Fiio portable music player

Posted by: Bruce Woodhouse on 17 August 2015

My ancient iPod Classic has just died so had to replace it with something else. Gets used a fair bit for travel and is always plugged into my car.

 

After not much research I just bought a Fiio X3 Mk2. Daft name but blimey it sounds good. Compared to the iPod it is far fresher and more dynamic and with much better detail (on the same iTunes AAC files). The difference is not subtle-you can tell night and day in the car let alone on headphones. Nice enough to use with perhaps not quite the elegance of the iPod, and limited to 128GB memory card which means I'll keep to slightly compressed files but have to say much impressed.

 

Pretty good value too. What progress when you look at it and think what it does, how much it holds and how good such a small device can sound. I might plug it into my Qute for fun too.

 

Bruce

Posted on: 18 August 2015 by Gavin B

Can you copy stuff onto it (or the memory card) directly from iTunes?  How do you manage your files?

Posted on: 18 August 2015 by Bruce Woodhouse

Just treat it like an external hard drive with a USB connection-or stick the card in your PC card reader if it has one.

 

I did a little bit of tidying in terms of artist folders-iTunes does some daft things with compilations etc but  basically I just copied my iTunes library to the memory card. When the memory card is updated and re-inserted the device detects the changes and updates the menus etc

 

I will rip new CDs using DBPoweramp direct to the memory card when I buy them, or just copy across any download.

 

It does artist search as well as album search and also by 'Folder' so finding what you want is not complex. Similarly the car audio seems to work the same as my old iPod.

Posted on: 18 August 2015 by JamieWednesday

I got myself an Ibasso some time back. Marvelous thing. Not quite A&K SQ but not A&K price either. Very handy just to drag and drop files onto micro SD card and then pop it in the player. Can handle just about any format and bitrate you like and be used as DAC too if you like. Separate headphone and line outputs. Adjustable gain. And buttons! Why ipod when better things are about?!

Posted on: 18 August 2015 by Bananahead

There are some very good players out there that are much better than an iPod. If you are a PC user then I would ditch iTunes as well. MediaMonkey would look after you very nicely. 

 

(it's an ibasso that I use as well)

Posted on: 19 August 2015 by ChrisSU

Apple don't seem to be remotely interested in making their devices sound any good, they can sell them easily just by making them look shiny. I've just bought a new Sony, which sounds fantastic and is really simple to use. I've just added 70GB of music to it by drag and drop from my Unitiserve, no iTunes required.

Posted on: 19 August 2015 by Bert Schurink

I also listened to the Fiio when before I bought my Sony, and indeed great sound quality in an attractive price level. So a lot of value for money. I don't understand Apple, as at some point the coin my be turned for them, it's not that difficult to create a better sounding IPod ....