with either so can't compare, but very interested in M11 Plus. Please share your usability and sound impressions when you are ready.

 

[Pelilin]

I have no experience with either so can't compare, but very interested in M11 Plus. Please share your usability and sound impressions when you are ready.

I cant say much about DAP function since this is my first DAP but i can say about sound signature. For me this DAP sound like typical ESS chip. Sharp noted i know it is thick noted but sharp also it is a bit bright. When i A/B it between this DAP with luxury and precision w2. the w2 sound rounder in every aspect which is not cutting the ear. The soundstage with W2 is larger in my perception i think this has something to do with the decay since m11+ sound technical to me. Here is the main difference between w2 and this DAP it is that W2 is more musical and pleasant and more laid back compared to m11+ . M11 plus is technical and have good separation. The problem is i use technical IEM where luxury and precision w2 sound better with technical iem so it dont get too technical. The power between this two is about the same when driving IEM but i can sense m11+ have more power since the bass have more rumble to it like powerfull punch and still have room to be more aggresive. So in my conclusion this DAP is technical and a little bright in its personality. This is why i have suspicion that AKM chip will sound better with my IEM. This is also what happen with ANK sp2000 and sp2000t the ESS is a little bit more technical(i know this from a friend who own both). hope this help. Need someone who own the AKM one and compare.

edit: i forgot to mention this DAP with sensitive iem have a little bit of a hiss but very low in volume. not very dark background with sensitive iem.

 

[SRKRAM]

Now- if anything says ‘HDCD’, THEN I ACTUALLY DO CLIMB OVER BROKEN GLASS TO TRY AND BUY.
Alas HDCD is so ‘yesteryear’ even though it could have given to the entire audio market ACTUAL USABLE HiRes audio and it was of benefit to EVERYONE! (even non HDCD/pacific macrosonics PMD100 chip equiped equipment)

HDCD -I'd almost forgotten about that. Back in the day quite a few of my CDs were HDCD encoded, and I used to look forward to the HDCD symbol lighting up on my CD player. Looking back, it was the MQA of it's time, or maybe worse. A proprietary system in which the audio was companded and undisclosed control bits embedded in the audio stream used to control the reverse companding process. This was all for questionable gains in sound quality for devices with HDCD decoding capabilities, and worse sound quality for those without since the outputted sound would have been compressed. It's probably still causing trouble today since CD rippers probably don't recognise the in-band control bits necessary to reverse the companding. Then there's also the question of unwanted data embedded in the audio.

Correctly reversing the companding process is even considered worthwhile enough that in the POTS telephony world that expensive converters were/are used in international gateways to convert between slightly different companding schemes.

 

[whitedragem]

HDCD -I'd almost forgotten about that. Back in the day quite a few of my CDs were HDCD encoded, and I used to look forward to the HDCD symbol lighting up on my CD player. Looking back, it was the MQA of it's time, or maybe worse. A proprietary system in which the audio was companded and undisclosed control bits embedded in the audio stream used to control the reverse companding process. This was all for questionable gains in sound quality for devices with HDCD decoding capabilities, and worse sound quality for those without since the outputted sound would have been compressed. It's probably still causing trouble today since CD rippers probably don't recognise the in-band control bits necessary to reverse the companding. Then there's also the question of unwanted data embedded in the audio.

Correctly reversing the companding process is even considered worthwhile enough that in the POTS telephony world that expensive converters were/are used in international gateways to convert between slightly different companding schemes.

I cannot speak about the tech at that level, I don’t really know…
I know there were two schemes that could be adopted (the engineer could choose what would help their recording ’the most’), but it was designed to avoid creating ‘have nots’.. (unlike MQA), pretty sure.
OF course if any ‘built to do HDCD device’ read any CD (even non HDCD discs) the PMD100 (or later PMD200) chips had ‘better filters’ and generally was a desirable thing for all discs…

but, HDCD discs on non HDCD equipment, from everything I read (and not just by the ‘press team’), would be ‘better discs for having undergone the HDCD processing.. (akin to superbit mapping and other methods that made use of ridiculous computing power at the creation stage, that could forever benefit the playback chain… (20 years had passed since PCMs coming to market and CPU power had increased exponentially)

The only time I was caught out was with a Denon surround receiver, which obviously was missing some filtering for frequencies well beyond ‘hi res’ (no doubt a part of its’ “charm” sounding a little less flat than midfi surround receivers ‘at the time’)- when playing back HDCD discs on that setup (DAC not featuring a PMD100 chip), I could hear an ‘inverted sound’ for much of the ‘instruments note edges’ playing in the ‘super high frequency space’; but only if I engaged ‘all channel stereo mode’, and had the music cranked up at ‘scream at the person next to you to be heard’ volumes..
The (super) high frequency band information I have never heard on any system, (or in any processing mode) outside of that ONE setup. (and the usage case was unusual, and whilst it didn’t annoy me, it was fascinating that only the HDCD discs exhibited the ‘fault’; but at the time I thought it was exceptionally clever as it showed that the HDCD encoding hadn’t screwed with the base music, and you could see where the 20 bit ‘edge enhancements’ were/‘what it was actually bringing to the music.

All of my HDCD discs still sound, generally, to be the best mastered discs in my collection. It was clear that the labels that ‘jumped on board’ did so in the pursuit of musical excellence. (the albums would have still been great even sans HDCD is my guess, as they were clearly shown love/focus and attention.. )

They certainly didn’t make the have nots experience ~13bit quality sound (which the adoption of CD to the market, generally that was what consumer devices were yielding..) it took a few years as players came down in price and tech evolved to get them towards 16bit by the mid to late eighties…
People in the audio community that experienced this probably know that ‘average joes’ will realise that non MQA ‘sounds bad’ in a way that 320kbps MP3s ‘may not’.
To me it looks like the tech was designed intentionally with a double edged sword.. vs HDCD that intentionally thought about the ‘have nots‘, because they wanted to be widely adopted and knew that not everybody would jump onboard.. and consumers didn’t have an option when buying the mastered CD…

I appreciate SRKRAM describing technical aspects, if they are relevant to HDCD, but I postulate ‘in the real world usage’ any disadvantage of HDCD was essentially nil.

 

[SRKRAM]

I cannot speak about the tech at that level, I don’t really know…
I know there were two schemes that could be adopted (the engineer could choose what would help their recording ’the most’), but it was designed to avoid creating ‘have nots’.. (unlike MQA), pretty sure.
OF course if any ‘built to do HDCD device’ read any CD (even non HDCD discs) the PMD100 (or later PMD200) chips had ‘better filters’ and generally was a desirable thing for all discs…

but, HDCD discs on non HDCD equipment, from everything I read (and not just by the ‘press team’), would be ‘better discs for having undergone the HDCD processing.. (akin to superbit mapping and other methods that made use of ridiculous computing power at the creation stage, that could forever benefit the playback chain… (20 years had passed since PCMs coming to market and CPU power had increased exponentially)

The only time I was caught out was with a Denon surround receiver, which obviously was missing some filtering for frequencies well beyond ‘hi res’ (no doubt a part of its’ “charm” sounding a little less flat than midfi surround receivers ‘at the time’)- when playing back HDCD discs on that setup (DAC not featuring a PMD100 chip), I could hear an ‘inverted sound’ for much of the ‘instruments note edges’ playing in the ‘super high frequency space’; but only if I engaged ‘all channel stereo mode’, and had the music cranked up at ‘scream at the person next to you to be heard’ volumes..
The (super) high frequency band information I have never heard on any system, (or in any processing mode) outside of that ONE setup. (and the usage case was unusual, and whilst it didn’t annoy me, it was fascinating that only the HDCD discs exhibited the ‘fault’; but at the time I thought it was exceptionally clever as it showed that the HDCD encoding hadn’t screwed with the base music, and you could see where the 20 bit ‘edge enhancements’ were/‘what it was actually bringing to the music.

All of my HDCD discs still sound, generally, to be the best mastered discs in my collection. It was clear that the labels that ‘jumped on board’ did so in the pursuit of musical excellence. (the albums would have still been great even sans HDCD is my guess, as they were clearly shown love/focus and attention.. )

They certainly didn’t make the have nots experience ~13bit quality sound (which the adoption of CD to the market, generally that was what consumer devices were yielding..) it took a few years as players came down in price and tech evolved to get them towards 16bit by the mid to late eighties…
People in the audio community that experienced this probably know that ‘average joes’ will realise that non MQA ‘sounds bad’ in a way that 320kbps MP3s ‘may not’.
To me it looks like the tech was designed intentionally with a double edged sword.. vs HDCD that intentionally thought about the ‘have nots‘, because they wanted to be widely adopted and knew that not everybody would jump onboard.. and consumers didn’t have an option when buying the mastered CD…

I appreciate SRKRAM describing technical aspects, if they are relevant to HDCD, but I postulate ‘in the real world usage’ any disadvantage of HDCD was essentially nil.

In the early days of CD there was some debate around the number of bits it would use, but that's long before HDCD. The name HDCD doen't quite match our current definition of 'HD' because it's more to do with dynamic range than frequency response - They still use a 44.1 sampling rate, and Nyquist is a thing.
Redbook CDs use LPCM, whereas HDCD does not; it's companded. I don't care to read about it, but I would expect more aggressively than than non-linear PCM formats like A-law and mu-law, hence the need for control bits to control the process. HDCDs will sound louder, but more compressed (as in less dynamic range), if played on non HDCD equipment. As louder sounds 'better', you could say that HDCD sounds 'better' but I would rather turn the volume up a bit if I want louder, and still have unadulterated sound.

MQA is an interesting one because the 'unfolding' techniques is uses sound very similar to a spectral folding technique which was patented by colleagues of mine to allow interworking between narrow and wideband voice codecs. We called it pseudo wideband (today it probably would have been called pseudo-HD, but that was 10 years ago) - Essentially it enabled narrow band codecs to have perceived quality almost as good as true wideband codecs. I was the product manager of the device which performed the necessary transcoding, and it was a good feature which actually improved the perceived quality. The idea was to improve the experience for users with devices which supported wideband codecs in the initial phases when the penetration of these devices was still low. This was all to do with frequencies which are well with in the audible range, and provided a perceptual improvement in quality. MQA, on the other hand, adds stuff above the audible range and claims to be lossless so I'm a bit dubious of that.

I'm not sure what the problem you experienced with 'super high frequencies' was, but maybe an issue to do with CD emphasis/de-emphasis rather than HDCD.

Sorry for the long post. I usually don't have the patience to read your posts, as I have the attention span of a gnat, and now I've gone and written a fairly long one myself

 

[LoryWiv]

Question for @FiiO on the DSD playback capabilities: The screenshot below from your website 's M11 Plus product page is a bit confusing (at least to me). Is the M11Plus unable to output anything higher than DSD128 in USB DAC mode? That's surprising with a modern ESS chip. If I feed it a DSD256 file from PC will it downsample? Lastly, what is the reference on the right to DSD512 with USB Audio, seems contrary to the USB DAC spec.

Thanks for clarifying!

 

[whitedragem]

Question for @FiiO on the DSD playback capabilities: The screenshot below from your website 's M11 Plus product page is a bit confusing (at least to me). Is the M11Plus unable to output anything higher than DSD128 in USB DAC mode? That's surprising with a modern ESS chip. If I feed it a DSD256 file from PC will it downsample? Lastly, what is the reference on the right to DSD512 with USB Audio, seems contrary to the USB DAC spec.

Thanks for clarifying!

I’m not sure regarding what their DSD capabilities are.. .but when I first got the M11+ (either version; both SHOULD DO THIS, and mine certainly did..) it ran all sorts of DSD output and was a great tool.

For quite a bit now I have been scratching my head- not sure if it was the firmware, the firmware + the software, or the 3.0.9 software alone,.. but now I cannot even play my DSD files from the unit (not just ‘on the fly DSD conversion’) (which also no longer works in situations that it previously did).

Something is amiss and knowing FiiO they will be on top of it super quickly, as soon as it is figured out what usage cases the issue exists,..

Now -I’d like to be wrong; that it is just my unit (which actually fully works), and just that I am doing things wrong.. but I am generally fairly tech savvy, have tried a range of methods to make it so, and have just given up… (literally ten minutes ago I was trying to play two ‘dead can dance’ DSD discs(/files) and the unit plays them but the output is nil.

Into a range of DACs I get different situations,.. but the end result is that none of them seem to do any form of DSD anymore.


When I jump over to HF player, I can get DSD out over USB, like always.. but on the FiiO side of the coin (pure music mode/ FiiO music app) I seem to have issues with a range of basic features that I loved and enjoyed.

Now - I did install Hiby Music, and Apple Music.
One of the steps to try and get things working again was ‘removing’ those softwares (HF Player too).

I imagine in a week the problem will be well reported, the issue will be redressed, and within two weeks we will all be up and running again…


Of course, perhaps its’ “just me” (my unit)

In the meantime, you are not alone, and I doubt it has anything to do with the DAC chips (seriously)


edit : I actually feel it has more to do with android, as when I had to go on the android store there were a lot of things about the player that just magically turned on to ‘default android phone settings’.
?google play store stuff up my player,? I think so!
My battery usage would drain 5% overnight (doing nothing, when previously it could go days and not drain more than a percent’)
So android store turned on my location (GPS) and a few other settings. I did go and turn as many of them off again as I could find. Believe I got them all as my overnight drain returned to ‘nil’.
Something about the android OS (wrongfully) updated itself when it had no permission to do so. (this is a new world thing, and all devices are treated this way by ‘the powers that be’)
As a thirty plus year technician servicing technology, we’ve never had it this bad, and I do everything I can to get away from these shenanigans.
When I bought a DAP, a large part of the joy to be found with said device was the fact that it wouldn’t keep needing/getting updates.

I nearly bought another M11+ just to have one that NEVER goes online.
Hope I am being ‘a nutter’.
Fortunately - FiiO seem to offer older firmwares (unlike EVERY MAJOR TECH COMPANY who will not let users revert to their last ‘uncompromised state’ (heck the updates are usually paired with security updates that everyone says we NEED, and often are worse to our devices than leaving them ‘as they are’. I am not doing banking or emails on my M11+ so ‘out of box state’ and not online connection will suit me just fine.

I know many here stream (radio or music subscription services); take what I say with a grain of salt. I am being dramatic cause my phone hasn’t been sending and receiving SOME messages for months now, and it has cost me A LOT OF BUSINESS. a few hours on the phone with the telco was a typical waste of time (wait and see).
But when I want to relax from said nonsense.. not being able to play a lot of my high res files was saddening. Normally not an issue- I would just feed via USB to an iFi DAC and use the GTO (filter) mode- which makes ‘everything hi res’, but having used the M11+ in USB mode all day (so I could do DSD output using HF Player), the unit was down on 7% and so I put the device on charge and went back to COAX output (and no DSD)

 

[tjl5709]

I posted this in the other M11+ thread as well.

"So the timing worked out for me to have both the AKM and ESS versions of the M11+ to evaluate. My Fiio X7mkII is getting long in the tooth from an operational standpoint. It is kinda sluggish and slow with my 1TB card with all my music. I figured with the newer OS/CPU and hardware (DAC/AMP), the M11 would provide both sound and operational benefits, so I took the plunge. I evaluated both M11+'s using identical 64gb cards with about 40 music files (flac, many being 24 bit). I selected the cuts to evaluate for both vocals (male/female), instrumentation, and ambience. Genres was jazz, country, rock, pop, and classical. I use IEM's for my portable rig, so what I state is based off of the following IEM's; Fiio FH-9 (balanced 4.4mm) and Shure KSE1200 (3.5mm LO). Both were using low gain. I used both the Fiio App and Neutron App. Every parameter was the same as best I could set. For the KSE1200, I ran both units thru an analog switch into the energizer. All the files are analyzed for volume, and I used replay gain. When I compared the FH-9s I set both DAPs to a set volume. ~90 I believe.

The bottom line is I could NOT tell a difference. When running the KSE's, I would press the play for each at the same time. I could literally switch between them and hear the song at the same spot. It sounded exactly the same to me. With the FH-9's, I had to pull the plug between them so it was not as easy to do a direct comparison, but I really could not hear any differences. I really focused on trying to discern differences in the upper and lower regions. Cymbals, brass, bass, bass drum and sound stage. For me, it's a push.

At this point, the AKM version is going back. It saves me some money.

The bigger issue now is in regards to the differences between the X7 and the M11+. From a sound perspective, there really isn't any. The X7 has the AM3D amp module and doing the same evaluation, I could not really hear any differences. This was a shock to me. The single ES9028 holds itself up well versus the dual ES9068's from a sound/detail standpoint. Operationally, there is no comparison."

 

[cleg]

Here is my video about M11 Plus. That exact case when forced changes were for a good

 

[mcnaugha]

@FiiO I know the Snapdragon 660 doesn’t come with an aptX Adaptive license but is there anyway you can negotiate to add it in a future update? This is to support the UTWS5 without the need for an additional aptX Adaptive adapter. I read somewhere that it’s only a license key away for chipsets it is not bundled with.

I wish you’d used the Snapdragon 675 which I see has both HD and Adaptive.