[dissembled]

Sincerely happy for you and if you found your holy graal with it, so it's cool... As you said, for me this product sounds nice but bugs is a hassle for me...

Regards.

Thanks, sir. I do have a question for you personally. How hard is it to remove the X3 from the included leather case? If the force required might scratch the player, then forget it. I have mine in the silicone case at moment and have not tried on the leather case since it doesn't have a dedicated hole for the micro sd card. It does look well made though and I'm tempted to try it out.

 

[Olimatou]

Yup, they said that the AptX issue is because Qualcomm doesn't support the MIPS architecture. Ok, fine.. Change the architecture, don't use a system that's limited again and again if you're well aware that the limitations will hinder your competitiveness in the market.
And on another note, how long have Fiio been using the same architecture? How much has it changed since the first X5 (this is a legit question, as these things are a bit out of my depth)? If things hadn't changed too much, why are paying customers still having to deal with bugs? Like, hasn't Fiio gotten things sorted out by now? Anyways, like I said, I'm rather tired of ranting about this. But personally, I think Fiio should stick to what they do really well - amps, DACs, and iems... Leave anything and everything that involves software, as Fiio don't seem up to the task.

This is a decision to take from the headquarter to have a vision for your brand and a direction to go. You cannot claim you are investing on quality side for your line of products without investing money for research or development on new hardware... There is a time where you will have to change or train your software team to follow technology because you can not deceive the customer indefinitely. IoT is the future and you have to make the jump... they must now ensure the image of the company or it is the fall assured with such a disputed market and it is clearly the low-cost segment that will win the long-term setting.

 

[Olimatou]

Thanks, sir. I do have a question for you personally. How hard is it to remove the X3 from the included leather case? If the force required might scratch the player, then forget it. I have mine in the silicone case at moment and have not tried on the leather case since it doesn't have a dedicated hole for the micro sd card. It does look well made though and I'm tempted to try it out.

effectively, it's a bit hard to remove, especially if you need to remove the microSD card often. I found a way to preserve the player from scratches or to be broken... Maintain the player upside down and take your hand flat on the screen (not like on the picture, it was to show you) and push up, you will then have a gap to remove the player entirely from the leatherette... i have to clean it with a microfiber cloth to remove fingerprints after this ^^

A simple hole on this side should have been a nice design option to remove this thing with the push of a finger, but they currently don't think a lot at FiiO ^^ Or an access hole to the microSD card to remove it, because 2Mo/s; of course you will use an external reader to put your Gigs on your card !

regards.

 

[Dobrescu George]

Let's hope that everything will be better in a short while!

 

[Dobrescu George]

Do you mean I am complaining because I am a big child of 43 years that don't accept bugs they selled to me packed in a lovely brick ?

As you can see in my following picture, this thing is playing arbitrary a DSD file as I am asking it to play a file from Sia album in folder mode (without folder reading option set) !!! Effectively, you're right, things aren't going the way I wanted ! This product currently sucks and is not reliable at all... The more I use it and the more I discover bugs everywhere ! Far away from specs and quality they claimed when they promote it on the July keynote...

I won't do a list of all bugs I discovered, I am tired to list them all... And the 1st that is telling me that FiiO wasn't aware of all that bugs in this product is only a fanatic addict that don't want to see the cruel reality. The clothes do not make the man and this device is not what I could expect when I readed descriptions from FiiO's. The promise is not there standing in my hands for the moment and it is sort of lie I can't agree with. When I buy a product, I usually do not take a subscription for patches because it is not working. I want it to work straight from unpacking.

Regards

I ain't contradicting you, if you're unhappy, you have the right to call it. Since I did not test it, I really didn't know that the bugs are serious, I'm just following to see what to expect when I get to test one.

Hm... I hope that FiiO will manage to make things right soon!

 

[Schiso]

Hi guys. Do you encounter this?

My unit freezes when I wake it up from deep sleep when the battery has only 2 bars. But when the battery has more than that, it normally wakes up when i press the wake button.

Also mine suddenly shuts down sometimes.

 

[eaglesgift]

I ain't contradicting you, if you're unhappy, you have the right to call it. Since I did not test it, I really didn't know that the bugs are serious, I'm just following to see what to expect when I get to test one.

Hm... I hope that FiiO will manage to make things right soon!

So you're telling people to be more understanding about bugs in a product you don't own and have never tested?

 

[Dobrescu George]

So you're telling people to be more understanding about bugs in a product you don't own and have never tested?

To be more understanding in general, not about X3-3 - Someone who has it, has all the right to express how they feel about it, this is why I said that I can't contradict someone if they dislike it

I am actually quite... intrigued by those developments. I mean, I had X3-2, X5-2, both were stable stable, curious how X3-3 became unstable

 

[eaglesgift]

To be more understanding in general, not about X3-3 - Someone who has it, has all the right to express how they feel about it, this is why I said that I can't contradict someone if they dislike it

I am actually quite... intrigued by those developments. I mean, I had X3-2, X5-2, both were stable stable, curious how X3-3 became unstable

I'm quite disappointed as I was in the process of convincing myself to buy the X3III but I don't feel comfortable doing that until the more serious issues have been sorted (gapless play, playing the right songs and not missing the first second of songs for me I think). If those were fixed, I'd like to buy one for the sound quality - the rest of the functionality is not a big issue for me.

 

[JaeYoon]

Brooko, no I don't have any experience with the X5 mk III. I was waiting for that player to come out to purchase it, so I was cautious after the experience with the X3 Mk 2. But I do have plenty of experience with my Fiio X3 2nd gen. I read all the reviews for the X5 mk III and the conclusion was the same with all Fiio players, you have to keep waiting for them to fix issues with the next firmware (a 3 months wait each time). The X3 mk 2 is stable now, but I had to flash it twice to get rid of some nasty bugs. My question for you is, if you are going to shell out $400 (more than the cost of the old iPod Classic), don't you think you deserve a better experience? If I put down $400 or more for a player I expect it to be top notch instead of go and wait for the manufacturer to fix UI bugs or playback bugs. Android is a joke too, I always had Android phones for the past 10 years, but the last Android phone fed me up with issues and pretty much of the same wait for the next patch to fix it. So I switched to iPhone 7 and never looked back = 0 issues.

So to make the story short, Fiio is pushing their product out to the market too fast without a good investment in QC, I refuse to pay big $$$ to be a Fiio beta tester.

Looks like we are all in same boat. We are basically beta testers. Fiio Music player keeps crashing every now and then when going into folder view on x7 here. There are other bugs too.

Sad to see x3III like this.

@eaglesgift
Also fiio x7 suffers from those same bugs. Half second is missing on songs at beginning! I have to repeat the song in order to hear the first half second.

:c it's just bugs that are becoming just a hassle and not as seamless as one would prefer.

 

[superuser1]

i thought only android implementation was abysmal. Time to get a new dev team.

 

[Olimatou]

Looks like we are all in same boat. We are basically beta testers. Fiio Music player keeps crashing every now and then when going into folder view on x7 here. There are other bugs too.

Sad to see x3III like this.

Hmmm from someone who have his X7 from dumpster, the question you must ask yourself is why it was there !

And yes, I agree with you too...

Regards.

 

[superuser1]

Hmmm from someone who have his X7 from dumpster, the question you must ask yourself is why it was there !

And yes, I agree with you too...

Regards.

Hahahaha good one! I really like the way they deal with customers .. really hands on and very helpful. I really wish these software bugs are done away with quickly. People using X7II dont seem to be having any problems yet. I remember the early days of X5III.

 

[Olimatou]

Well, my guess is that they have ignored many components to get a competitive price tag with this product, but it was not the right solution to drive all with such a SoC and lack of power to get all working flawlessly. Stupid decisions make things becoming stupid to use at the end... I would have paid a few bucks more to get a good product if it has all I was looking for, working without hassle... This thing is running too slow already and I think there is not big rooms to make it working better (faster)... And software after sale support with nice improvements seems not to be the primary goal of FiiO... Sometime, working on embedded software from scratch to optimize all in details is the only option to get things better... But at first glimpse, they do not master the implementation of the components at the software level and it is a pity. When you tend to perfection for audio, your software must touch perfection too, you can't ignore one part to get the other... You are talking about Quality ? Quality is not only components soldered on a PCB, a nice designed enclosure and that's it ! Software part is also the major part for quality because you can't have the best hardware in the world working correctly without it, and that's make the difference between quality products and the low end...

For me the promise of a better firmware in the future is pure marketing invention to sell asap the brick because you are stuck with the hardware you get and no non magician people can make miracles ! Maybe some little playing improvements, better file browsing support, but major features, I guess no... And how can I believe a company that has already left its customers with bugs between ears for years already ?

 

[TheoS53]

Well, my guess is that they have ignored many components to get a competitive price tag with this product, but it was not the right solution to drive all with such a SoC and lack of power to get all working flawlessly. Stupid decisions make things becoming stupid to use at the end... I would have paid a few bucks more to get a good product if it has all I was looking for, working without hassle... This thing is running too slow already and I think there is not big rooms to make it working better (faster)... And software after sale support with nice improvements seems not to be the primary goal of FiiO... Sometime, working on embedded software from scratch to optimize all in details is the only option to get things better... But at first glimpse, they do not master the implementation of the components at the software level and it is a pity. When you tend to perfection for audio, your software must touch perfection too, you can't ignore one part to get the other... You are talking about Quality ? Quality is not only components soldered on a PCB, a nice designed enclosure and that's it ! Software part is also the major part for quality because you can't have the best hardware in the world working correctly without it, and that's make the difference between quality products and the low end...

For me the promise of a better firmware in the future is pure marketing invention to sell asap the brick because you are stuck with the hardware you get and no non magician people can make miracles ! Maybe some little playing improvements, better file browsing support, but major features, I guess no... And how can I believe a company that has already left its customers with bugs between ears for years already ?

Yeah I don't know how/why Fiio doesn't get it by now. User experience in terms of software is incredibly important. Did they forget that we use smartphones every day of our lives, and so we've become accustomed to a certain level of UI responsiveness and intuitive interaction?

This carries over into other parts of life too. How about a website that has really good info, but it's incredibly difficult to use and find what you're looking for? Crappy design leads to a person becoming frustrated and soon abandoning it. This (along with brilliant marketing strategies) are why companies like Apple have a huge user base. Of course, their prices are higher, but who of us wouldn't mind paying a little more if Fiio's devices operated correctly? I just feel that if Fiio cared, truly and honestly cared, about their products and customers, they'd sort these things out ASAP. I bring up the example of the M3 again (just because it's such a blatant display of not giving a damn). It's been well over a year and we still have not received that rich set of themes they advertised. Let's be perfectly honest - how long would it realistically take them to create a single theme? I remember back in the X5 days that we (the users) would take a few days to a week to create a theme. All these other bugs and lags...do they not test the products themselves?

How many devices still don't have proper gapless and/or replay gain? It's just so disrespectful to customers for Fiio to be spending manpower on new products when they still haven't fixed their old / existing products. It's like loaning money to someone in desperate need, and then seeing them spending lavishly when they're back on their feet before paying you back (if they ever pay you back).

Mismanaged resources and a lack of courtesy, that's all it is.