FIIO’s innovative sub brand, SNOWSKY Pure Music Player ECHO MINI Is Officially Released!

[RoMac]

Thank you. Let me make sure. But when I received the file, it wasn't hidden, and the file suffix was flac.

This happens when you are using Mac to copy files from macOS formatted file drive (HFS+, APFS) to something like FAT, FAT32 or exFAT drive. "._filename.ext" contained some special information of the "filename.ext" to use in the macOS only (it was called "Resource Fork" in older Mac OS's). Normally Windows or Linux file browsers will not show those files, unless you configure the browser to show hidden files.
I am writing this post because folder browser started to show the hidden files after last update of MINI (v1.46) and Fiio Music app on JM21 (v3.2.6). Looks like a bug or something.

 

[Impidimp]

I moved on. Will come back when Fiio Echo Mini is more stable. But, I found a player that cost me $40 more than the Echo Mini ($90), which is even smaller than the Echo Mini 1.7 inch x 1.8 inch, no limit in SD Card up to 2TB, 4.4mm balanced output through an adapter cable, Bluetooth 5.0 with LDAC-HQ and apt-X, can be used as a computer sound card or change output to USB Audio to use with another DAC/AMP, support for m3u playlists and best of all, NO ERRORS while playing back even in the slowest SD Card.

What device is It?

 

[DW10]

What device is It?

Can't reveal on this chat to respect the Fiio Team.

 

[appleturnover]

I moved on. Will come back when Fiio Echo Mini is more stable. But, I found a player that cost me $40 more than the Echo Mini ($90), which is even smaller than the Echo Mini 1.7 inch x 1.8 inch, no limit in SD Card up to 2TB, 4.4mm balanced output through an adapter cable, Bluetooth 5.0 with LDAC-HQ and apt-X, can be used as a computer sound card or change output to USB Audio to use with another DAC/AMP, support for m3u playlists and best of all, NO ERRORS while playing back even in the slowest SD Card.

I feel you. I'm on the fence about it. It's a nice little toy, but it will not be my primary player at this point due to the little niggling issues. I really hope they fix the basics on this because they affect the user experience so much.

I know the player you switched to. I have it also. It's a great device, but I just don't love the display. The device is so small it's hard to navigate when an album has long track names (such as "Beethoven Violin Concerto, Opus 61 in D Major I: Allegro ma non troppo". On the display you can literally only see "01 Beethove" unless you flick the name to manually scroll it! But that not something I wasn't aware of prior to buying it, just more of a pain than I imagined. However, I love the dedicate volume wheel!

For now I bounce between mostly the Echo Mini and my old Fiio X1: which still sounds great. And I just recently figured out that the X1 works with 256Gb cards because I got one for my Echo Mini and popped the card into the X1.

 

[DW10]

I feel you. I'm on the fence about it. It's a nice little toy, but it will not be my primary player at this point due to the little niggling issues. I really hope they fix the basics on this because they affect the user experience so much.

I know the player you switched to. I have it also. It's a great device, but I just don't love the display. The device is so small it's hard to navigate when an album has long track names (such as "Beethoven Violin Concerto, Opus 61 in D Major I: Allegro ma non troppo". On the display you can literally only see "01 Beethove" unless you flick the name to manually scroll it! But that not something I wasn't aware of prior to buying it, just more of a pain than I imagined. However, I love the dedicate volume wheel!

For now I bounce between mostly the Echo Mini and my old Fiio X1: which still sounds great. And I just recently figured out that the X1 works with 256Gb cards because I got one for my Echo Mini and popped the card into the X1.

Yes, it is a small display, but I don't have that big need of navigating as I solved that by creating all the Playlists I needed in m3u format and imported them, so I just choose the Playlist I want to listen to. But the Alpha scrolling of songs is great as it looks like they copied that from the Sony Walkman music player.

 

[FiiO Support Lin Lin]

Hi.

I have just received this little device. I am on the latest firmware.

Is there a database creator with the Echo Mini?

The reason I ask is I am using a 256GB card formatted with an Android phone loaded with FLAC files (it was previously used for music storage on my phone). When I click on 'update medialib' nothing happens. I can scroll through the contents of the card but I would prefer a database so I could choose artists etc. At the moment I am forced to scroll through a list album folders on the sdcard. It's a pain.

Dear friend,

Hi, after updating the media library, you could go to playlist option. The artist, album category are not updated? Is it empty?

Best regards

 

[guyo]

I, too, have recently received my brand new Snowsky Echo Mini (purchased on AliExpress), and have been super happy with the sound quality and nostalgic build.

I am having problems, however, with the device not recognizing my music's metadata/tags.

I have a 200GB SanDisk micro SD card inserted in the Echo Mini, with about 150 gigabytes of music albums - all mostly 24-bit/192 kHz and 24-bit/96 kHz, and some 16-bit/48 kHz.

I have very carefully tagged all these albums using the macOS Music Tag Editor 2 application (so all have proper tags for album name, release date, album artist, track artist(s), track numbers and album covers). The albums are organized on the micro SD card in the following folder/file structure:

[Micro SD card root directory]
\Music
...........\Flac 24 (for 24-bit Flac music albums)
........................\[Album artist name]
.........................................................\[Album name]
.................................................................................01.Track name.flac
.................................................................................02.Track name.flac
.................................................................................03.Track name.flac
.................................................................................etc.

...........\Flac (for 16-bit Flac music albums)
...................\[Album artist name]
....................................................\[Album name]
............................................................................01.Track name.flac
............................................................................02.Track name.flac
............................................................................03.Track name.flac
............................................................................etc.

When I insert the micro SD card with my tagged music arranged as noted above into another audio player (a Sony hi-res audio Walkman), it recognizes all the tags properly and allows me to navigate my music using these tags.

On the Snowsky Echo Mini, however, when I perform a media library update on the micro SD card, the process completes fairly quickly (taking probably around 30 seconds, maybe even less), and when I try and access my music through the player's "Playlist" interface, I can only see all songs (from all albums) listed with their file names under the "All songs" category, but any attempt to access my music via the "Album", "Artist" or "Genre" categories results in there being only a single "Unknown" entry listed there - meaning none of the tags embedded in the Flac music files are being recognized by the Echo Mini, making folder-based navigation the only (cumbersome) way to access my music.

One more problem - when I do access my music via folder navigation, sometimes when I select a certain track, the player will play back a later track in the same album instead (for instance, I select track 7 in a 12-track album, but the player starts playing back track 10 in the same album instead). If I then skip back to the track I actually wanted, it plays back absolutely fine. Very strange!

I have updated the player to the latest 1.46 firmware version, and the problems have not gone away.

Anybody here experiencing the same? Any ideas on what I may be doing/tagging wrong, and on how to get the player to properly recognize and allow navigation by the metadata I've embedded in my Flac music files?

Would be amazing if Fiio could weigh in here, too.

Thanks!

 

[WarrenR]

Dear friend,

Hi, after updating the media library, you could go to playlist option. The artist, album category are not updated? Is it empty?

Best regards

Hi.

The sdcard had Android folders on it such as Documents, Movies. Music etc. I reformatted the card with Echo Mini and then sent my FLAC files over and now the playlist is working.

Thanks!

 

[guyo]

Hi.

The sdcard had Android folders on it such as Documents, Movies. Music etc. I reformatted the card with Echo Mini and then sent my FLAC files over and now the playlist is working.

Thanks!

Thanks. Will give a clean format and fresh transfer a try.

Another question - is there a problem in arranging the flac music albums in a nested folder structure, like I've done (i.e. separate folders for 24-bit and 16-bit flac albums under the root micro SD folder, respectively, then album artist sub-folders, and album sub-folders under those?

I do in fact have Android folders on the micro SD card I'm using. Just wondering if that's the only reason the Echo Mini isn't recognizing my media tags, or if it also has to do with the nested structure I've stored them in?

 

[WarrenR]

Thanks. Will give a clean format and fresh transfer a try.

Another question - is there a problem in arranging the flac music albums in a nested folder structure, like I've done (i.e. separate folders for 24-bit and 16-bit flac albums under the root micro SD folder, respectively, then album artist sub-folders, and album sub-folders under those?

I do in fact have Android folders on the micro SD card I'm using. Just wondering if that's the only reason the Echo Mini isn't recognizing my media tags, or if it also has to do with the nested structure I've stored them in?

Hi.

Sorry I don't know about that.

 

[mseis]

Hola.

Lo siento, no sé nada de eso.

Thanks. Will give a clean format and fresh transfer a try.

Another question - is there a problem in arranging the flac music albums in a nested folder structure, like I've done (i.e. separate folders for 24-bit and 16-bit flac albums under the root micro SD folder, respectively, then album artist sub-folders, and album sub-folders under those?

I do in fact have Android folders on the micro SD card I'm using. Just wondering if that's the only reason the Echo Mini isn't recognizing my media tags, or if it also has to do with the nested structure I've stored them in?

Yes, i had the same problem. now, i put into the microsd only flac and jpg archives.

 

[WarrenR]

Thanks. Will give a clean format and fresh transfer a try.

Another question - is there a problem in arranging the flac music albums in a nested folder structure, like I've done (i.e. separate folders for 24-bit and 16-bit flac albums under the root micro SD folder, respectively, then album artist sub-folders, and album sub-folders under those?

I do in fact have Android folders on the micro SD card I'm using. Just wondering if that's the only reason the Echo Mini isn't recognizing my media tags, or if it also has to do with the nested structure I've stored them in?

Hi.

I've just spent hours transferring FLACs over to the sdcard inside the Echo Mini and I think you are onto something in that it does not like nested folders. If I have an artist eg FLAC > Bjork > POST > 01 - Army of Me.flac -- it doesn't seem to like this and puts all these FLACs inside an unknown folder. If I have FLAC > POST > 01 - Army of Me.flac -- It seems fine. I have hundreds of tracks inside this 'unknown' folder.

I will have to transfer everything over again but avoid nested folders.

 

[FiiO Kang]

I, too, have recently received my brand new Snowsky Echo Mini (purchased on AliExpress), and have been super happy with the sound quality and nostalgic build.

I am having problems, however, with the device not recognizing my music's metadata/tags.

I have a 200GB SanDisk micro SD card inserted in the Echo Mini, with about 150 gigabytes of music albums - all mostly 24-bit/192 kHz and 24-bit/96 kHz, and some 16-bit/48 kHz.

I have very carefully tagged all these albums using the macOS Music Tag Editor 2 application (so all have proper tags for album name, release date, album artist, track artist(s), track numbers and album covers). The albums are organized on the micro SD card in the following folder/file structure:

[Micro SD card root directory]
\Music
...........\Flac 24 (for 24-bit Flac music albums)
........................\[Album artist name]
.........................................................\[Album name]
.................................................................................01.Track name.flac
.................................................................................02.Track name.flac
.................................................................................03.Track name.flac
.................................................................................etc.

...........\Flac (for 16-bit Flac music albums)
...................\[Album artist name]
....................................................\[Album name]
............................................................................01.Track name.flac
............................................................................02.Track name.flac
............................................................................03.Track name.flac
............................................................................etc.

When I insert the micro SD card with my tagged music arranged as noted above into another audio player (a Sony hi-res audio Walkman), it recognizes all the tags properly and allows me to navigate my music using these tags.

On the Snowsky Echo Mini, however, when I perform a media library update on the micro SD card, the process completes fairly quickly (taking probably around 30 seconds, maybe even less), and when I try and access my music through the player's "Playlist" interface, I can only see all songs (from all albums) listed with their file names under the "All songs" category, but any attempt to access my music via the "Album", "Artist" or "Genre" categories results in there being only a single "Unknown" entry listed there - meaning none of the tags embedded in the Flac music files are being recognized by the Echo Mini, making folder-based navigation the only (cumbersome) way to access my music.

One more problem - when I do access my music via folder navigation, sometimes when I select a certain track, the player will play back a later track in the same album instead (for instance, I select track 7 in a 12-track album, but the player starts playing back track 10 in the same album instead). If I then skip back to the track I actually wanted, it plays back absolutely fine. Very strange!

I have updated the player to the latest 1.46 firmware version, and the problems have not gone away.

Anybody here experiencing the same? Any ideas on what I may be doing/tagging wrong, and on how to get the player to properly recognize and allow navigation by the metadata I've embedded in my Flac music files?

Would be amazing if Fiio could weigh in here, too.

Thanks!

ID3 information for the macOS Music Tag Editor is not recognized. I'll confirm it today, and maybe I can change the firmware for you to confirm.

 

[FiiO Kang]

 

[FiiO Kang]

Also, I want to update the firmware. Implement USB DAC function (as Dongle). Would you like to have this feature?