[doublea71]

You mentioned high res file first, and then 24/96 vinyl rips, make me wonder, when you say high res, are you referring to loseless 16/44.1? or 24/96? or something in between (e.g., 24/48)??

I have a friend who own a huge vinyl library, and I have heard some of his vinyl rips, in both high bit PCM and DSD format. One thing I notice that the rips are not necessarily dead quiet to start with, so maybe that is not a good starting point to show how low the noise floor of the player is.

24-96. I have them downsampled to 16-44 on my J3 and I can't hear the hiss nearly as well - it's there, but on the X5, it's very apparent and in your face. I think it is a very revealing dap based partially on this. I've been loading more stuff onto it and am about to give it another whirl.

 

[Andykong]

I think he means being able to hear the hiss of the vinyl itself distinctly from any hiss the player may generate? He did mention that some tracks have a very black background whereas others have hiss.

Because the tracks that have a very black background are coming from HDTracks:

I have some stuff from hdtracks which sound terrific - Paper Airplanes by Alison Krauss sounds amazing - it has a very black background and is crystal clear - just stunning

 

[Andykong]

24-96. I have them downsampled to 16-44 on my J3 and I can't hear the hiss nearly as well - it's there, but on the X5, it's very apparent and in your face. I think it is a very revealing dap based partially on this. I've been loading more stuff onto it and am about to give it another whirl.

Let me see if I get the sequence right.

1. You downloaded some High Res 24/96 files previously.
2. You down-sampled them to 16/44.1 and listen to them on your J3
3. When you received the X5, you plug the J3 card into X5 and used these down-sampled file to form your first impression
4. Subsequently you re-test the X5 with the original 24/96 files and feel the X5 sounds much better

May I ask, do you hear the different through UM Miracle or VSonic GR07 MKI? or both?

I didn't own a J3, but a close friend had that for ages and I managed to show him the J3 is not the keeper with a DX50, and subsequently I gave up my DX50 with Fiio X5, and I only used 16/644.1 FLAC to achieve all these because our music library are 99% Red Book CD rips only, so if the different only make sense in 24/96, it is not relevant to our practical usage.

So the SQ of these players (with 16/44.1 music) in my experience are in this order:

X5 > DX50 >> J3

Thats why I am interested to follow your observation that the SQ different can only be revealed in Hi-Res files.

 

[miceblue]

Wow I nearly a heart attack with the touring X5. >.>

I was listening to some 24/96 files on the bus like an Average Joe with some cheap-o Sennheiser CX-300s and the playback was s-s-s-t-t-t-u-t-tering pretty bad. I switch to a different 24/96 song from a different album and it works just fine.

I get off the bus and it's raining outside so I pull out my umbrella and start walking to my destination. Suddenly I hear a popping sound similar to when you plug in a headphone into an amp and turn the amp on and the X5 died. Wondering what went wrong, I tried to play/pause and that didn't work. I tried to turn the power on/off and that didn't do anything.

I got to my destination with some friends to eat dim sum and one of the people there had a portable battery charger thingamabob. Originally I thought the X5 ran out of batteries but upon 30 minutes of charging, the X5 still didn't turn on. I then grabbed a toothpick and pressed/hold the reset pin for ~10 seconds and tried to turn the X5 back on.

Luckily it turned on, but still.... :|

 

[henwell]

Wow I nearly a heart attack with the touring X5. >.>

I was listening to some 24/96 files on the bus like an Average Joe with some cheap-o Sennheiser CX-300s and the playback was s-s-s-t-t-t-u-t-tering pretty bad. I switch to a different 24/96 song from a different album and it works just fine.

I get off the bus and it's raining outside so I pull out my umbrella and start walking to my destination. Suddenly I hear a popping sound similar to when you plug in a headphone into an amp and turn the amp on and the X5 died. Wondering what went wrong, I tried to play/pause and that didn't work. I tried to turn the power on/off and that didn't do anything.

I got to my destination with some friends to eat dim sum and one of the people there had a portable battery charger thingamabob. Originally I thought the X5 ran out of batteries but upon 30 minutes of charging, the X5 still didn't turn on. I then grabbed a toothpick and pressed/hold the reset pin for ~10 seconds and tried to turn the X5 back on.

Luckily it turned on, but still.... :|

Joe I would hope you send out a new X5  to Barra howdy and myself it sounds as if this one maybe defective or got wet
Thanks Henwell

 

[miceblue]

The X5 is perfectly dry. It was in my pocket the entire time outside.

 

[lee730]

Because the tracks that have a very black background are coming from HDTracks:

I've got vinyl rips that also have a dark background but aren't from HD tracks. Depends on the equipment used to attain the rips as well as the quality of the record itself.

 

[musicheaven]

  Joe I would hope you send out a new X5  to Barra howdy and myself it sounds as if this one maybe defective or got wet
Thanks Henwell

Send him your request through your group PMs as well, best way to get Joe's attention.

 

[HK_sends]

Hey everyone,
 
I'm polishing up my impressions (no, I haven't disappeared) and hope to have them to Joe Bloggs for review soon.  My review is going to be a little different because I focus more on functionality than sound, but you are highlighting most of the UI and control issues I found.  I will say the X5 worked just fine for me but I didn't use it outside or anything.
 
Will update soon...
-HK sends
 
PS - No, I didn't breathe on it (or touch it) when I was ill...

 

[henwell]

 
Send him your request through your group PMs as well, best way to get Joe's attention.

I did 

 

[miceblue]

Ugh I think I'm going to reinstall the 1.0 firmware and re-format my class 10 microSD card.

I'm getting stuttering playback again with an HD Tracks FLAC file.

 

[cattlethief]

Sounds like you have a duff unit!

 

[bowei006]

Probably not.
 
The X3 stutters and needs resets. And I've had to do a hard reset on the X5 already for various reasons. Doesn't seem out of ordinary from my experience with FiiO units.

 

[lee730]

bowei do you think these anomalies could be due to differences between our tagging? I really wonder about that as I've had several issues with DAPs in the past due to my tags having a bunch of junk in them as well as incompatibility issues with certain tag versions. This goes for my iphone4, Sansa Fuze, etc. Once I fixed my tags and setup a system to properly tag my music, I have had minimal issues with my DAPs. Never did have the X5 stutter on me or freeze. I didn't try high res music on it though so not sure if that is a possible reason or not. I did have issues with the DX100 stuttering at times with high res music.

 

[TekeRugburn]

Biggest pet peeve, and I'm really beginning to hate it.
 
When scrolling the wheel clockwise, the on screen option "wheel" scrolls counterclockwise and vice versa.  
 
My crappy illustration: