darkarn
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Ah, that explains my observation too; I was not listening to such music (mostly rock, electronic and anime music)
The Fiio X3 Thread.
- Thread starter eke2k6
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Ah, that explains my observation too; I was not listening to such music (mostly rock, electronic and anime music)
darkarn
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Dang, just double-checked the price for X5 and realised that it is way too high...
FatalDestiny
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It's your untrained ears OR your headphones. The difference is very noticeable for me with my JVC FX700.
HWTest
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I did some test with mp3 decoding.
I took the file Fiio_X3_noise_test.mp3 posted earlier and recorded it digitally from the X3 (coaxial) and iRiver H140 (optical) and also converted it to wav in Foobar. Then I compared all 3 files in Audio DiffMaker.
I think you, know the result
- a lot more noise, when the X3 was involved.
Here are the diff files, for anyone who is interested to hear the difference.
http://www.ulozto.net/xWwgjMXu/noise-zip
The files are slightly cropped to remove "clicks" on the start and end.
OF - means H140 running original firmware
X3 - means X3 running firmware 2.10
F_16 - means the file converted in Foobar
I took the file Fiio_X3_noise_test.mp3 posted earlier and recorded it digitally from the X3 (coaxial) and iRiver H140 (optical) and also converted it to wav in Foobar. Then I compared all 3 files in Audio DiffMaker.
I think you, know the result
Here are the diff files, for anyone who is interested to hear the difference.
http://www.ulozto.net/xWwgjMXu/noise-zip
The files are slightly cropped to remove "clicks" on the start and end.
OF - means H140 running original firmware
X3 - means X3 running firmware 2.10
F_16 - means the file converted in Foobar
Bray90820
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I am currently on version 2.1 but i have noticed these bigs in early versions of the firmware as well
jkauff
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OK, I'm new here, and I'm willing to admit I might be wrong, arrogant, elitist, whatever.
I've never seen any FiiO marketing for the X3. If it was marketed as a general purpose plays-all-popular-formats player, I apologize. I found out about the X3 and the company from reviews raving about its ability to deliver excellent hi-res playback. On that basis, I bought one.
Do I care about MP3 playback quality? Sure, but it seems reasonable that it's not the top priority for a high-end player--which the X3 is, despite the low price. Would I expect a $200 pocket player to support more than 64GB of external storage? No, and it wasn't a problem for me. I have almost 2TB of legally acquired lossless music, so even if I wanted my whole collection on a pocket device (which I don't) there's nothing out there that can hold my collection, even if I converted it all to MP3/AAC.
My MP3 collection is very small. I have some remixes that were never released on CD, some out-of-print stuff, and some live stuff. I own an iPhone, but I've never bought anything from iTunes and never will because I don't like Apple's approach to content (especially that you can't buy lossless). If I want to buy an MP3, I buy it from Amazon.
I'm an old guy, I've always bought albums rather than songs (unless you count 45 rpm singles) and done my own rips. I understand that there's a generation of music lovers who've never bought an LP or CD, but why would folks from the download generation buy an X3 instead of an iPod (which has a much better user interface) or a Cowan or whatever?
Again, maybe I'm wrong, but the X3 seems like a niche product that will probably be replaced by a mass market device as the FiiO name gains traction. Just the fact that you can use it as a DAC marks it as niche player--the mass market doesn't even know what a DAC is or does.
The point I wanted to make (which apparently I did badly) was to say I have confidence that the FiiO people know what they're doing, that they have their priorities right, and that they're taking a lot of undeserved criticism. Feedback is fine, but criticism can quickly become unwarranted noise.
I've never seen any FiiO marketing for the X3. If it was marketed as a general purpose plays-all-popular-formats player, I apologize. I found out about the X3 and the company from reviews raving about its ability to deliver excellent hi-res playback. On that basis, I bought one.
Do I care about MP3 playback quality? Sure, but it seems reasonable that it's not the top priority for a high-end player--which the X3 is, despite the low price. Would I expect a $200 pocket player to support more than 64GB of external storage? No, and it wasn't a problem for me. I have almost 2TB of legally acquired lossless music, so even if I wanted my whole collection on a pocket device (which I don't) there's nothing out there that can hold my collection, even if I converted it all to MP3/AAC.
My MP3 collection is very small. I have some remixes that were never released on CD, some out-of-print stuff, and some live stuff. I own an iPhone, but I've never bought anything from iTunes and never will because I don't like Apple's approach to content (especially that you can't buy lossless). If I want to buy an MP3, I buy it from Amazon.
I'm an old guy, I've always bought albums rather than songs (unless you count 45 rpm singles) and done my own rips. I understand that there's a generation of music lovers who've never bought an LP or CD, but why would folks from the download generation buy an X3 instead of an iPod (which has a much better user interface) or a Cowan or whatever?
Again, maybe I'm wrong, but the X3 seems like a niche product that will probably be replaced by a mass market device as the FiiO name gains traction. Just the fact that you can use it as a DAC marks it as niche player--the mass market doesn't even know what a DAC is or does.
The point I wanted to make (which apparently I did badly) was to say I have confidence that the FiiO people know what they're doing, that they have their priorities right, and that they're taking a lot of undeserved criticism. Feedback is fine, but criticism can quickly become unwarranted noise.
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Hey guys. Let's be a little objective here.
Most of you are citing bugs and problems that may not even be problems. I was here for a long time, and most storage bugs that people have problems with were mainly issues with themselves (bad formating, bad cards, incorrect operation) or in where they didn't know about the X3's problem with how many folders it can handle per section.
The X3 is a high res player yes. The 8GB of internal space has nothing to deal with the manufacturer recommending high res files. FiiO could have included NO internal storage. This is a high res DAP aimed at the audiophile niche market after all. They could have just required only TF card input for storage.
The MP3 'problem' never was a problem until people saw a chart of it having harmonic distortion issues. The manufacturer and the OP have both even agreed that RMAA is a very amateurish analyzer along with details regarding human hearing of the noted 'issue' and if it is a problem.
The X3 is filled with UI bugs. It's software functionality is a bit spotty and hardware a bit weird.
We all get this. I have a lot of problems with the X3 sometimes when I test out new functions and features.
But as a reasonable person we must also understand the idea of perception, objectivity, and isolated issues.
Perception being that people come here en mass a lot more when they have issues than when they don't. Most that do that often don't follow up well or had a user error that then gets fixed.
Objectivity being what I said above. Analyzing both the consumer, middle(thinking as a reviewer) and manufacturer side. Example being the MP3 decoding issue right now. Me as a consumer is a bit disapointed with the mp3 decoding harmonic distortion graph. Me as a reviewer noted that although that is a problem, there were no huge sonic problems with it. Any sonic differences I heard between mp3 and lossless ones were me attributing the slight noise, distortion, and artifacts heard in mp3 to its format and not to the X3's decoding. And finally as a manufacturer. One would have to note and think that this issue is not very big if at all very auidible and along with other things dealing with it being possibly within acceptable range.
Isolated issues then playing into all 2 above where NONE of us have the real numbers. We don't know how many FiiO sold. Most of us don't have the numbers of errors, unit breakdowns, emails received, and problem units they get. This one is very important. Say 100 units are sold with a 2% error rate. That means that in this theoretical situation. 2 units will be broken. Well using knowledge about the niche market this is in. We can say that there is X chance that the users with those broken units will report it online as broken. A further example of this being the unit being a part targeted towards enthusiast PC gamers as opposed to the unit being targeted to very old people. We can then say that there is probably a much higher probability that the PC Enthusiast people are more likely to post it online. So now we have maybe 1 or 2 error reports in the forum. One to two is a lot in many people's eyes at times. Some issues from one person spawn multiple pages and replies because it is of course, an issue. This along with other factors then develop into the perception of it being a bigger problem then it actually is.
The end all thing is that we don't know the actual numbers, and what is going on.
I am in no way saying the X3 is completely awesome and because of these argumetns that we should ignore the problem. Rather I say that we take a step back to look at what is going on.
Most of you are citing bugs and problems that may not even be problems. I was here for a long time, and most storage bugs that people have problems with were mainly issues with themselves (bad formating, bad cards, incorrect operation) or in where they didn't know about the X3's problem with how many folders it can handle per section.
The X3 is a high res player yes. The 8GB of internal space has nothing to deal with the manufacturer recommending high res files. FiiO could have included NO internal storage. This is a high res DAP aimed at the audiophile niche market after all. They could have just required only TF card input for storage.
The MP3 'problem' never was a problem until people saw a chart of it having harmonic distortion issues. The manufacturer and the OP have both even agreed that RMAA is a very amateurish analyzer along with details regarding human hearing of the noted 'issue' and if it is a problem.
The X3 is filled with UI bugs. It's software functionality is a bit spotty and hardware a bit weird.
We all get this. I have a lot of problems with the X3 sometimes when I test out new functions and features.
But as a reasonable person we must also understand the idea of perception, objectivity, and isolated issues.
Perception being that people come here en mass a lot more when they have issues than when they don't. Most that do that often don't follow up well or had a user error that then gets fixed.
Objectivity being what I said above. Analyzing both the consumer, middle(thinking as a reviewer) and manufacturer side. Example being the MP3 decoding issue right now. Me as a consumer is a bit disapointed with the mp3 decoding harmonic distortion graph. Me as a reviewer noted that although that is a problem, there were no huge sonic problems with it. Any sonic differences I heard between mp3 and lossless ones were me attributing the slight noise, distortion, and artifacts heard in mp3 to its format and not to the X3's decoding. And finally as a manufacturer. One would have to note and think that this issue is not very big if at all very auidible and along with other things dealing with it being possibly within acceptable range.
Isolated issues then playing into all 2 above where NONE of us have the real numbers. We don't know how many FiiO sold. Most of us don't have the numbers of errors, unit breakdowns, emails received, and problem units they get. This one is very important. Say 100 units are sold with a 2% error rate. That means that in this theoretical situation. 2 units will be broken. Well using knowledge about the niche market this is in. We can say that there is X chance that the users with those broken units will report it online as broken. A further example of this being the unit being a part targeted towards enthusiast PC gamers as opposed to the unit being targeted to very old people. We can then say that there is probably a much higher probability that the PC Enthusiast people are more likely to post it online. So now we have maybe 1 or 2 error reports in the forum. One to two is a lot in many people's eyes at times. Some issues from one person spawn multiple pages and replies because it is of course, an issue. This along with other factors then develop into the perception of it being a bigger problem then it actually is.
The end all thing is that we don't know the actual numbers, and what is going on.
I am in no way saying the X3 is completely awesome and because of these argumetns that we should ignore the problem. Rather I say that we take a step back to look at what is going on.
shrimants
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Id like to add about the mp3 issue: by my understanding, it only is a problem for very quiet, low dynamic range portions of mp3 files that have relatively high dynamic range. IE if your music has some extremely loud and extremely soft parts in it, you may hear some noise during the soft parts. Apart from that, the mp3 issue is not noticeable for the masses. Most modern music does not have high dynamic range. Classical and jazz has some high dynamic range, and only certain recordings have excessive dynamic range. Dont think this mp3 issue is getting in the way of you enjoying some miley cyrus.
pennylane
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OK, I'm new here, and I'm willing to admit I might be wrong, arrogant, elitist, whatever.
I've never seen any FiiO marketing for the X3. If it was marketed as a general purpose plays-all-popular-formats player, I apologize. I found out about the X3 and the company from reviews raving about its ability to deliver excellent hi-res playback. On that basis, I bought one.
Do I care about MP3 playback quality? Sure, but it seems reasonable that it's not the top priority for a high-end player--which the X3 is, despite the low price. Would I expect a $200 pocket player to support more than 64GB of external storage? No, and it wasn't a problem for me. I have almost 2TB of legally acquired lossless music, so even if I wanted my whole collection on a pocket device (which I don't) there's nothing out there that can hold my collection, even if I converted it all to MP3/AAC.
My MP3 collection is very small. I have some remixes that were never released on CD, some out-of-print stuff, and some live stuff. I own an iPhone, but I've never bought anything from iTunes and never will because I don't like Apple's approach to content (especially that you can't buy lossless). If I want to buy an MP3, I buy it from Amazon.
I'm an old guy, I've always bought albums rather than songs (unless you count 45 rpm singles) and done my own rips. I understand that there's a generation of music lovers who've never bought an LP or CD, but why would folks from the download generation buy an X3 instead of an iPod (which has a much better user interface) or a Cowan or whatever?
Again, maybe I'm wrong, but the X3 seems like a niche product that will probably be replaced by a mass market device as the FiiO name gains traction. Just the fact that you can use it as a DAC marks it as niche player--the mass market doesn't even know what a DAC is or does.
The point I wanted to make (which apparently I did badly) was to say I have confidence that the FiiO people know what they're doing, that they have their priorities right, and that they're taking a lot of undeserved criticism. Feedback is fine, but criticism can quickly become unwarranted noise.
People responded poorly to you because not everybody uses the X3 the way you told them to.
MP3 playback is important because:
-The X3 is a high quality portable audio device. It has great hardware and it should decode all its supported formats correctly. Just because it can decode 24-bit/96kHz FLAC correctly doesn't mean that MP3 playback doesn't matter. Not everybody is going to want to use it solely to listen to 24-bit/96kHz FLAC.
AND
-It's perfectly reasonable to get the X3 with the intention of putting MP3's on it. It has limited space, just like NEARLY EVERY OTHER DAP, and high bit-rate MP3's are transparent for most people. Loading up the X3 with a lossy format like MP3 is a reasonable compromise for many people. High-bit-rate MP3's can still take advantage of the hardware of the X3 and can (and usually do) sound fantastic.
I agree that the criticism has been harsh; the MP3 decoding issue seems to be apparent only for a small fraction of recordings. However, it is still a reasonable stance to think that it should be fixed if at all possible. This does not mean that there aren't higher priorities, but MP3 playback should be on the list.
james444
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If you want to be "objective", you should at least read the posts and get your facts right. Your above statement is not only dismissive, but factually wrong.
The MP3 problem has actually been documented and officially confirmed by FiiO as a bug long before those charts were posted.
Apart from that, I believe that everyone here has her/his own subjective point of view and no one's being more objective than the others.
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I seem to recall no posts being made about mp3 decoding problems pre RMAA graphs. I haven't read some of the more recent ones but I have read most of the past posts. Hell, probaby over 400 pages of this thread.
Confirmed as a bug yes. There wasn't any widespread outcry over it back then.
Which still leaves my statement safe.
james444
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I admire your confidence. In case you haven't decided on your career yet, I'd recommend lawyer or politician.
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I admire your confidence. In case you haven't decided on your career yet, I'd recommend lawyer or politician.
What is life but in the confidence that you will survive?
Okay, that's enough, unless one of you really want this thread closed. I think all the fact has been presented and argument from both sides have been heard - now let's give FiiO the time to figure things out. Keep repeating the same thing won't help to move them along faster.
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Some of you may think I'm like this
When I'm really like this most of the time.
Keep calm and enjoy your day fellas.
I'm outta here.
When I'm really like this most of the time.
Keep calm and enjoy your day fellas.
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