[bsoplinger]

I have a Benjie and AGPtEK which are cheap players that don't have gapless playback but neither makes noise between tracks. Just about a second, a bit less but not by much, a dead silence then the next track starts. Both are dirt cheap players so at least this much should be what Xduoo should manage. I have another player that does the noise thing. I can't listen to that one at all. Even if it was the best sounding player with a perfect GUI and supported 10 Tb of storage and only cost $10 I still wouldn't want it. That jarring second or so of noise between tracks is just that awful. IMHO.

 

[mbwilson111]

I have a Benjie and AGPtEK which are cheap players that don't have gapless playback but neither makes noise between tracks. Just about a second, a bit less but not by much, a dead silence then the next track starts. Both are dirt cheap players so at least this much should be what Xduoo should manage. I have another player that does the noise thing. I can't listen to that one at all. Even if it was the best sounding player with a perfect GUI and supported 10 Tb of storage and only cost $10 I still wouldn't want it. That jarring second or so of noise between tracks is just that awful. IMHO.

Yes, a player that does not do gapless play is ok for albums that do not require seamless playing. I have the little Ruizu A50 and I love it because it is so small. I am just careful about what albums I put on it. I only listen to full albums. I never shuffle. The A50 does not make a noise between tracks either. It does not cut off the beginnings of songs. That Sao Mai does at times.... depends on if the song has any lead in time or not I guess. If it starts with a bang, you miss that.

I know the Benjie and AGPtEk are great little players. The Benjie T6 does gapless I believe.

For gapless play I already have my Cayin N3, my Opus #1, and my rockboxed xDuoo X3. I would only get this nano d3 if it has gapless play, no pops between songs, and no cutting off the beginnings of songs. Waiting to find out... I do not actually NEED another player... obviously

 

[NymPHONOmaniac]

Yes, a player that does not do gapless play is ok for albums that do not require seamless playing. I have the little Ruizu A50 and I love it because it is so small. I am just careful about what albums I put on it. I only listen to full albums. I never shuffle. The A50 does not make a noise between tracks either. It does not cut off the beginnings of songs. That Sao Mai does at times.... depends on if the song has any lead in time or not I guess. If it starts with a bang, you miss that.

I know the Benjie and AGPtEk are great little players. The Benjie T6 does gapless I believe.

For gapless play I already have my Cayin N3, my Opus #1, and my rockboxed xDuoo X3. I would only get this nano d3 if it has gapless play, no pops between songs, and no cutting off the beginnings of songs. Waiting to find out... I do not actually NEED another player... obviously

I begin to think its about time that I rockbox the X3 but when I do so with Ibasso DX90 i go back to normal firmware cause with touch screen it wasnt that great and I don't use eq. My batteries life was lower too and now about X3 just to be sure, can we play 96khz flac or not? With all this space that give dual microsd I have lot of ''hd'' album in my 128g cards wich I enjoy with line out (less so without cause it look soundpressure is different or something).

 

[mbwilson111]

I begin to think its about time that I rockbox the X3 but when I do so with Ibasso DX90 i go back to normal firmware cause with touch screen it wasnt that great and I don't use eq. My batteries life was lower too and now about X3 just to be sure, can we play 96khz flac or not? With all this space that give dual microsd I have lot of ''hd'' album in my 128g cards wich I enjoy with line out (less so without cause it look soundpressure is different or something).

When you rockbox the X3, the first step makes the player able to dual boot so you can either boot into stock firmware or rockbox depending on the position of the lock switch. So you are not stuck with rockbox if you do not like it.

I do know that rockbox plays 24 bit files but it downsamples them first to 16 bit. If that is a problem you can boot into stock firmware to play those. Using stock firmware you will not have gapless play and certain files have a small pitch error (search pitch error in the X3 thread). Rockbox fixes those two problems so that is the reason I rockboxed mine the day I received it. I do not use EQ or any of the fancy Rockbox features. I do not make playlists. I do not shuffle play. I just play my albums.

 

[bsoplinger]

Yes, a player that does not do gapless play is ok for albums that do not require seamless playing. I have the little Ruizu A50 and I love it because it is so small.
…
I would only get this nano d3 if it has gapless play, no pops between songs, and no cutting off the beginnings of songs. Waiting to find out... I do not actually NEED another player... obviously

I begin to think its about time that I rockbox the X3 but…

When you rockbox the X3, the first step makes the player able to dual boot so you can either boot into stock firmware or rockbox depending on the position of the lock switch. So you are not stuck with rockbox if you do not like it.

I do know that rockbox plays 24 bit files but it downsamples them first to 16 bit. If that is a problem you can boot into stock firmware to play those. Using stock firmware you will not have gapless play and certain files have a small pitch error (search pitch error in the X3 thread). Rockbox fixes those two problems so that is the reason I rockboxed mine the day I received it. I do not use EQ or any of the fancy Rockbox features. I do not make playlists. I do not shuffle play. I just play my albums.

I have a Ruizu A50 and I don't mind the silent gap for some things like mellow classical music where the pause in music isn't jarring. My point was that if these cheap players can at least do a silent, less than 1 second gap between tracks there is absolutely no reason that more expensive players can't do at least as well and it is inexcusable to have noise between tracks or cut off the beginning of tracks or any of the other poor behavior found in these more expensive devices.

What he said about RockBox. Extremely simple to install. Is dual boot with a simple way to run the Xduoo firmware to access features that RockBox doesn't have. So this is a have your cake and eat it too situation.

 

[Raketen]

I've always wondered why one of these lower cost oriented DAP makers like xDuoo don't just hire a few open source devs to port rockbox.

 

[kova4a]

Well, the Nano is in the house.

 

[atmazzer]

The person I mentioned before finally gives a full review. As this is not my own review, I'll just give the gist of the review for the sound quality.
Bass: Punchy type of bass, But uppermid leak probably makes the depth can't be found.
Mid: Kind of lacks presence, but uppermid very loud, makes the sound of guitar strums or keyboard feels like in the 'front of your nose' (lol). Kind of unpleasant.
Treble: It got details, but still on the tame side.
Soundstage: Feels like inside of a room. Kind of tight, but feels natural.

Story short, he highly recommends to use the build-in EQ to shape the sound to your taste, especially since he said the equalization feels 'natural' or so he said.

EDIT: More info about the 10 seconds delay.
If you play the song from internal memory, the delay are 'only' about 3-4 seconds. But well, it's only 8 GB, so...

I hope that he checks to see if it has gapless... but that comment about cutting off the first two seconds of the song worries me. That is unacceptable.

If you mean whether it will play next song uninterrupted, no it's not. It's not gapless unfortunately.

 

[kova4a]

OK, just gave it a quick go. It's in bad need of an update or just the design is flawed. It is slow - nothing like the very snappy and responsive x10. These is big delay when skipping songs as stated above. Seems to be better in few skip through songs in one folder. Definitely struggles the most with high-res and it's been 20 minutes and I already got 2 freezes and one random restart when trying to go to the menu.
Yes, like 2 secs missing in the beginning of songs (strangely not with all songs - again some weird stuff). It's like the put a super slow SoC to achieve the bigger battery life, but it backfired.

Also, while you go through the menus and settings you can hear a faint sound from the operation of the chip. Right now I'm disappointed. Will have to wait and see what they'll do.

Oh, and of course, no gapless. There is no pop between the songs but more of a sound pressure change like from turning down an amp

I don't know if it's just an issue with the first batch or what, but they've kinda dropped the ball on this one. I've been super happy woth the X10 and haven't had a single freeze or restart since I got it, but this here is a mess

 

[kova4a]

And here are some bad pics

 

[Orac]

...It's not gapless unfortunately.

OK, just gave it a quick go... ....here is a mess

Thanks for the feedback, you saved me from wasting $80 and I can strike this from my list. Somewhat depressing that so many of these contemporary DAPs are disappointing in so many ways, but there it is.

 

[kova4a]

Well, the positive thing is that I also got the xduoo ep1 at a bargain price, so not a complete bust coz at least I got one good xduoo product today. I see that Alex who is modding xduoo DAPs has also posted his impressions and that it is for people who are not in a hurry coz mushing the buttons more times won't speed things up. Hopefully xduoo will address this issues and will be able to fix it.

The bad part is that I actually intended to just check it out and then gift it to my father for Xmas to replace his old sansa clip he loves, but there's no way I'm going to torture him with this until it's fixed. This Christmas will be a total disaster lol. I also bought a new phone for my girlfriend for Chirstmas and it turned out that her boss is giving everyone an iphone X as a present today - can't compete with that

 

[mbwilson111]

If you mean whether it will play next song uninterrupted, no it's not. It's not gapless unfortunately.

The bad part is that I actually intended to just check it out and then gift it to my father for Xmas to replace his old sansa clip he loves, but there's no way I'm going to torture him with this until it's fixed

Thanks for the information. You have both saved me from wasting money and from frustration and disappointment. I have enough DAPs to meet my needs. I was just intrigued by this one.

 

[bsoplinger]

These initial reports are extremely depressing. It begs the question of how it could even be released in this awful condition. This forum has quite a few reps of various companies here. Is there an Xduoo one so I can send a request for them to refund me for mine once it arrives? I decided to go ahead and order one so I'd have a new toy for myself for Xmas Perhaps I can offer to be a tester so that they don't release something this bad again?

 

[kova4a]

Well, beats me. I did write them before it was released and said that I'm interested in reviewing the nano (and the x20, of course) but they never replied, which is strange, because they were the ones who approached me before asking whether I was interested in the x10 and I did praise it - deservingly, of course, because it's a great DAP, but with the nano I don't know - it needs to be updated or you need to be extremely patient - "oh, I won't to hear this track." and 10 seconds later you can listen to it. Now, if you want to listen to a certain track, there's a good chance that you'll still want to listen to it 10 seconds later but that's not the point lol (edit: actually more than 10 seconds given that the UI is not particularly snappy either)