[-kent-]

So... I recently bought a Fiio X1 Gen2 after god knows how long I tried to get the last out of my 13 years old iPod. After modding it, and after using it constantly, it died on me recently. So instead of hunting for parts (again), I changed my mind to go the Fiio-way.
 
The things that were holding me away - the system and the use of a touch wheel (not a click wheel!). After purchasing it, I liked the handling. It's *almost* like the iPod handling was. I don't like the OS but that is ok for what you get. (still hopeing for a custom firmware at some point in the future )
 
But... 
 
The other part I tried to hold on to my iPod, was the syncing with iTunes. I don't need two-way-syncing, just one way. I don't mind if iTunes has an updated playcount for every single music file on my drive. So I purchased Dapper. And yes, it does for the most part what I want - I had to tinker here and there, but one option is missing. And that option isn't missing in Dapper alone, it's missing in ALL apps I tested out before deciding to buy Dapper -> converting files!
 
Why oh why has NO app the option iTunes has with "convert music files to XXXkb/s to transfer to "iPod""?
I mean, is there something apple tries to stop, or is the option not wanted at all? My Fiio has a 256GB microSD inside, and it's full. I don't need my ALAC-Files inside the fiio (someday yes, but that has to wait until 512GB microSDs won't cost as much as a trip to the moon)
 
I just want to sync my Fiio with iTunes like Dapper does, but with the option to convert it before copying. Is there some way? I don't have enough nerves / disk space to double my iTunes library to just hold on to a 320kb/s copy of my entire library. Has anyone an idea how I could convert it inside the same app that is responsible for copying the files to the Fiio?
 
OS is OSX, so I'm already short on choices :/
 
And I hope some other lost souls will find this thread and share it so I / we're not alone

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  So... I recently bought a Fiio X1 Gen2 after god knows how long I tried to get the last out of my 13 years old iPod. After modding it, and after using it constantly, it died on me recently. So instead of hunting for parts (again), I changed my mind to go the Fiio-way.
 
The things that were holding me away - the system and the use of a touch wheel (not a click wheel!). After purchasing it, I liked the handling. It's *almost* like the iPod handling was. I don't like the OS but that is ok for what you get. (still hopeing for a custom firmware at some point in the future )
 
But... 
 
The other part I tried to hold on to my iPod, was the syncing with iTunes. I don't need two-way-syncing, just one way. I don't mind if iTunes has an updated playcount for every single music file on my drive. So I purchased Dapper. And yes, it does for the most part what I want - I had to tinker here and there, but one option is missing. And that option isn't missing in Dapper alone, it's missing in ALL apps I tested out before deciding to buy Dapper -> converting files!
 
Why oh why has NO app the option iTunes has with "convert music files to XXXkb/s to transfer to "iPod""?
I mean, is there something apple tries to stop, or is the option not wanted at all? My Fiio has a 256GB microSD inside, and it's full. I don't need my ALAC-Files inside the fiio (someday yes, but that has to wait until 512GB microSDs won't cost as much as a trip to the moon)
 
I just want to sync my Fiio with iTunes like Dapper does, but with the option to convert it before copying. Is there some way? I don't have enough nerves / disk space to double my iTunes library to just hold on to a 320kb/s copy of my entire library. Has anyone an idea how I could convert it inside the same app that is responsible for copying the files to the Fiio?
 
OS is OSX, so I'm already short on choices :/
 
And I hope some other lost souls will find this thread and share it so I / we're not alone

 

Because from the get go, ie when the X3 gen 1 was just a concept, one of the design requests from people asking for it was that it specifically should absolutely not work in any way like an iPod. These aren't people with an iTunes library, but people who will rip their CDs or download FLAC and then load them onto the players using drag n' drop, something that has led to a lot of hair pulling confusion with Apple users (likewise, I nearly tore my hair out using iTunes).

 

In short, don't be confused by what the wheel control makes it look, Apple users are absolutely not the target market for these products. They're about as far apart as Mercedes and Tesla control panels are from Lotus and Pagani, even if the Elise chassis (like the wheel control) was used for the Tesla Roadster (ie just look at the tablet in the Model S vs...well, virtually nothing in any Lotus, even the Evora 4-seater) and Pagani uses Mercedes engines and expensive leather (the dash is unadorned carbon fibre, something you won't see in a Mercedes).

 

I'm not saying you'll absolutely never ever get such a feature but that's why they're not there and why I won't hope to see it in the near future.

 

[-kent-]

I don't think that Apple Users aren't in any way targeted, since the resemblance of the product is almost 1:1 of an iPod, with the only DAP on the market that has a wheel and an interface that works the same. And (sadly) now that Apple only ships iPod Touchs, the Fiios get  more and more into touch aswell. The Fiio X5 Gen3 is like a second smartphone, something I don't want in any way. 
 
It's like an iPod on steroids - and you'll find many people switching from iPod Classics to Fiios.
 
And as I said before, I don't pretty much care about the syncing in two ways. But I do care about the converting and then syncing. I know many people hate iTunes. And I can understand that. Only because I own Apple products doesen't make me an Apple fanatic.
But for the past 17 years I used the same library in my iTunes, so after the years I took many hours to clean it up as much as I could. And there is no difference between ALAC and FLAC, both are lossless. You can still drag&drop stuff out of iTunes into whatever you want, but I don't need drag&drop if I want _my whole library_ on the device. The problem is just how to convert everything directly onto the microSD of my Fiio, without doing it every single time I get new CDs. 
 
If the Fiio was targeted to people only into FLACs, Fiio made a giant mistake using microSD instead of CF or SD. SD is not only faster, but bigger and much less expensive. And the slots for both types are almost the same in volume. 

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  I don't think that Apple Users aren't in any way targeted, since the resemblance of the product is almost 1:1 of an iPod, with the only DAP on the market that has a wheel and an interface that works the same. And (sadly) now that Apple only ships iPod Touchs, the Fiios get  more and more into touch aswell. The Fiio X5 Gen3 is like a second smartphone, something I don't want in any way. 

 

My point exactly, and that people did make sure to ask Fiio that it doesn't work like Apple. Its firmware is as proprietary as it goes for software, and now with the X5III and X7, it's even less proprietary given the option to just run Android. That was of course started more by Ibasso with the DX100, but that had no direct access to Google Playstore, at least at the time I had a review unit (not sure if it was updated much later).

 

The wheel really is just there due to issues with navigation using just buttons on the first X3. Short of a touchscreen, it's really the best way to interface with the device, the same way that all cars have a steering wheel and at least two pedals (though of course BMW introduced that god awful and confusing joystick control for the interior functions instead of just waiting for touchscreens a few years later, with Tesla literally just slapping on an 11in tablet).

 

And the thing is it's not that I thought you thought they were targeting Apple users, but I am just making sure you understand that they are specifically designed to work as unlike Apple as possible. To put it more bluntly, they are doing exactly the opposite of targeting Apple users, something you need to take into account before jumping in, because...
 

 
It's like an iPod on steroids - and you'll find many people switching from iPod Classics to Fiios.

 

...many of those who shifted who have been using iTunes tend to absolutely hated Fiio and Ibasso and all the other non-Apple players. If you missed such posts on the DAP threads, it's not because they were few and far between, but because they get to a point where the mods have to step in and clean up all the flaming posts on both sides of it. The parts of the threads that have these kind of have a parallel in the dynamic and manner of communication between those involved as, for example, when the topic is moving from some desert to Europe and then complaining that their women go to college, they stun cows before killing them, and that they have bacon smack next to the pastrami. In short, that's why mods have had to step in and clean them up.

 

Note that that's not everyone in every case of switching from iOS to Android. Those who are otherwise happy generally either switched to a smartphone (the more widely known case), or in this forum, these would be the ones who have been using Rockbox instead of iTunes. The latter precisely were the ones who have been unhappy with how iTunes works, but since competing DAPs short of the Sansa Fuze and limited storage (at the time) Walkmans were the only ones with a line out to an amp (and the Discman by that point was defunct as anything but a desktop player thanks to how they read only normal CDs or MP3 CDs, and battery life having to run a larger motor just plain sucked by comparison), led to Rockbox. And when alternatives were being made, and with better hardware (ie the "on steroids" part), well, they asked specifically that they work with Drag N Drop instead of sync software (like iTunes and whatever the heck Sony used to have).
 

 
And as I said before, I don't pretty much care about the syncing in two ways. But I do care about the converting and then syncing. I know many people hate iTunes. And I can understand that. Only because I own Apple products doesen't make me an Apple fanatic.
But for the past 17 years I used the same library in my iTunes, so after the years I took many hours to clean it up as much as I could. 

 

Point is though they were made to work very differently, and again, conversion while syncing/transferring libraries was nowhere in consideration at the time these came about because the assumption really was that they just play FLAC/MP3 320kbps VBR or could play ALAC/AAC that weren't tied to iTunes (unfortunately they had a lot of hiccups, unlike Android smartphones).

 

You don't need to be a self-confessed fanatic to run into trouble. I didn't realize I can't wrap my head around how Apple worked until I got an iPad. I had an iPod before that, but installed Rockbox on it immediately because FLAC. And then I got an iPad for Christmas five years ago, and since that was running iOS and there was FLACPlayer, well, that was when I realized I'd tear my hair out using iTunes. Before that point I didn't get why there was a lot of debate between Apple vs Windows(Linux) and Android, but fifteen minutes into trying to figure out how to swap out contents without drag and drop was like if I scoffed at people with shellshock until I ended up in Verdun. 

 

  And there is no difference between ALAC and FLAC, both are lossless. You can still drag&drop stuff out of iTunes into whatever you want, but I don't need drag&drop if I want _my whole library_ on the device.  

 
Not exactly the same, but I guess at this point it would be better to just let you figure that out if you get one than elaborate on it again.
 

  The problem is just how to convert everything directly onto the microSD of my Fiio, without doing it every single time I get new CDs. 

 
RIP using Foobar/MediaMonkey, then go into Windows Explorer and drag from one window of the music library in the HDD to the window of the microSD. You have a library in the HDD of the main computer or one that sends it to an HDD server when ripping, probably mirroring it to a back up drive, and then also transferring it to the microSD card in the player. Kind of like the reverse of what people do with cameras.
 
if that sounds confusing or you can't get why people want things to work that way, well, that's kind of the point I've been making about the people tearing their hair out when going from one type of OS to the other.
 

 
If the Fiio was targeted to people only into FLACs, Fiio made a giant mistake using microSD instead of CF or SD. SD is not only faster, but bigger and much less expensive. And the slots for both types are almost the same in volume. 

 

That makes a heck of a lot of us as a lot have been asking the same question. Maybe Fiio's thinking there would be more people who retire now-too small storage size microSDs for their next smartphones and putting them into a fullsize adapter to use as a back up for a camera than just people who'd use them with a camera.

 

[-kent-]

 

My point exactly, and that people did make sure to ask Fiio that it doesn't work like Apple. Its firmware is as proprietary as it goes for software, and now with the X5III and X7, it's even less proprietary given the option to just run Android. That was of course started more by Ibasso with the DX100, but that had no direct access to Google Playstore, at least at the time I had a review unit (not sure if it was updated much later).

 

The Fiio firmware is sadly the most unstable system I've used in the past years, and I don't even mean to hate it. The Fiio forums are full of people trying to get into contact with Fiio, fixing stuff. I for example, don't understand why they changed from their old OS-system to the linux-version. Was the old software so "old"? It looks at least the same. And I don't see any difference except for user made themes. Since it's linux, it's unable to run aptX even though the hardware is inside. Qualcomm won't release a license.
 

 

The wheel really is just there due to issues with navigation using just buttons on the first X3. Short of a touchscreen, it's really the best way to interface with the device, the same way that all cars have a steering wheel and at least two pedals (though of course BMW introduced that god awful and confusing joystick control for the interior functions instead of just waiting for touchscreens a few years later, with Tesla literally just slapping on an 11in tablet).

 
You and your car examples
That is just not the case. It would be the case if everyone would've a Delorean flux capacitor inside their car. No mp3 player I've ever seen has a touch wheel like the iPod does. I _wish_ that would be untrue, but it is. That is how I found Fiio. I was going to buy me a Hifiman, but the Touch wheel-idea is just too great. I don't get why people want something different. And I wondered how Fiio got away with something like this - normally I would think that Apple (like Samsung and all the other companies) would sue them to hell before using their copyright protected stuff, but on the other hand... Apple stopped producing the Classic, and the touch wheel has no (at least direct) button control like the iPod does. Maybe that's why it's not in their targeting range.
 
Since I use already a touchscreen device, I don't want another besides it. And I like to use the little buttons of the Fiio (my favorit feature is the middle button play / pause, that I really missed on my iPod)
 

 

...many of those who shifted who have been using iTunes tend to absolutely 

hated

 Fiio and Ibasso and all the other non-Apple players. If you missed such posts on the DAP threads, it's 

not

 because they were few and far between, but because they get to a point where the mods have to step in and clean up all the flaming posts on both sides of it. The parts of the threads that have these kind of have a parallel in the dynamic and manner of communication between those involved as, for example, when the topic is moving from some desert to Europe and then complaining that their women go to college, they stun cows before killing them, and that they have bacon smack next to the pastrami. In short, that's why mods have had to step in and clean them up.

 
My... that really got out of hand rather quickly.
I don't hate anything, and I don't tend to get angry at people or ignore stuff on the forums. That's why I normally write a post on the whole internet every few years. I know how to use Google and *normally* get all of my answers there. Head-Fi is a highend website, with highend stuff as topics. I don't have much to talk about hardware - I like to help people. That's why I was so stunned to find out that really NO one asked my question. 
I'm really rare in my case - I use a Mac. For the past 20 years (more or less). I'm an Android guy who just loves his OnePlus 3, and I don't like the iPhone / new iPod / iPad because of iOS' restriction. But I wouldn't start any flamewar. I guess everyone around is a bit shaky when someone posts a thread like mine?
 
Truth to be told - I didn't want a high res player. I wanted a player with a touch wheel. I tried to listen to my music on my phone, but I just don't like the feeling. And the plings and plongs I get from App XY. (yes you can disable that, but still!)
 
It's my first mp3 player after the iPod 5, so I searched around to get something that is not a smart-wireless-syncing-system, but just more of the same old. I tried bluetooth on it but even after so many years of looking at bluetooth 1 till bluetooth 4.1, the system still has it's flaws. For example the headphones I have right now (not the ones I get hopefully pretty soon -> V-Moda Crossfade Wireless 2) just break up the connection every few seconds. It feels like the radio in my mothers car back in 1995. Hopefully that are the Plantronics headphones I tried out, not the Fiio. Or maybe I'm an android and don't know it, who knows. Terminators tend to shield bluetooth connections, true story!
 

 

Note that that's not everyone in every case of switching from iOS to Android. Those who are otherwise happy generally either switched to a smartphone (the more widely known case), or in this forum, these would be the ones who have been using Rockbox instead of iTunes. The latter precisely were the ones who have been unhappy with how iTunes works, but since competing DAPs short of the Sansa Fuze and limited storage (at the time) Walkmans were the only ones with a line out to an amp (and the Discman by that point was defunct as anything but a desktop player thanks to how they read only normal CDs or MP3 CDs, and battery life having to run a larger motor just plain sucked by comparison), led to Rockbox. And when alternatives were being made, and with better hardware (ie the "on steroids" part), well, they asked specifically that they work with Drag N Drop instead of sync software (like iTunes and whatever the heck Sony used to have).

 
Why Discmans led to Rockbox I don't get - I haven't heard of Rockbox before the RedWine mod for the iPod... I guess 2005? I tried Rockbox, installed it on my iPod, but the system was not able to play what I wanted so I ignored it. I liked to have my own style on the display, but since I look at the display only to see what I want next to be played, it wasn't that big kind of a deal.
 
I think many hate iTunes mostly because it doesen't play FLAC / it's too confusing. And Apple update-killed iTunes over the years. My iTunes is the newest one, but thanks to terminal / shell commands, it still looks like the one 13 years ago. No AppStore, no Podcasts, nothing but a nice looking playlist I really really don't want to give up just because Apple won't allow third party hardware to be synced.
 
Oh and by the way - of course people want to sync their mp3 /Fiio/ something-Player with iTunes. Otherwise something like Dapper wouldn't exist. Dapper is nice, very very slow but nice. It just hasn't the option to convert... what was by the way my only question. Now it's... more like talking to you alone instead of listening to all users around me trying to help
 
Or since you're already here -> have you an idea how to convert the files while copying?
 

 

Point is though they were made to work very differently, and again, conversion while syncing/transferring libraries was nowhere in consideration at the time these came about because the assumption really was that they just play FLAC/MP3 320kbps VBR or could play ALAC/AAC that weren't tied to iTunes (unfortunately they had a lot of hiccups, unlike Android smartphones).

 

You don't need to be a self-confessed fanatic to run into trouble. I didn't realize I can't wrap my head around how Apple worked until I got an iPad. I had an iPod before that, but installed Rockbox on it immediately because FLAC. And then I got an iPad for Christmas five years ago, and since that was running iOS and there was FLACPlayer, well, that was when I realized I'd tear my hair out using iTunes. Before that point I didn't get why there was a lot of debate between Apple vs Windows(Linux) and Android, but fifteen minutes into trying to figure out how to swap out contents without drag and drop was like if I scoffed at people with shellshock until I ended up in Verdun. 

 
You just saw iTunes in it's worst possible way. That was why I went away from iOS completely. Is it still you need to open up iTunes, click tabs until you find the apps section, scroll all the way down to the app you want, drag&drop stuff inside a tiny list and sync everything until the iOS device hands up and you have to do all of it over again? Last time I checked I used the iPhone 4, so it's a bit long ago.
 
As I said before - iTunes can be really good. Not as the old iLife stuff, but it's a nice media organizer. The DACs inside iPads just convert everything into a muddy mess, so FLACs would be nothing special to listen to. 
 

  RIP using Foobar/MediaMonkey, then go into Windows Explorer and drag from one window of the music library in the HDD to the window of the microSD. You have a library in the HDD of the main computer or one that sends it to an HDD server when ripping, probably mirroring it to a back up drive, and then also transferring it to the microSD card in the player. Kind of like the reverse of what people do with cameras.
 
if that sounds confusing or you can't get why people want things to work that way, well, that's kind of the point I've been making about the people tearing their hair out when going from one type of OS to the other.

 
Mac user here... so no windows explorer, no foobar and no mediamoney.
But you're right, you confused me there a bit... 
As mentioned earlier, the copy process is ok as it is now. I rip my CDs via iTunes or XLD and then use Dapper to sync the music. But Dapper (do you know Dapper? It's an Application that uses the iTunes library to copy all of the organized stuff out of iTunes, into your player) but it won't convert the things. That was why I said the name "iTunes" in the first place. Apple has a tiny little option on the bottom of their sync-page. And that is "convert your music to xyz kb/s" - that is what I want. There must be a way to copy and convert everything instead of just copying. I thought if people use all of the stuff we talked about, someone has to have the same idea... it just can't be that every Fiio user is FLAC/ALAC-only. 
 

 

That makes a heck of a lot of us as a lot have been asking the same question. Maybe Fiio's thinking there would be more people who retire now-too small storage size microSDs for their next smartphones and putting them into a fullsize adapter to use as a back up for a camera than just people who'd use them with a camera.

 
That is what I thought at first too, but no that can't be the case. Android is going away from SD Card-management for the past 3 years now, that is why you won't see many phones with SD slots anymore. Users are complaining the usability of the system, that the structure of the OS is too confusing for them to handle a secondary entry in the file system. I never understood how someone could get confused, but I'm an android / iOS  developer, I don't see the stuff others see the same. 
I think it's just a trend...? I mean, why did Fiio use an outdated usb slot? MicroUSB is stepping down, USB-C is showing more and more. USB-C also has a much longer life since it's easier to plug / unplug stuff. And hopefully Canon & co won't get on the "hey micro SDs are cool"-train. It's hard enough to get good SD cards. 
 
And I really hope head-fi won't kill my answer now when I click on "submit". That took me a few minutes to write.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  The Fiio firmware is sadly the most unstable system I've used in the past years, and I don't even mean to hate it. The Fiio forums are full of people trying to get into contact with Fiio, fixing stuff. I for example, don't understand why they changed from their old OS-system to the linux-version. Was the old software so "old"? It looks at least the same. And I don't see any difference except for user made themes. Since it's linux, it's unable to run aptX even though the hardware is inside. Qualcomm won't release a license.

 
And these are people who were in contact with Fiio since the X3 was just an idea, even before there was a rendered image of it. Most of them would ratehr put up with a company that doesn't have a monster software development team that makes things work smoothly in just one way they don't want things to work.
 

 
You and your car examples
That is just not the case. It would be the case if everyone would've a Delorean flux capacitor inside their car. No mp3 player I've ever seen has a touch wheel like the iPod does. I _wish_ that would be untrue, but it is. That is how I found Fiio. I was going to buy me a Hifiman, but the Touch wheel-idea is just too great. I don't get why people want something different. And I wondered how Fiio got away with something like this - normally I would think that Apple (like Samsung and all the other companies) would sue them to hell before using their copyright protected stuff, but on the other hand... Apple stopped producing the Classic, and the touch wheel has no (at least direct) button control like the iPod does. Maybe that's why it's not in their targeting range.

 

Well a flux capacitor is basically the power source for the car. My examples focused on iDrive and such, which like the wheel - touch or whatever - is an interface device. That includes full touchscreens.

 

As for not using the exact same type of wheel, I think there was some legal issue about it thanks to an Apple patent, something Sandisk didn't do for the Fuze since paying to have such a patent restriction wouldn't make sense when they're not running their own music distribution service and proprietary sync software to keep people within their ecosystem. Unlike Apple.
 

 
Since I use already a touchscreen device, I don't want another besides it. And I like to use the little buttons of the Fiio (my favorit feature is the middle button play / pause, that I really missed on my iPod)

 

Well the X5III might have a touchscreen but it has an analogue volume knob. Something I liked about the A&K players but I hated how they couldn't (potentially) dock the way Fiios initially looked like they would (and they do now with the K5 amp and DK1 dock) for desktop use.
 

Originally Posted by -kent- /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
My... that really got out of hand rather quickly.
I don't hate anything, and I don't tend to get angry at people or ignore stuff on the forums. That's why I normally write a post on the whole internet every few years. I know how to use Google and *normally* get all of my answers there. Head-Fi is a highend website, with highend stuff as topics. I don't have much to talk about hardware - I like to help people. That's why I was so stunned to find out that really NO one asked my question. 
I'm really rare in my case - I use a Mac. For the past 20 years (more or less). I'm an Android guy who just loves his OnePlus 3, and I don't like the iPhone / new iPod / iPad because of iOS' restriction. But I wouldn't start any flamewar. I guess everyone around is a bit shaky when someone posts a thread like mine?

 

But the thing is that's where all those other conversion attempts eventually ended up in, and personally, cleaning up the threads is just prepping for more people to get frustrated whether they end up that frustrated or not. It's kind of like having a history textbook that doesn't tell children of all the screwing and skewing their grandfathers did to somebody else' grandmother (or great aunts, when they die in the process) and babies on bayonets while their great-great grandmothers were whipping out the naginatas as human shields because it's harder to shoot granny and therefore have no context on why Mazda's factory was wiped out by a new kind of bomb. 

 

OK that escalated quickly but I'm taking a break writing an IR paper right now and it's the one I can think of off the bat.
 

 
Truth to be told - I didn't want a high res player. I wanted a player with a touch wheel. I tried to listen to my music on my phone, but I just don't like the feeling. And the plings and plongs I get from App XY. (yes you can disable that, but still!)

 
I'd much sooner repair an iPod really. There are sites that sell every bit of iPods as spare parts you can practically build a new one since the logic board is available too.
 
And while I'm on the Windows/Android side of things I haven't picked up any DAP since I ditched my Rockboxed diyMod 60gb Video. I reviewed some but I just found a smartphone or tablet more convenient (not to mention my IEMs don't need that kind of hardware to power them) and I have a destop version for critical listening.
 

 
It's my first mp3 player after the iPod 5, so I searched around to get something that is not a smart-wireless-syncing-system, but just more of the same old. I tried bluetooth on it but even after so many years of looking at bluetooth 1 till bluetooth 4.1, the system still has it's flaws. For example the headphones I have right now (not the ones I get hopefully pretty soon -> V-Moda Crossfade Wireless 2) just break up the connection every few seconds. It feels like the radio in my mothers car back in 1995. Hopefully that are the Plantronics headphones I tried out, not the Fiio. Or maybe I'm an android and don't know it, who knows. Terminators tend to shield bluetooth connections, true story!

 
I'm not much into BT myself - I only used it to conveniently stream music to a party speaker system and a rental car's stereo.
 

 
Why Discmans led to Rockbox I don't get - I haven't heard of Rockbox before the RedWine mod for the iPod... I guess 2005? I tried Rockbox, installed it on my iPod, but the system was not able to play what I wanted so I ignored it. I liked to have my own style on the display, but since I look at the display only to see what I want next to be played, it wasn't that big kind of a deal.

 

I didn't say it was a direct path from Discman to Rockbox. What I said was that at the time the options were:

 

1. iPods  with large storage but only worked with iTunes, weak earphone output but had a line out

 

2. Old Discmans. Emphasis on old, because only the older units had a dedicated line out. Also impractical - transports wear out and harder to replace than HDD. 1000songs in your pocket vs bringing a CD or at best 200songs on an MP3 CD (but no line out). Battery life was short.

 

3. MiniDisc players that had no line out, basically just a smaller Discman in terms of storage capacity, although at least the discs didn't scratch easily.

 

4. Creative DAPs that had no wheel, no line out, and had weak headphone ouput.

 

Now guess why Rockbox came about. No Fiio or Ibasso, so hey, somebody just figured, "maybe we can work around iTunes."

Closest thing to Fiio at the time was some Chinese companies that basically miniaturized a CDP circuit and then replaced the transport with solid state storage. And it was, for the most part, horrible. Those people putting up with firmware hiccups on Ibasso and Fiio DAPs have this other thing to compare it to, ie, no product support. So compared to that, they can live with what they have right now.
 

 
I think many hate iTunes mostly because it doesen't play FLAC / it's too confusing. 
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You just saw iTunes in it's worst possible way. That was why I went away from iOS completely. Is it still you need to open up iTunes, click tabs until you find the apps section, scroll all the way down to the app you want, drag&drop stuff inside a tiny list and sync everything until the iOS device hands up and you have to do all of it over again? Last time I checked I used the iPhone 4, so it's a bit long ago.

 

It starts with FLAC, yes, because Apple doesn't have ALAC downloads. And then even then the hardware had the iPod's potential to be a player for a reference home system anyway, so on top of the large storage, it made sense to have lossless. But then again, FLAC was easier to get, and what people ripped with, so when they go off and try iTunes, now there's a problem just on the format side.

 

But then it didn't stop there. It's hard not to hate it when I can't just open a window into the device storage and delete what I don't want in there for the next few days and put in something else in its place. All I kept getting was, "no available memory." And it didn't help that whenever I asked how, people went, "oh you need a 2nd iPod, bro! that way you just plug it in and iTunes automatically fills it up!" I got another iPod cheap, only to have it load practically the same stuff I wanted out of the other one, and asking how to manually select what goes in each just has people going, "why?" like I was talking about "wonder what my car looks like wrapped around that lamp post." Practically everything would just work with drag and drop then reboot, but nope, and now people thought you had to be a caveman to like drag n drop or something.

 

I got around all that with Rockbox and I didn't have any issues again until I had to deal with iTunes again, after I got an iPad as a gift. Back to the same "can't I just delete this then drag that thing in here," plus something else. By that point my library was all in FLAC, both rips and downloads, but while I can run player apps to run FLAC, iTunes went out of its way to screw up my computer. Suddenly files on Media Monkey - audio files in Media Monkey's automatic folder while iTunes was manually set to only look into its own folder - started greying out. Hovering over them with the pointer said there was something wrong with the file association. To my surprise, they were appearing on iTunes player! Wow, it can play FLAC!

Well, nope..double clicked on one and said it was unsupported. But iTunes went out of its way to claim the file as associated with it and bar MediaMonkey from playing them despite that. Uninstalled it and everything went back to normal. Now I just have iTunes in my gaming desktop and sync my iPad through there, no matter how convenient it would otherwise be that I have my PDF academic journals in my laptop where I work, because if I put iTunes in there, it will just screw everything up like Smaug looking at gold.

 

In other words, of course it's not hard to see iTunes in a bad way...it's always just Apple's way or the Pacific Coast highway. I drove back south away from 

 

 

 
As I said before - iTunes can be really good. Not as the old iLife stuff, but it's a nice media organizer. The DACs inside iPads just convert everything into a muddy mess, so FLACs would be nothing special to listen to. 

 
It treated my entire hard drive like Smaug looking at a loaded cave. Oh and that option to designate it to look only in one folder? Yeah, didn't work. It just hoarded everything, locking MM out of FLAC file use claiming them for itself, but won't play them. HORRIBLE.
 

 
Oh and by the way - of course people want to sync their mp3 /Fiio/ something-Player with iTunes. Otherwise something like Dapper wouldn't exist. Dapper is nice, very very slow but nice. It just hasn't the option to convert... 

 
Yeah, there are some people who want that...those who came from iTunes and liked how that worked, but want the kind of hardware that drives headphones without an amp...well, I dunno, they could have just strapped an amp onto their iPods. But maybe it was sooooooo mid-2000s.
 
 

 
Or since you're already here -> have you an idea how to convert the files while copying?

 
I've basically been saying that probably no app does. But IIRC Media Monkey probably does since it rips as well as syncs, so that feature is likely to be in there somewhere. Never needed it because, again, drag n drop, whatever format it's on. I mean, it just works.
 

 
Mac user here... so no windows explorer, no foobar and no mediamoney.
But you're right, you confused me there a bit... 

 
Exactly my point about how they're supposed to work very differently.
 
 

 
As mentioned earlier, the copy process is ok as it is now. I rip my CDs via iTunes or XLD and then use Dapper to sync the music. But Dapper (do you know Dapper? It's an Application that uses the iTunes library to copy all of the organized stuff out of iTunes, into your player) but it won't convert the things. That was why I said the name "iTunes" in the first place. Apple has a tiny little option on the bottom of their sync-page. And that is "convert your music to xyz kb/s" - that is what I want. There must be a way to copy and convert everything instead of just copying. I thought if people use all of the stuff we talked about, someone has to have the same idea... it just can't be that every Fiio user is FLAC/ALAC-only. 

 

I know what DAPper is because I've seen the threads here. I just never needed it because Drag N Drop. I mean, it just works - hold left mouse on something, literally drag it, then let it go. And then it's there. No browsing through iTunes. Wanna remove something? Drag from window to Recycle Bin. Copy to a new computer or SD card? Just drag the main folder.
 

 
There must be a way to copy and convert everything instead of just copying. I thought if people use all of the stuff we talked about, someone has to have the same idea... it just can't be that every Fiio user is FLAC/ALAC-only. 

 

There is. Convert using Foobar or MediaMonkey. No on the fly while "syncing" the device, but on Windows when I loaded up my SGS1 with 320kbps (before it was possible to use them as desktop music servers, so no need for FLAC there), what I did was batch convert on MM then selected the microSD card as the destination. Put it back in the phone and fired it up. Done. It's unlikely to have anyone develop one for on the fly sync because nowadays if people will have a lossless library and want a lossy library with it they are more likely to just have FLAC and Spotify.

 

 

 

That is what I thought at first too, but no that can't be the case. Android is going away from SD Card-management for the past 3 years now, that is why you won't see many phones with SD slots anymore. Users are complaining the usability of the system, that the structure of the OS is too confusing for them to handle a secondary entry in the file system. I never understood how someone could get confused, but I'm an android / iOS  developer, I don't see the stuff others see the same. 
I think it's just a trend...? I mean, why did Fiio use an outdated usb slot? MicroUSB is stepping down, USB-C is showing more and more. USB-C also has a much longer life since it's easier to plug / unplug stuff. And hopefully Canon & co won't get on the "hey micro SDs are cool"-train. It's hard enough to get good SD cards. 

 
Likely because even for their size they can't change direction quickly. The idea for the DK1 and K5 and the DAPs to work with them were around before USB-C really gathered steam.