The FiiO X3 2nd gen (ex X3K, X3II) Thread : 192K/24B, CS4398,Native DSD, USB DAC with LO and inline remote

[fourrobert13]

   
Check the FIIO OTG forum for more info.. there is plenty of us trying to expand the storage capabilities of our systems beyond the 128GB limit (microSD).  512GB is possible with a OTG SSD - it just takes the right one (Integral) due to the USB controller design.  This gives the ultimate number of track selections available to the device - I wedge the SSD between the Fiio Mt. Blanc amp and the X3 gen 2.  For selection/quality, this can't be beat ... amazing to have a full rack of high fidelity tracks available on random play - a perfect combination.

What kind of battery life do you get with the X3 with this set up?

 

[Sound Eq]

when will there be a new firmware that fixes that eq works from line out

 

[JaZZ]

  when will there be a new firmware that fixes that eq works from line out?

 
You could try firmware 1.11 beta. Just take care to not remove your headphone when the player is on if your unit has # W233b!

 

[goodyfresh]

Guys, guys. . .I FREAKING LOVE THIS THING.  Granted, I'm pretty new to the audiophile community, and this is my first ever hi-res player. . .my previous experience has been with onboard sound on computers, smartphones, and things like iPods.  And all I know is, my ears could not be happier, this thing sounds WAY better than music players I've listened to in the past!  And the USB DAC function provides a GREAT improvement over the godawful built-in Beats Audio (yes, Beats, ugh) in my HP Envy Laptop, which is the one and only thing I always disliked about this laptop since getting it >_<

I know we already have been, but we need to PREACH THE GOOD WORD even more, guys. . .the good word that Fiio is making the best bang-for-your-buck budget hi-res DAP's out there right now!

 

[despuit]

  Guys, guys. . .I FREAKING LOVE THIS THING.  Granted, I'm pretty new to the audiophile community, and this is my first ever hi-res player. . .my previous experience has been with onboard sound on computers, smartphones, and things like iPods.  And all I know is, my ears could not be happier, this thing sounds WAY better than music players I've listened to in the past!  And the USB DAC function provides a GREAT improvement over the godawful built-in Beats Audio (yes, Beats, ugh) in my HP Envy Laptop, which is the one and only thing I always disliked about this laptop since getting it >_<

I know we already have been, but we need to PREACH THE GOOD WORD even more, guys. . .the good word that Fiio is making the best bang-for-your-buck budget hi-res DAP's out there right now!

If you are running a 64 bit architecture and are a bass head you can go into enhancements and enable bass boost, I set it at 80hz 6DB as my amp is all ready +10 with -4 treble.That will have your ears shaking pretty good, I have HD-25s and I notice the right connection keeps becoming loose as the bass is shaking it out lol. I all so set my settings to low latency, 8192 samples in ASIO menu.  And all so while in the device properties where you set bass boost don't forget to goto advanced and max out your sample rate.

 

[goodyfresh]

  If you are running a 64 bit architecture and are a bass head you can go into enhancements and enable bass boost, I set it at 80hz 6DB as my amp is all ready +10 with -4 treble.That will have your ears shaking pretty good, I have HD-25s and I notice the right connection keeps becoming loose as the bass is shaking it out lol. I all so set my settings to low latency, 8192 samples in ASIO menu.  And all so while in the device properties where you set bass boost don't forget to goto advanced and max out your sample rate.

I'm not a basshead except when I listen to one genre. .  .that genre being rap, honestly.  But damn you're right, enabling bass-boost from Windows through the Fiio X3 2G as a DAC works WAY better than doing so with the onboard sound, let-alone the god-awful muddy and distorted bass-boost available through Beats Audio on this laptop >_<

I do have a question for other though, not despuit now.  Is despuit right, will going into Windows Advanced Sound Settings for the Fiio X3 DAC Output, and setting it to 24-bit/192khz output, actually make any difference in the sound-quality?  Wouldn't it make more sense to keep re-setting the output each time you play files at a different sample rate, setting it to match the sample-rate of the files being played?  Or what?  What do you guys think?

And how safe is it to set the buffering to minimum latency, and what effect does it actually have to set the buffer to 8192?  I don't know enough about the technical details of how ASIO works to judge this myself, so I'd appreciate input from guys who really know the technicalities of it   Keep in mind I do have some background in comp-sci and electrical engineering and a very heavy math background, so don't worry TOO much about talking "over my head"

 

[despuit]

Jeeze thanks, I could have had a PHD in audio engineering for all you know. Sometimes it is better to pretend to know nothing at all so you can truly know what others know.
 
Though my opinion for sample rate is that maxing out is best, the application you use will provide the sample rate of the file.
 
For latency you have to test the latency of your hardware to optimise to where your needs are. For this you can use latency mon. As for buffer I really do not know. Some one else could answer better then why I think it is better. I have an old HDD, and crappy computer so the extra buffer helps in my opinion. I even throw applications that are heavy on disk like chrome into a virtual ram disk because it is just too much activity on the HDD. If you have a good drive then I don't think it matters too much. But if you have the RAM for it, may as well. As for audio quality it doesn't make a difference beyond helping your computer breathe better.

 

[interpolate]

8192 samples into a 44.1/16 sample rate would be approximately a 186ms buffer. The larger the buffer more data processed at once however with a knockback effect on performance in some cases.

 

[despuit]

8192 samples into a 44.1/16 sample rate would be approximately a 186ms buffer. The larger the buffer more data processed at once however with a knockback effect on performance in some cases.

Isn't that allocated to the read access memory (the performance knock back can all most be negligible if you have a good drive over low ram, or high ram over bad drive) , as the data chucks are still being processed with a low buffer only on the local disk? So an SSD with a low buffer/ram  and a HDD with a high buffer/ram would all most compare the same for latency?
 
In my opinion if that is right would be if you did have a SSD with a good amount of ram and allocated the buffer into the read access would be ultimately be the best configuration. As now the I/O has its task, and read access has its task.
 
Latency again a lot of people say they don't hear much of a difference though, all most seem more psychological where you are receiving the satisfaction that your system is fully optimised for that task. Asio4all comes into play there as well as it disables the sound bar functionality on windows which is said to improve latency, and you can further optimise your set up pairing fidelizer with Roon, Tidal, FooBar, Amarra  or whatever application you're using for playback. All so if you're using Windows 7/Vista and need to switch been the Hi-Fi Cable output and the speaker output you can use Audio-Switcher and hot key it, or if you use multiple sources and certain applications for certain things you can use Virtual Audio Cable with all your sources.

 

[chowmein83]

  I do have a question for other though, not despuit now.  Is despuit right, will going into Windows Advanced Sound Settings for the Fiio X3 DAC Output, and setting it to 24-bit/192khz output, actually make any difference in the sound-quality?  Wouldn't it make more sense to keep re-setting the output each time you play files at a different sample rate, setting it to match the sample-rate of the files being played?  Or what?  What do you guys think?

And how safe is it to set the buffering to minimum latency, and what effect does it actually have to set the buffer to 8192?  I don't know enough about the technical details of how ASIO works to judge this myself, so I'd appreciate input from guys who really know the technicalities of it   Keep in mind I do have some background in comp-sci and electrical engineering and a very heavy math background, so don't worry TOO much about talking "over my head"

 
If I'm not mistaken, by going into Windows Advanced Sound Settings and setting it to 24/192, that means that all sounds that come through normally (through the Windows sound mixer) will be padded to 24 bit resolution and resampled to 192kHz, so that you can play multiple sounds at the same time (which may originally be of different sample rates and bit depths). To be honest, I've listened to music using different sample rates selected in the advanced sound settings, and I'm not really sure if I can hear a difference.
 
As for re-setting the output each time you play files of different sample rates, normally to get around this you would try to output the digital bits through something like ASIO or WASAPI Exclusive mode, in which the bits are unaltered (and don't go through the Windows sound mixer) as they are passed through to the USB DAC (in this case, the X3ii). Thus, each time you switch between files of different sample rates, your computer through either of these modes will automatically just send the bit depth and sample rate the music file was originally encoded at. However, you will need to find a music player that lets you output the digital bits through these modes (something like Foobar2000 with its add-ons or JRiver Media Center). As far as I know, something like Windows Media Player is only able to output music through DirectSound mode, which is basically outputting the digital bits of the music through the Windows sound mixer and thus is being padded and resampled to whatever setting you set in the advanced sound settings.
 
Also, keep in mind that at least while playing music in WASAPI exclusive mode, the player that is playing music in that mode has "exclusive" control over the sound card or USB DAC or whatever, so no other sounds will be able to come through (such as notifications from chats, etc.).
 
As for how safe it is to set the latency to minimum latency, well I've only tried the different latency settings with the default ASIO buffer size of 2048 bytes, and minimum latency is mostly ok except for rare instances. So personally, I've just set it to low latency, which I find doesn't really increase latency all that much but pretty much has no problem with everything that I've thrown at it.

 

[cba191]

Some good news. Hope this is on track for release in the next week or two:

 

That sucks.  I had mistakenly believed that the limit issue had already been resolved and returned mine today.

 

[Im2spec1al]

Hi!
Are there any custom themes for x3ii?
Where can I find them?

 

[despuit]

   
If I'm not mistaken, by going into Windows Advanced Sound Settings and setting it to 24/192, that means that all sounds that come through normally (through the Windows sound mixer) will be padded to 24 bit resolution and resampled to 192kHz, so that you can play multiple sounds at the same time (which may originally be of different sample rates and bit depths). To be honest, I've listened to music using different sample rates selected in the advanced sound settings, and I'm not really sure if I can hear a difference.
 
As for re-setting the output each time you play files of different sample rates, normally to get around this you would try to output the digital bits through something like ASIO or WASAPI Exclusive mode, in which the bits are unaltered (and don't go through the Windows sound mixer) as they are passed through to the USB DAC (in this case, the X3ii). Thus, each time you switch between files of different sample rates, your computer through either of these modes will automatically just send the bit depth and sample rate the music file was originally encoded at. However, you will need to find a music player that lets you output the digital bits through these modes (something like Foobar2000 with its add-ons or JRiver Media Center). As far as I know, something like Windows Media Player is only able to output music through DirectSound mode, which is basically outputting the digital bits of the music through the Windows sound mixer and thus is being padded and resampled to whatever setting you set in the advanced sound settings.
 
Also, keep in mind that at least while playing music in WASAPI exclusive mode, the player that is playing music in that mode has "exclusive" control over the sound card or USB DAC or whatever, so no other sounds will be able to come through (such as notifications from chats, etc.).
 
As for how safe it is to set the latency to minimum latency, well I've only tried the different latency settings with the default ASIO buffer size of 2048 bytes, and minimum latency is mostly ok except for rare instances. So personally, I've just set it to low latency, which I find doesn't really increase latency all that much but pretty much has no problem with everything that I've thrown at it.

 
Thank you for clarifying, I made it sound like the computer would play the files at original rate lol... you need the sample rate that high if you have files that match that rate other wise the dap will decode into 16 bit files or whatever the default is.

 

[yoyorast10]

So it's pretty much normal that you can't read or see anything on the screen in the day light?

 

[JaZZ]

  So it's pretty much normal that you can't read or see anything on the screen in the day light?

 
Unfortunately, yes. That's a big concern for me. But I get over it, since the sound is so good, and the X5 II with its much better display is a bit bulkier to carry around on an armband.