[RobC]

what about other devices?
Does the Spark App find & play .m4a ALAC files on other Android 5 or 6 devices?

My X5 III arrived today in the office in Switzerland.
As I'm on holidays, I have to wait until next week to test it ... grrrr, optimal timing

Yep,  the Spark app finds and plays .m4a ALAC on other Android devices, e.g. Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.
 
That's the point.  Spark works beautifully on other Android kit.
 
My hope is that the X5III can be used a useful source for other HiRes audio gear than just headphone use (I know - wash my mouth

 

[FiiO]

  With "Mastering Quality Lossless Playback Hi-Res Music Player" statement should we understand that X5 3rd gen has native MQA support or will have in the future with FW update? @FiiO

Dear chaturanga,
 
We have reported to the engineers about that. We will consider about that. Thank you for the feedback.
 
Best regards

 

[bhazard]

Review up.
http://www.head-fi.org/products/fiio-x5-3rd-gen-premium-hi-res-dap/reviews/18174
 
What an excellent DAP! Thanks Fiio!!!!

 

[ngoshawk]

Review up.
http://www.head-fi.org/products/fiio-x5-3rd-gen-premium-hi-res-dap/reviews/18174

What an excellent DAP! Thanks Fiio!!!!

You pointed out features I will now investigate, thank you!

 

[chaturanga]

  Dear chaturanga,
 
We have reported to the engineers about that. We will consider about that. Thank you for the feedback.
 
Best regards

 
Thanks for your reply, it will be nice to use Tidal Masters on X3 III in the near future (Still Tidal did not add MQA albums to mobile apps, but surely will do) 

 

[HaPeKa]

As I never used a balanced headset, I'd like to invest in a balanced in-ear headset to use with my X5-III

Any suggestion from the pros here? What would you buy in the price range of $ 300-400 (including cable)?
Shure SExxx, Sennheiser IE 80, Westone UM Pro 20 ...

Most of the time I'm listening to Rock / Pop (80%), from time to time Jazz and Classical Music (20%), ripped to flac files.
In the future, I'd like to upgrade my Tidal account to be able to listen to Tidal Masters sound files ...

 

[SYRadio]

Having worked for several years as a recording engineer and having been in many studios, I have to say I never saw anyone use a balanced headset.  I think it is a waste of money and has no technical advantage what so ever.  Balanced lines are needed for microphones and long line level cable runs because they reduce any possible interference and hum.  This is not a factor with headphones which use short leads and high signal levels.  Those that claim that they can hear a difference are deluded.  If they were truly, needed professional headphone manufacturers would have been using them long ago. 
 
In the past transformers were needed to create balanced inputs and outputs.  Now it can be done with active circuits.  Nevertheless, it just means more devices in the signal chain which is never good.  High quality transformers were very expensive.  The use of IC's to create balanced inputs or outputs is cheaper, but introduces more unneeded circuitry.

 

[RobC]

  Having worked for several years as a recording engineer and having been in many studios, I have to say I never saw anyone use a balanced headset.  I think it is a waste of money and has no technical advantage what so ever.  Balanced lines are needed for microphones and long line level cable runs because they reduce any possible interference and hum.  This is not a factor with headphones which use short leads and high signal levels.  Those that claim that they can hear a difference are deluded.  If they were truly, needed professional headphone manufacturers would have been using them long ago. 
 
In the past transformers were needed to create balanced inputs and outputs.  Now it can be done with active circuits.  Nevertheless, it just means more devices in the signal chain which is never good.  High quality transformers were very expensive.  The use of IC's to create balanced inputs or outputs is cheaper, but introduces more unneeded circuitry.

Most expensive high end peripheral HiFi gear is now gimmickry.  (I mean $K power cables - good grief !)
 
Even this whole Hi-Res music thing is a joke.  There is a point at which sampling at higher frequency and bit rate to record music in digital form does not give you any more information to produce a perfect analog wave form when the digital information is converted back to analog (i.e. CD quality sound - 44.1kHz/16 bit is as accurate as you get). I remember an old physics professor putting it this way.  How many times does a frog have to jump a 10 foot pond to get to the other side if every time he jumps only half the distance left.  Well the perfect answer is that the frog never reaches the other side!  However the idea of limits says that there is a point at which the frog is so close to the other side, that the frog is in reality actually at the other side.  Well it the same with Nyquist-Shannon.  There is a point at which you have enough digital information to reproduce a perfect anaolg wave form.  Check this out: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html#toc_intro. 
 
But people are just not going to be convinced by logic.  Me included!
 
Hey, I just spent some heavy dollars buying balanced cables for my hi end IEM's.
 
Go figure ?

 

[glassmonkey]

  Having worked for several years as a recording engineer and having been in many studios, I have to say I never saw anyone use a balanced headset.  I think it is a waste of money and has no technical advantage what so ever.  Balanced lines are needed for microphones and long line level cable runs because they reduce any possible interference and hum.  This is not a factor with headphones which use short leads and high signal levels.  Those that claim that they can hear a difference are deluded.  If they were truly, needed professional headphone manufacturers would have been using them long ago. 
 
In the past transformers were needed to create balanced inputs and outputs.  Now it can be done with active circuits.  Nevertheless, it just means more devices in the signal chain which is never good.  High quality transformers were very expensive.  The use of IC's to create balanced inputs or outputs is cheaper, but introduces more unneeded circuitry.

This may be true in some set-ups, but the reality is that not all SE designs are created equal and sometimes the balanced output is cleaner on the amplifier. Whether the headphone is balanced isn't necessarily going to be the deciding factor, a balanced amplifier circuit may or may not sound better than a comparable SE circuit. On my Aune M1S, balanced sounds better, and with cans that need more juice, balanced will almost always sound better than the SE output on the same device simply because balanced outputs more power.
 
I fully intend to test whether the X5iii's balanced circuit sounds better than the SE at volume matched levels. In my experience this isn't always the case and an SE output on one unit may sound better than the balanced output on another unit, but you have to have a balanced setup to know this and identical cables. With the UERR I have their stock cable and their balanced cable, both have identical construction, so this makes a very good control. It is also a headphone that is sensitive to small differences in sound quality, so will be good for the test. I'm looking forward to doing it.
 
In the meantime, @HaPeKa shouldn't worry about going and getting a balanced headphone setup, as it very well may not make a difference.

 

[glassmonkey]

As I never used a balanced headset, I'd like to invest in a balanced in-ear headset to use with my X5-III

Any suggestion from the pros here? What would you buy in the price range of $ 300-400 (including cable)?
Shure SExxx, Sennheiser IE 80, Westone UM Pro 20 ...

Most of the time I'm listening to Rock / Pop (80%), from time to time Jazz and Classical Music (20%), ripped to flac files.
In the future, I'd like to upgrade my Tidal account to be able to listen to Tidal Masters sound files ...

I recommend the Mee Pinnacle and a Fidue Balanced cable. I loved the Pinnacle P1 last year and found it one of the best values in headphones. It has superb sound quality for the money. You can find my Pinnacle review in my index in my signature. The Pinnacle needs some driving, but the X5iii should be up to the task.

 

[RobC]

  This may be true in some set-ups, but the reality is that not all SE designs are created equal and sometimes the balanced output is cleaner on the amplifier. Whether the headphone is balanced isn't necessarily going to be the deciding factor, a balanced amplifier circuit may or may not sound better than a comparable SE circuit. On my Aune M1S, balanced sounds better, and with cans that need more juice, balanced will almost always sound better than the SE output on the same device simply because balanced outputs more power.
 
I fully intend to test whether the X5iii's balanced circuit sounds better than the SE at volume matched levels. In my experience this isn't always the case and an SE output on one unit may sound better than the balanced output on another unit, but you have to have a balanced setup to know this and identical cables. With the UERR I have their stock cable and their balanced cable, both have identical construction, so this makes a very good control. It is also a headphone that is sensitive to small differences in sound quality, so will be good for the test. I'm looking forward to doing it.
 
In the meantime, @HaPeKa shouldn't worry about going and getting a balanced headphone setup, as it very well may not make a difference.

The only way to do a true test is to run a double blind with someone who knows what that means and using a good quality SPL meter.  There are just too many subjective elements involved otherwise.

 

[jamescheru]

-Headphone(s) / earphone(s) you possess: Ultimate Ears UE900s
-Any DAP(s) / DAC(s) / amp(s) you may possess: Astell&Kern AK Jr
-Descriptions and links to review(s) you may have posted: none so far
-Your geographical region (e.g. the city and country you live in): Clemson, SC, USA
-Your native language (and any other languages you may be able to write in): English

 

[puppyfi]

Having worked for several years as a recording engineer and having been in many studios, I have to say I never saw anyone use a balanced headset.  I think it is a waste of money and has no technical advantage what so ever.  Balanced lines are needed for microphones and long line level cable runs because they reduce any possible interference and hum.  This is not a factor with headphones which use short leads and high signal levels.  Those that claim that they can hear a difference are deluded.  If they were truly, needed professional headphone manufacturers would have been using them long ago. 

Here's my take, after having worked many years with people in the ProSound field:-

In ProSound (Recording Studio including), people's job mainly is to get the job done, so long as they are using good professional audio gears, good quality balanced cables link like Canary, Belden, Klortz, etc (all consultant approved). Any mention of exotic cables or brands, be prepared to get snipe at!

In Headfi, people are pursuing a hobby, a personal one. Here, people are free to spend their own money, exploring and venturing into High Resolution audio (DSD, etc), using exotic cables (Cardas, Audioquest, etc, not Belden), be it balance or single ended. I suggest let people enjoy what they believe in and what they are hearing. Cheers.

 

[glassmonkey]

 
This may be true in some set-ups, but the reality is that not all SE designs are created equal and sometimes the balanced output is cleaner on the amplifier. Whether the headphone is balanced isn't necessarily going to be the deciding factor, a balanced amplifier circuit may or may not sound better than a comparable SE circuit. On my Aune M1S, balanced sounds better, and with cans that need more juice, balanced will almost always sound better than the SE output on the same device simply because balanced outputs more power.

I fully intend to test whether the X5iii's balanced circuit sounds better than the SE at volume matched levels. In my experience this isn't always the case and an SE output on one unit may sound better than the balanced output on another unit, but you have to have a balanced setup to know this and identical cables. With the UERR I have their stock cable and their balanced cable, both have identical construction, so this makes a very good control. It is also a headphone that is sensitive to small differences in sound quality, so will be good for the test. I'm looking forward to doing it.

In the meantime, @HaPeKa
 shouldn't worry about going and getting a balanced headphone setup, as it very well may not make a difference.

The only way to do a true test is to run a double blind with someone who knows what that means and using a good quality SPL meter.  There are just too many subjective elements involved otherwise.

Rob, I disagree. The double blind test controls for prior belief. My prior is the null hypothesis. I'm already controlling for everything else that I feasibly can. Additionally the resources to conduct the double-blind test are prohibitive. It isn't nearly as simple as you are saying. In order to do it properly I need to have two of each unit. Do you feel like buying me another UERR and a second FiiO X5iii? Do you want to pay a lab to test the two UERRs to insure they are identical? Shall we burn-in the new UERRs ( that's a can of worms right there-I don't think it would make much difference on BA based IEMs)? What about cable burn-in (another thorny issue that I have no belief on)? How shall we overcome the time lag issue in the face of substantial uncertainty on audio memory, switching takes time. There is also measurement error on the SPL as I dont have a perfect coupler and am unlikely to seat the UERR the same for each measurement-this could be overcone by doing many sets of measurements and taking an average but that takes time. How do we overcome the tediousness of the test: I would need to sit blindfolded while my wife or someone else handed me the second pair of headphones, I would have to do at least 30 trials with each track I tested, and my daughter would need to be asleep for the whole thing. After that how do you propose to overcome what I view as the primary limitation of the commonly suggested ABX test: it is contaminated by our brain's remarkable ability to fill in information based on prior experience. I believe that one of the reasons people constantly fail double-blind ABX is the same reason people read the correct word when letters are rearranged, we fill in details. I'm not qualified to design an experiment to overcome this.

I'll grant you that double blind is considered the gold standard, but there are far too many examples in the literature that show people performing worse than expected in double-blind ABX tests when it comes to audio. This to me undermines the fundamental logic of the ABX test--the test itself is affecting people's ability to correctly identify material. I've read a good deal of studies. I've watched videos. The evidence is hardly ironclad. What people are really arguing over on ABX, etc... is strong prior beliefs and extraordinarily weak experimental evidence. When confronted with weak new evidence people default to their prior beliefs.

This discussion isn't about the X5iii directly, so it is more of a Sound Science discussion. For the case of testing the balanced output versus the SE on the X5iii a double-blind ABX is neither feasible nor logical. People asking for double blind rarely think on what it entails. It is frequently such an unreasonable request that it almost always feels like trolling to me. I think that is why Jude and co. have restricted double-blind ABX discussion to Sound Science. If I conducted the test to the best of my ability with my available resources it wouldn't meet the scientific standards required and wouldn't overcome cognitive difficulties. People will just have to take my future observations for what they are: an attempt to control as many variables as possible in the face of the infeasibilty of collecting more rigorous data. Whether people believe my observations will depend on their prior belief on my methods and their trust and experience with my previous work. I take this really seriously and do my best to remain objective, but I simply can't control for everything. There will be uncertainty in my observations, as there are with every set of comparative observations on HeadFi.

I hope the mods don't move this post to sound science, as I think that it is useful here, but I'll understand if they do and hope that they leave a link behind to show where the discussion is moved to in this X5iii thread.

Thanks FiiO for tolerating this kind of discussion if you do. It is a little known fact that sponsored threads are also moderated by the sponsors, so remember that when you leave impressions in a sponsor thread instead of an independent thread. Personally, I've found sponsors don't moderate any differently than the excellent mods on HeadFi.

 

[Moleman X]

The EQ limitation on the X3ii did not allow it to work with hi res or DSD files. Has anyone tested that the EQ works on ALL file types in the native app (preferred) or any other Android-based players?  Thanks!