[CH23]

Just to clarify, are you implying that:

1) listing in numerical order by album, and
2) having an artist/album category and/or a genre/artist/album category

is a patented thing that no one is allowed to do? So winamp, foobar, musicbee, and every single other open source application on the face of the planet are all in gross patent violation right now because they are doing this correctly? Also every single player on android? Also every player thats been released since 1999? Also windows phone applications?

Because thats what it sounds like you're getting at. And at that point i'd have to say you're straight up wrong. This has nothing to do with patents.

ROCKBOX SUPPORT is a patenting/warranty issue. The little tweaks im talking about is something else. Its laziness.

I had not read the very post you were referring to at the time of my posting, i completely missed that page.

I did say, however, that some patents cost a lot of money to implement into your system, and for some companies it's too much.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,928,433.PN.&OS=PN/6,928,433&RS=PN/6,928,433

Here's one of the patents that will, as i understand, give us the hierarchy as we want, but i would bet you $5 that it costs more than $5 to use/implement it.

 

[shrimants]

Here's the problem with that: the big companies have a lot of patents for things they have in their code and hardware, and heaps of money to throw lawsuits at other companies, who simply can't afford it.

FiiO is a company which has stated before that they want to play by the book, so, unless they pay a lot of money for the right to use those patents, they'll have to do everything from scratch.
I completely missed the page with this post.

1&2: a better explenation for this would be desirable.

Volume buttons available at all times: yes.

Multi-button: any device should be operable with 1 hand, if you ask me.

No worries, i'll explain the 2 things I am talking about fixing since day 1:

1) In X3, click "play all". The X3 lists everything in "strict numerical order". By this I mean all of the track 1's from all of the albums are grouped together, alphabetically. Then you get all of the Track 2. Then all of the Track 3. etc. In any mode, I feel this should instead list in track order BY ALBUM GROUPING, alphabetically, BY ALBUM. So if i had albums A, B, C, and D, it would list trac 1-10 from A, 1-10 from B, 1-10 from C, and 1-10 from D.

Currently, it is listing A1 B1 C1 D1 A2 B2 C2 D2 A3 B3 C3 D3 etc.

2) I ask for better sorting. Easy enough. In category view, there is "Albums". Fine. There is "Genre", but this just lists tracks within a genre. There is Artists but this lists tracks by a certain artist.

What i ask instead is for further sorting. So it would be like this:

Artist/SOME_ARTIST (example, pink floyd)

• All Songs
• Albums

Genre/SOME_GENRE (example, rock)

• All Songs
• Artists
• Albums

And within that artists category, another albums category. It would make finding music so much easier.

The Browse function is a WORKAROUND. but a workaround is NOT a solution. It is a temporary fix until someone fixes the real problem at hand.

The other things I mentioned are just nice things, like maybe double-click to get screen off, instant recognition of track skip/volume, dont have to press a button first for power on, dont use volume +/- to cycle menu selection (between DAC and Storage, for example) instead just use the play/pause button to toggle values. But im not too concerned about those things.

I know this is a long shot and I dont know what fiio can and cant do in terms of warranty/policies, but it would be fantastic if the community could work on the X3 firmware.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

If you're able to talk to the programmer, can you get a clear explanation on exactly why the following items "cant be fixed":

1) track numbering: 01 01 01 02 02 02 03 03 03 etc. under all songs, genre, and artist view (album mode has the problem too, but not as apparent)

2) no /artist/album/track, no /genre/artist/album/track

I need to understand the problem myself before I can ask our programmer about it
Are these two points two ways of stating the same problem, eg that you can see all songs by the same artist but not be able to then sub-sort this by their different albums, so you have track 01 of several albums showing together?

Edit: ok, just saw your post right above mine lol (I'm guessing this will have to wait for Monday over here though)

 

[Marlene]

The way i store music is like this: Root/Artist/Album/Track.FLAC. Almost everything on my player is flac, but there are some albums where the artist only released VBR mp3, and I havent listened to it much. Also, im not mad at you in the slightest, and I dont know where you're getting that from. Theres no hard feelings here. Actually I find it quite impressive that you figured this out, and when I have more time I'm definitely going to go back and read up on this to see how this was found out and how it will be remedied. VERY nice work.
 

 
Then I misunderstood, sorry. It just seemed to me that you were very agitated when writing your posts. You did something like SHOUTING which in my experience is far from optimal

. Thing is we can´t see each other and us humans suck at interaction without seeing the individual we communicate with. Irony, a joke, those things might get lost in writing. So sorry for misunderstanding.

All of my files are tagged "correctly", i use the windows 7 x64 program "mp3tag".

(...)

Dont know what happened though. I think maybe Musicbee was the culprit and was saving tags incorrectly.

 
How do you access your music? I use 'Albums' only. I have tried 'Genre' and 'Artist' only once, hated it and went happily back to 'Album' (it´s how I listen anyway). From the little experience I gained using the 'Genre' & 'Artist' I concluded that every album needs to be tagged properly in order to be accessed without problems. I don´t know Musicbee, but just like you I use mp3tag a lot. Though I´ve already found that its tags sometimes produce errors. The programs I use most of the time are dBpoweramp and foobar2000. Reason: mp3tag cannot handle .wav tagging which I need.
 
On the other hand, maybe tags aren´t terribly important. I updated tags once on an album that was already on the SDcard of the X3, already scanned and in its databank. Updating the tags didn´t change anything, even after re-scanning the library. So I assumed that the FiiO doesn´t use tags when accessing the files (at least not when using 'Album' mode) and that it at first simply uses the file structure of the storage medium to organize; tags might be read only the moment the file is played back. To me, this isn´t very disturbing - as I said, 'Album' mode has been working very well. IMO, it even fits the 'retro' design of the X3. But then again, to me, convenience never was key. Or otherwise I´d have bought an Apple thingy.
 

I dont expect apple quality. However, what I do expect, given the way the thread is going, is that when a problem is identified (especially from within the first pages of the thread), that the problem will be remedied. Instead, month after month, we are told "we cant fix it". There is no real explanation of why. The closest explanation is "it is too hard to explain why because of language barrier". I figured that with Fiio's new english/chinese guy, he might be able to make some sense of what the problem was. I also figured that maybe we can have some update on if the X5 firmware ported to X3 is happening or if that is still just speculation.

 
I think - and this is a shot in the dark - that FiiO keeps internal priorities. They need to earn some money in order to develop new gadgets and to keep their business afloat, including their workforce. The first thing they wanted to do - obviously - was to enable the DAC feature. While I don´t need it myself, it still makes perfect sense: they needed to be on the same level of the AK 100 in order to stay competitive. In every magazine I´ve read, the X3 and the AK100 are pitted against each other. So when iRiver added the DAC feature, FiiO fasttracked that and held other problems and their solutions back. As they have now added that function they might concentrate on other things. Regarding the X5: if I´d be FiiO I would of course develop them both together; assuming that they both use the same basic hardware setup (which I assume them to do). Secondly, they can´t promise anything since they don´t know what they might be capable of. See below.

My concern is that these 2 glaring problems have been there since day 1 and fiio has corrected many things but not that. Seemingly it is simple, it is a linked list type thing. Admittedly difficult to do linked lists in a tiny embedded environment, but Fiio wouldnt have hired programmers that dont know what they're doing.
 
(...)

And while the ipod interface looked bad when it first came out, its not like Fiio hasnt had multiple generations of products from multiple vendors (including apple and sansa clip, who has the same number of buttons as the X3) to figure out how to properly lay out an interface. I would think its common sense to do some market research and see what other interfaces are like before you design your own.

 
Apple needed four to five engineering 'gods' to get the first iPod released (and it took them 3 years to make it Windows compatible... and why? Because they only knew their own Apple OS). And they had some 100 people working on the hardware alone. Add some other 100 people working on the software. Apple threw an awful amount of money and people at their first iPod. Then they employed people testing their new gadget. Lots of people. Lots of times. And all the while Steve Jobs was complaining that they should change the DAC (true story, he chose the DAC for the first iPod himself after listening tests). This costs money, loads of it. Money FiiO doesn´t have since they are much, much smaller. IMO it´s a wonder that they even managed to get this far, releasing a player of their own. And I´m not blowing sugar up their ass.
Apple can afford to use the fastest SoCs available. FiiO cannot, the companies producing the best SoCs won´t even talk to FiiO (they wouldn´t buy enough). But even then they afforded themselves the luxury of hiring firmware engineers. Compare that to other boutique manufacturers like iBasso who´re still trying to turn sh** into chocolate.
Yes, FiiO lacks experience. But I expect nothing else, in fact I was certain that it would be like this before I even bought it. They are still learning how to do stuff (you can only buy so much expertise... and who knows who holds some dubious patent for this or that) and believe me... they are blazingly fast. And their support still reacts friendly even when they are bombed with emails always asking for the same things (as I did). So far, FiiO has been an exception... and stupid Americans like you and stupid Germans like me can actually learn something from them: how to react to customers for example.
 
Maybe you could in the meantime try to circumvent your problem by trying to navigate via the album or file view. Not the most comfortable way, but it might get the work done and make you happy. I hope I´m not too naive here.
 
EDIT: Crap, sorry for writing so much. Typical for me.

 

[Marlene]

Here's one of the patents that will, as i understand, give us the hierarchy as we want, but i would bet you $5 that it costs more than $5 to use/implement it.

 
I agree. Just think about Apple and Samsung sueing each other because of how customers 'wipe' on their smartphone screens.

 

[Marlene]

   
Forgive me if that's already been answered (haven't been following this thread lately), but will this fix the mp3 decoding issue I reported earlier?
 
I haven't been able to enjoy mp3 encoded classical music on my X3 so far, due to excessive background noise (still present with FW 2.05).
 

 
I cannot access the example MP3s you uploaded. Do they contain the noise you were talking about? Did you produce them yourself? I´m asking because if you resampled them some not-very-good resampler could suck at aliasing rejection which might cause noise to creep back into the audible band. Or did you record the output of the FiiO to exhibit the noise?

 

[shrimants]

Actually Joe I'm out to dinner right now but tomorrow let me take some pictures and compile a thing of what I mean and how I think it should be. It's hard to explain without a couple diagrams and I'm not great at using the head go editor to make multi layer lists.

 

[Marlene]

  (...) and possibly provided a little better explanation about what can't be done (eg, the big lag switching tracks).

 
Are you using FLAC? I´ve found that using a compression level close to the maximum taxes the FiiO processor immensely... so I´ve opted for 'Compression Level 0' instead. Much faster. It also helps to resize embedded covers to the screens' resolution of 240x240px - the X3 doesn´t need to resize anymore.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Just got my X3 today. It came fw1.31, I had upgraded to fw2.05 straight away out of the box. My files with korean text is unable to display correctly , seems that all korean text display as squares. Japanese text is fine though. Any solution to fix this?

Do you know what is the tag encoding of your Korean songs? Unicode or? Thanks

 

[Mr Trev]

   
Are you using FLAC? I´ve found that using a compression level close to the maximum taxes the FiiO processor immensely... so I´ve opted for 'Compression Level 0' instead. Much faster. It also helps to resize embedded covers to the screens' resolution of 240x240px - the X3 doesn´t need to resize anymore.

 
I'm using FLAC (comp.5) and ALAC almost exclusively, but I haven't noticed any real difference with lag between formats. They way I have Musicbee set, it will resize all the embedded art to 240x when it transfers (I'm not really sure why James mentioned before that Fiio was looking at supporting artwork larger than 1000x1000 since it just gets scaled anyways). They only reason that the lag is an issue for me is that sometimes I'll hit the button twice thinking it didn't work the first time. Of course this makes the X3 skip 2 songs (I'm slowly learning to wait). I remember some others speculating that it could be a buffer size issue, and it is mentioned over on the bug thread, but Fiio claims it's not something they can/will fix (unless they are referring to a different slow skip problem). Otherwise I'm pretty happy with the X3. I haven't been having any of the problems that some of the others have, and I'm learning to adapt to the way it currently works - still hoping that they can get the categories working better (file browser works ok for me now. same for album mode). (Also waiting to see if the X5 UI works as good as the screenshots look. Since it uses the same SoC, Fiio should hopefully be able to port it over.)
Cheers.... 

 

[Marlene]

   
I'm using FLAC (comp.5) and ALAC almost exclusively, but I haven't noticed any real difference with lag between formats. They way I have Musicbee set, it will resize all the embedded art to 240x when it transfers (I'm not really sure why James mentioned before that Fiio was looking at supporting artwork larger than 1000x1000 since it just gets scaled anyways). They only reason that the lag is an issue for me is that sometimes I'll hit the button twice thinking it didn't work the first time. Of course this makes the X3 skip 2 songs (I'm slowly learning to wait). I remember some others speculating that it could be a buffer size issue, and it is mentioned over on the bug thread, but Fiio claims it's not something they can/will fix (unless they are referring to a different slow skip problem). Otherwise I'm pretty happy with the X3. I haven't been having any of the problems that some of the others have, and I'm learning to adapt to the way it currently works - still hoping that they can get the categories working better (file browser works ok for me now. same for album mode). (Also waiting to see if the X5 UI works as good as the screenshots look. Since it uses the same SoC, Fiio should hopefully be able to port it over.)
Cheers.... 

Ah, now I understand. You´re right, skipping doesn´t work that well. My solution is to go back into the tracklist of an album I´m playing. Being there, I simply hit the next track.

 

[binc]

Do you know what is the tag encoding of your Korean songs? Unicode or? Thanks

Is USB OTG(flashdrives etc) at all planned for a future fw? It's great that we finally have good english support . Hoping my x3 arrives this week, can't wait to test it against my touch 5g.

 

[howdy]

Hello James, question about the battery, mine was moving around the other day and now it is not. Is this something I should worry about or? I have had mine since the release in the US, a few months anyways. Thanks in advance.

 

[MrJohnnyHan]

Do you know what is the tag encoding of your Korean songs? Unicode or? Thanks

UTF-16
 
I have tried changing the language of the dap to Korean and it will display correctly. If i change to other languages, it will show up as squares. I can see japanese characters if the language is set to English. I guess I need to wait for a firmware update for this problem to be fixed.

 

[shrimants]

Then I misunderstood, sorry. It just seemed to me that you were very agitated when writing your posts. You did something like SHOUTING which in my experience is far from optimal . Thing is we can´t see each other and us humans suck at interaction without seeing the individual we communicate with. Irony, a joke, those things might get lost in writing. So sorry for misunderstanding.

How do you access your music? I use 'Albums' only. I have tried 'Genre' and 'Artist' only once, hated it and went happily back to 'Album' (it´s how I listen anyway). From the little experience I gained using the 'Genre' & 'Artist' I concluded that every album needs to be tagged properly in order to be accessed without problems. I don´t know Musicbee, but just like you I use mp3tag a lot. Though I´ve already found that its tags sometimes produce errors. The programs I use most of the time are dBpoweramp and foobar2000. Reason: mp3tag cannot handle .wav tagging which I need.

On the other hand, maybe tags aren´t terribly important. I updated tags once on an album that was already on the SDcard of the X3, already scanned and in its databank. Updating the tags didn´t change anything, even after re-scanning the library. So I assumed that the FiiO doesn´t use tags when accessing the files (at least not when using 'Album' mode) and that it at first simply uses the file structure of the storage medium to organize; tags might be read only the moment the file is played back. To me, this isn´t very disturbing - as I said, 'Album' mode has been working very well. IMO, it even fits the 'retro' design of the X3. But then again, to me, convenience never was key. Or otherwise I´d have bought an Apple thingy.


I think - and this is a shot in the dark - that FiiO keeps internal priorities. They need to earn some money in order to develop new gadgets and to keep their business afloat, including their workforce. The first thing they wanted to do - obviously - was to enable the DAC feature. While I don´t need it myself, it still makes perfect sense: they needed to be on the same level of the AK 100 in order to stay competitive. In every magazine I´ve read, the X3 and the AK100 are pitted against each other. So when iRiver added the DAC feature, FiiO fasttracked that and held other problems and their solutions back. As they have now added that function they might concentrate on other things. Regarding the X5: if I´d be FiiO I would of course develop them both together; assuming that they both use the same basic hardware setup (which I assume them to do). Secondly, they can´t promise anything since they don´t know what they might be capable of. See below.

Apple needed four to five engineering 'gods' to get the first iPod released (and it took them 3 years to make it Windows compatible... and why? Because they only knew their own Apple OS). And they had some 100 people working on the hardware alone. Add some other 100 people working on the software. Apple threw an awful amount of money and people at their first iPod. Then they employed people testing their new gadget. Lots of people. Lots of times. And all the while Steve Jobs was complaining that they should change the DAC (true story, he chose the DAC for the first iPod himself after listening tests). This costs money, loads of it. Money FiiO doesn´t have since they are much, much smaller. IMO it´s a wonder that they even managed to get this far, releasing a player of their own. And I´m not blowing sugar up their ass.
Apple can afford to use the fastest SoCs available. FiiO cannot, the companies producing the best SoCs won´t even talk to FiiO (they wouldn´t buy enough). But even then they afforded themselves the luxury of hiring firmware engineers. Compare that to other boutique manufacturers like iBasso who´re still trying to turn sh** into chocolate.
Yes, FiiO lacks experience. But I expect nothing else, in fact I was certain that it would be like this before I even bought it. They are still learning how to do stuff (you can only buy so much expertise... and who knows who holds some dubious patent for this or that) and believe me... they are blazingly fast. And their support still reacts friendly even when they are bombed with emails always asking for the same things (as I did). So far, FiiO has been an exception... and stupid Americans like you and stupid Germans like me can actually learn something from them: how to react to customers for example.

Maybe you could in the meantime try to circumvent your problem by trying to navigate via the album or file view. Not the most comfortable way, but it might get the work done and make you happy. I hope I´m not too naive here.

EDIT: Crap, sorry for writing so much. Typical for me.

Yeah, i tend to use capital letters in order to emphasize, whereas the rest of the internet uses it to yell haha.

For accessing my music: First of all understand my directory structure: Microsd / Artist / Album / ## Title.flac

As a result, the way I browse is always:

Browse > Microsd > Artist > Album > play the entire album or some track

Alternatively, I'll do Category > Artist > Play some track, shuffle this artist.

Alternatively, Play all > shuffle everything.

The problem with this is that my MicroSD card needs to have very meticulously organized file names. its fine with MP3tag. but keep in mind, I had to go out and buy an external microUSB card reader so that I can achieve proper speeds otherwise reading the card is too slow. Right now, i can eject the card, load it using the reader, and very quickly re-organize all my items. I like to keep the original file name, but its not a big deal for this player.

I see that you hated the "artist" view. Why is that? I'm sure that its for the same reason I disliked it: it listed all the first tracks, then the second tracks, then 03 tracks, then 04, etc. There was no option to search within artist by album, and the "all songs by this artist" view doesnt sort intuitively.

I think fiio is already competitive enough against the AK100. I mean the AK100 costs 6 times as much, and cant really measure that much better. Put them against each other on a test bench and see if one performs 6 times better in terms of specifications, see if any of those specifications are even worthwhile. Some people just want to blow money on useless high end audio devices because they are rich and they think that money == audio fideltiy, and they are free to do so, fiio wouldnt ever get their business anyways.

Also, this comparison to first gen ipod keeps being drawn. But that was in 2001 with no other comparable hardware on the market. Apple started from scratch. They put a HUGE screen on this thing, there was practically no one else to compete against for the longest time (till ipod gen3 i believe, because ipod still kept beating everyone in terms of disk space, even when others managed to nail the UI like iRiver).

Right now you can buy an ardiuino kit and create your own mp3 player. There are thousands of DAPs on the market to choose from. There are thousands to research from. Ipod had to make a big start, but fiio has 12 years of technology and knowledge to draw upon when creating this. Sure they are a small company, but this design seems like they didnt have anyone simulate it first, they didnt have any prototypes that people tried using, they didnt have any beta testing (except what we are doing now) and even now when we are telling them "this is what is wrong" we werent really getting any replies regarding a possible solution.

I do get what you are saying about X3/X5 development though.

On a different note, i really love this website. theres not many people IRL you can talk to this passionately about such odd subjects like a digital audio player's problems and the internal workings of the company that designed it. Normal people just wouldnt care. They'd just return it and buy something else, or say "oops bad purchase" and buy something else.