[lordearl]

How is the 4GB RAM on the M17, is it adequate to provide a fast, non-laggy user experience?

 

[PuPS]

How is the 4GB RAM on the M17, is it adequate to provide a fast, non-laggy user experience?

I had a DX300 with 6 GB of memory and 128 RAM. Worked without brakes.
Now M17. Works just as great!

 

[lordearl]

Thanks - good to know! I appreciate the comments as I was scratching my head about the 4GB RAM, everything else is top notch so I wondered why they only gave the engine 4GB?!

 

[Gymboy]

Thanks - good to know! I appreciate the comments as I was scratching my head about the 4GB RAM, everything else is top notch so I wondered why they only gave the engine 4GB?!

Keeping the price low, if Fiio used 128/6gb, that combination would go over 2k. 4gb is enough, for tidal or Fiio player + browsing aside. I was before on M15 and never had any issue even with 3gb, just felt Exynos chipset was slower than 660 SD used on M17.

 

[whitedragem]

Thanks - good to know! I appreciate the comments as I was scratching my head about the 4GB RAM, everything else is top notch so I wondered why they only gave the engine 4GB?!

Because android, based of linux, RAM doesn’t need to be so large.

Back when Win 98 / Win XP needed 192MB+ of memory (256MB being the typical amount we would see), Linux would run just as capably on 64MB

Over the years Microsoft has leveraged ‘crazy system requirements’ to push platforms forward (and remove competitors products from working) (ie using Flash and media rich languages to eliminate Psion and Palm as competitors)
If anyone remembers the ‘late 2000s’, 2Gigabytes of RAM was considered the huge amount that ‘having more RAM didn’t net ANY BENEFIT’ to majority systems (some games being the ‘exception’; ie Crysis map was built to use a full 2GB by itself, so having more than 2GB gave system overhead again…)

Nowadays Microsoft uses ‘strange tricks’ to make consoles look near equal to ‘high powered PCs (by spec), such as ‘still reserving 2.5x the video cards RAM, in system memory, in case a user needs to swap data in-out of the video card’.
So my 2x8GB video cards have windows reserve 40GB of my system RAM ‘just in case’ I want to move data to/fro said graphics cards.
Obviously I am not likely to run multiple games (at the same time) all needing 8GB of graphics RAM each (and even if I did, given the cards would be BOTH ACCESSING THE SAME DATA, it wouldn’t need the full 40GB, 20GB would still give it the 2.5x rule…)
the 2.5x rule of reserving system RAM for graphics cards availability is from days when video cards had 2MB-4MB of RAM, and games may have needed to have a ‘pool’ in system RAM in case of moving data to-from the card…
Microsoft will even take it a step further, and use one direct X 12s features to cripple PC performance in games like Forza; Direct X 12 allows storing all textures as ‘one large graphic’. They then encrypt that graphic file at something akin to 256AES level encryption.
Decryption and Encryption are heavy CPU hitters, and running that decryption process on the primary core, responsible for the games ‘minimum frame rate’ can ensure that super fast processors are incapable of doing ‘high frame rates’ (vs an XBOX that doesn’t have an encrypted texture file to deal with).

Because they have their sticky fingers in a few markets, and like to manipulate this way to make low powered XBOX consoles ‘equal’ to powerful PCs, they use ‘another trick’ with their consoles; they give them graphics RAM 1GB larger than common consumer video cards. And then have their first party studios do ‘nice tricks’ like make the texture file 1GB larger that typical PC graphics cards have. (it was no accident that the Xbox had 5GB allocated to graphics ram and the Xbox X had 9GB)
This makes a PC with regular 4GB/8GB etc video cards in the machine have to constantly do decryption (not being able to hold the whole file in memory), and keeps the processor constantly bogged down. (for whatever reason Microsoft DO NOT USE THE 2.5x pool reserved from main RAM to hold the excessively large texture file.. (amazing, I know!))
this can affect frame pacing and in a race game, this is ‘good enough’ to have users get frustrated and move to console (Microsofts’ intent) driving down the road at 200miles per hour, and having micro judders, isn’t very sim like…)

There are ways around this; one I found was turning on virtual memory. (yes even with 16GB+ of memory (I use 64GB)
after the texture file decrypts, (having virtual memory set to a minimum and maximum size of, say 10GB), means that the game is jumpy for a little bit, and then smooths out, and has no further judders (from decryption at least), once a user has driven around the map and had all textures loaded…

Just because Windows PCs are RAM hogs, doesn’t mean all devices NEED large amounts of RAM.
The RAM bloat that was a lot of multimedia extensions in the web browser (introduced back in the day to kill low RAM component operating systems like Symbian and Palm) was recently removed, so Microsoft could finally get the speed of their webbrowswer equal to the rest of the market (these anticonsumer practices DO end up biting them on the butt).

RAM numbers are not fair to users expectations due to one or two platforms being HIGHLY INEFFICIENT.
mostly it is a spec sheet bragging rights game that gives nil benefit, but can easily draw more power/affect battery life if we have more RAM than we need (it cannot ‘cleverly power down if not needed’)
4GB on a ‘low resolution’ device that isn’t running large spreadsheets etc, is more than consumers should need.

UNLESS: some audio companies smartly load the playing music straight to RAM space, so as the electrical draw on the storage media (that fluctuates under use) doesn’t affect transport quality.
I wish all media players knew to do this.. but I imagine some crazy albums in hi res, say a one track ‘hi resolution disk’, might push beyond a reasonable pool reserved for caching tracks.
It wouldn’t be hard for a programmer to have some sort of if/or command in place, surely, to figure out if a track will fit in the reserved pool.. I would think this is an optimisation that many android music players could bring to some of our DAPs…
In a pure music mode, where the system is able to allocate all available RAM in a controlled fashion, would allow a large amount of RAM in a 4GB device.. usually I would fathom a modern inefficient (for RAM) android OS could be given 1GB (plenty of overhead), and the music player software doesn’t need much,.. and that would leave approx 3Gigabytes to ‘scratch space‘ for playing a song from. I do not know how many individual music tracks I would have that are >3GB+ in size…
most average songs are 100Megabytes. hi res can be larger,.. but not multiple gigabytes typically…

TL: DR FOUR GIGABYTES IS HUGE. more RAM on a DAP is mostly a spec sheet war. (embarrasingly, my phones have 12GB but it wasn’t why I bought them)

 

[Sven2015]

How is the 4GB RAM on the M17, is it adequate to provide a fast, non-laggy user experience?

Normally, 4 GB RAM is enough for an android device.
2 GB is a limitation, 3 GB is okay, 4 GB great and more than 4 GB luxury

btw. it's an UNIX based OS not a Windows OS.....

 

[DarginMahkum]

Thanks - good to know! I appreciate the comments as I was scratching my head about the 4GB RAM, everything else is top notch so I wondered why they only gave the engine 4GB?!

Because it is not needed on a music player. You are not playing games with huge textures etc. on it. 4 GB is plenty for a media player task. The rest would be a waste.

 

[Sven2015]

Remember. 4 GB RAM for CPU not GPU

 

[uncle b]

Does anyone know if it possible to have the “Album Title” scroll in the FiiO Music App, whereas longer titles may be displayed via scrolling, even at least once? I circled the Album Title in the attached pic, it stays fixed.

 

[LCHF]

Did anyone test the M17 with the Sony MDR-Z1R? What is the pairing like compared to Walkman DAPs (WM1Z/WM1A)?

Thanks

Don't have the MDR-Z1R but I have the IER-Z1R and went from the WM1A to M17.

I found the WM1A / IER-Z1R quite disappointing. My main issue was mids (especially vocals) sounding distant, and in the background. I tried every setting and custom firmware I could get my hands on but was never happy with the sound. I initially thought the Z1R's didn't suit me, so I got the Thieaudio Monarch MKII, and this did improve the vocals / mids but it still wasn't great. In the end I suspected this to be due to the WM1A not having a high enough gain as both IEMs have highish ohms.

I got the M17 2 days ago and am really happy with the Z1R's now. The mids are back to where they should be, bass is tighter, more details, more energy, though smaller soundstage but not too small.

 

[AmusedToD]

Don't have the MDR-Z1R but I have the IER-Z1R and went from the WM1A to M17.

I found the WM1A / IER-Z1R quite disappointing. My main issue was mids (especially vocals) sounding distant, and in the background. I tried every setting and custom firmware I could get my hands on but was never happy with the sound. I initially thought the Z1R's didn't suit me, so I got the Thieaudio Monarch MKII, and this did improve the vocals / mids but it still wasn't great. In the end I suspected this to be due to the WM1A not having a high enough gain as both IEMs have highish ohms.

I got the M17 2 days ago and am really happy with the Z1R's now. The mids are back to where they should be, bass is tighter, more details, more energy, though smaller soundstage but not too small.

The IER-Z1R is supposed to be a completely different animal from the MDR-Z1R according to reviews, I haven’t heard it myself so I can’t make any comments.

The MDR-Z1R is not that bad when driven by the WM1A (MrWalkman firmware modded), but it’s far from ideal. The WM1A (and I guess the W1Z too) can’t really control its bass properly and can be a bit grainy.

Whatever the specs are, the MDR-Z1R requires an iron fisted amp to grip its bass, the Walkmans are not up to the task.

 

[lordearl]

Does the M17 (or any of the apps on it) have a crossfeed function/setting?

 

[ddlo]

Thanks - good to know! I appreciate the comments as I was scratching my head about the 4GB RAM, everything else is top notch so I wondered why they only gave the engine 4GB?!

fiio has explained their commercial decision of settling on 4gb+64gb here. it's in fact a bit sad when shanling m9 offers 8gb+256gb at the same price bracket.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/story-the-story-of-fiio-m17-from-fiio-james.960565/#post-16677829

 

[LCHF]

The IER-Z1R is supposed to be a completely different animal from the MDR-Z1R according to reviews, I haven’t heard it myself so I can’t make any comments.

The MDR-Z1R is not that bad when driven by the WM1A (MrWalkman firmware modded), but it’s far from ideal. The WM1A (and I guess the W1Z too) can’t really control its bass properly and can be a bit grainy.

Whatever the specs are, the MDR-Z1R requires an iron fisted amp to grip its bass, the Walkmans are not up to the task.

Yeah I agree, not even close. More just giving my impression of differences between WM1A and M17.

 

[Godwyn88]

Anyone tried M17 with Hifiman Arya?

Thanks guys!