[crawlgsx]

So did anyone find success? Is anyone running the E7/E9 combo with 100% function on windows 7 64bit?
 
I am thinking about buying the combo but this thread made me very nervous, I also found others with problems getting the dac to recognize and getting 1 channel. Wondering if I should just buy a Xonar + E9 instead.

 

[elfboy26]

I have the e7 only, no e9.  I get no sound in the left channel when using as a DAC in windows 7 Professional 64bit.  Windows setting are fine.  I get both channels just fine when using a straight headphone amp with my iphone.  Has anyone figured this out yet?
 

 

[hk94]

Me too, just the E7, no left channel. Pity. At least it's an acceptable amp to pair with my iphone.

 

[trotoir]

I have fiio E7 & E9 running on windows 7 64bit. Just did the stereo test and all is fine.

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

Been using my E7/E9 with W7 64-bit with zero issues. Check the dock on the E9. It's flimsy and moving the E7 around can result in losing one channel every once in awhile. There's a rubber piece that may come off and the E7 won't sit perfectly.

I can pretty much make it lose one channel just by nudging the E7 a bit while docked. Pretty sure that's where OP's issue is.

 

[JustinGN]

I have the same problem, except I'm running an E17 + E9, tin connectors on the rear.  No amount of wiggling in the dock fixes it, but it seems like the DAC itself is loose, as the dock connector in the E9 was never used prior to today (and is still built firm with not even the slightest give in the construction).  From my testing, I get the following results:
 
PC -> USB -> E9+E17 DAC = Right Channel ONLY
PC -> USB -> E17 Undocked -> E17 Headphone Out -> E9 Line-In = Full Stereo
PC -> USB -> E17 = Full Stereo
PC -> USB -> E17 DOCKED -> E17 Headphone Out -> E9 Line-In = Full Stereo
 
Any thoughts?  It seems only when the audio goes straight from the dock connector internally to the headphone amp itself, does the left channel up and die.  I'm honestly stumped at this point.  The headphone out to line-in shortcut works for now, but I'd like to get rid of that unsightly cable and let the amp do its job.

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

Why not just buy the L7 LOD so the E17 is kept as DAc online, feeding the signal to the E9's line in? I personally prefer over the docked look.

 

[JustinGN]

Quote:

Why not just buy the L7 LOD so the E17 is kept as DAc online, feeding the signal to the E9's line in? I personally prefer over the docked look.

It's a space and aesthetic issue. I'm currently shacking up in a small guest room with friends for the interim, and I don't have a lot of desk space.  The fewer cords/items on it, the better, as cluttered spaces make me stressed.  Besides, the whole reason I bought the E9 last year was the promise of a future dockable DAC this year (the E17).  If I didn't want to use that DAC, I would've gotten something else, like an ASUS XONAR card.

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

Understandable. My current E7 itself is having issue with the proprietary input where it docks to the E9 as well as hooks up the L7 (the L7 causes very bad buzzing/humming, as well as losing a channel just like on the E9). I believe your problem might be the very same input on the E17, and not the E9's dock itself.

 

[JustinGN]

Quote:

Understandable. My current E7 itself is having issue with the proprietary input where it docks to the E9 as well as hooks up the L7 (the L7 causes very bad buzzing/humming, as well as losing a channel just like on the E9). I believe your problem might be the very same input on the E17, and not the E9's dock itself.

That was my initial thought as well, but I'm doubting it because A) It has more pins than the dock itself, & B) receives full bitstream information just fine.  It's somewhere between sending out the decoded analog signal to the E9 via the dock connector and the headphone amplifier itself that it "loses" the left channel, and since the dock connectors on both seem fine, it's either a bug in the E17 (possible, but unlikely) or a flaw in the E9 construction (much more likely, since it has seen revisions since I purchased it).  I'm tempted to pry the E9 apart and check out the solder connections myself, since I don't think it has warranty anymore.
 
UPDATE:
 
And I did just that. Had a friend confirm my suspicions that it's the dock connector.
 

 
A few things I took away from this:

1. This E9 was sold to me as new, while this piece is clearly defective/refurbished, as judged by the soldering "cleanup" and re-solder.  So there's no difference between refurb'd and new items when shipped to customers.
2. This somehow "passed" quality control, which means they either don't fully test the product before boxing it, or they don't test the dock connector (or, likely, test at all or even do a visual inspection because, COME ON, that would've sent red flags shooting up right away).
3. QA, QC & Supply Chain are all in serious need of overhaul, if a defective part that was poorly refurbished can make it onto the assembly line, into a brand-new product, and boxed for shipping without any sort of visual inspection by any worker along the way, or any sort of basic, routine testing procedure.

 
Look, I really, really like my Fiio gear.  It's inexpensive while providing good quality sound.  However, I'd be willing to pay more to get quality gear, and I thought I was with Fiio - but this poor soldering job (one my friend called, quote, "looks like a Kindergartner painting with a glue bottle") really kind of crushes any respect I had.  I mean, I just bought an E17 - how do I know some similar piss-poor soldering job isn't hiding inside waiting to gimp me of a critical feature down the road?  The E9 is fixable with a replacement dock and cable, sure, but I can't fix an E17 should something arise.
 
If you can, pry open the dock from your E9 (use a small, flat-head screwdriver on the rear, pushing it up on either corner - once the rear is free, it lifts out somewhat) and verify your solder connections are clean as soon as you get it.  Otherwise, you may be SOL should you want to use your E7 or E17 down the road with it.
 
I'd really like to hear from Fiio on this if possible.  This is a pretty glaring oversight, and I'm in a situation where a return isn't really possible (no packaging, extra cables, etc like their website says I should send in. Plus, I bought it from Amazon.com from a dealer not listed on Fiio's website now, which likely disqualifies me from warranty coverage.  Really, really lame).

 

[Riku540]

Quote:

A few things I took away from this:

1. This E9 was sold to me as new, while this piece is clearly defective/refurbished, as judged by the soldering "cleanup" and re-solder.  So there's no difference between refurb'd and new items when shipped to customers.
2. This somehow "passed" quality control, which means they either don't fully test the product before boxing it, or they don't test the dock connector (or, likely, test at all or even do a visual inspection because, COME ON, that would've sent red flags shooting up right away).
3. QA, QC & Supply Chain are all in serious need of overhaul, if a defective part that was poorly refurbished can make it onto the assembly line, into a brand-new product, and boxed for shipping without any sort of visual inspection by any worker along the way, or any sort of basic, routine testing procedure.

 
Look, I really, really like my Fiio gear.  It's inexpensive while providing good quality sound.  However, I'd be willing to pay more to get quality gear, and I thought I was with Fiio - but this poor soldering job (one my friend called, quote, "looks like a Kindergartner painting with a glue bottle") really kind of crushes any respect I had.  I mean, I just bought an E17 - how do I know some similar piss-poor soldering job isn't hiding inside waiting to gimp me of a critical feature down the road?  The E9 is fixable with a replacement dock and cable, sure, but I can't fix an E17 should something arise.
 
If you can, pry open the dock from your E9 (use a small, flat-head screwdriver on the rear, pushing it up on either corner - once the rear is free, it lifts out somewhat) and verify your solder connections are clean as soon as you get it.  Otherwise, you may be SOL should you want to use your E7 or E17 down the road with it.
 
I'd really like to hear from Fiio on this if possible.  This is a pretty glaring oversight, and I'm in a situation where a return isn't really possible (no packaging, extra cables, etc like their website says I should send in. Plus, I bought it from Amazon.com from a dealer not listed on Fiio's website now, which likely disqualifies me from warranty coverage.  Really, really lame).

 
Sorry this happened to you; I just thought I'd quote a very credible person here on Head-Fi to put things in perspective:
 
Quote:

Quote:

Their quality control isn't very good, as I've experienced channel imbalance issues with mine, but I got a replacement.

Originally Posted by ClieOS /img/forum/go_quote.gif

To FiiO's defense, it is not about quality control, but the scale of operation.

A typical portable amp maker in the forum, say RSA, Headamp and even iBasso, etc. probably make less than hundred per week (and likely per month). A typical amp maker sells around thousand of amps the whole year. For what I know (as told by their authorized dealer), some of them sell only a few hundred a year. Only the most popular of portable amp maker sell over thousand unit. Because they sell so little in number, they can have the time to take care of every thing. Guess how many amps FiiO typically makes a month? Answer: Over 5K easily, and over 15K in a busy month. Even with just 1% of failure rate passes over QC in the slowest month, there are still around 50 bad amps in the market - and that is half the production number of many other small headphone amp maker out there.

Now if you think about it - if FiiO received 50 complaint in Head-fi per months, everyone will think FiiO has bad QC. Yet if another amp maker who makes only 100 amp per month get only one complaint, everyone think he has really good build quality. The fact is, they are both in the same 1% failure rate. Even with the best of QC, you will still see a lot more defected FiiO than any other amp maker simply because they are the largest portable amp maker in the world right now, and probably produce more headphone amp than all the other headphone amps maker combined.

 

 

[JustinGN]

I'm well aware of the relationship between complaint volume and production scale, but that's besides the point here.  To sum it up in TL;DR version...
 

• My E9 had a flaw that went undetected until this weekend, as a result of a defective part being used in assembly.
• This same error has been reported by other users elsewhere on the forum, though I was the first to pry my E9 apart to check the soldering (based on a search of the Head-Fi forums, that is) - this is likely not the first (or last) time this exact problem has occurred.
• This part, despite Fiio's products (presumably) being hand made, went entirely unnoticed end-to-end, even during any sort of QC cycle.
• I purchased the E9 through Amazon.com through a dealer no longer listed on Fiio's site.
• Fiio's site says (in broken English) that I must purchase products from a currently listed authorized dealer in order to receive any sort of warranty coverage, which means I'm essentially SOL for their mistake.

 
For the record, this wasn't a bad Cap, or defective transistor, or anything like that.  This was human error end-to-end, something that should be caught in a proper QA/QC process.  Bad raw components are one thing, but this was something entirely in their control, and they never corrected it (and likely won't, since my dealer is no longer listed on their site, thus invalidating my coverage).  Even if they were to give me coverage, since I don't have all the original materials anymore (I discarded most of it since I was moving, and any cables aside from the power cord are in storage), they won't accept the return according to the warranty page on their website.
 
Even if they still accept my in-warranty repair/return, I have to box up and send the whole unit back, pay shipping (to where, China?) plus insurance, and there's no mention of turnaround time (in my experience, likely six to eight weeks).  I'm just pissed off that, even in the best case scenario, I'm likely screwed for eight weeks because their QA/QC process was insufficient to find such an obvious flaw anywhere in the sourcing, construction, testing and shipping phases of the product.  If I wanted overpriced garbage, I would've grabbed the headphone "amp" RadioShack tried to sell me.  Instead, I paid a premium in money & time for two Fiio devices that won't work with each other due to a single human error that was continuously overlooked by the other humans in the chain (which, looking at the picture, is pretty damn hard to do).
 
Economy of scale aside, I think I have a right to be pissed off in this situation.  Since I'm boned anyway, I'll probably see if my friend can fix the points for me (though he doubts it, since that much solder has likely caused other untold problems, and it's already been "fixed" a few times before judging by the PCB scratches/markings).  If Fiio wants to step up and send me a new dock kit (the cord, plastic dock/connector/PCB kit), I'll swap it myself since it's an easy fix with new parts.  Otherwise, I think I've learned my lesson about rushing to buy - next time, I'll save my cash for something made to last with a good support record behind it.

 

[Riku540]

Before you get pissed at FiiO, have you even attempted to contact James? He's been very nice and has often taken personal responsibility over these types of issues.
 
Honestly I don't think it's fair for you to condemn FiiO before A) giving them the opportunity to correct the problem, and B) buying from an unauthorized seller. The minute you make a purchase from an unauthorized seller, you the buyer are personally taking a risk of such situations.
 
You claim the item was sold to you as you said it was clearly a refurbished item, who's the say the seller hadn't tampered with it or tried to do a repair themselves and pass it off a new? Not to mention, the seller in now no longer listed on FiiO's site (I assume you're implying that it previously was)? Sounds fishy to me. Probably because of these exact instances occurring.
 
Bottom line, you bought from and received a refurbished product that was supposed to be new from an unauthorized seller. You have no proof that FiiO is at fault, and all signs point to the unauthorized seller. Have you even tried contacting the seller directly? I would do that before contacting James.
 
Is it highly inconvenient for you? Yes, I agree, but this is a risk that you knowingly took. Attempt to resolve the problem with the people responsible before making groundless accusations over a company's reputation.

 

[lovemyheadphone]

So has anyone bought the E7+E9 combo recently and used it on their Windows 7 just fine?
 
My laptop has this left right inbalance issue which is what finally push me into searching for a DAC/AMP.  My mouse is hovering over the ordering button... would loved to be reassured.  If this E7+E9 combo is going to give me the same problem as my laptop I'll be really annoyed!!

 

[Riku540]

Short answer: Yes, many users use the E7/E9 on Windows 7 and it works just fine.