[Muenchener]

  Gonna love the silly 'this happened X years ago, so why not now?' argument. Why are smartphone's battery life not on 1000+hrs per charge when I had a whole week of battery life in my dumbphone 10 years ago? Why are we not colonizing the moon when we already sent people up there some 45 years ago?
 
The fact, FiiO is only in the DAP market for just one years. Who-did-what some X time ago might sound nice, but it does nothing to help a company on building a business from the ground up. I don't see Sony, Apple, Microsoft or Sandisk sending their senior engineer to help FiiO anytime soon, nor is FiiO going to be able to afford those engineer anyway. It is not an excuse that FiiO's DAP isn't as good as it can be, but at least have some perspective about it.
 
p/s: 5800 files limitation has nothing to do with the Chinese. Lets don't blame them for everything happened everywhere. It has to do with the limited RAM available to the SoC, which isn't exactly your TOTL SoC to begin with.

I mostly agree with you. But, I think FiiO is hurting its own business and future by selling a product with an immature firmware and set of capabilities. Or, at least, selling it and not being fast enough to bringing it up to speed before people start to complain and possible buyers take notice.

At New York's B&H store, both the X3 and the X5 are being returned in relatively large numbers, mostly because of a bad user interface experience. Sadly, the ruling system allows a customer to return an item and get a full refund for whatever reason. IMHO, that's why FiiO should be making a much larger effort to work through the bug list well before they release the next player.

Exactly because FiiO is not Sony nor would they ever get a senior engineer from them, they have to try harder and be faster.

 

[ClieOS]

  I mostly agree with you. But, I think FiiO is hurting its own business and future by selling a product with an immature firmware and set of capabilities. Or, at least, selling it and not being fast enough to bringing it up to speed before people start to complain and possible buyers take notice.

At New York's B&H store, both the X3 and the X5 are being returned in relatively large numbers, mostly because of a bad user interface experience. Sadly, the ruling system allows a customer to return an item and get a full refund for whatever reason. IMHO, that's why FiiO should be making a much larger effort to work through the bug list well before they release the next player.

Exactly because FiiO is not Sony nor would they ever get a senior engineer from them, they have to try harder and be faster.

 
The question, what kind of standard do FiiO needs to follow to tell them when and where their DAP is ready? Who to tell them what is "mature enough"? Does Apple or Sony never face any firmware problem on their new DAP? Do they not sell those DAP while trying to fix the problem on-the-go? However, what I do know is, and I can't disclose the detail to you, is that there are fairly large amount of money (*for a small company) FiiO has spent on developing the firmware fro X series, outsourcing it to specialized software company. So it is neither because of the lack of effort nor being ignorance of their part. Maybe they are not good enough to be compared to the big boys yet, but it is hard to deny they are among the best DAP (*functionality wise) coming out of China and they have shown us they are constantly trying to improve their firmware all the time - which I reckon is important, as they are being responsible to their products. They could have had an easiest life not to come to Head-fi for any discussion. Instead, they have chosen the harder way. But on the other hand, I also think buyer should be made aware of what they are buying into and not expecting iPod like smoothness right off the bat. It is what you are willing to wait for, trade off, learn and walk-through that makes these "unmature" DAP worthwhile. If you really just want a DAP that functions like a Sony or Apple, then it is better just to get a Sony and Apple then to fantasize FiiO will offer you that. Well, at least not yet. Neither Sony nor Apple becomes that giant they are in the time FiiO spent to develop their X series.

 

[LarryB08]

>>That's not the case though. I've encountered many applications including those by big corporations which play by filename in alphabetical order. Which is why almost everyone uses '01 Title.flac' etc. across the board. Now that you can mass rename files extremely easily based on your tags there's just no reason not to have that in place as a matter of diligent file management.
 
Most operating systems/file browsers won't display the files in order without the help of track numbers at the start either.
 
I never even noticed that the X5 wouldn't read track numbers as it plays everything I have gaplessly and in the correct order.<<
 
 
Fair enough and then I would stand corrected.
 
However, it would then seem to me that those players or applications never intended to use tags from which to build a library, like a simple file management tool in an operating system wouldn't when displaying a simple list of files. (Even so, I know for a fact that latter versions of Windows, for example, let you set the content type for certain folders so that when you set a folder as containing music, additional information in Details View from the file tag is displayed allowing you to present the files in the folder by track number gleaned from the tag and not the file name)
 
But in the end, my point is that Fiio has made some modest effort to build a music library on the X5 (putting aside the shockingly small file limit for now) and that uses some information from the file tag. But if you then expect users to have the track number in the name of the file, then you can also expect users to ensure that they have their files in a strict order of artist folder, then album folders, and then file names.
 
And if you expect that to be the case, there is no need to build a library at all - you can just as easily find the artist and their albums in folder view with the songs in track order because of the required naming convention.
 
But then don't make a half hearted effort. If you are going to build a music library on the player, do it right. What Fiio currently is doing makes the company look inept.
 
Yes, the main focus of this player is to provide an excellent sound experience for the user. But a good user experience with a functional UI and file handling is a very close second in my book.

 

[Muenchener]

   
The question, what kind of standard do FiiO needs to follow to tell them when and where their DAP is ready? Who to tell them what is "mature enough"? Does Apple or Sony never face any firmware problem on their new DAP? Do they not sell those DAP while trying to fix the problem on-the-go? However, what I do know is, and I can't disclose the detail to you, is that there are fairly large amount of money (*for a small company) FiiO has spent on developing the firmware fro X series, outsourcing it to specialized software company. So it is neither because of the lack of effort nor being ignorance of their part. Maybe they are not good enough to be compared to the big boys yet, but it is hard to deny they are among the best DAP (*functionality wise) coming out of China and they have shown us they are constantly trying to improve their firmware all the time - which I reckon is important, as they are being responsible to their products. They could have had an easiest life not to come to Head-fi for any discussion. Instead, they have chosen the harder way. But on the other hand, I also think buyer should be made aware of what they are buying into and not expecting iPod like smoothness right off the bat. It is what you are willing to wait for, trade off, learn and walk-through that makes these "unmature" DAP worthwhile. If you really just want a DAP that functions like a Sony or Apple, then it is better just to get a Sony and Apple then to fantasize FiiO will offer you that. Well, at least not yet. Neither Sony nor Apple becomes that giant they are in the time FiiO spent to develop their X series.

The standard they need to follow is their own, if any. They are not Sony, nor Apple, nor do they have their deep pockets to happily lose money, do they?

However, simple things like properly reading track tags are mandatory for a high-fi DAP. And if you are going to fit 2 mSD slots in the DAP and claim huge storage capacity as a competitive differential, please do it with a firmware that is ready for the much more than 5800 tracks customers will likely put into those 2x128GB mSD cards. Just good ol' common sense.

I am not discussing FiiO's hardware quality. We know they are among the best buck for the money you can get.

If you take a look at how FiiO markets their devices, they appeal to the average costumer who's looking for more sound quality than their i-device or lesser DAPs can provide. The only thing FiiO lacks for that to be completely true is for their firmwares and user interfaces to be as polished as their aluminum enclosures.

 

[krayziehustler]

 
However, simple things like properly reading track tags are mandatory for a high-fi DAP. And if you are going to fit 2 mSD slots in the DAP and claim huge storage capacity as a competitive differential, please do it with a firmware that is ready for the much more than 5800 tracks customers will likely put into those 2x128GB mSD cards. Just good ol' common sense.
 
I am not discussing FiiO's hardware quality. We know they are among the best buck for the money you can get.

If you take a look at how FiiO markets their devices, they appeal to the average costumer who's looking for more sound quality than their i-device or lesser DAPs can provide. The only thing FiiO lacks for that to be completely true is for their firmwares and user interfaces to be as polished as their aluminum enclosures.

 Well said.
 
People act as if those two things you stated are luxuries. Those are pretty basic this day and age especially with their marketing angle and materials.  

 

[Jess70]

 Well said.

People act as if those two things you stated are luxuries. Those are pretty basic this day and age especially with their marketing angle and materials.  

Fiio spends a lot of evergy listening to Head-Fi'ers and working with us to improve their product to fill our needs. As we speak they are implementing play lists.

No product is perfect. Apple ipods have been out for years and they have yet to fix sonething as simple as an EQ to keep it from clipping. At least Fiio has the sonics right.

I have no problem politely requesting Fiio to improve features. However, tone is everything.

I love my X5, and all my tags work fantastically, however, I copied and pasted from iTunes, whuch had already numbered each track.

 

[Styx2]

  Hey!
I've just joined the club:
yesterday I received my X5 from The Headphone Bar (who's service is first rate, BTW!).
So far, I haven't seen any bugs or had any problems..
I'm using a Lexar 64 GB card with no troubles.
My preliminary impressions are the X5 sounds quite good driving my AKG Q701 phones!

I have that same setup Chris, but I find that the X5 amp does not drive my AKG Q701's efficiently but sound awesome with the E12 amp.

 

[Muenchener]

Fiio spends a lot of evergy listening to Head-Fi'ers and working with us to improve their product to fill our needs. As we speak they are implementing play lists.

No product is perfect. Apple ipods have been out for years and they have yet to fix sonething as simple as an EQ to keep it from clipping. At least Fiio has the sonics right.

I have no problem politely requesting Fiio to improve features. However, tone is everything.

I love my X5, and all my tags work fantastically, however, I copied and pasted from iTunes, whuch had already numbered each track.

The problem with this line of thinking is forgetting that the Apple iPods that started with those very bad firmwares were also the pioneers of the DAP industry, many years ago. Nowadays, you do not need several months to research and discover how to make a simple piece of code read correctly a file tag. Almost every audio player on the market reads tags and can order tracks based on the embedded track number.

I like that FiiO listens to its users and improve their products as a result. The speed of that "circle of improvement" is what I consider problematic. I have a few hundred songs with no track number on the file name. It makes the use of the music library futile, unless I want to listen to the songs in an alphabetic, sort of shuffle mode. I have been waiting 3 months for that very little fix to happen, yet it didn't. In a few months, FiiO may present a new DAP, and who knows if my X5 would be able to read the track number tag by then...

See the point here?

 

[Loquah]

  The problem with this line of thinking is forgetting that the Apple iPods that started with those very bad firmwares were also the pioneers of the DAP industry, many years ago. Nowadays, you do not need several months to research and discover how to make a simple piece of code read correctly a file tag. Almost every audio player on the market reads tags and can order tracks based on the embedded track number.

I like that FiiO listens to its users and improve their products as a result. The speed of that "circle of improvement" is what I consider problematic. I have a few hundred songs with no track number on the file name. It makes the use of the music library futile, unless I want to listen to the songs in an alphabetic, sort of shuffle mode. I have been waiting 3 months for that very little fix to happen, yet it didn't. In a few months, FiiO may present a new DAP, and who knows if my X5 would be able to read the track number tag by then...

See the point here?

 
Fiio are releasing new beta firmware on roughly a weekly basis so they are clearly working very quickly on updates - much faster than I ever experienced with the much higher-priced AK100 which had plenty of UI and firmware-related issues. The fact that they haven't fixed your problem shouldn't be a blight on Fiio as their actions are likely based on the volume of feedback and requests received for certain fixes via here and Bugzilla. As others have mentioned, there is software available (Foobar, MediaMonkey, MP3Tag) that can quickly and easily update your filenames with track numbers. That is probably why most of us are more focused on issues like playlists, CUE support, and gapless (already fixed) and thus why Fiio is responding to those requests.
 
I'm not saying this to make you wrong. You have every right to manage your library how you choose to and to use your devices how you choose to, but I feel like this Fiio-bashing is unreasonable given the rapid attempts to fix many of the most discussed problems (except the library size limit). If you remove Apple and Sony from the equation because they are large, long-established players in the market, none of the boutique, hi-end DAP manufacturers have succeeded first go in producing a quality player with a quality interface, full-featured firmware (playlists, gapless, no freezes, CUE support, etc.). iBasso is on their 3rd player with reportedly terrible firmware issues (I haven't owned so can't comment directly) and iRiver produced a deeply flawed firmware on the AK100 that was still not fixed and was receiving literally no attention or customer support by the time I sold mine to buy the X5. As a complete non-fanboy, I think Fiio should be applauded for their continued, rapid efforts and given some grace to sort out the same challenges that are still tripping up far more experienced DAP manufacturers.

 

[Muenchener]

   
Fiio are releasing new beta firmware on roughly a weekly basis so they are clearly working very quickly on updates - much faster than I ever experienced with the much higher-priced AK100 which had plenty of UI and firmware-related issues. The fact that they haven't fixed your problem shouldn't be a blight on Fiio as their actions are likely based on the volume of feedback and requests received for certain fixes via here and Bugzilla. As others have mentioned, there is software available (Foobar, MediaMonkey, MP3Tag) that can quickly and easily update your filenames with track numbers. That is probably why most of us are more focused on issues like playlists, CUE support, and gapless (already fixed) and thus why Fiio is responding to those requests.
 
I'm not saying this to make you wrong. You have every right to manage your library how you choose to and to use your devices how you choose to, but I feel like this Fiio-bashing is unreasonable given the rapid attempts to fix many of the most discussed problems (except the library size limit). If you remove Apple and Sony from the equation because they are large, long-established players in the market, none of the boutique, hi-end DAP manufacturers have succeeded first go in producing a quality player with a quality interface, full-featured firmware (playlists, gapless, no freezes, CUE support, etc.). iBasso is on their 3rd player with reportedly terrible firmware issues (I haven't owned so can't comment directly) and iRiver produced a deeply flawed firmware on the AK100 that was still not fixed and was receiving literally no attention or customer support by the time I sold mine to buy the X5. As a complete non-fanboy, I think Fiio should be applauded for their continued, rapid efforts and given some grace to sort out the same challenges that are still tripping up far more experienced DAP manufacturers.

You are right in that they have recently started to release beta firmware updates in the last weeks, but the player has been in the market for months now. If FiiO keep the speed of releases they have now, I guess they will be solving a lot of bugs pretty soon. I was mostly talking about how things were, not how things are now, since a couple of weeks. 

iBasso is terrible, I returned the DX90 because of that. But I want FiiO to succeed where others have failed. That iBasso is worse at this firmware game than FiiO is not enough (for FiiO).

I love my X5, and the few bugs that bothers me are not really that important. I'm going beyond my own personal issues, talking about how much better would the X5 have been if the firmware and user interface were more mature before they started to sell the DAP. I saw several FiiO DAPs being returned because of issues such as the track number, file limit or the now-solved missing 2 seconds at the start of the first song.

All brands that release poor or unstable firmware pay the price via returns or lack of future sales, but some brands can afford it and some others can't.

If a brand fails at communicating exactly what can you expect of a device when you buy it, and how long it will take for the improvements to arrive, it will lose sales, money and trust. The release early, release often, fix it on the way does not work for small brands.

 

[aural bliss]

Anyone pull the trigger on these cheap 64gb cards from China through ebay
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hot-sale-Free-Shipping-New-64GB-Micro-SD-Microsdhc-Class-10-TF-Flash-Memory-Card-/161283021790?pt=US_Cellphone_Memory_Cards&hash=item258d379bde
 
$15 for 64gb

 

[cooperpwc]

I browse by folder. I have properly named files. The X5 UI is not immature. It is close to flawless in terms of covering the basics in my view. It lacks exactly one important basic feature. It should be possible to return to the Now Playing screen from the file browser without losing your place in the browser. Currently you get pushed to the top of the directory tree every time that you exit the browser.
 
Overall the X5 has a good UI. If you are satisfied with crap files, you have already chosen your position in the food chain.

 

[x RELIC x]

Anyone pull the trigger on these cheap 64gb cards from China through ebay
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hot-sale-Free-Shipping-New-64GB-Micro-SD-Microsdhc-Class-10-TF-Flash-Memory-Card-/161283021790?pt=US_Cellphone_Memory_Cards&hash=item258d379bde

$15 for 64gb

Every time, and I mean EVERY time, I've seen these deals purchased by a friend or read about it on Head Fi the cards turn out to be fake with only ~4gb of storage.

Maybe it's legit, and it's certainly cheap enough to give it a go, but personally I wouldn't waste my time.

 

[x RELIC x]

I browse by folder. I have properly named files. The X5 UI is not immature. It is close to flawless in my view. It lacks exactly one important feature. It should be possible to return to the Now Playing screen from the file browser without losing your place in the browser. Currently you get pushed to the top of the directory tree every time that you exit the file browser.

The X5 has a good UI. If you are satisfied with crap files, you have already chosen your position in the food chain.

Agreed. The Fiio DAPs have come a long way since the first release of the X3, and aside from a couple of quirks (which I easily live with) it's sound is just so great. This is what I love about it over anything else. I can't unhear what the X5 has shown me in a portable player and I'll never go back to a mainstream DAP again.

 

[subguy812]

I have a little different opinion on FiiO. They have their niche. While I do agree at times some things don't make sense for the most part the product they have turned out is an incredible bang for the buck. So FiiO decides to bring on huge salaries for software engineers etc... and pushing their product line that means the price also increases and opens up a whole new list of bitches. I can hear it now folks here saying I remember when FiiO was affordable. You can't win with some people.

For those that think Apple is great I will not use one of their products, I loathe iTunes. I don't bitch on their forums and continue to try to coach Apple on how to build or run their business, nor does Apple care what I think.

I will say that anytime I have had an issue Fiio has hooked me up. I am not fanboy but enjoy portable equipment that has good quality sound. Apple has limited issues,now, with things not working because they control and limit the types of files and only use their hardware etc...the X5 is a broad based product. It is amazing that while some folks have issues others don't. I have had issues, frustrating... Yes. Overall things work.

X5 is not only file dependant but hardware dependant. There are many micro SD manufacturers. The flexibility of the FiiO X5 user to create the amount of storage they choose ie...you are not limited by a fixed storage amount, is a huge selling point to me. But it would be an insurmountable task to test with each SD card manufacturer. People buy and return products everyday, this is not one size fits all world.