FiiO X5 3rd Gen (FiiO X5iii): Stream of Consciousness Impressions & Review

Sorry if I sounded like I wanted you to like the X7 more than the X5iii - I did not mean to come off like that. I was just genuinely curious as to why you preferred one over the other. Thanks for your response - it's illuminating, and it gives me a better idea of what I could listening be for when comparing the two (I consider myself inexperienced, and so I'm trying to learn all I can in terms of what to listen for with equipment that I do actually have access to).

I'm actually not in the "ES9018S is the best" camp. I actually prefer AKM DACs when talking about DS DACs - I simply haven't spent enough time with non-DS DACs to know where my tastes for those lie.

 

During my troubleshooting of the library scanning behavior of the X5iii, I wound up doing a good bit of delving into the innards of my library directories. I was surprised at how much crud/cruft has accumulated in there over the years - from superfluous .JPG, .PDF and .TXT files, to OS-level controls files (e.g. Windows thumbnail databases and macOS folder-store files). And then some of this has been down to using different tools over time and not really paying attention to what files they were putting in the folders with some of the newer rips. More still has come with some dubious flirtations with meta-data editing/management/fix-up software.

Anyway, the net effect of all this is several THOUSAND completely useless files. In the context of my "travel library" this amounts to gigabytes of crap taking up precious space on the all-too-tiny microSD cards you can currently buy.

So, I'm going to put together an application to take care of this sort of thing, largely automatically, but with configuration options as necessary - since I doubt everyone that has space challenges on their DAPs actually maintains a completely separate copy of their library and they probably want to keep their "folder.jpg" files or .PDF "liner notes" etc. I have them in my primary library anyway (which isn't space constrained).

I'll likely do a rough version as a command line tool first, and if I'm feeling like it at the time I'll do it in something cross-platform so that as many of you as possible that want it can use it. And then I'll likely push a full-blown version with UX etc. for macOS.

 

I ended up picking these up today. I was going to wait for B&H to get them in stock however I remembered that Adorama sold them as well so went there after work. I know it would have been cheaper if I just had it shipped however I was impatient and don't have to deal with shipping issues (I'm not home when they deliver so there may be delays). I only have one 200gb micro sd card (I do plan on purchasing another one) and that seemed to scan pretty fast. Once I get another one I'll be set for a long time since my entire collection is considerably less than 400gb.

With my Andromeda, I can hear a very faint hiss if the room is quiet and I'm focusing to hear it. I don't believe it will be an issue in normal use situations. I've owned Fiio daps in the past (X1 - actually I never used it. I bought one and never got around to it and it's been sitting in my desk since, X3, X7) and I'm pretty impressed with how they have improved since. The X3 was their first dap and the UI was really simple however the sound was really good at the $100 price range. I bought the X7 when it was released (or close to it). It was too big in size and I didn't like the sound enough to keep it. I swore off Fiio after the X7 until I read this thread and the equivalent on head-fi. Their presence there really helped me make this purchase as it was nice to see a company so willing to help with issues and listen to their customers. That has separated them from other companies in my book as it's not something that is common.

The size of this version of the X5 is perfect. I always hated those transportable stacks with a dap, amp and a bunch of cables. I like how the portable audio has changed to a single unit doing the job these days. I do find the layout of the controls to be a bit odd. It took some time to realize that next song was on the bottom instead of the top of the two buttons. From my short use of this dap, there is a lot to like about them. I would like to use them balanced eventually so I'll have to find a cable maker for that (I wish I could DIY these things). I do need to figure out these filters. There's a quick explanation on their website about the difference however I'll need to experiment to see which setting I will like the best. At $399 I do not get the sense that these will challenge anything on top but it does seem to be competitive as the entire package goes at this price range. I do hope this will be the Fiio dap that I keep long term (I don't count the X1 since I bought it used in shitty condition and never used it).

 

Now that would be damn useful!

 

I'm actually going to start on it today ... because, you know, that'll give me one more thing to do that'll cause procrastination on other things that I need to get done but am not necessarily in the mood to do. After all, hard-work might pay off in the future, but procrastination always pays off right now!

I expect I can get through the parts that build the catalogs, for the CLI version anyway, today. Over night I've had some more involved thoughts about what a full-blown application might do in this context. Some of which includes a better way to handle sub-setting my library for portable devices with limited storage - without having to manually maintain multiple libraries.

First I have to choose what language I'm going to build the CLI version in though ...

 

Back to the topic of the X5iii for a couple of things ...

First, mounting it as USB Storage for using the built-in storage and/or updating your microSD cards in-place.

Now, for me, I rarely write to cards IN the player itself, though sometimes I'll format them there as this tends to cause fewer issues, especially with Android-based units, as my dedicated card readers are generally quite a bit faster. In the case of the Fiio X5iii you're DEFINITELY going to want to use an external card reader. The FiiO is glacially slow when connected in USB storage mode. Hell, it takes about 30 seconds for the volumes to mount when you put in that mode, and any file operations on either the built-in storage or the two microSD cards run at a fraction of what I get with my card readers.

To put this in perspective, with my 256 GB cards and a USB 3.1 reader/writer, I see about 90 MB/s write speed. With my 200 GB cards that roughly halves. And all of them drops to about 25 MB/s via USB 2.0 (which is about the write-speed I get writing to cards in the WM1A as well). However, the best speed I've clocked writing directly to the FiiO so far is 7 MB/s. Which means it'd take between, very roughly, two or three million years* to fill my dual 256 GB cards using the X5iii as the card interface.

On using cards with the thing ...

Supposedly it supports exFAT, NTFS and FAT32 ... but you can't do firmware updates from anything but FAT32 (which I would take as a warning sign) and there are enough reports of issues with exFAT volumes (how most current flash cards are formatted at the factory) that you should plan on switching your cards to FAT32 before seriously attempting to use the device.

I've run it both ways and not, honestly, seen any difference between exFAT and FAT32**, but the internal storage is in FAT32 format (presumably to keep the firmware updater as simple as possible), and other than faster random file operations and smaller allocation blocks, in this use case there's not much real advantage to exFAT anyway (unless you want to move your cards between players I guess ... but I'm too lazy for that ... each player gets its own dedicated cards).

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*Okay, I'm exaggerating a little ... it just feels like it's that long ... it'd actually take about 21 hours to fill both cards and the internal storage writing to the player directly.
**Note that if you're a Windows user, you'll need a third-party tool, or to format the card in the player, if you want a FAT32 volume larger than 32GB! Macs can do 256GB FAT32 volumes natively with no issues (just be aware that you choose "MS-DOS (FAT)" as your format and it'll automatically do it as FAT32 as needed).

 

@rawrster How do the Andros sound of of the X5iii compared to your other sources? That is, the bass vs. Zout character?

Good to know there's not much hiss out of the SE output.

 

Another couple of thoughts on the X5iii and accessing cards installed in it and/or it's internal storage ...

Unlike the Astell & Kern nonsense, you do not have to twat around with the bloody-awful "Android File Transfer" program to copy files to the X5iii from macOS. It mounts cards as standard USB Storage Class devices and you can address them directly (if slowly).

Also, you might find you're best served by keeping any streaming-service off-line files on the internal store (provided they'll fit, of course), as I've run into issues with some other Android based players that seem to lose those files if they're put on storage cards. I have NOT seen that particular issue with this FiiO unit yet, but who knows. This is less about the FiiO, then, and more about Android DAPs in general.

I just saw a bug report that shows the X5iii mixing up it's labels when you choose where to store downloaded content (it flagged the internal storage as external and the external as internal). I expect that's a cosmetic issue (if a bit silly), but if you see the same, you're not alone.

 

I may not be the best one to ask about that. I don't have much to compare with as I've recently gotten back into this hobby so no other portable sources at this time. That being said I do like the sound of the pairing. I have a geek out 1000 for my laptop and find that the X5 pairing has a tad more bass quantity. I typically don't complain much about bass quantity. If you have heard the ER4SR I felt that was borderline in bass quantity for me and at times I did want the UERM to have just a tad more when I owned those two earphones in the past. I have no such issues here. I do believe that there are better sources out there and the Andromeda could benefit from such. I would like to get the Sony WM1A in the future (why are there so many different balanced output on daps?) The opus#1 I had did sound a bit better however my unit had issues with noise/buzzing and it occurred while there was music playing so that is going to get returned this week as soon as I mail it out.

 

Prolly none of my business, but have you considered English?

Any idea why phone manufacturers would ever prefer the godawful "File Transfer" protocols to the good ol' reliable mounting as a USB Storage Class? I hate phones that don't give you standard access to your files...

 

Don't speak it, mate.

(Cheeky Bleeda')

...

l did get a start on the little tool though. The CLI version begins life as a little Python tool. Since it'll be a general purpose tool for DAP users (and has some uses for general library maintenance anyway), once I'm ready to post the thing I'll start a thread specifically for it.

For now, so far I have it doing the following ("library" here refers to whatever folder/hierarchy you elected to run the tool against):

• Count all entities in a given folder structure (from root, to as specific as you want to get), which should correspond to the item count you get inspecting the properties of a folder directly in your O.S. file browser. This is almost certainly going to vary hugely from the number of tracks your DAP (etc.) will report as scanned/indexed. This is useful since it's the source of a lot of confusion in what is/should be indexed.

• Catalog and display all of the types of music file (e.g. flac, wav, aac, mp3, alac etc. and the list of types recognized is trivially extensible) that exist in the library, along with how many files of each type there are and the total of all types. Assuming your DAP supports all of these file-types, this total should be the same as the reported number of scanned tracks*.

• Report the delta between total files and music files (to save you doing the math).

• Report the total size of all files and music files, and the delta, to show the space consumed by "crap" and that would be freed if you let the tool do a purge**. There is an option here to include/exclude folder-level cover/album/folder.jpg files.

• Display/log files that have filenames/paths that might be problematic for some players (special characters/unusual length).

So far this has been useful in directly validating that the X5iii is properly indexing the relevant files in the library.

And, right now, on a sample 20,000 track library, it runs the entire set of above operations in about 10 seconds.

I'll probably poke at it some more this evening and add the actual purge functionality.

And then the fun stuff will come, such as being able to intelligently, and controllably, manage a library in-place, including source deletion propagation, controllable synchronization, and to conditionalize what does/doesn't get copied to, and spread across, available storage on the target.


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*With the X5iii the "progress wheel" is scaled to represent the total number of files, of all types, across all mounted storage, so it can be as little as 3/4 full when it legitimately completes it's scan. This caused me some confusion at first, since I didn't think it was completing it's scan.
**This will vary a bit from the actual amount of space reported and shown as reclaimed by the O.S. since initially I'm just using file-size data and not accounting for slack space due to the allocation block size in the actual file-system. I may add logic to account for that, but it's not that important right now.

 

A bit more time with the unit ... (I've been bad the last couple of days and have just been listening to the WM1A instead).

First, with some third-party players and utilities, the second-card slot will not be visible. This is due to it seemingly not being exposed via the standard "External Storage Folders" interface in Android. I ran into this with UAPP (which I don't particularly care for, but lots of people use), but it'll affect any other tool or player that uses that method to enumerate available external storage (and it's a standard way of doing it, so is likely to be quite widespread).

Not sure how likely that is to get fixed ... it could be a simple off-by-one error* in how that list is being populated, a simple omission in the coding, or something more involved. We'll see. It's a big enough issue that it needs to go on the summary in the 2nd post though.

Second, I still find no fatigue listening to this thing. And I still find it very much a "Velvet Sound" presentation**. Depending on the filter mode selected it sounds very close to the signature of a Modi 2 (4490)/Magni 2 combination, albeit with a subtly less dynamic and authoritative delivery ... and not so subtly different with full-size cans. Which is still to say that I prefer it to the A&K units (even the 3XX line).

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*Lots of issues with the unit have, so far, been down to this type of coding error.
**It's worth noting that while I don't care for this very much in desktop components, it has a place in portable gear for me. Similarly, I tend to get on better with ESS 90XX implementations in portables than I do in full-size desktop gear. But, if you don't like the "Velvet Sound" stuff, you're unlikely to like this either.

 

I piddled around a bit more with the "clean-up" tool I mentioned ...

I've added the "purge" functionality. The default behavior is just to report on the status of the library, as previously described. You have to explicitly tell the tool to execute the purge (for safety). But, I am going to add a couple of other functions/options to the purge feature.

Principally those options will be to a) more control over what gets purged and b) to move rather than delete the purged files (into an identical folder-structure on some other mount point or folder; thus making it trivial to put all those files back where they came from if you need to with a simple, single, OS-level drag/drop or copy operation).

And once that's done, and (if I'm not feeling too lazy) I've packaged it so that you don't need to mess around setting up/installing Python etc., I'll post it for download and take it to it's own thread for further updates. That'll probably happen over the weekend.

 

I found a local store with a demo X5iii and went down for a listen today. It's a good size and fairly light, much lighter than the ZX2 which felt like a lead brick in my hand. It wasn't obvious how to scan the test tracks on my microSD card, so I just used it in folder mode. Otherwise, it was pretty easy and intuitive to use. A bit of delay in touch response (.2-.3 sec?), but not too bad. Having to wait a few seconds for the volume setting display to go away before you can do anything after adjusting the volume is a bit of an annoyance. I don't know if you can set that delay to be shorter. I tried pressing on the screen to turn off the volume display, but nothing seemed to work except to wait for it to go away on its own. The repeat mode area of the screen seemed to be randomly unresponsive on this unit. The buttons are a bit too easy to press accidentally if it's in your pocket or bag. They (and the volume wheel) can be selectivly disabled when the screen is off, but that defeats the purpose of having them so you don't have to use the touchscreen.

My main interest was in how it paired with the Andromedas. The specs say,

The SE output resulted in boomy bass, as I was afraid it would. I had to use my iEMatch -12dB proto-pigtail to bring the bass down to a desireable level. Compared to my iFi micro iDSD (iEMatch at High), the Fiio had a slightly shallower stage but tighter/precise imaging. Also a bit more detail, like lifting a slight veil compared to the iFi. The Low-pass filter was set to Slow Roll-off and I left it that way. I was hoping they'd have a balanced MMCX cable I could borrow to see if that output was more suited to the Andros, but I was out of luck. They should be getting one in soon though, so I'll be heading back down then.

I also briefly tried my HD650Ms. Needed volume set at ~75 on low gain, ~60 on high. Haven't been listening to them much since getting the Andros, so a comparison is rather difficult, but I didn't hear anything bad.

When changing tracks, there were 2 clicks: one at the stop of the track playing, and another at the beginning of the new track. No clicks playing through the queue. Clicks were loudest with the Andros plugged in directly, a bit reduced with the iFi attenuator, and very slight with the HD650s. Quickly skipping though test tracks it was a bit annoying, but in regular use I guess it wouldn't be that bothersome.

Was quoted equivalent of US$428 (incl tax), which is comparable with the amazon.com price of $400.

 

I've not noticed this at all on my unit, though that doesn't mean it isn't there - so I'll test for it specifically this evening.

Do you happen to know what firmware the unit was running (just in case it's a software issue)? Mine prompted for an OTA update to 1.1.3 pretty much as soon as I powered it on, so I let it do that update and had never listened to it on an earlier firmware.

 

I had a look at the "about device" screen but couldn't see a firmware version, only the kernel (3.x.x?) and something else I don't recall. I remember you mentioned FW 1.x.x, but didn't see anything that looked like that. It's highly likely that no updates have been done as they've got tons of stuff in the store and don't have the time nor inclination to play around with everything.

 

On the tool front ...

Some testing with different volumes/disk formats to verify the space-saved calculations are properly taking account of "space on disk" rather than "reported file size", and then giving it a once over under Windows, and I think I'm done with the first pass of this.

For those blissfully unaware, disk space is allocated in clusters of sectors (typically referred to as "allocation blocks/units" - and the size of those clusters varies both with the size of the partition/volume in question and the format of the disk involved. Under FAT32, for example, a store of more than 128GB is going to use 32KB clusters, meaning that even a 1-byte file will consume 32K of disk space. Since crud files tend to be small and numerous, they exhibit a disproportionate tendency to have slack space here and reporting just the "file size" (number of actual bytes in the file) can easily be significantly different than the "size on disk".

 

So,I fired mine up, set an album playing, and did some random track skipping and I'm not hearing any clicks as the tracks switch.

This is on firmware 1.1.4 which is, I believe, the latest.

 

Hmmm ... an odd little discovery ...

Since I switched card formats to the "supposedly recommended" FAT32 format (which is normally a long way from ideal for cards of more than 32GB), booting from cold results in it taking a few minutes before album or artist art starts showing up reliably. When I was running exFAT on the cards, this did not happen and the art was visible immediately (or would never display for a given album).

 

In the about device screen, there will be a build number which reflects their firmware version. Also, I tried to recreate the clicks using the Andromeda and I do not hear any clicks when I go to next song or when the song naturally ends and goes to the next one.

I'm curious to why they still have fat32 as the default format. My guess is laziness. When Fiio first started out making daps, they had their own UI (I'm fairly certain it was not android). It was horrible and needed fat32 for better compatibility with all files showing artwork displayed. Even then there were issues but fat32 was definitely better than exfat then. It's probably that they didn't think to change it.