Official M3 firmware download and discussion thread - FW1.9--new UI theme, various UI improvements

[FiiO]

2016-12-07
Official firmware version FW1.9 for the M3 is now available!
 
M3 FW1.9:>> Download link
 
After downloading the file, please expand (unZIP) the zip archive and read "Instructions for updating the M3's firmware" contained within.
 

The following changes and improvements have been made to FW1.9 compared to FW1.7:

1. Added support for Fast forward/Rewind through in-line control;

2. Fixed issue where noise might be heard when playing certain WAV tracks;
3. Fixed issue where the total number of tracks displayed in the Now Playing menu would not be updated after deleting a track;
4. Fixed issue where the idle power off function might not work in some cases;
5. Fixed issue where the Hold function would not work when charging the player while the screen is off; 
6. Fixed issue where some buttons might not work after switching off the Hold button in some cases;
7. Fixed issue where the control buttons might still function when the player is turned off but being charged;
8. Miscellaneous bug fixes.
 

Looking forward to your comments and feedback. 

 

Spoiler: Firmware update instructions

How to upgrade the M3 firmware: 
Before updating:

1.  Please ensure that the M3 is adequately charged, preferably fully charged, before updating the firmware, to prevent loss of power during the udpate.
2.  You can only enter the shortcuts menu and from there the settings menu and the firmware update option by holding the menu button from the Now Playing screen.  Therefore, please load the M3 with at least one song and play a song before attempting to update the M3.
3.  You may go to Settings->Player information (first option, third / last page) to check the firmware version of the M3.

To update the M3's firmware:
1.  Extract and copy M3.hex to the root directory of the ***internal storage*** of the M3. (M3.hex may simply appear as "M3" on your computer.)
i.e. drag the M3.hex file directly from this package onto the drive icon of the M3 internal storage (called "FiiO" by default, volume size 7.xx GB)
2.  While playing a song on the M3, in the Now Playing screen, hold the menu button (upper left button on main panel) to open the shortcuts menu;  choose and select the cog icon at the bottom to enter settings menu;  click "up" once to choose "Auto upgrade" at the end of the System settings menu and select it to update the firmware, select the tick to confirm;
3.  The M3 will update its firmware and then reboot;
4.  Choose your preferred language for the M3 again.

Spoiler: Info on older firmware

2016-01-30
Official firmware version FW1.7 for the M3 is now available!
 

The following changes and improvements were made to FW1.7 compared to FW1.5:
The following changes and improvements were made to FW1.7 compared to FW1.5:
1. Added a new UI theme (theme 2);
2. Added options to clear the "favorites", "Playlist1" and "Playlist2" playlists, and to delete individual songs from each playlist;
3. Added "Screen off button response" option in System Settings, to customize the response to the front 6 buttons when screen is off:
   a) Direct action (default)--pressing one of the front buttons performs the action of the button directly without turning on the screen;
   b) Screen wakeup only--turns on the screen without performing the action of the button (until a second press);
   c) Wake+action--turns on the screen at the same time as performing the action of the button;
4. Language selection screen now appears immediately after firmware update / factory reset, before the library scan;
5. Fixed issues with playing certain mp3 files;
6. Fixed issue where switching from an APE High-compression encoded track to other tracks could cause noise to be emitted;
7. Fixed issue where if the M3 is turned off and then plugged in for charging, it turns itself back on when unplugged;
8. Fixed issue where battery icon does not stay lit onscreen even when screen timeout is set to ON (no timeout);
9. Fixed issue where the Hold button does not prevent button response under certain situations;
10. Corrected certain dialog language and fixed other miscellaneous bugs.
 
M3 FW1.7:>> Download link
 
2015-12-19
Official firmware FW1.5 for the M3 is now available!
 

The following changes and improvements were made to FW1.5 compared to FW1.4:
1.    Added option to go to Settings by holding menu button while not at the Now Playing screen.
2.    Added On/Off reminder for Fade in/Fade out.
3.    Fixed issue where the player would display format error by certain operations.
4.    Fixed issue where the genre tag of some APE files was read incorrectly.
5.    Fixed issue where the battery gauge couldn’t move when charging under certain interfaces.
6.    Fixed issue where the HOLD slider was defeated by certain operations. 
7.    Fixed issue where prev / next buttons couldn't work while music was paused at Now Playing screen.
8.    Broadened the range from 0-5s to 0-10s where the player would go to the previous song after press previous track button.
9.    Fixed issue where the LED indicator couldn’t light up caused by certain operations.
10.  Amended the reminder “Disk error” to “SD card removed” after auto updating completes after connecting to PC. 
11.  Amended “Play mode” to “Play settings” under System settings.
12.  Fixed issue where language option couldn’t show up after restart the player while the Hold key is on.
13.  Corrected display error of some prompts.
14.  Fixed issue where Rewind and Fast-forward couldn’t work by holding prev/next button while the player was paused

at Now Playing screen.
15.  Various other bug fixes.

 

M3 FW 1.5: >> Download link

 

 

The following changes and improvements were made to FW1.4 compared to FW1.1:

1.  Added welcome screen to boot-up animation;

2.  Added support for ogg vorbis;

3.  Added option to play lists and folders directly by holding menu button while a list or folder is chosen;

4.  Miscellaneous bug fixes.

Note: Samples shipped out before Nov 25th are not in this newest firmware version, you may try to upgrade it.

 

 

M3 FW1.4:  >> Download link 

 

Complete User Manual: >> Download link

 

[graemei101]

Glad to see that Fiio are starting the updates on the M3, but I am disappointed that inherently basic functionality has still been overlooked.  
I did send Joe a pm 2 weeks ago saying_ 
 
I am finding that my files are playing in incorrect order both in folder and album method.  My files are generally track number,  title but I am finding that 10 is appearing before 01.
 
Long album names (like Dark side of the moon)  do not display fully and do not scroll to give you the full album name (this also applies to track names and artists etc
 
 
The player only seems to show the first 23 characters in file names or Metadata. I suppose that if the player is only reading the first 23 characters then an album like- "The best of McAlmont and Butler (CD1)" and then the same but (CD2) is going to read as one album as the first 23 characters are the same.
 
This does not seem to have been addressed in 1.5, thereby making the play by album function of the player pretty useless. Having been an early adopter of both the x3 and x5, I am used to Fiio reacting to users comments and updating accordingly. As these were their first foray into the dap  market,  it was excusable, but now with their 6th (or 7th if you include the x7) there should be no excuse for lack of functionality.
I wonder if the hardware arrived on time,  but the software was not ready,  and rather than have a pile of stock sitting,  Fiio have decided to release it anyway. I have no doubt that Fiio will address all the issues to make this player as much a joy to use as it is to listen to, and once they do get it right they will have a sue fire winner on their hands. I look forward to being able to  play by album with tracks on the correct order and within the correct disc in the future,  but until then I suppose that I will have to listen  by folder. 

 

[JK1]

With the 1.5 firmware the skipping/stuttering occurs much less than with the 1.4, however it still happens occasionally. Sometimes tracks still play out of order and not according to the track numbers. Yes, they have a leading zero when needed, ie. 01, 02,...10,11, etc. Sometimes the pause button doesn't work when the screen is off. the player can't be turned off when the screen is off. First the screen needs to be turned on, then the player can be turned off. 

 

[JK1]

When will the next M3 firmware become available? I stopped using my M3 for now since the tracks still often play out of order, and there is still occasional skipping/stuttering, but not as much as with the 1.4 firmware. For the next M3 firmware, please use a larger and bolder font for the items that are displayed. Even when wearing my reading glasses, the items are still hard to read. I would also like to be able to add an album at a time to a playlist made on the player. How can an item be removed from a playlist made on the player? How can all items be removed from a playlist made on the player?

 

[fellow]

I agree with graemei101 and JK1 on all those points. I am encouraged, though, that FiiO are actively engaged with the community like this, and i've joined up to add this...
 
I found the track ordering to be problematic, and even in folder mode it seemed to order by the metadata track number. I would love the option in the settings to change between order by filename / order by track number. It is especially relevant when using audiobooks, some of which have 100 or more mp3 files. The M3 really has a problem when it reads 3 digit track numbers, even with leading zeroes.
 
In folder mode it would be nice to have a setting adjustable so that folders can be changed between list alphabetically / list by added date. I understand that for Chinese users the alphabetical option isn't helpful, and maybe the last added is more use, but for us European language users, alphabetical is really important.
 
The other main thing I would like to add is that holding down fast-forward or rewind only jumps about 15s a time (interval about every half second). It means if you have a long track such as a single-file audiobook, podcast, ambient sound or just a long song, you can be seeking for ages to find the place you want. It would be much better if the seek jumped further the longer you held the button- so say after 5 seconds of holding it is jumping minutes at a time rather than seconds. Even better if it could be worked out as a proportion of the track length.
 
One thing not so critical, but on my wishlist, would be a facility to bookmark your track position so that you can leave an audiobook and come back to it later.
 
I think perhaps i have been a bit spoiled by RockBox that i had on my (sadly now dead) Clip Zip. I love the M3, it is a great player- nice to look at it and great sound for the price point, but interface issues let it down for me-- although I accept that some of my expectations are based around audiobook listening rather than music.

 

[tinara]

I'll get a Fiio M3 on an informal lending. Can we customize the theme of the M3 like the Fiio X3? Mainly, I'll look for switch foreground and background colors (white on black instead of black on white) and put a higher size font.

 

[JK1]

  I'll get a Fiio M3 on an informal lending. Can we customize the theme of the M3 like the Fiio X3? Mainly, I'll look for switch foreground and background colors (white on black instead of black on white) and put a higher size font.

The customization isn't much on the X1. When I think about customization, I think about what Rockbox offers. It offers many choices of what is displayed, and how it is displayed. 

 

[tinara]

Agreed but we ain't gonna see Rockbox coming on the Fiio M3 soon imo and Fiio offered a little customisation option with X3, just hoping we can do it on the M3 too. It seems I dreamed a little bit on that part .

 

[ondrak]

It is a really good DAP for a reasonable price but there are some major problems about this device which I hope are fixable via new firmware release:
 
- if playing for a while (screen gets darkened, hold button is not pressed) six buttoned area sometimes does not respond to pressing a button for a few first tries. Sometimes it is not responding at all. I have to press on/off button on the side to light up a screen and then it works. I always try to press buttons correctly to ensure the problem it’s causing a DAP, not me. I don’t think it’s hardware problem.
- options are quite lacking
- equalizer has very limited range of frequencies and also limited levels of adjustment.
- a rotating vinyl animation is ugly and primitive, it spoils a good feeling of DAP’s design. There is no option to change it or turn off.
- font has short spaces between words, they seem stuck together.
 
But this all is nothing compared to terrible functionality of sorting songs.
The best thing in the world would be option to set sorting by personal preferences. I would like to sort my songs by album interpret. They are sorted by interpret only. This is bad. If several (often hosted) musicians worked on the song and the file is tagged by their names, your music library goes pretty messy, there are no longer only names of the bands but names of all the people who cooperated with those bands. I hope no one is interested in such a chaos in his device. Since I noticed that files in category “interpret” are sorted by interpret tag only, that means if the file has interpret tag lacking but album interpret tag is filled properly, that file will not be shown in this category at all, there’s no priority of tags in sorting, the only possibility there is sorting by interpret tag.
 
Why this player is not showing an actual tagged name of the song and it is showing file name instead!? This regards both “now playing” screen and whole library hierarchy. I would understand that in selecting a file through the last option in the menu (directory) but I don’t definitely get it when selecting by other ways (song, interpret, album). Should I manually rename all the thousands of my music files because of this?
 
In searching through “directory option”, folders are no sorted alphabetically. The latest added are at the bottom. That's bad.
 
Long file names are not displayed completely. It is impossible then to select a song you want if a name of the file is long (or not containing a name of the song, again – proper would be if a device does show tagged name of the song, not the name of the file!). Please fix that, it should be sorted by actual song name tag! I have to play whole folder and find a desired song by clicking on next button and waiting for name to roll through its length on screen (of course this is possible only when name of the file is the same as actual name of the song). Bwah, terrible!
 
Another problem is with displaying cover arts of songs. DAP has quite good display and thus displaying cover art is aesthetical advantage (anything better than that pissing animation of vinyl disc). I understand that to display cover art it has to be implicit to file itself. My music library is perfectly provided with cover art implicitly saved in files. I didn’t understand for a while why in some cases cover art is displayed while when in others it's not. Then I figured it out, it wasn’t so hard. DAP does not display bmp and png files. It does only jpg. It would be great to fix, if it is fixable.
 
If I choose a song (no matter by what category – song, interpret, album, folder) and I want to choose other song from the currently listened album, it should be logical that “back” button (left upper) will get me backwards through the hierarchy, to the current album. Every DAP I had has it this way and for a good reason. But this device gets me to the main menu and I have to go through selection process once again. And again. And again. Every time I want to select particular song and not repeatedly clicking on “next” button while on "song playing screen" as a dumbass. What a drag.
 
I hope next FW releases will fix this. I don’t write pluses of the DAP here (there are a lot of great things about the device) because it’s not constructive for FW developers. As a customer I highly appreciate opportunity of this feedback communication with the company and I am hopefully looking forward to new FW releases. M3 is my first FiiO product and I am amazed with this company attitude towards customers. This is one of the major reasons why I’ll recommend FiiO to everyone, who has serious interest in purchasing well-build DAP. But not until the major of these issues will be fixed.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

2016-01-30

Official firmware version FW1.7 for the M3 is now available!

Download link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/apvzvbcr7v8v2ij/M3%20FW1.7.zip?dl=0
After downloading the file, please expand (unZIP) the zip archive and read "Instructions for updating the M3's firmware" contained within.

The following changes and improvements were made to FW1.7 compared to FW1.5:

1. Added a new UI theme (theme 2);
2. Added options to clear the "favorites", "Playlist1" and "Playlist2" playlists, and to delete individual songs from each playlist;
3. Added "Screen off button response" option in System Settings, to customize the response to the front 6 buttons when screen is off:
a) Direct action (default)--pressing one of the front buttons performs the action of the button directly without turning on the screen;
b) Screen wakeup only--turns on the screen without performing the action of the button (until a second press);
c) Wake+action--turns on the screen at the same time as performing the action of the button;
4. Language selection screen now appears immediately after firmware update / factory reset, before the library scan;
6. Fixed issues with playing certain mp3 files;
7. Fixed issue where switching from an APE High-compression encoded track to other tracks could cause noise to be emitted;
5. Fixed issue where if the M3 is turned off and then plugged in for charging, it turns itself back on when unplugged;
8. Fixed issue where battery icon does not stay lit onscreen even when screen timeout is set to ON (no timeout);
9. Fixed issue where the Hold button does not prevent button response under certain situations;
10. Corrected certain dialog language and fixed other miscellaneous bugs.

Looking forward to your comments and feedback.

 

[JK1]

2016-01-30

Official firmware version FW1.7 for the M3 is now available!

Download link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/apvzvbcr7v8v2ij/M3%20FW1.7.zip?dl=0
After downloading the file, please expand (unZIP) the zip archive and read "Instructions for updating the M3's firmware" contained within.

The following changes and improvements were made to FW1.7 compared to FW1.5:

1. Added a new UI theme (theme 2);
2. Added options to clear the "favorites", "Playlist1" and "Playlist2" playlists, and to delete individual songs from each playlist;
3. Added "Screen off button response" option in System Settings, to customize the response to the front 6 buttons when screen is off:
a) Direct action (default)--pressing one of the front buttons performs the action of the button directly without turning on the screen;
b) Screen wakeup only--turns on the screen without performing the action of the button (until a second press);
c) Wake+action--turns on the screen at the same time as performing the action of the button;
4. Language selection screen now appears immediately after firmware update / factory reset, before the library scan;
6. Fixed issues with playing certain mp3 files;
7. Fixed issue where switching from an APE High-compression encoded track to other tracks could cause noise to be emitted;
5. Fixed issue where if the M3 is turned off and then plugged in for charging, it turns itself back on when unplugged;
8. Fixed issue where battery icon does not stay lit onscreen even when screen timeout is set to ON (no timeout);
9. Fixed issue where the Hold button does not prevent button response under certain situations;
10. Corrected certain dialog language and fixed other miscellaneous bugs.

Looking forward to your comments and feedback.

Why are some songs still out of order? I use 320 kbps mp3 files. My tags are ID3V2.3ISO 8859-1. Are my tags in the wrong format for this player, or is this still a firmware glitch? Yes, I used leading zeros when needed. I was hoping you would increase the size and boldness of the displayed charachters. I needed to put on two pairs of reading glasses to read it. The single pair I usually use wasn't enough.

 

[fellow]

Agreed (again) on the ordering-- file ordering is still woeful!
 
Serious anti climax with the new theme! Same bugger font as before, only now with uglified colours-- come on FiiO, sort it out
 
On the plus side-- button response better- i like that i can wake the screen with a button press, that's progress.
 
Oh FiiO.... all of the basic issues that we have listed are still here!!
 
 
EDIT: Oh yeah, this as well... "Born for Music and Happy" makes no sense!! I'm embarrassed to let my mates see this, so it is staying in my pocket. That slogan is not one bit show-offable.
 
I think what you mean is something like:
 
"Made for Music"
or
"For Music and Happiness"
or maybe
"Track List Shuffling for Laughs"
 
But basically anything other than the current slogan.

 

[JK1]

  Agreed (again) on the ordering-- file ordering is still woeful!
 
Serious anti climax with the new theme! Same bugger font as before, only now with uglified colours-- come on FiiO, sort it out
 
On the plus side-- button response better- i like that i can wake the screen with a button press, that's progress.
 
Oh FiiO.... all of the basic issues that we have listed are still here!!
 
 
EDIT: Oh yeah, this as well... "Born for Music and Happy" makes no sense!! I'm embarrassed to let my mates see this, so it is staying in my pocket. That slogan is not one bit show-offable.
 
I think what you mean is something like:
 
"Made for Music"
or
"For Music and Happiness"
or maybe
"Track List Shuffling for Laughs"
 
But basically anything other than the current slogan.

"Born for Music and Happy" is probably a direct translation word for word from Chinese. It doesn't make sense grammatically in English. Perhaps the intention of the slogan might be "Born for musical enjoyment", or perhaps even better, "Created for musical enjoyment"? Perhaps a slogan could be "Music is more enjoyable with Fiio".

 

[sunny25]

Is there any tools for mod fw ?

 

[samu]

Wow...the screen button response when screen-off update is something that I have been really waiting for. Thanks FiiO.