Hey guys,
New X2 user here... Maybe I won't make many friends here with this
, but actually I'm a tad disappointed by the X2... I've been using it for a little bit more than a week now, and it's definitely a decent little player. With all the hype it got though, and people mentioning seperation and soundstage as it's strong suits, I found that I got a better soundstage out of my laptop (without amp) which I was a little miffed about (using Monks). I went from outside of my head to in my head going to the X2. It arrived with fw 7.0, but after listening for a bit I decided to try the Tennmak fw 6.1 and I do think I like it more (couldn't A/B though so could be psychological). Unfortunately a few of it's buttons do rattle, but it does have a serial number, don't know exactly how old it is.
Either way, I *am* enjoying it now, in all honesty I think I went in with too high expectations. I was hoping the Xduoo X2 was the Monk of DAPs, price / quality ratio, but that was just unrealistic, set myself up for failure there.. It's nice and small, light, I can do basic operations from inside my pocket & it sounds musical and pretty detailed (though not analytical ofc) with decent seperation. If it had a bit more air up high and a bigger soundstage I'd be blown away, but for the money it's definitely decent. I really don't mind the UI at all so far, it's bare-bones ofcourse but functional. I also didn''t have any noise floor issues, using the Monks. When I put in the Kz ATE's I did notice a bit of hiss, but as soon as the music started playing I forgot about that though. For that IEM the X2 is too warm a source though, the already big (and kinda slow / wooly?) subbass just overpowers, on electronic music at least.
Just felt like sharing my first experiences after a bit more than 10hrs of playing music on it (FLAC, variety of genres and artists like Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Bob Marley, Amy Winehouse, Lauryn Hill, Dave Brubeck Quartet, Daft Punk, Bluetech, Ott, Younger Brother, Quanta, Hibernation, Notorious BIG, De La Soul and The Pharcyde, etc ).