[Martinstraka8282]

The Fiio M7 and M9 were my first experience with and android DAP. My Sony A17 and Shanling M0 were both Linux based. Obviously plus and minuses for both as I found the Linux based DAP's are slightly more responsive. Linux based DAP's don't need as powerful hardware for fluid operation and scanning speeds are much better. I am fine with the Fiio Music App as it fits my needs just fine. I tried Pulsar and I like it for features and usability but it was very bad at indexing my track library missing many tracks. The Fiio app seems to handle my really old tracks with old metadata tags while some other apps have some trouble reading these tags.

Ya thats true about the trade offs. While I like the flexibility with Android based, closed systems with only one thing to worry about quite often do function well. As much as I'm not an apple guy, I always appreciated the simple, fairly snappy operation of the Ipod classic I had at one point.

I also should say that its not that the Fiio app is bad, its actually a pretty good one imo, its just one deal killer for me so I moved on immediately. I sort my collection using Genre tags into about 7 or 8 folders, that then breaks down in to artist folders, then their albums. With the fiio app, if you sort by genre, the next page doesnt bring you to a list of artists, it just lists everything by album in one massive overwhelming list of albums not even sorted by artist and that just flat out doesnt work me (nor would I think anyone would want it that way, but most probably dont use genre tags). Its actually a pretty solid app otherwise. Onkyo's was the winner and I keep MediaMonkey for a different look sometimes.

 

[JediMa70]

What's the best apk player to Install? I'm planning to install it on the M9 and eventually on my Galaxy S10
Poweramp v3
Onkyo HF
Neutron Music Player
Foobar

or another?

 

[Ichos]

Neutron is the best player with great customisation options.

 

[JediMa70]

Neutron is the best player with great customisation options.

The paid pro version ? Now the noob quesiton, how do I get the APK to use on the M9?

 

[fish1050]

@FiiO

I have noticed a couple of glitches with firmware 1.0.07. Both are very random using the stock Fiio Music App.

1. When I tap on the little target icon on the track list it sometimes kicks me to a random location in the track list.

2. When playing tracks with the screen off, when I turn it back on the album art shown doesn't match the track playing. Usually it is artwork for a previously played track, if I go into the track list and back to the now playing screen it is fine.

I didn't have either issue with the previous firmware. I haven't really found anything I need from firmware 1.0.7, can I flash back to 1.0.6?

UPDATE: ANOTHER ISSUE

Since updating to firmware 1.0.7 my track library is now a mess.

After I updated firmware reset and rescanned the track library. Music app showed 9228 songs, file management showed 9228 songs so all good.

Added 29 tracks to the microsd card and rescanned the library. Scan shows 40 tracks found and added to library. But the Music app shows 9265 tracks (37 added) and the file manager shows 9244 tracks (21 tracks less than the Music app).

I would really like to know if I can revert to firmware 1.0.6 or if I uninstall the stock Fiio Music App and install the standalone version will it do a better job scanning the track library?

 

[Ichos]

The paid pro version ? Now the noob quesiton, how do I get the APK to use on the M9?

To tell you the truth I don't know!
I have the pro version installed at my phone.
BTW why don't you try the FiiO app.
It is great.
Not the embedded one but the other available as a download.
Uninstall first the embedded one and then install the other.

 

[pstefan98]

Would the Andromeda be a good pairing with this DAP? I had my eyes on the M11, but it’s a little out of my price range.

I’ve been using the Andromeda with my iPhone and dislike the bassy/muddy sound from <1oi Apple dongle.

 

[Ichos]

This is a pretty linear player so I believe that it is OK

 

[JediMa70]

No, if you would like to install the standalone FiiO Music app, you would need to uninstall the stock one first.

Best regards

Ok ty

 

[fish1050]

Uninstalled the stock Fiio app and installed the standalone version

after scanning the library it found 9242 of 9244 tracks reported by file management. So it seems to be more accurate at library scanning. It will take awhile to get use to as the functionality is quite different from stock app. It is certainly not optimal for such a small screen. The track number and time are an extremely small font. Given that this is the most important information it needs to be bigger. The jury is still out on whether I will stick with the standalone app. Scrolling isn't great, sometimes take multiple attempts for the screen to scroll.

The question is will Fiio continue to work to improve the stock music app with firmware updates or are they simply going to recommend switching to the standalone version? If not it would be helpful if Fiio reconfigured a second version of the standalone music app for the DAP's and keep the current version for smartphones.

I would love to find an app that was designed to work on a smaller screen. Is the Hiby music app better for the smaller DAP screens?

UPDATE: After 3 hours using standalone app still trying to figure out navigation. Still does not sort in proper alphabetical order on M9 at least for me

Target icon is more accurate and advances to currently playing track faster than the stock music app.

Navigation is fairly cumbersome compared to the stock app. While playing around with it kept getting stuck on different screens and swiping up right often didn't help me get out of it to the right place. Tapping on icons often don't respond, especially the settings cog. Swiping up from the left or right more often then not does not register. To help me figure things out I downloaded the user manual for the M15 since it uses the standalone version of the Fiio Music App. The manual showed I was more often then not navigating properly but the gestures and taps not registering made me think I was doing it wrong

Clearly this standalone app isn't great to use with under powered M series DAP's. Might just uninstall it and reflash firmware to 1.0.7 to get stock player back. Hopefully doing a fresh install of the stock music app will help the library scanning issue. I also might retry Pulsar to see if it does a better job finding tracks in my library with the firmware updates released after I stopped using it.

 

[fish1050]

After figuring out why Pulsar couldn't read some of my tracks (didn't like the flac tag version), I ended up manually fixing 280+ track tags. It cost me all of my Saturday to do it but Pulsar now reads all 9244 of my tracks just like the Fiio Music App. Since I changed so many tracks I decided reset the database to do a scanning speed test between the standalone Fiio Music App and Pulsar. The results were insane, it took the standalone Fiio Music app almost 53 minutes to scan 9244 tracks on a 256 GB Samsung Evo microsd card. It took Pulsar less than 1 minute to scan and properly identify all 9244 tracks. Pulsar was so fast you couldn't even read the tracks it was scanning. I think it might be able to scan just the tracks that changed and not have to rescan the entire library. Either way the Fiio app is glacially slow scanning by comparison.

At this point I think I will uninstall the Standalone Fiio Music App and stick with Pulsar. Pulsar is so much easier to use and much more responsive than the Fiio Music App. Since I don't stream or use wifi I can get by without the Fiio Music App. I might reflash the firmware to reinstall the stock Fiio Music App just in case I need it.

UPDATE: I was curious to see how much memory the different apps are using. So I checked and found that even when not in use the Fiio standalone music app uses 110 MB of RAM. In comparison the Pulsar app uses 10.77 MB and considering the DAP only has 768 MB of RAM that is alot to waste on an app you aren't using with the Fiio app. So I uninstalled the Fiio Music app and will go with just Pulsar to save RAM. Pulsar runs really well without the Fiio Music app bogging it down in the background. You can certainly see why the M6/M9 DAP's are so sluggish when using streaming services with the Fiio Music app being such a resource hog. If Fiio is going to continue using these low RAM Exynos chips on the M6/M7 and M9 then they need to do a much better job optimizing the stock Fiio Music app in these DAP's to use fewer resources.

 

[Natara]

@FiiO

Noticed the new firmware update 1.0.7

Most of the changes don't apply to my needs. What are the bug fixes and do they make it worthwhile to update the firmware?

Are there any problems created by updating to this firmware?

 

[Natara]

Hi
I've owned M9 for about 6 months without any issues until now when I try to log into Tidal I get this message
Login failed
unidentified network error
please try again
Trying again doesn't help neither does logging out and back in I even removed the Tidal app completely and then reinstalled it but nothing helps.
All my other apps work fine. Very frustrating one of my main reasons for choosing the M9 was Tidal integration.
Any help gratefully received.

 

[iceman27]

I had a similar problem with Spotify, it helped me to install another version.

 

[Natara]

Thanks iceman I did try reinstalling the same version but I'll give another one a go.