[drmacman]

listening grado sr225e, I do not give me that sense of fullness of sound, listening to metal, kreator, gunse n roses, violator, Exodus etc.

what dap had you used before you bought dp?

 

[Sonic Defender]

  listening grado sr225e, I do not give me that sense of fullness of sound, listening to metal, kreator, gunse n roses, violator, Exodus etc.

Well, I owned a SR225i, and loved it, but Grado's are not really full sounding, certainly not the prestige series anyway. I also owned the 125 and briefly a 325 and an HF2. You should consider a closed portable if you want a full sound, which I assume means more body and weight which will be mostly communicated through the lower frequencies of course which are not the strengths of the SR225 going by memory. Don't get me wrong, the 225 is an excellent headphone that I loved very much so not trying to dismiss it at all.

 

[cirodts]

  Well, I owned a SR225i, and loved it, but Grado's are not really full sounding, certainly not the prestige series anyway. I also owned the 125 and briefly a 325 and an HF2. You should consider a closed portable if you want a full sound, which I assume means more body and weight which will be mostly communicated through the lower frequencies of course which are not the strengths of the SR225 going by memory. Don't get me wrong, the 225 is an excellent headphone that I loved very much so not trying to dismiss it at all.

In fact, with 225 I feel good, but I feel strangely lower with my samsung s3 that with the dp, dp is definitely cleaner and articulated as sound but does not excite me as it should.

 

[Laird]

  Does the DP-X1 use the same exact tagging structure/format as the Fiio X5 1st generation?

The audio file tagging structure is defined by the various ID3 standards and is a function of the music files themselves and not the players. So yes - they both expect/process file tags.
 
What IS different is how the tags are used by the player to enable you to navigate through your music library. Case in point - the X5 "genre" menu takes you to a list of genres, but when you select a genre, you then get a list of songs in that genre. (not very usable when your "classical" genre has 800 tracks in it). On the DP-X1 with the default app, when you go to the genre menu and select a list of genres, you get a list of artists who have songs in that genre. When you select an artist on that list, you get the list of albums for that artist and an additional "all songs" option. If you select "all songs" you get all the songs for all the albums for that artist. If you select an album, you get all the songs on the album and can go from there.
 
In both cases, the tags in the files are identical. (In fact, the files are identical - I have an X5-1 and a DP-X1.)  It is how the player chooses to use or not use the tags that drives things. If you have a larger library, the Onkyo app behavior is vastly superior to that of the FiiO.
 
Both my DP-X1 and my FiiO X7/AM3 each have a 1TB Samsung T3 tethered with about 800GB/20,000 tracks of music on them. Even on the X7, I downloaded the Onkyo HF player so I could get better navigation. The way FiiO app on the X7 and the embedded software in the X5 implement genre-based navigation is completely unusable except with a small library.
 
None of the available android high-rez players out there (and very few of any of the non-hi-rez players) handle the "Album Artist" tag properly as opposed to using the "Artist" tag - so on all these devices you end up with your various artist lists polluted with crap-loads of "1-song" artists which is a nightmare for usability if you have more than a few compilation albums and a large library. A good implementation would give you an option to use "album artist" rather than "artist" and then permit you to select between two methods of handling multi-artist (compilation) albums. SOMEDAY somebody will take care of that - but I am not holding my breath.

 

[MadDane]

  What headphones are you using? The DP-X1 is anything but thin sounding, at least that is what I found. Rock is always kind of thin if you ask me, and I have been listening to it since the 1980s. Once the guitars get screaming and the cymbals are swished and pounded those frequencies will be very front and center "thinning" the sound. I know there are times when the bass is prominent, but as I said I never find rock to consistently have much body. I'm sure there are exceptions, and a great deal I haven't heard, so I'm only speaking based on my personal experience which is of course nothing more than that.

Agreed!!  Listening to rock for 40+ years.  When I get real deep bass it's usually acoustic/Jazz/Classical.
 
Just my 2 cents, ymmv!

 

[cirodts]

 
The audio file tagging structure is defined by the various ID3 standards and is a function of the music files themselves and not the players. So yes - they both expect/process file tags.
 
What IS different is how the tags are used by the player to enable you to navigate through your music library. Case in point - the X5 "genre" menu takes you to a list of genres, but when you select a genre, you then get a list of songs in that genre. (not very usable when your "classical" genre has 800 tracks in it). On the DP-X1 with the default app, when you go to the genre menu and select a list of genres, you get a list of artists who have songs in that genre. When you select an artist on that list, you get the list of albums for that artist and an additional "all songs" option. If you select "all songs" you get all the songs for all the albums for that artist. If you select an album, you get all the songs on the album and can go from there.
 
In both cases, the tags in the files are identical. (In fact, the files are identical - I have an X5-1 and a DP-X1.)  It is how the player chooses to use or not use the tags that drives things. If you have a larger library, the Onkyo app behavior is vastly superior to that of the FiiO.
 
Both my DP-X1 and my FiiO X7/AM3 each have a 1TB Samsung T3 tethered with about 800GB/20,000 tracks of music on them. Even on the X7, I downloaded the Onkyo HF player so I could get better navigation. The way FiiO app on the X7 and the embedded software in the X5 implement genre-based navigation is completely unusable except with a small library.
 
None of the available android high-rez players out there (and very few of any of the non-hi-rez players) handle the "Album Artist" tag properly as opposed to using the "Artist" tag - so on all these devices you end up with your various artist lists polluted with crap-loads of "1-song" artists which is a nightmare for usability if you have more than a few compilation albums and a large library. A good implementation would give you an option to use "album artist" rather than "artist" and then permit you to select between two methods of handling multi-artist (compilation) albums. SOMEDAY somebody will take care of that - but I am not holding my breath.

you have the x5ii gen? if you could explain to me what are the differences with dp x1 see which best suited to listen to rock?
I headphones grado sr 225E

 

[Laird]

  you have the x5ii gen? if you could explain to me what are the differences with dp x1 see which best suited to listen to rock?
I headphones grado sr 225E

I have the 1st-gen X5 and I do not have your phones. I can tell you that neither the X5 nor the unbalanced output of the DP-X1 could drive my cans (HiFiMan HE-560) well at all. I have an E12 stacked with the X5 and that takes care of it. The balanced output of the DP-X1 (I had to make a cable for my cans) just manages the task.
 
I also have a now-old-but-still-wonderful set of LiveWires Trips for actual portable use. Even they benefit from the added power of the E12, and I am waiting to modify a LiveWires cable for balanced drive to see what happens with the DP-X1.
 
I listen to a lot of just about everything. I am not a bass-head. I try very hard to not use the EQ at all on any portable unit and if I do find I need to EQ I do so caaareefulllyyy and gently and only to compensate for other flaws somewhere in the audio chain. I am looking for detail and accuracy. If the original mix/mastering is somehow "thin" then I want playback to be "thin" too. If the original material is scooped, then I want to hear the scoop. If the original recording has a lot of sibilance, then I want to hear a lot of sibilance in the playback. I have a reasonably-high-end hifi system and use that as a baseline. If those are not the things you are looking for (the universe of preferences is pretty large here) then my opinion about sound signature is less than useless to you. Both the X5/E12 and DP-X1 seem to do fine for my purposes in that regard.

 

[Riley Beale]

Thanks for the in depth information.  I do have compilation albums, but have l only a handful and I have them tagged as various artist and in album artist and I believe I have left artist tag blank.  Would this make the DP-X1 harder to navigate?  The only tags that the X5 1st gen can properly read are under MP3 ApeV2 (ID3V1, ID3V2, ApeV2).  I do not want to retag again.  It was a huge pain.  Will the DP-x1 properly read and use my tags where I can find everything the way I tagged it?  The X-dap software seems to not read my tags properly so I am worried the DP-X1 won't either?  Could you send me a screenshot of how you tag your music so I can see if I have it correctly or not?  I am not at the point that I want a DP-X1 yet if it won't read my tags.  Thanks everybody!  This is a great forum!

 

[Laird]

  Thanks for the in depth information.  I do have compilation albums, but have l only a handful and I have them tagged as various artist and in album artist and I believe I have left artist tag blank.  Would this make the DP-X1 harder to navigate?  The only tags that the X5 1st gen can properly read are under MP3 ApeV2 (ID3V1, ID3V2, ApeV2).  I do not want to retag again.  It was a huge pain.  Will the DP-x1 properly read and use my tags where I can find everything the way I tagged it?  The X-dap software seems to not read my tags properly so I am worried the DP-X1 won't either?  Could you send me a screenshot of how you tag your music so I can see if I have it correctly or not?  I am not at the point that I want a DP-X1 yet if it won't read my tags.  Thanks everybody!  This is a great forum!

If you set "Artist" to "Various Artists" and then don't use album artist for your compilations, then you will not have the problem I described, but you will lose the track-by-track info of who that performer on that track is. If that works for you, then you will have not problem.
 
I have a large number of thoroughly-tagged flac, dsf, and m4a (alac) files in my collection and my players have no issue with any of them - it is just that they all ignore the "Album Artist" tag, which is distinct from the "Artist" tag.
 
Really, the "proper" way to handle things is to use the album artist tag in conjunction with the artist and compilation tags using the following pseudo-algorithm. Most desktop players (JRiver, Etc.) can do this - but for some reason portable players have ignored this for the most part:
 
// this is a compilation, and the user wants compilations grouped separately
if ((Tags.isCompilation) && (not UserPrefs.IgnoreCompilationTag)) then {
   if (existsAndIsNonBlank(TrackTags.AlbumArtist)) then {
      ArtistToUseForNavigation = AlbumArtist  // if they force-feed you the album artist, you should use it - even if it "wrong" in theory.
   } else {
      ArtistToUseForNavigation = "Various Artists" // or "Compilations" or whatever - just always use the same thing and make it make sense
   }
} else {  // treat track as though it is not from a compilation, either because the compilation tag is not set or because the user prefers to ignore it
  if (existsAndIsNonBlank(TrackTags.AlbumArtist)) then {
    ArtistToUseForNavigation = AlbumArtist
} else {
   if (existsAndIsNonBlank(TrackTags.Artist)) then {
     ArtistToUseForNavigation = Artist
   } else {    // not a compilation and yet neither artist nor album artist are set...ouch
     ArtistToUseForNavigation = "Unknown Artist" // or something like that
   }
}
 
Note however, that when the track data is displayed during playback (which is NOT navigation), the actual artist field should be used rather than album artist. So you navigate to your copy of "Subdivisions: A Tribute to Rush" you find it under "various artists" (or "compilations" or whatever) but when you have on Kip Winger's rendering of "Spirit of the Radio" the screen shows the album art, the song title as "Spirit of the Radio", the album name as "Subdivisions: A Tribute to Rush", and the Artist's name as "Kip Winger" (and NOT "Various Artists").

 

[Riley Beale]

I do have artist and album artist as various artist.  Will that work?  Will my tagging show up as I have tagged my music on the Onkyo brand music playing software or should I use another kind of software on my DP-X1 to play music?

 

[Gerryhatrick]

An earlier post suggested setting variable line out on to increase volume. I have tried to replicate this but this option is missing on the relevant menu - only fixed line out is there which locks the volume at max. variable line out should be immediately below fixed line out but it is notable by its absence!

Anybody have an explanation?

 

[Peridot]

An earlier post suggested setting variable line out on to increase volume. I have tried to replicate this but this option is missing on the relevant menu - only fixed line out is there which locks the volume at max. variable line out should be immediately below fixed line out but it is notable by its absence!

Anybody have an explanation?

 
It's only available on units that have a volume cap applied to the normal volume control. 
 
If it's not on the menu then you have an uncapped player and can just use it as normal. 
 
You should have enough power available to damage your hearing on most headphones 

 

[bettyn]

  Something as expensive as the X1 should not be a throw away item simply because the damn battery is wearing out. I debated ordering the X1, but for it's price it shouldn't be a disposable item and so ordered the much cheaper Cowon PD. At least the PD's battery is accessible if I should ever decide to replace it.
Yes, I know the PD doesn't even compare, but the thought of dealing with a dying $800 DAP doesn't set well--just because of a battery!
Damn you X1! I still want you! LOL  

So do I. I ordered one, it sounded great and I didn't have the headphone jack problems some encountered, but the battery would only hold a charge for 4 hours with all other programs like Wifi, Bluetooth, Airplane Mode, etc. turned off. I think I shut down just about everything I possibly could, but nothing helped. Returned it to Japanese seller (  through Amazon). They let me know they received the unit about a week ago, but nothing since. Think I just lost $700+. Don't think I'll ever order another Android player again. Just too much other bells and whistles I don't need that can't be fully disabled for the player to work properly. Wonder if the cheaper Pioneer has this same problem. (Not that I want it.)

 

[Despotes]

  So do I. I ordered one, it sounded great and I didn't have the headphone jack problems some encountered, but the battery would only hold a charge for 4 hours with all other programs like Wifi, Bluetooth, Airplane Mode, etc. turned off. I think I shut down just about everything I possibly could, but nothing helped. Returned it to Japanese seller (  through Amazon). They let me know they received the unit about a week ago, but nothing since. Think I just lost $700+. Don't think I'll ever order another Android player again. Just too much other bells and whistles I don't need that can't be fully disabled for the player to work properly. Wonder if the cheaper Pioneer has this same problem. (Not that I want it.)

 
Contact the seller for the refund and dispute the charge on your credit card.

 

[bettyn]

   
Contact the seller for the refund and dispute the charge on your credit card.

Exactly what I plan to do.