[TrollDragon]

Pills or Cheap Booze?
Inquiring minds want to know your game?

 

[MicroEuphoneum]

Pills or Cheap Booze?
Inquiring minds want to know your game?

Who ME?
 

I'll have you know I have nothing to do with such.

 

[soniccircle]

Thanks for the advice, Micro.  I'm on a Mac platform.  Are you talking about setting up partitions?  I'm unclear about what my next step would be.

 

[uzi2]

  Cycling is pretty dangerous even with all senses acute.

Agreed - cycling and music don't mix. I don't know how many times I've had to avoid pedestrians who can't hear me because of their ipods or phones. If I was doing the same, no doubt I would be flattened by a bus.
Leave the X3/X5 at home, ride safely and get a better workout because you're keen to get back to the music. Then go for maximum isolation when you can enjoy it.

 

[MicroEuphoneum]

  Thanks for the advice, Micro.  I'm on a Mac platform.  Are you talking about setting up partitions?  I'm unclear about what my next step would be.

Mac?  Yikes! No idea what goes there. Using my files browser I can navigate to the top level and see the microSD card as a storage device. Then if I right click on it I get a pop up menu that has a selection to format the storage device, that is the microSD card. Then there are selections for formatting which include FAT32 and NTFS. Then there is a little list of allocation unit sizes from which I select 32 kilobyte. And WALL LAW the card gets formatted and both the PC and X3 can read all files on the card.
Maybe another Mac user can give you specifics for that on the Mac, or you could do a search, or use help on formatting external storage devices. You did say you formatted it, although all the cards I buy are microSDHC and come pre-formatted FAT32.
It's just the 64G and up cards that the X3 can't fully read. Even a search of this thread will return previous posts answering your question.

 

[AgentXXL]

 

  Thanks for the advice, Micro.  I'm on a Mac platform.  Are you talking about setting up partitions?  I'm unclear about what my next step would be.

Mac?  Yikes! No idea what goes there. Using my files browser I can navigate to the top level and see the microSD card as a storage device. Then if I right click on it I get a pop up menu that has a selection to format the storage device, that is the microSD card. Then there are selections for formatting which include FAT32 and NTFS. Then there is a little list of allocation unit sizes from which I select 32 kilobyte. And WALL LAW the card gets formatted and both the PC and X3 can read all files on the card.
Maybe another Mac user can give you specifics for that on the Mac, or you could do a search, or use help on formatting external storage devices. You did say you formatted it, although all the cards I buy are microSDHC and come pre-formatted FAT32.
It's just the 64G and up cards that the X3 can't fully read. Even a search of this thread will return previous posts answering your question.

 
Soniccircle - I made a couple of posts about correcting this issue in one of the other threads here on HiFi - here's the links:
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/681927/reply-to-some-bugs-of-x3-s-new-firmware-and-new-function-suggestions-from-our-end-users/165#post_10618565
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/681927/reply-to-some-bugs-of-x3-s-new-firmware-and-new-function-suggestions-from-our-end-users/165#post_10619227
 
As for formatting your cards and making sure they are correct, use the formatter built-in to the X3 to format your microSD cards. Hope these tips help!
 
Dale

 

[MicroEuphoneum]

  Agreed - cycling and music don't mix. I don't know how many times I've had to avoid pedestrians who can't hear me because of their ipods or phones. If I was doing the same, no doubt I would be flattened by a bus.
Leave the X3/X5 at home, ride safely and get a better workout because you're keen to get back to the music. Then go for maximum isolation when you can enjoy it.

Oh Oh! Well, that is very good advice but cycling is what X3 is mainly about. Using open-air, or small on ear headphones though it is possible to hear ambient sounds just fine. Any isolation type is suicide no doubt.
HOWEVER...
I live in a place called Tubac. It's not far north of Nogales, AZ. There is very little ambient noise here, no busses, almost NO TRAFFIC, no crime (yep, check it out on city data or whatever) and NOBODY is in any kind of a hurry. Hakuna Matada brother.
It means no worries for the rest of your days.
I was riding around listening to Big Band Jazz at 2:30 this morning enjoying the thunderstorm up North over Tucson. Got a little bit wet but the Monsoons are a fact of life here. I do it almost every night. Oh, it would suck in St. Paul no doubt. I'm not going anywhere near any big city. Had all of that I'll ever need.
What good is an X3 left at home?  As I've said before, it's all about mobility, as are other micro DAPs.
Well, do be safe, and enjoy your music.

 

[MicroEuphoneum]

SHEESH! Now that's taken care of, I promised in an earlier post to put up some wave forms that illustrate what I'm talking about when it comes to compression and limiting.

 
So, the blue waveform at the top is what I call 'overproduced'. The producer was all concerned with LOUDNESS. "People will buy this album because it is the loudest!"  Yeah, right.
The pink waveform at the bottom is produced with no compression or limiting and the natural dynamics of the performance are fully preserved. It has enough level to take advantage of the digital format without stomping out expression or creating intermodulation distortion that is a product of any non linear transfer curve.
Don't know what I'm talking about? Probably not many do. But many people can easily hear the 'artifacts' that are the result of IM (intermodulation distortion).
For a subjective description, on the track at top in the beginning of the song the drummer is lightly riding a small crash cymbal. The purpose of this would be to create a kind of rushing sound behind the other instruments. But because of the excessive compression it sounds more like someone dropping sandbags into a steel drum. If you weren't familiar with the sounds of cymbals and playing techniques you might not realize what the sound started out like at all. But for listeners who have heard it live the result is just irritation.
I think this loudness wars thing all got started with radio. Now that radio is DEAD I really wish these producers would get a clue and back off.
New technology makes old methods obsolete very quickly. With players like X3, and storage capacity that we have with microSD cards it is all so unnecessary.
I can only hope.

 

[MicroEuphoneum]

AgentXXL;
Thanks Dale. I learned all about the various techniques for using X3 right here on this thread. Before I bought X3 I did a search for reviews and such. Lots of people have problems with X3 but it seems most of them just come from misunderstanding the unit. I was delighted to find this thread because HERE is where answers are found. Most every place else just has the gripes.
Thanks again to Head-Fi for the education.

 

[aangen]

  Ha! You've been misled soniccircle. Those Chinese kids have a real crazy sense of humor. I got a real hoot out of that users manual. It's a little pity they have to joke around about such a technical subject. Any way, FAT32 does not do a very good job at addressing 128GB of data. What exactly goes wrong I will not try to explain, but you must format the microSD card NTFS with 32 kilobytes allocation units. Don't forget to select the allocation unit size or you'll still have the same problem. X3 does read NTFS, despite the little joke about FAT32. I think they're just making fun of Americans. Know what I mean?

 
My experience indicates none of the above is true. I have formatted two 128 GB microSD cards to FAT 32 with no problems at all. All songs present, both cards filled to near capacity.

 

[tjw321]

  ...
However, after safely ejecting the card and x3 from my computer (sometimes that works without an error message, sometimes not)
...

You shouldn't ever get an error message. The only time I ever got an error message was when the cable fell out during a file transfer and I ending up having to reformat the card *and* the X3 to get rid of the resulting problems. What error do you get?
 
When you say that you can't see the files on the X3, do you mean that you can't see them in categories, or that you can't see them using the file browser, or both?
 
If you can't see them in categories, have you tagged them? 

 

[MicroEuphoneum]

   
My experience indicates none of the above is true. I have formatted two 128 GB microSD cards to FAT 32 with no problems at all. All songs present, both cards filled to near capacity.

Very strange! Of course most of it IS nonsense. Hopefully readers realize I'm just NUTS!. But, X3 would not even read the 64G microSDHC card I got, pre-formatted. I mean not even recognize it. So I just did a search for posts regarding this and found that formatting NTFS was the magic key. Well, now, some posters say format the card in the X3, but with the X3 refusing to recognize the card no such thing is possible. What do they call that, a 'catch 22' ? Chicken or the egg, whatever. No, seriously, the first thing I did was install fw3.0. Unit came with a pre-formatted 64G card and would not recognize the card. So I took the advice, did the NTFS thing and it works. Is this X3 in some kind of alternate reality? Like me. Other than the 64G card hang up (and I don't even like using it) X3 has given me absolutely no other problems. I get along with it fine and I think mostly because of what I've learned here.
AHA! There are some multiple variables here that make these ethereal events more clear. Are you, in fact, loading songs onto cards installed in the X3, via USB with a Mac computer. I've read the links provided by AgentXXL and think that if I was having problems of that nature I would probably take a sledge hammer to the Mac AND the X3. MAYBE the trick is to load the files onto the microSD card directly on the computer. But what if you don't have a card slot on your computer? I suppose one might try the USB / X3 / microSD detour. Don't even go there.
Soniccircle; do you not have a SD card slot? Most of the micro's come with an adapter because the PC's usually have the regular SD slot. This detour approach must be where the hang up lies. But why my unit with fw3.0, and some other unit with the same fw would react differently to card formatted the same way is still a head banger. What????

 

[aangen]

Cards typically come formatted with XFAT which is no good. From day one people here have explained the need to format with FAT32 using 32k block size. Only lately has the NTFS chatter been mentioned. (I have read every post in this and the X5 thread, sigh) The next time I format a microSD card I am going to try NTFS. I just want YOU to know that FAT32 works swell as well. I should add I never tried formatting any cards with the X3 or the X5. I used a program called Aomei Partition Assistant which I learned of early in this thread. It works swell. 

 

[kimuxaki]

Hello guys, noob here, i have my fiio x3 for a while and when i listen to the player around 1-2 hour, the player get extremely hot. I dont know whether i get the faulty one or its normal.. But it more hotter than iphone using 4G.. Little help here?

 

[x RELIC x]

Hello guys, noob here, i have my fiio x3 for a while and when i listen to the player around 1-2 hour, the player get extremely hot. I dont know whether i get the faulty one or its normal.. But it more hotter than iphone using 4G.. Little help here?

They get warm. It's normal, and just a sign of the powerful amp working.