[Joe Bloggs]

Official firmware version 2.4 for the X5 is now available!
http://121.199.40.94/UploadFiles/main/Firmware-and-driver/X5/X5-FW2.4.rar (RAR)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9k91vztmlir5nuh/X5%20FW2.4.zip?dl=0 (temporary dropbox mirror, ZIP)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/m4j47lv23um5is6/X5_FW2.4.zip (mediafire mirror, ZIP)

The following changes and improvements were made to firmware 2.4 compared to FW2.3:
1. Removed 5800 track limit to media library scan.
2. Added playback support for multichannel recordings.
3. Pressing the Back button from the Now Playing screen will now always take you to the folder / album / etc. from which the current song is selected. This is true even after navigating to the main menu or powering the X5 off and back on.
4. Added option to display song title instead of filename in Now Playing screen.
5. Added Sleep timer, with on/off toggle switch and timer setting.
6. Preset EQ settings may now also be adjusted.
7. Added option to play through folders: ie skipping to the first song in the next folder after the last song in the current folder.
8. Added option to delete a whole folder.
9. Added function to delete tracks from within a playlist.
10. Optimized playback of AAC, FLAC and M4A.
11. Fixed issue where shuffle mode reverted to the same set of "random" songs if starting from the same song.
12. Various bug fixes.

Looking forward to everyone's feedback

The DAC driver may be downloaded here:
http://121.199.40.94/UploadFiles/main/Firmware-and-driver/X5/Driver-for-X5-USB_DAC.zip

Some info on M3U playlists:
1. M3U playlists stored on the SD cards are accessed via Browse Files, not Browse by Category->Playlists.
2. Each entry of the M3U playlist should not reference a drive letter (relative paths) or refer to the two card slots as TF1: and TF2: (less preferred, as this would cause the playlist to only work with the card inserted into a particular slot on the X5)

Here are the recommended methods for creating playlists on the computer:
Method for adapting existing playlists for the X5
The X5 can read playlists with relative pathing and thus is compatible with most existing playlists that do not reference the drive letter at the beginning of each track reference.

Method for creating playlists for the X5 in foobar2000
New playlists compatible with the X5 may be created using foobar and a text editor as follows:
1. Connect the SD card for the X5 to the computer (e.g. by connecting the X5 itself with the SD card inside in Storage USB mode)
2. Load the songs desired from the SD card into a new playlist and save the playlist as a M3U8 file in the root directory of the SD card.



Method for creating playlists for the X5 in iTunes
If using a windows PC for playlist creation, foobar2000 is recommended over iTunes. If using iTunes on the Mac, the custom playlist export program created by fellow X5 user, JeremyLaurenson, is recommended:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/728503/submit-your-dap-specs-please-i-am-creating-dapper-a-mac-itunes-to-dap-converter

 

[mikolaj612]

Maybe it's good time to add exFat support for SD Cards?
This is serious problem when you want to migrate from Android phone to FiiO or backward and you want to address files bigger than FAT32 support.
NTFS is generally not supported without custom kernel/root + special modules. Many people (like me) uses phones for watching movies (HD videos etc.) or even like a data storage and FAT32 is bad choice for all of us.
 
Edit:
 
Features that should be added in near future (for me):
- clock + simple calendar (automatic change for summer/winter time),
- color adj. (I mean option to set only black and white color) this should save some battery juice and this is a portable so
- custom lockscreen with user preferable buttons,
- % battery as a option,
- if you add exFat support there should be option to set system file before formatting the SD card.

 

[HK_sends]

Looking forward to trying it out (with some customizing from the other thread)!
Cheers!

-HK sends

 

[reihead]

Joe, could you clarify what "10. Optimized playback of AAC, FLAC and M4A." means?

Thanks

 

[Tyke666]

Just put 2.4 on, upgraded from 2.36 beta and all is looking good so far.
A couple of the differences I have spotted between 2.36 and 2.4:
1) "Play Through Folders" option in music settings is now correctly in English (was Chinese even if English selected)
2) I had various "spurious" Genre appearing in the category view. These appear to have vanished now, so thats much better.
 
The "more than seven albums" bug is still there.
 
I think the only thing I want the player to do now is all in the navigation of various categories:
1) Allow different sorting of album within artist. Specifically, year of release instead of just alphabetic. I currently achieve this by using folder view and name the folders accordingly, but would be better to use the category view and tag details rather than filename/foldername details.
2) As many people already mentioned, fast scrolling through long category lists is pretty essential. Again, I work around the problem of many artists by top level folders of a-z, numeric and compilations as suggested in other threads.
3) All songs category: Should at least use the song title from the tags if present, rather than the filename. This is done for other categories, not sure why its not been done for All songs. we have the choice of displaying either in the now-playing screen so this should not really be a biggie.
4) All songs for an artist: the option to display this list as song within album sequence as well as pure alphabetical.
5) The Album category uses the tag for the album rather than the filename, as it should. Unfortunately I have just the first few albums of one artist where it has used the filename. No idea why, the files are all tagged correctly. Just a spurious bug I guess.
 
All in all it's pretty damn close to being spot on for me so I hope they keep up the great work and just clear up the last few issues - a lot of which could be option driven if everyone doesn't want them.

 

[reihead]

Not enough time playing with it, but so far so good, stable and faster (I have +6000 songs on it).
 
As the previous post reported, the "more than seven albums" bug is still present.
 
The X5 is getting closer to a truly great player. 

 

[BubbaBob]

This firmware addressed exactly ZERO of my concerns. No wheel/button acelleration. No artists by tag instead of Filename in Artist category. No listing by Album instead of Song in Genre search results. Same awful GUI (until someone else fixes it).

 

[kaboodjame]

please add display album art in album list ...

 

[Tyke666]

  No artists by tag instead of Filename in Artist category.

Not sure what this meant. All my Artist category list matches the Artist tag. Not sure what happens if Album Artist is also present - not tried that yet as I only use it for compilation stuff and not loaded any of that yet. I would hope the Artist category would be populated in the order Album Artist > Artist .
 
On a general note, because we have 2 ways of accessing the music - folders and categories - I would want the categories to be driven purely by tags with fallback to filenames if tags not present. I thought this was already happening though, but Bubba has suggested otherwise.

 

[hAbIrAbI]

Doesn't exFAT mean more licensing costs? It's been a while since I've read about it but I think it was considerable cost in the beginning when exFAT was released.

 

[BubbaBob]

Tyke666,
  My bad. I meant no songs by tag rather than no artists by tag. Oops.

 

[Qalavand]

Looks okay to me

 

[mbk1969]

  Doesn't exFAT mean more licensing costs? It's been a while since I've read about it but I think it was considerable cost in the beginning when exFAT was released.

Well, FiiO already implemented exFat support in X3...

 

[hAbIrAbI]

What I meant was those licensing costs are usually due per device so vendors implement them before release so they can calculate the price of the device before release .

Edit: I could be wrong or FiiO has a different licensing agreement.

 

[JaviAl]

Songs on a M3U8 Playlist in a line with more than 110-120 characters not recognized or produce error and block the device.