Fiio X5 3rd generation.

FWIW, I ended up buying the Android-based Pioneer XDP-100R, a player that was originally $700 that currently costs $300. It basically does everything the Fiio X5-3 does, but has the added benefit of software not made by Fiio. I'll report how it is when I receive it.

 

This Pioneer is a home run. I think it sounds better then the Pono, and I love being able to use it as a Roon endpoint when I'm at home. It can drive my 250 ohm Beyers to ear-splitting volume. It has two SD card slots, but I can see myself being a lot more selective about what I store locally on it as I'll usually have WiFi when I use it.

 

That's interesting, as I've been eyeing up potential replacements for my Pono when it eventually needs replacing. How is it better than the Pono?

 

I personally think it sounds better, with better instrument separation/etc, but aside from this being subjective, its also not a totally fair comparison as the Pioneer drives my 250 ohm headphones much better then the Pono - which in of itself is a win for the Pioneer: more power for high impedance headphones. No balanced mode like the Pono, (that's only available on the Pioneer's Onkyo-branded older brother), but with more power in single ended mode I don't miss it.

From there, most of the advantages are self-evident. 4.7" touch screen vs. postage stamp by itself means its much, much easier to use. WiFi and the Play Store. Stepped volume control with an analog knob. Fast. A lot of my use case is to just find somewhere in my home to settle down with a book, and not having to lug a mess of wires and OTG amps and such. In this case, being able to use Roon and my full library is absolutely fantastic. When I was loading albums onto the SD card, I realized for the non-essential-but-nice-to-have stuff I could just use Tidal/etc. Speaking of Tidal, the Pioneer supports MQA streaming if that's your thing.

One "problem" with Android being Android is you sign in with your gmail account and it dutifully loads your identity on to it like it would a phone. It's a full fledged device with Gmail, Chrome, Maps, etc. I turned off syncing to these things, but I'll probably end up making a burner gmail account to use with it just so there's no PII issues, I don't feel a need to set a screen lock, etc.

 

Does this unit have the downsampling problem that a lot of Android phones seem to have?

 

Kind of. It doesn't seem to be downsampling high rez PCM. It does convert DSD to PCM unless you're using the line out. With Roon, it's definitely downsampling to 48/24. In either case, it sounds so fantastic I couldn't bring myself to engage any audiophile fussiness towards the situation. Whatever its doing, its doing it well enough.

Don't quote me on this until I spend some more time with it, but it actually seems to upsample in a lot of cases, like it doesn't have a 44.1 clock so it upsamples 44.1 to 48 and 88.2 to 96. That could just be me misinterpreting the display. I did see it has a "upsample everything to 96 or 192" mode, which I haven't played with and don't plan to.

To make a comparison, I think going through the Android mixer adds a little bit of meh when I use my phone and an OTG DAC, but I don't get that with the Pioneer.

A common complaint I read about DAPs is an inability to do a full shuffle between the internal storage and the SD card(s). I get the sense this is an OS problem and the Pioneer has this limitation as well (the native music app requires you to select between Internal, Card 1, and Card 2 vs. displaying a contiguous library), but I don't do that anyway.

 

Anyone know of any simple ways to scrobble to LastFm using the 3rd Gen Fiio?

 

Might not be the best thread to ask but I'll start here.

I've usually used Windows Explorer & drag 'n' drop to load DAPs but have recently started using Mediamonkey to sync my Fiio X5 3rd gen. I've got basic understanding how to use (from past use of iTunes & iPod), but I'm a little confused how to handle the fact there are TWO SD cards. How do I make sure certain files sync to SD card 1 & other stuff to SD card 2?

Thanks.

 

Musicbee is another good, free alternative to the drag/drop method.

 

I have 2 loaded 200gb cards in my X5iii and it scans everything in about 5 minutes

 

For those of you who might be using the X5iii's Android side for podcasts... does it save those to the internal memory or the cards? Is there a way to set that sort of thing to say where you want them saved?

 

About the same scan time for my (2) 200-gb cards

 

Hi, despite my dislike of Apple I have tried many different bits of music management software and keep coming back to iTunes, which is handy as I have a 160GB Classic (though I also have a Rockboxed IPod 5.5 with a 240GB HDD) - the Classic is/was an annoyingly competent large storage player with no real affordable competition until more recent years. I heavily use the Smart Playlists in iTunes and have most things Star-rated (1-5), Grouped (Studio/Live/Demo...), Genred (Metal, Jazz, Ambient...), Year, etc., and I was wondering how much of this would be visible in the X5 3rd Gen and if these flags could be used on-board rather than building playlists? eg, could I filter my music, in the player, to listen to just 4-star, or above, Funk studio recordings from 1975 to 1995? And, if so, can this filtering be refined on-the-fly (perhaps to just one artist)?
And can a rating be set/changed on the X5 3rd gen?

 

My iPod has just about given up the ghost and I can no longer use it for Spotify, appears to work ok when plugged into the usb in the car so may just use it in there, was looking at one of these x5iii fiio players to replace it, I have resisted downloading iTunes onto my new laptop and currently using musicbee to sort my external hard drive with about 1tb of music on it, how are these things for Spotify as well as music on the sd cards, I know Spotify has its faults but most of my listening away from the house has been Spotify and I hate using my phone for for it for various reasons

 

I'd rather it be thicker and not bend just from being in my pocket like the iphone.

 

ordered & being delivered today along with a 200gig card, managed to get a red one for £300, new but a display model, just got to start ripping some CDs at lossless now to see what its like

 

Will be curious to hear your experience!

 

Hooked this up to my Fiio Mount Blanc headphone amp & Sennheiser Momentum cans and although its early days its very impressive I have only put a few albums ripped to flac on it and a couple of albums downloaded as WAV files with the codes from my vinyl purchases but so far so good, a different league to my old ipod touch which will now get confined to the car
its a heavy old lump with the amp so so when i'm out and about commuting and travelling about i may slim it down a bit but time will tell

now how do I go about vinyl ripping about 2000 vinyl records to flac to load this bad boy up

 

Annoyingly both my 160GB iPods regularly crashed if too full (one of the reasons/excuses I bought an X5 3rd gen), however I still use the iPod for the car and, whilst I'm probably an Apple-hater, I have to say that I couldn't find a music database tool that fitted my needs better than iTunes. I found an app (iSyncr) that does a fair bit of what i need (syncs playlists and seems to do 2-way rating transfer) so been able to stick with iTunes

 

Update: I bought the X5 3rd gen and whilst the FiiO app is pretty solid I did also buy the Rocketplayer app which supports star ratings and can do 'live lists' that are very similar to iTunes smart playlists; iI also bought the iSyncr app from the same deveolper (JRT something ?) which does 2-way synching of star ratings - neither app is 100% perfect (and could have a few more features if I'm honest) but it's the best thing out there that I've found to date.

 

Old thread but thought I might ask. Is the X5 III worth $275 Canadian ($206US) brand new sealed? I have been dabbling in HD Audio and started a thread about concerting a Mac Mini to a music server. My thoughts would be to be able to use this with my receiver when home and possibly in the car or when walking.My FLAC collection is small but I plan to grow it. I do not own high end headphones yet.

 

For that amount of money, may as well get the M6, M7 or M9.

 

Is $206 a bad price for the X5? Seems the M6 is listed for lower at retail. Does the M series have significant upgrades.

 

So I just got a red X5 III last week and everything was fine until I updated to firmware 1.2.4. Now randomly the player pauses every 10-20 minutes and I need to press play to get it started again, basically rendering the player useless. This is while using coax out and line out, and headphone out. Sometimes it just freezes up and I have to re-start it. Is there a way to install an older firmware to see if I can resolve this? Again it was fine until I updated it and it does sound great.

For reference, I also have a Fiio X3 II that I use the same micro SD cards in and never had a single problem.

 

For the record, I have all kinds of annoying issues with my X5III. It IS built like a brick ****house compared to any and all iPods, but Apple's software is definitely better.

The problems:

Lots of files show up with unknown artist or unknown title, etc., even though the metadata is accurate.
While on random shuffle, it often just stops playing after a song ends and I have to either press the forward or back button or restart the Fiio player.
Recently, when I went to scan to add a new track to its library, it identified all tracks on my SD card such that the library now shows each track twice.
The EQ is too limited for my tastes, which is not the case with iPods.
It sometimes gets hot as hell.
The battery life could be longer before requiring a recharge.

Would I buy it again? Probably not. I was looking at alternatives recently and highlighted the Onkyo DP-X1A. But because of the cost, I'm sticking with the X5III until something goes terribly wrong.

For $206 (US) would I buy one? Definitely.