I have a little more to say today about the controls, I see that there are Fiio representatives here, so I hope this would help them identify some areas for improvement in future firmware updates.
Lets start with
- pausing and resuming a song - I don't have any complaints about this - seems to work great, seamless and instantaneous.
- next/previous song - I wish the next song change was as smooth as the pausing and resuming the same song. It usually takes about a 0.5-1 seconds for the next song to start playing. It's definitely not a huge problem but, I'd really love it if it could be done instantaneously, with the push of the button. I seem to remember someone mentioning this previously in the thread and suggested buffering at least the next song in the playlist so it'd be ready to play, but what I am about to say in the next point probably points to this technique already being used, so I don't know if Fiio has any other ideas or even if people think this is an issue - it might just be me being picky and finicky...
- starting any song other than the next one in the playlist - this takes about 2-3 seconds for me. At first I thought this was a problem because I was changing directories, but with further testing it seems to me that it doesn't matter if the song is in the same directory or in another, or even on the other microSD card - it always takes about this time for switching between the songs. I'd really love if Fiio manages to speed up this process. The reason I said above that I assume the software is already buffering the next song in the playlist is the difference between changing between next song and any other song(be it in the same directory or in a different directory on the other micro SD card).
-the gapless playback mode - some people reported problems with it, but for me it works really well - seamless and smooth(as long as it is the next song in the playlist that's played next and it's not in shuffle mode(which seems to disable the gapless mode).
-I have no idea what people around this corner of the internet think about crossfading, but I'd love to have a simple crossfade option, which might be able to alleviate the aforementioned wait periods between switching songs on the go(i.e. start fading out the current track while buffering in the next one).
-I'd also love if Fiio can implement some simple playlist support, so we are not limited to using preset folders and categories.
Other than that, I love my X5, the sound is awesome and is really tempting me to get some better headphones or IEMs to be able to fully appreciate the sound quality.
. Should have insured it.
