[Dobrescu George]

@harpo1 @talan7 @JaviAl Do you have the super mode active?

 

[JaviAl]

I'm on the latest firmware (?)

Tested, FiiO music app works flawlessly for me, 2 microSD cards, 1xSamsung 128GB, 1XSanDisk 256GB, both full with flac files, around 8000 - 10.000 files or so, works lightning fast with folder browsing. Ever so slightly slower with Artist or Album or other browsing methods, but the lists are almost ten time as long, and it still is smooth to my eyes

Do you have considerably more files? I'm trying to figure out what could cause something like what you mention

Maybe one of your mSD cards went bad ?

I had this happen to me once, there was a bad spot at the middle of the card. X7mkii was really sensitive to this, and would randomly crash, even if that spot wasn't being played, while the card worked fine in other DAPs, unless you'd play the song on that spot .

I figured out that the card had a damage because I tried to copy all of its content to PC to copy it back and format it, and it crashed in windows, gave me 0 bytes / second and then it was ded.

To add to the fact that X7mkii si fully stable to me, right now I have all my album art on external .jpg or .png files, some of which are huge, and I also have the two mSD cards formatted one as FAT32 and one as exFAT.
\
I'm trying to make it die or stutter on me before I post my review, but I can't . It is buttery smooth for me

I use a 1 TB Kingston HyperX Pendrive and a 2 TB Samsung T5 SSD connected via OTG. No problems in FW 3.3.0. But every last firmware 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.3 is very more slowly and less responsive compared to FW 3.3.0. Also constantly stoping/pausing playing for a second or more in the first 5 seconds of a song occurs randomly in firmwares 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.3 not in FW 3.3.0. I have around 20.000 song files in my library.

 

[csglinux]

I really don't think V30 has the best sound out there, especially compared to X7mkii.

Just out of curiosity, which music app(s) did you use to test the V30?

 

[Dobrescu George]

I use a 1 TB Kingston HyperX Pendrive and a 2 TB Samsung T5 SSD connected via OTG. No problems in FW 3.3.0. But every last firmware 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.3 is very more slowly and less responsive compared to FW 3.3.0. Also constantly stoping/pausing playing for a second or more in the first 5 seconds of a song occurs randomly in firmwares 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.3 not in FW 3.3.0. I have around 20.000 song files in my library.

Woah, that is quite the music source.

I am not sure what to say in this situation, sounds like the OTG support might be getting iffy rather than the music app itself . Have you tried to change the OTG cable? I had one or two randomly fail on me

@FiiO FiiO, maybe there is something that is possible to fix in the upcoming firmwares about OTG (?)

I cannot use OTG becuase I don't trust OTG cables, but I'd love for people using it to get the best experience possible.

 

[Dobrescu George]

Just out of curiosity, which music app(s) did you use to test the V30?

VLC, This is my guideline music app for any device that doesn't include a very clear defined music app, or one that I can use easily

I like the sound of Neutron, but the GUI is not made for me, and for PowerAmp, similar situation, the sound is great, but the GUI is not for me either

For DAPs, I test them with their default app usually, since the default app is usually most configured to work best with a device

Mind me, I tested V30 for a short period of time as it wasn't my phone, but still had the chance to play a bit with it. The sound is not bad by any means, but I still prefer X7mkii, and by a good margin. Think about it this way., V30 is good, X7mkii is just better in every way (Better impact, better dynamics, better instrument separation, instrument definition, instrument placing, wider soundstage)

 

[csglinux]

VLC, This is my guideline music app for any device that doesn't include a very clear defined music app, or one that I can use easily

I agree that the X7ii is the better-sounding device - but not by much (to my ears). Certainly not by a large enough margin to warrant me carrying two devices.

If you get a chance, you need to give the V30 another shot, because VLC (or even the stock LG music app) don't do it justice - and I'm not talking about minor nuances. The V30 DAC has a bug that causes it to up-sample all 44 kHz/16-bit files and the artifacts of the re-sampling are rather significant. More details on the 2nd spoiler section in this link:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/music-apps-tips-and-tricks-for-the-lg-v30.868978/

P.S. The up-sampling issue can be fixed with the right settings in Neutron.

 

[JaviAl]

Woah, that is quite the music source.

I am not sure what to say in this situation, sounds like the OTG support might be getting iffy rather than the music app itself . Have you tried to change the OTG cable? I had one or two randomly fail on me

@FiiO FiiO, maybe there is something that is possible to fix in the upcoming firmwares about OTG (?)

I cannot use OTG becuase I don't trust OTG cables, but I'd love for people using it to get the best experience possible.

My OTG cable runs very well in FW 3.3.0 and in other devices. Also, i try with other OTG cable with new firmwares and same results. I have more than five new OTG cable in case it fails.

@harpo1 @talan7 @JaviAl Do you have the super mode active?

What is and where the super mode in FiiO X7?

 

[Dobrescu George]

My OTG cable runs very well in FW 3.3.0 and in other devices. Also, i try with other OTG cable with new firmwares and same results. I have more than five new OTG cable in case it fails.


What is and where the super mode in FiiO X7?

It is somewhjere in the settings, it should imrpvoe the smoothness of the system a bit

 

[Joe Bloggs]

I don't think R6 will be much quicker, it has a similar SoC. It does have Hiby's super strong software, but there is only so much the SoC within can do without becoming a hot volcano.

@Joe Bloggs probably knows if R6 is as quick as V20 / V30, but again, those are flagship level smartphones with ultra hot and power-hungry SoC units, I would never want something like that in my DAP

The question I think was whether it would be faster than the X7 II, esp. with regards to streaming Tidal.

I wouldn't point to it directly here but you can find Antutu benchmark results of these players on a certain review at Headfonics.com

As for the speed of downloading Tidal music files, I believe all the dedicated players mentioned would benefit from having connection to a 5GHz WiFi network. The discrete DAC and amplification circuitry in these players are more prone to interference from 2.4GHz networks than the highly integrated circuitry on regular cellphones and when prioritizing audio quality over WiFi reception, the resulting speeds on 2.4GHz networks often aren't the best.

 

[Dobrescu George]

The question I think was whether it would be faster than the X7 II, esp. with regards to streaming Tidal.

I wouldn't point to it directly here but you can find Antutu benchmark results of these players on a certain review at Headfonics.com

As for the speed of downloading Tidal music files, I believe all the dedicated players mentioned would benefit from having connection to a 5GHz WiFi network. The discrete DAC and amplification circuitry in these players are more prone to interference from 2.4GHz networks than the highly integrated circuitry on regular cellphones and when prioritizing audio quality over WiFi reception, the resulting speeds on 2.4GHz networks often aren't the best.

My router is 2.4 GHz only...

What I am curious is if you'd say that it is as fast as V20 / V30 in general.

X7mkii is already faster than my daily phone, a Xiaomi Mi Max 2, which is a really fast upper midrange Android device based on Snapdragon 625. This might be because I only used FiiO's own music app, but still works better for me. I don't know why Tidal would work poorly on anything, but it doesn't seem to work differenly on my phone or my X7mkii. I live 50 cm next to a router, so I get full signal on both devices.

As for 5GHz networks, I simply didn't upgrade my router...

 

[harpo1]

My router is 2.4 GHz only...

What I am curious is if you'd say that it is as fast as V20 / V30 in general.

X7mkii is already faster than my daily phone, a Xiaomi Mi Max 2, which is a really fast upper midrange Android device based on Snapdragon 625. This might be because I only used FiiO's own music app, but still works better for me. I don't know why Tidal would work poorly on anything, but it doesn't seem to work differenly on my phone or my X7mkii. I live 50 cm next to a router, so I get full signal on both devices.

As for 5GHz networks, I simply didn't upgrade my router...

You're only running one app on your X7ii that's why it seems faster. The issue isn't so much speed with most current DAPs, it has more to do with the Rockchip they use. It's horrible for streaming Tidal. All my phones with snapdragons in them never have issues with Tidal and I'm willing to bet the R6 won't either. Manufacturers need to quit using the Rockchip.

 

[Dobrescu George]

You're only running one app on your X7ii that's why it seems faster. The issue isn't so much speed with most current DAPs, it has more to do with the Rockchip they use. It's horrible for streaming Tidal. All my phones with snapdragons in them never have issues with Tidal and I'm willing to bet the R6 won't either. Manufacturers need to quit using the Rockchip.

Oh, so all Rockchip based DAPs will behave similarly with Tidal

Can't Rockchip release an update or upgrade to fix this?

As I pointed earlier, it is not FiiO's work to make it work better, they cannot really approach this without the source code, so somebody should fix this

As for using Rockchip, most companies said that they cannot use other chips for small quantity runs, other chips have a minimum order in the numbers of thousands, making them less of an ideal situation

 

[harpo1]

Oh, so all Rockchip based DAPs will behave similarly with Tidal

Can't Rockchip release an update or upgrade to fix this?

As I pointed earlier, it is not FiiO's work to make it work better, they cannot really approach this without the source code, so somebody should fix this

As for using Rockchip, most companies said that they cannot use other chips for small quantity runs, other chips have a minimum order in the numbers of thousands, making them less of an ideal situation

You think Hiby is a large company? They managed to do it and their DAP falls in line with all these other DAP's price wise.

 

[Dobrescu George]

You think Hiby is a large company? They managed to do it and their DAP falls in line with all these other DAP's price wise.

Hiby is behind 90% of the Chinese DAPs software wise, and was behind FiiO for X5, x5ii, so yes, Hiby is most certainly big. They are behind the firmware of Cayin, Shanling, and many many others actually...

I don't have an R6 right now to confirm what it can actually pull. I expect it to be good, simply because Hiby and their firmware, and I will eventually get one to tell, but right now I cannot say.

Until then, I still love X7mkii, and even if R6 is awesome, i'll love it as well, doesn't make X7mkii any less good.

I have DX200, Opus #2, X7mkii, AP200, Shanling M2s, and a few others. I think that X7mkii is quite good for its price, the sonic performance is really good. I will be putting it through a few more tests in the near future, but I do feel like people are putting it through specific usage case scenarios that are a bit more than I do while on-the-go.

Think about it this way, I'm either on-the-go with 2xmSD cards, or at home using it as a USB DAC. If I'm on-the-go I don't have wifi unless using my phone for teethering, and at home I just use it as a USB DAC attached to a workstation with a 43" screen, so it is a lot different than some other usage scenarios I've seen it placed through

To mention, it works as a USB DAC connected to my monitor

 

[JaviAl]

It is somewhjere in the settings, it should imrpvoe the smoothness of the system a bit

No Super Mode in FiiO X7 Settings or FiiO Music Settings.