AT CES i have tested a couple of DAP's to ba able to decide which one I would buy to replace my Iphone or Ipod 5.5 with E12A combos. I tested A&K 120 and 240, Pioneer DP100R and the Onkyo version and a couple of Hifiman devices. The 2nd day my choice was down to the Pioneer and the FIIO X7, both sounded equally fine and as good as the more expensive options (to my ears) the way they were presented at the show and were a lot cheaper than the A&K players. Next to that both could also run Spottify and Tidal which would make my music listening experience much more convenient. My preferred device was the Pioneer because it seemed to be more mature than the FIIO
As a last test I tried my own UE5 Pro CIEM's on both devices and strangely the Pioneer completely failed this test, It really sounded bad, the amp was apparently not capable of controlling the balanced drivers where the FIIO had no problems at all controlling the UE5 pro.
That combined with a CES last day discount made me buy the X7.
Now that I have the X7 I am very happy with the sound (especially of well mastered hi res content) but the device is not without flaws, maybe I should say it is not ready yet.
Compared what I expected reading the specs in the advertising:
- The music player works well with local music but I cannot get any DNLA/UPNP content to play, the button for this does not react al all.
- VU meters are completely missing.
- Custom mapping of buttons is not possible.
- Lyrics is very difficult to include with audio
- Firmware is not stable, crashes sometimes.
- If you are listening to Spotify and Tidal has been used before this than Tidal reacts to the hard buttons and not Spotify. (So pressing Pause in Spottify results in Tidal to start Playing
- Album art (Spottify and Tidal) is sometimes visible on the lock screen and sometimes not. It looks like the FIIO music software must be started and not used to show the Album art of the streaming devises.
- The name of the current playing song in the Lock screen only updates after pressing sleep 2 times. (Otherwise It will show the previous song)
All of these are minor glitches but I hope they will be fixed soon.
Next to that I also heard the noise when using WIFI but I only heard in a hotel sitting close to some kind of Airconditioning system, it sounds like an AM radio. At home I have not hear it at all.
Next to all these remarks I still think it is a very nice sounding player with a capable AMP and would buy it again without hesitation.