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Fiio X1 II hi-res mp3 player

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Finally paid out some money for one of these Fiios following the death of my ipod. I’d run along with some music on my phone, but too much music loaded up caused my phone to slow down considerably. My phone is a great sounding thing mind, much much better than the iPod.

I realised recently I own music that I’ve never heard on anything but an ipod – either through little earbuds or the kitchen dock or in the car. Last year I bought a pair of cheaper on ear Sony headphones. They’re nice actually, decent sound, no distortion when bass gets too loud, I really like them (and they’re comparable in my own tests to more expensive things).

The Fiio paired with the Sonys has given me probably the best listening experience I’ve had for years. I don’t have much idea of the technical details but from a listening perspective the most noticeable thing about the sound is the amount of extra sound that you can actually hear. The Ipod didn’t really transmit the sound around the music, the original room, or the reverb. Backing vocals became a shadow under the main voice. But on the Fiio all of that is there and I didn’t realise quite how much I missed it. The detail of the music is more visible. There is an illusion in the headphones of the speaker moving air as well, which is weird. Bottom end is strong without feeling like a simple addition of distortion by the headphones. Orchestral pieces are incredible.

Best sounds for me are 70s productions though, the likes of ELO and ABBA sound amazing. It’s not as kind to music that might have never been recorded in the air – that is a lot of electronic music. Some of that punches, but sounds a little flat in comparison to the live stuff. The live instrument recorded in a room sounds like it’s breathing. Really.

But the reason I’ve placed this in here instead of as a review, dear lord the machine is an annoying little bugger to use. Drag and drop to the drive and just listen – like the IPOD – no. Once you’ve loaded the machine you have to then reset the internal media library if you want to access your music by it’s metadata. Not just to add new items either no, it has to redo the whole library. And sometimes it hangs because a file might be a little dubious around the edges. Doesnt’ tell you which one. Oh no. And the update of the media library can take ages. I will set the library to update about 11 at night, and if I’m lucky by about 4am it’s finished.

Admittedly I do have a lot of music on it, over 20000 tracks. But to give the ipod it’s due, when you loaded music on all of that stuff happened at the same time automatically.

It’s really bloody annoying, especially as my music metadata is something I spent a long time getting right. Wish I’d renamed all the files now. That would have been more useful. Perhaps creating a folder for each artist too. Sigh.

So, fellow Fiio users, what’s your view and experience? Any hints or tips to get round the annoying set up process? I do love the sound of it by the way…

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Comments

  1. I will be getting one of these soonish so I will watch this thread with interest. Have been given permission to get one but am waiting, frankly, for when I have a few quiet days to play around with it uninterrupted (hurrr)

    • Oh soundwise it is great – through headphones and connected up to a decent music system. I’ve a 25 year old system that I used to use as a playback machine when I had a spare room recording studio in my younger days. Great speakers. This running through that was the equal to the best I’ve ever heard that machine sound, including bought CDs. I do have a lot of my mp3s at cd quality at least anyway. But I’m struggling with getting it to operate as anything other than playback from a storage drive at the moment. Forget asking me about creating playlists or anything like that – I’ve read up on those and I’m not going to try. But price and sound are likely to trump that for me. And there’s no equivalent with regards to amount of storage in a price range I’m prepared to pay. If I can’t get used to the fiio interface, I’m going to chuck the SD card into my phone and be done with it.

  2. I have one. Use it much less than I would have 10 years ago, but it’s there if I need it. I mainly don’t use it as I mostly listen by Bluetooth in the car these days and it doesn’t have that.

    My update always works even though it takes forever, Alternatively you can access the music by folder as you said but hopefully you have the track number as part of the filename as it plays things alphabetically then. All m,y artists and albums are in different folders.

  3. I use MP3tag (it’s free) to rename files so I can tell what they are without looking at Metadata. That’s personal preference, really. It will, for example, rename media files based on tags to something like:-

    01 – First Trackname.flac
    02 – Second trackname.flac

    And so on – the filename format is entirely your choice.

    MP3 tag might also be clever enough to create directories based on Artist & Album tags (I’m not sure, as I do mine manually).

    The business with rescanning the whole library was a problem with early media players using MSC (mass storage class), so MTP (media transfer protocol) was invented in WMP8 or 9. MTP transfers are a little slower as the player database is updated once each track is loaded, but then the player is ready to go as soon as the last track transfer is complete. Does the X1 support MTP mode? My wife has a X1 Mk 1 for the gym but she’s happy to play the same few 100 tracks on repeat as long as it goes loud enough to drown out the TV.

    Glad you’re enjoying the sound – welcome to high-end on the cheap.

    • A bit of a search suggests Fiio don’t support MTP. Shame. Meanwhile, MP3tag – how does it work? Is it some sort of automated process so that I can just hit ‘go’ and leave it to it? If so how long does that take? Does it scan the existing metadata? I’m looking at 20000+ files.

      • Yep, MP3tag is pretty automated. You set the filename format you want, drag and drop the files in, select Convert Tag – Filename and leave it to get on with it. It’s a lightweught app so is as quick as your computer is.

        If you have no artist/album structure now, I would suggest you go for

        Artist – Album – Track Number – Track Name

        …for starters. It’s then easy to drag them into folders. If the SW doesn’t create the folders for you, I mean. You could then drag in all the folders and rename to Track Number – Track Name if you wanted.

        http://www.mp3tag.de is your friend, and perhaps drop the lovely German chap a few Euros for a beer while you’re there.

        And, like MC Escher says below, lossless files are the way to go if you’re ripping from CD now (don’t convert from mp3 to Flac). Decent player + decent cans – room acoustics = sound straight into your ears. You will notice the difference.

        • Thanks for the tip. I wanted to rename my files but was put off – I had some other file tag editor a while back that was just awkward and slow. But this is a pleasure to use. Really fast on my average little laptop too. Should have my library reorganised and reloaded by the weekend. Won’t need the media library then.

    • If you mean sync-ing then yes you can. I can’t remember if it recognises the Fiio natively or as just a disk drive, but as far as I can remember (used to have one but the user interface was so poor I had to sell it) you can just drag to the disk drive. You might need to read online to see if there are any restrictions on what path to store them to.

  5. Music that has made me go ‘wow’ upon listening by the way:

    ABBA – Knowing Me Knowing You
    Goldfrapp – Train
    Miranda Lambert – Vice
    the remaster of the Star Wars soundtrack
    Miles Davis – So What
    The Jam – Wasteland

    the Miles is actually the absolute best sounding thing I’ve heard on it. Good quality mp3 in the first place from a recent(ish) remaster but I’ve never felt like I was actually in the music itself. it was the moment where I thought I’m not going back to anything other than hi-res if I can help it.

    • Kind Of Blue was recorded on 3-track master tape with decent mics and minimal processing. 8-track sounded worse, 16-track awful. Early digital was worse. Now, there are as many channels and as much processing in the box as you like. In 30 years, we’ll all be going “Urgh! Listen to that nasty ProTools filter” like we do now with anything with a DX7 on it, or brickwall mastering.

      You can’t beat the sound of people playing live in a room recorded with a good mic – I’m a recent convert to the Soundfield mic. It cost a lot, but you only need to buy one.

  7. This is interesting. I rarely listen to music is an perfect environment (it is normally in a car, on a train, on a dog walk, in the kitchen, laying on the sofa etc.) and the idea of trading a nice, cross platform (my files in the cloud, Apple Music subscription, Sonos, car compatible and phone) for a better sounding but hard to use device is hard to consider. It would have to sound very fantastic indeed to make me consider it.

    • I spend a lot of time commuting – 200 miles a day – stopping using in ears to on ears was to stop my ears feeling so tired.Made a huge difference. But it meant I could hear the music better. And that led to me wanting to hear it ‘more betterer’. Although I may not have made the leap if the iPod hadn’t died.

      • I think the car integration would be the hardest part to lose. I plug in the iphone and it charges but I can easily switch between music (which is fully controllable through the car) and also podcasts and audio books. All of which synch either automatically or quickly over a data connection. If I had a long train journey I could see the sense in a standalone player.

        Out of interest, do you use it for podcasts and audio books as well? Does it do a good job on those?

    • When i had an iPod, i have up on iTunes pretty sharpish. There are other alternatives which work with the silver oblong – i still use jriver mediacenter for sorting my files and it does a fine job.

          • Just playing around with the info box (especially album artist field) soon gets rid of that prob. All my albums are fine. And being totes anal I have all the artwork for every album and every non album track done perfectly. Which is wunderbar in my car where it shows up on the little screen.

              • Same here, as is every iPod owner I know. It’s so frustrating and bizarre that such a perfect and much loved product has been made obsolete.

                • Another ITunes/iPod fanboy here. I break all the rules (have a massive library, hundreds of smart playlists) but I never get any trouble from it. Like Gary says, as soon as you know your way around the ‘Get Info’ box it’s a cinch.

                  I’m dreading the day my iPod breaks. I was recently given an Apple smartphone so I guess I can use that, but it doesn’t feel at all intuitive, doesn’t have the capacity and, erm… probably other drawbacks that I haven’t come across yet.

                    • I am agree shouldn’t do it in the first place, but solveable glitches aren’t a big prob and I promise you Twang tis easily solveable.

                      If I were there I’m sure I could solve it. Try viewing in artists mode, select all the tracks from the relevant album, click get info and delete the album artist field. If that doesn’t work, then repeat and fill in all the fields to make sure they’re the same. Repeat first step if necessary.

                    • I find that the problems are usually caused by idiocy by the buffoons who tag the files in the first place rather than iTunes. Get info won’t solve automatically by itself, YOU use it to take the appropriate action.

    • Yup, first thing I checked out of the box. Fiji’s own forums are filled with 2 types of people, those that have the same problems and those that don’t. And there’s no consistency to it. Fiio themselves reckon changing the sdcard will make a difference in my case. But that’s not a small purchase. And if the problem stays the same…

      • That’s a good point – SD cards do vary in speed. But the fast ones are not cheap. If you do have that many files, a UHS-1 card might be appropriate (£65 for 256GB)

    • I have an X3 II and my wife has an X1. To be honest, there’s not much difference. Mine has a metal case and a separate Line/SPDIF Out socket (I run it through my PA for interval music). Her case is metallised plastic and the headphone jack can be switched to Line Out mode. Both can read up to 200GB cards. They both sound ace.

      I haven’t tried the X1 II but the 256GB card capacity would be nice. I’m not bothered about Bluetooth.

      The X5 III looks lovely – huge touch screen, 32GB onboard, and twin 256GB card sockets. Cor!

      I found this slightly out of date comparison table:
      http://www.fiio.net/en/products/41/comparisons

      and X7/X5 III/X5 II:
      http://www.fiio.net/en/products/65/comparisons

  11. No issues with file management for me on the X1. Just import and drag and drop using File Manager through iTunes. AAC/MP4’s work perfectly like this but lossy FLAC’s are more fiddly.

    Interested to know what on ears you’re using on your commute. I’ve tried a few but they don’t blot out external sound of the tube as well as the IEM’s for me.

    On the occasions I’ve tried, I’ve found the on ears overheat my ears

  12. Just to add to the noise. Like fentonsteve, I have an X3II but I pair it with some Beyer Dynamic T51ps and, like Simonl, it’s the best listening experience I have ever had precisely for the same reasons – detail and presence. Hearing stuff I never heard before. I also use mp3tag not only to tag the files but to organise into folders by artist and I have a few presets set up to make that all relatively automatic. Updating the media library is relatively quick – takes about 2-3 minutes on my 128Gb card for about 7,000 files (a lot of FLACS). So I wonder if your SD card is particularly slow?

    • Yeah I think it might be.Can’t really to shell out right now to find out. But thanks to Mr fentonsteve up there I’m converted to MP3tag. Renaming files retagging so that i can organise will mean that i wont need the media library.

  13. An X1 user here. I use it mostly with Bose QC 15s (I think) when flying / driving. The sound quality was partly why I got them but also I wanted away from iTunes and play a library that was a mix of mp3 and flac. An unexpected bonus was discovering I can boost the right hand channel volume to compensate for my increasingly poor hearing on that side. I can actually hear music like I used to again.

    I also use it for podcasts, radio downloads – it’s great – it’s a bit short on volume but it’s only reading this thread that has made me aware I could switch the output from headphone to line out. Maybe that will boost the loudness in a car.

    I select all the music from folder view so I’ve not encountered the library problems. I did have some initial problems with cover art and metadata on flac files – in the end I just gave up.

    The thing I miss the most is the lack of playlist support. Not seen a method (at least, one I could understand) that works. In the end I just dragged a whole bunch of tracks into a playlist folder and then set it to random play.

    • Ah, that’s another thing the X3 does which the X1 doesn’t. Everything bar the X1 has switchable low/high headphone drive level, which adds plenty of grunt when I use my magnetoplanar cans but is deafening with IEMs.

      For album artwork, create a folder for each album, stick the cover art as folder.jpg into the same folder as the music files and voila – no need to embed album art into each audio file (which can take ages, even with mp3tag).

  14. Are you dumping all of your files into a single folder? If so, you’re going to suffer a huge performance hit with thousands of files there, due to the simpler filesystems that tend to be used on embedded devices.

    The fix is of course to move you files to individual folders, one per album. Another is to ensure that your SD card is formatted using ExFAT, which does support file indexing, but I gather you may need to upgrade you player’s firmware to do so.

    • I’m organising the library to do just that. Wanted to do that first, but was too impatient!

      ExFAT works with the player, but you have to use a FAT32 formatted card to update the firmware. Guess I could keep a much smaller card around simply for that. Wouldn’t cost much. I don’t have these things hanging around the house. If I did the kids would probably nick them to use in some game they’re playing when they’re pretending to be spies!

      • I’ve only just realised I’ve a sd card slot on my laptop. I can format the card and load my music on that way. Which at least speeds up some of the process.

        I’m one of those dangerous people, who knows some tech, but doesn’t pay attention.

  15. So, I’ve fixed all my metadata and renamed all the files to match. I’m in the middle of putting it all into folders, before moving onto the Fiio. I’ve got A & B done and put onto the machine and it is amazing the difference. The card is a bit slow, tracks loading on do move slowly across but not too bad, they get there. But that I can cope with. The media library not loading, or at best taking a massive amount of time was really annoying. But with renamed files I can actually ignore the media library if I want to.

    But i don’t have to, because the reorganised files and their folders have made the creation of the media library super fast! Thanks for the tips!

      • Initially while it was being annoying, it would take an hour before it would actually start updating – that is before the file count shows. And then overnight to update the library. Now it’s immediate on that and yesterday with around 3000 tracks it took about 2 minutes to complete updating the media library.

        But even without that, the renamed files mean I wouldn’t need the library anyway. The library is now a luxury rather than a must have. MP3Tag worked brilliantly.

  16. This thread has caused me to re-enter the Fiio world.

    I’ve been swayed by the 3rd gen iteration of the X5 for several reasons: it can take 512Gb on its 2 SD cards, they have replaced the terrible user interface + click wheel of the previous gens with a “smart phone” Android touch screen one, and they have added Bluetooth. All of these are must haves for me so I think I will blow my bonus (oo-er) on a new “hi-fi in your hand”.

      • Oh that looks nice. Working with a decent music player on my smart phone was probably the most ease of use I’ve had with music players since the original Walkman back at the start of the 80s. It doesn’t make so much difference on playback, but it’s the library management and playlist creation etc that I liked using the rocket mp3 player on my phone.

        A thought – it’s probably a stupid one – but given that the X5 3rd gen is an Android thing which allows Android apps – could you run a 3rd party Android music player app like Rocket as the UI, if you preferred it’s ways?

          • Being a bit old school I won’t be perusing Twitter while listening to music…

            It seems running it in the Pure Music mode will restrict you to Fiio’s own media app (but allow decoding improvements because nothing else is running), while the other way lets you use your media library software app of choice. So swings ‘n’ roundabouts.

    • Update: I’ve just read a review of the X5 III in an engineering mag (they have proper audio test gear). Measurements were excellent. 5 star verdict.

      I’m tempted now, but I blew all my spare cash on magnetic planar cans. Time to start saving up.

  18. I like threads like this. Tons of information, specs and user instructions. I was beginning to think that I needed this new fangled mp3 player, so off to the tax dodgers I went.

    3rd gen X5 player – £389
    256gb sd card – £160

    I didn’t even bother looking at the price for decent headphones. It’s not going to happen.

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