[Mr Trev]

Anyone out there using Musicbee (Win 7) having any luck getting the DAC mode to work in ASIO mode? I can get it to play 1 song (sometimes), but when it switches to the next track it stops playing. Seems to work fine in WASAPI, but I'd think since the Fiio driver is ASIO it should work. Other than that everything else is working fine, and sounding good (except when I do a sound test in the control panel the channels are reversed, but Windows has always done that to me).

 

[bodewalla]

 
All right! Time to load up some live shows.

That's how I mostly use my X3! Live shows are so live and deep! Now closing the eye feels almost the same as being on the concert, 'cos the music never stops till is the end.

 

[Marlene]

  It's certainly a funny thing. I too could swear I heard an improvement in sound quality after installing the new firmware and re- listening to a file that i had just listened to the day before. All of this was prior to reading the initial post claiming an improvement in the sound quality after installing the new firmware. The placebo effect would hinge entirely on both expectation bias and the power of suggestion. How could either of those be a factor however when i had no cognoscente expectation bias due entirely on not experiencing any sound quality improvements after the installation of the previous firmwares, and also not having read the relevant post before hand so there would be could not be any  power of suggestion. I am not about to go through the aggravation of returning to the previous firmware to do another comparison just to try, most likely fruitlessly, to confirm this one way or the other. i really don't see the point. Also i can also swear that I can detect subtle sound differences between a file played back through browse files and the same file played back through Categories/Album.

 
It´s really funny. I didn´t expect any difference at all when it comes to sound. I was only hoping that my unit wouldn´t crash anymore (that wish thankfully was fulfilled). But the sound... before I could have sworn that the X3 sounded slightly warm. The bass is still the same though treble seems much more neutral to my ears. If it isn´t a placebo and if there really is a change then this change is definitely for the better.
 
Still, the skeptic in me doesn´t like what the subjectivist in me seems to hear. I cannot measure it, but if it´s audible it simply MUST be measurable. Ah, what the heck, I decided to enjoy it instead.

 

[Marlene]

  NOTE: I have experienced random freezing while playing FLAC. By the way, why does music stops at the end of each folder?!

 
What do you mean exactly by 'freezing'? If you mean an occasional hiccup within tracks right after changing albums I agree, I have this too. But a complete freeze (where I had to press the 'reset' button) like I experienced before has yet to happen.

 

[Marlene]

   
Yes, a complete freeze. Happened just once in a whole day though.

 
Oooh, not good. My solution consisted of too things: new firmware and another SD card. The Transcend SD card I used before obviously wasn´t as good as advertised.
 
Right now, I´ve only had some skipping within FLAC tracks and that the FiiO sometimes skips to the next track when it´s in the process of switching off.
 
And of course, WMA Professional are still decoded to 16 bit, and not in 24 bit as the X3 reports it.
 
EDIT: BTW, the change in acoustics caused by the firmware might indeed have been a placebo as I can´t hear it anymore. Or maybe I´ve grown accustomed to it. Anyway, I won´t spend too much time about thinking about it, doesn´t make sense since the X3 easily beats every other portable device I own.

 

[good sound]

My freezing, or crashing if that's what you want to call it, happened while playing back a specific WAV file that was converted to 24/192  from a DSD ISO file. It has happened only twice and both times on this specific file, a track by the band Wheatus, a DSD download converted to WAV specifically for playback on my X3. In my case I didn't use the reset I simply held down the power button for more than ten seconds which caused a rather loud pop through my IEM's and then the player would power up again. I will not attempt to play that file again. I have converted many other DSD files of different types to 24/192 WAV and have had zero issues playing them back on the X3. I don't know what is different with this one particular file.

 

[galanga]

  On a completely unrelated topic I read in a previous post, in this thread, about a way to get gapless playback from the Browse Files header previous to the availability of the new 2.05 firmware simply by turning off the X3 and turning it back on while having the player set to resume from the start of the last track listened to. I never experienced that, but I did experience something very similar and I would presume connected. I have found that if you start playback from the Categories/Album header when having the player settings set to resume from the beginning of the last track when you turned off the player, and then turned it back on again, it would no longer play that particular file in gapless. So basically the exact opposite of what the other poster experienced. Spooky! Actually it appears that for some reason turning the player off then on again seems to reverse the gapless setting.
 
All sort of a moot point now however, with the release of firmware 2.05

I had the same behavior (indicated here), and for me it seems completely fixed with firmware 2.05. I guess that the problem was that the 'memory track/position' mechanism is memorizing a path as in the 'Browse file' mode and not a position in the Category mode. When resuming, the gapless was not working anymore because the player restarts in 'Browse file' mode, in which the gapless was not working before FW2.05.
 
 
There is another limitation with the 'memory track/position', but this one is still unchanged in FW2.05: I just made some 'dichotomy' tests on several length of files in a same folder, and if I play a file that has a file path in the X3 of more than around 127 characters, then the track/position is completely lost on shutdown/restart. I have not found such indication of this limitation in the user guide nor by searching in the forums (but my eyes are maybe wrong). 
First, it would be good to know what is the effective limit (i.e.  when the X3/SDcard is visible on the PC), and if possible to increase this limit to 255 characters, in a future firmware.

 

[nasilemak]

Hi, need some help and clarification.
 
I've updated to FW2.05 and installed the driver. Tried using the DAC function. I'm on Windows 7 and playback 192/24 flac using foobar2000 but the X3 screen keep showing 44/24 and driver control panel shows sampling rate of 44100Hz. Is this suppose to be the case? If not am I doing something wrong?
 
Thanks.

 

[dacari]

Still no album art from external.jpg, I thought It will be with this firmware 

 

[CH23]

Hi, need some help and clarification.

I've updated to FW2.05 and installed the driver. Tried using the DAC function. I'm on Windows 7 and playback 192/24 flac using foobar2000 but the X3 screen keep showing 44/24 and driver control panel shows sampling rate of 44100Hz. Is this suppose to be the case? If not am I doing something wrong?

Thanks.

Hi there,

You have to set windows audio to use higher quality output, and this is how:

On the taskbar, find the speaker icon.
Rightclick it, select playback devices.
Doubleclick "fiio X3"
Go to the Advanced tab, and select the highest output in the "default format" drop down box.

Click apply/ok and reconnect your Fiio X3.

This should make it work at 24bit 192Khz(and lower)
The X3 will show this bitrate, no matter what the source audio is, but that's not much to worry about.

-CH23

 

[nasilemak]

Hi there,

You have to set windows audio to use higher quality output, and this is how:

On the taskbar, find the speaker icon.
Rightclick it, select playback devices.
Doubleclick "fiio X3"
Go to the Advanced tab, and select the highest output in the "default format" drop down box.

Click apply/ok and reconnect your Fiio X3.

This should make it work at 24bit 192Khz(and lower)
The X3 will show this bitrate, no matter what the source audio is, but that's not much to worry about.

-CH23

Hi CH23,
 
Thanks! Works as you suggested

 

[KeepItOn]

...alternatively, you could install ASIO support for foobar2000:
http://www.foobar2000.org/getcomponent/d1b6ccaf4206736daadadd72667d49c3/16cffc42fa53fd992b0e9db7a72bffd2/foo_out_asio.fb2k-component
Then go under File/Preferences/Output and select "ASIO: TUSBAudio ASIO Driver". Once you did that, the sample rate on the X3 display will change according to the playing track's resolution.

 

[nasilemak]

  ...alternatively, you could install ASIO support for foobar2000:
http://www.foobar2000.org/getcomponent/d1b6ccaf4206736daadadd72667d49c3/16cffc42fa53fd992b0e9db7a72bffd2/foo_out_asio.fb2k-component
Then go under File/Preferences/Output and select "ASIO: TUSBAudio ASIO Driver". Once you did that, the sample rate on the X3 display will change according to the playing track's resolution.

 
Hi, thanks for the suggestion will try this as well.

 

[subguy812]

The new firmware is nice...still getting some weird freezing after song or the player not advancing to the next song(freezing).

 

[bodewalla]

  My freezing, or crashing if that's what you want to call it, happened while playing back a specific WAV file that was converted to 24/192  from a DSD ISO file. It has happened only twice and both times on this specific file, a track by the band Wheatus, a DSD download converted to WAV specifically for playback on my X3. In my case I didn't use the reset I simply held down the power button for more than ten seconds which caused a rather loud pop through my IEM's and then the player would power up again. I will not attempt to play that file again. I have converted many other DSD files of different types to 24/192 WAV and have had zero issues playing them back on the X3. I don't know what is different with this one particular file.

Haven't you ever tried Flac? They are smaller filetypes but saves the same sonic information from the original files, in just half the original size. Plus, you get idtag information, like in mp3, including cover and lyrics!