Pioneer XDP-300R Balanced DAP

using the Pioneer, my other dap is a Pono, which I like. I find the battery life or on the Pioneer so far (just tried shutting all services I could, seer if that helps). Been using Neutron player, but when I turn the unit on, the stock player goes on automatically and blasts me with loud music. Annoying. Haven't used it a line out, seems not worth it to need a2 piece portable player. And, the Bluetooth doesn't connect to my car. Waiting for a cable that can be used balanced, curious if that makes a difference (balanced is better on my Pono).

 

Right now it isn't meeting my requirements at all. The primary reason I bought the X5iii was to have a high-capacity player that could also do streaming. On the current firmware v1.1.6 the WiFi connection drops out every three to six songs and has to be manually reconnected. This started in v1.1.5 and isn't fixed yet. I'm not even sure FiiO have acknowledged the issue. So, until/unless that gets fixed it does me no good (I have a WM1Z for non-streaming playback).

The software is still rather rough in places.

And FiiO's re-built audio-stack, which was for me the biggest draw to the unit (beyond the capacity and streaming), and which is supposed to bypass the nasty forced SRC of the standard Android implementations, doesn't always seem to be in use. With most player applications it is, mostly, since you'll see things like EQ in Spotify not work - which is because Spotify uses the normal Android EQ capability, but the replay chain doesn't. So changing settings in it do nothing. And then in some cases you wind up with SRC'd output when you don't expect it. Which defeats most of the rest of the point of the player, at least for me, and is a bit dodgy given FiiO's claims before launch.

USB audio out, and COAX out, are still limited.

In fact there's a fair bit going on that STILL isn't in line with what FiiO did, and DO, claim for the player. And firmware updates have slowed to a crawl at this point so I wouldn't hold my breath on them getting fixed.

Both "Android" and "Pure Music" mode DO run on Android. "Pure Music" mode turns off a bunch of optional services and fiddles with some process priority/affinity settings, but it still running on top of Android. As far as I can tell it doesn't sound any different and really isn't any more stable. It's really only useful if you want to make sure background apps aren't running and hogging resources (can avoid stuttering in some places when there's a lot going on).

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Right now, unless you're okay with the unit as it is today, don't need the features that FiiO still haven't finished/completed and are okay with the WiFi connection dropping out a couple of times an hour while streaming, I would look for something else. That, or commit to running on it on Firmware v1.1.4 to avoid the WiFi issue.

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On the Pioneer and Onkyo players ... poor battery life combined with being stuck with Android's forced SRC meant they didn't hold my attention for long. They're just too expensive to be compromised in such a fashion.

 

Disappointing. Have to pray for my old DAP keep running till fall, then I'll see. Thanks anyway.