FiiO X5 beta firmware 2.03 download and discussion. One word: Playlists!

[krayziehustler]

Sorry for the confusion guys, my communication time with FiiO headquarters are somewhat limited by circumstances these days and I only got hold of the actual method for generating external playlists for the X5 today.

Here's the general instructions:
1. As mentioned before, mount the SD card on your PC (e.g. via the X5's storage mode) and import the songs you want playlisted from the SD card to a new list on your player of choice.
2. Export the playlist to an M3U or M3U8 file ON YOUR COMPUTER (e.g. your desktop), not the SD card. This will force the generated playlist to contain full absolute paths for each song as well as a drive letter reference.
3. Open the M3U file in a text editor.
4. If an "#EXTM3U" line is not seen at the top of the file, add it. (without the quotes)
5. Replace all drive letter references (say, "X:") with "TF1:" if the card is to be placed in X5's slot 1, or "TF2:" if in slot 2. (this can be done using a "replace all" action on your text editor)
6. Save the modified file anywhere you like on the card (anywhere where you think it will be easy to find the playlist, e.g. in the root directory or in the same directory where most of the songs themselves are found. Since absolute paths are used the X5 obviously doesn't care where you put them)

I understand that this might not be the answer you guys may have been waiting for and I've told them as much, but hey, this is just the first beta for this feature so I'm keeping my hopes up.

 
 
That worked for me. However what is the max number of files it can read in an m3u? Can you find out?
 
I placed 7000 files as a test and the X5 froze and i had to do a reset to get it back. The player also froze with 5799 songs listed in a playlist. Now this isn't typical but it is worth knowing imo

 

[Znuff89]

I'm not a playlist guy but I have noticed a definite sound change from 2.0. It does sound better throughout the spectrum. However, I would describe it as if you change your ext dac on comp from 16/44.1 to say...24/96. It sounds smoother but impact of bass is lessened. Rock music seems to suffer most from this. I think i like the change but really miss the bass thump. To be clear...not complaining...just throwing it out there for any thoughts.

 

[Loquah]

Sorry for the confusion guys, my communication time with FiiO headquarters are somewhat limited by circumstances these days and I only got hold of the actual method for generating external playlists for the X5 today.

Here's the general instructions:
1. As mentioned before, mount the SD card on your PC (e.g. via the X5's storage mode) and import the songs you want playlisted from the SD card to a new list on your player of choice.
2. Export the playlist to an M3U or M3U8 file ON YOUR COMPUTER (e.g. your desktop), not the SD card. This will force the generated playlist to contain full absolute paths for each song as well as a drive letter reference.
3. Open the M3U file in a text editor.
4. If an "#EXTM3U" line is not seen at the top of the file, add it. (without the quotes)
5. Replace all drive letter references (say, "X:") with "TF1:" if the card is to be placed in X5's slot 1, or "TF2:" if in slot 2. (this can be done using a "replace all" action on your text editor)
6. Save the modified file anywhere you like on the card (anywhere where you think it will be easy to find the playlist, e.g. in the root directory or in the same directory where most of the songs themselves are found. Since absolute paths are used the X5 obviously doesn't care where you put them)

I understand that this might not be the answer you guys may have been waiting for and I've told them as much, but hey, this is just the first beta for this feature so I'm keeping my hopes up.

 
Thanks for the update Joe. It's not ideal, but a good start and the way you guys keep working on the firmware gives us all hope I think.

 

[JHutchins]

While the convoluted m3u creation process works its utility, once imported into the X5, is severely limited. The tracks are presented in completely random order across the whole file and mixed across all of the albums incorporated in the playlist.  Playlists are key for me and I await development of the capability optimistically.  Hopefully we will get there otherwise my days with the X5 may be numbered.
Jeremy

 

[dustmos]

@Joe Bloggs
 
Thanks for the update Joe. Now we know they are extended m3u's.
 
It now works, though all of the tracks are consistently out of order.
 
I manually (typed out the text file) put together a sample playlist - 10 tracks alternating between cards:
 
test_playlist.m3u
 
#EXTM3U
TF1:\Alva_Noto\Alva_Noto-Unitxt\01.U_07.flac
TF2:\King_Sunny_Ade-Juju_Music\02.Eje_Nlo_Gba_Ara_Mi.flac
TF1:\Brian_Eno\Brian_Eno-Ali_Click\03.Ali_Click_Rural_Doo_Gap_Mix.flac
TF2:\Metro_Area-Metro_Area\04.Pina.flac
TF1:\Can\Can-Saw_Delight\05.Fly_by_Night.flac
TF2:\Max_Richter\Max_Richter-The_Blue_Notebooks\06.Vladimirs_Blues.flac
TF1:\Aphex_Twin\Aphex_Twin-Selected_Ambient_Works_85_92\07.Heliosphan.flac
TF2:\Oval\Oval-Systemisch\08.Oval_Office.flac
TF1:\Harold_Budd\Harold_Budd-Avalon_Sutra\09.A_Walk_in_the_Park_with_Nancy_In_Memory.flac
TF2:\Rhythm_and_Sound\Rhythm_and_Sound-See_Mi_Yah\10.Free_For_All.flac
 
The list resides at the root level of TF1.
 
The playback order is consistently wrong: 2, 10, 3, 5, 4, 6, 8, 7, 9, 1
 
I also tested this as a m3u8 file, just to see if there was a character encoding mismatch, but got the same results - the same track order.
I also rescanned the media library and received the same results.
 
Thanks for getting this functionality under way and hope this helps.

 

[nmatheis]

dustmos: [OT] Once again, you impress me with your musical taste, good sir! [/OT]

Um, hope you are a sir. Otherwise, I'm dreadfully embarrassed, ma'am :wink_face:.

 

[dustmos]

@dustmos: [OT] Once again, you impress me with your musical taste, good sir! [/OT]

Um, hope you are a sir. Otherwise, I'm dreadfully embarrassed, ma'am

.

@nmatheis
 
[OT] lol, was just using whatever tracks were easy to grab.
 
Thanks for the compliment. I am male, so no need to be worried. Obviously you also have excellent music taste. Perhaps we should continue our mutual admiration society via personal message.
 
On topic: I've never been a big playlist user, but with the ability to create multiple lists on my computer (I prefer creating them via text processing software, rather than point/click etc) and store them in a dedicated directory on the X5 presents some interesting possibilities for me.
 
Cheers

 

[Canaudio]

Thanks very much for this update.  I upgraded from 2.0.  I don't really care about play lists - I'm an album at a time kind of guy, but I am delighted to have album art for everything on my Fiio.  All my music is in flac format, much of it from CD and copied from my XBMC music server to the X5.  I carefully retrieved album art from Allmusic for every CD I've ripped and now it is displayed on my X5 with no fiddling around.  We are definitely getting there!

 

[x RELIC x]

I'm not a playlist guy but I have noticed a definite sound change from 2.0. It does sound better throughout the spectrum. However, I would describe it as if you change your ext dac on comp from 16/44.1 to say...24/96. It sounds smoother but impact of bass is lessened. Rock music seems to suffer most from this. I think i like the change but really miss the bass thump. To be clear...not complaining...just throwing it out there for any thoughts.

Funny, I hear a better bass impact, more thump. Quite the opposite from your thoughts. Curious.

 

[x RELIC x]

Listening to 2.03b and I discovered a major regression with this FW over 2.02b.

Through the Artist Category the Play All by artist feature no longer lists all songs by the artist in the order of their albums. Now it lists all songs by their numerical order, so all songs beginning with 01, and then songs beginning with 02, and so on, regardless of the album they are from. This creates a mess of the song order and is very undesirable.

With FW 2.02b the Play All by artist feature would list each song according to the order they appear in their album and then list the next set if songs from the next album, and so on. 2.02b is much more user friendly and if I wanted my songs to be played randomly I'll turn on shuffle.

I really, REALLY, hope Fiio has the sense to go back to the way 2.02b lists songs in the Play All by artist category (by each album).

I'll stick with 2.02b until this can be worked out.

Edit: I give Fiio huge props for progressing the FW this far, but please continue to move forward not back.

 

[Znuff89]

Relic - I went back to 2.0 because I prefered that sound more. And I was thinking yeah this is what I like! Last night I went back to 2.03 to compare a second time. Man, I love 2.03 the second time lol. Its WAY better than 2.0. Wider soundstage, Fiio house sound completely gone, brighter. I stayed up way too late last night enjoying music. The biggest difference to me is that every album sounds great now. Before you could really hear a sound diference between albums...not now. I think the sound improvement is stunning, and the best thing about 2.03. I still think its a little bass light compared to 2.0 but I'm more than willing to give up bass for this new sound. No way I can go back to 2.0. Big thanks to Fiio for constantly improving an already great player.

 

[Qkslvr8216]

Hello All,
 
New to the site.  I have the Fiio X5 and absolutely love it except for one thing.  When scrolling through Artist I have to scroll through all the names instead of having it auto scroll via an A - Z scheme and then allowing me to stop at a letter.  Does anyone have any tips for scrolling through hundreds of artist or am i just stuck with it?

 

[x RELIC x]

Relic - I went back to 2.0 because I prefered that sound more. And I was thinking yeah this is what I like! Last night I went back to 2.03 to compare a second time. Man, I love 2.03 the second time lol. Its WAY better than 2.0. Wider soundstage, Fiio house sound completely gone, brighter. I stayed up way too late last night enjoying music. The biggest difference to me is that every album sounds great now. Before you could really hear a sound diference between albums...not now. I think the sound improvement is stunning, and the best thing about 2.03. I still think its a little bass light compared to 2.0 but I'm more than willing to give up bass for this new sound. No way I can go back to 2.0. Big thanks to Fiio for constantly improving an already great player.

I have no complaints about the sound. I really like the feature to Play All by artist when the songs are listed according to their album order and not just according to number.

Like this:

FW2.02b

Album
01 - song
02 - song
03 - song
And so on.........

Album
01 - song
02 - song
03 - song
And so on..........

Vs

FW 2.03b

Album
01- song
Album
01-song
Album
02-song
Album
02-song
And so on.........

For the life of me I can't understand why this would change as it was really perfect in 2.02b. Basically in 2.02b when you Play All by artist it played all the albums by the artist in order without having to manually skip to the next album like in the Album Category. This kills two birds with one stone as there have been many requests for automatically skipping to the next album in the Album Category.

Baffled as they actually nailed it with 2.02b.

 

[Preben]

Hello All,

New to the site.  I have the Fiio X5 and absolutely love it except for one thing.  When scrolling through Artist I have to scroll through all the names instead of having it auto scroll via an A - Z scheme and then allowing me to stop at a letter.  Does anyone have any tips for scrolling through hundreds of artist or am i just stuck with it?

Hello a fix is hold forward/previous Button will scrolling.

 

[LarryB08]

In my "version" of 2.03b, the All Songs for an artist option displays the songs by that artist all in one bunch alphabetically.
For me, this is perfect as if I wanted to play an album, I would play the album so I don't need All Songs displayed by album. Having just an overall listing of songs by the artist I can then shuffle play is what I wanted so a simple alpha organization is just fine.
 
The two things I feel should be fixed as soon as possible is, of course, the exceedingly small 5800 library track limit. If there has to be a limit, it should be at least 64K if not more (Also make sure when that limit is raised, that the library is built from all the tracks on both microSD cards combined. You do not want to be restricted to a library based on where the track is physically located, especially when you want, like I do, to be able to shuffle your entire music library).
 
The second item is that the tracks displayed when choosing an album are always shown alphabetically and not in track order per the tag, which makes no sense. If I recall, this problem only existed in the 2.0 FW when you went to an album by way of the Artist category. But if you brought up the album via the Album category, the songs would be in track order.
 
In the 2.02 and 2.03 beta FW that I have tried, no matter how you get to an album, the tracks are only displayed alphabetically and not by track number and needs to be corrected no matter how you bring up an album.
 
Given how quickly updates are coming, I feel confident this excellent sounding player will only get better.