[HN Gopher] FiiO M3K review - a pocketable-high quality audio pl...
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FiiO M3K review - a pocketable-high quality audio player (2018)
Author : walterbell
Score : 78 points
Date : 2021-04-20 05:05 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (accessibleaudio.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (accessibleaudio.co)
| choffee wrote:
| I think this would end up sitting the draw next to my camera. For
| me phones are "good enough" for music given I'm mostly listening
| on the go so there are many more factors that influence the
| sound.
|
| The best audio player is the one you have in your hand right now.
| (to butcher the quote) And that for me, just like my camera, is
| the phone that is always there.
|
| Having said that Music, like coffee, or keyboards is a very
| personal thing that people connect with and so I can see the
| appeal of the focused device. It's similar to the e-book reader I
| suppose where there are not the distractions of a full connected
| phone. Just you and the music.
| NBJack wrote:
| It's definitely a matter of taste. I have used a few of their
| amps, and for me personally, it makes a world of difference in
| the audio quality worth the effort. Several types of headphones
| simply can't be driven by most phones directly.
|
| I've even gone as far as using my phone's OTG USB feature to
| hook up my amp as a DAC, which is admittedly awkward in my
| pocket. But to your point, I would miss my convenient streaming
| options.
|
| A good compromise are amps that use a high quality bluetooth
| connections, like EarStudio.
| 0x008 wrote:
| I would rather use a lossless player on my iphone with a super
| small dac/headphone amp that I can plug into the lightning port.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| LG has made phones with really good DAC, get them while you
| can.
| kohlerm wrote:
| Depending on the headphone the biggest problem is the amp not
| the DAC. E.g. something like a hifiman Sundara or a Sennheiser
| HD 600 Series requires a bit more power then a cell phone
| typically requires. Looking at the specs for the M3k it looks
| to me that it is not really suitable for these kind of
| headphones. I like using slightly bigger mobile amps with the
| Sundara. Used to have a Topping NX4, which worked well, but
| died after 6 months, now switched to an ifi hip-dac.
| walterbell wrote:
| M3 Pro, the successor to M3K, has 3X power but no Rockbox
| support: https://fiio.com/m3_pro
| 0x008 wrote:
| obviously a "hifi" dac/amp combo should deliver enough power
| at 300 ohms. I would suggest buying one that delivers enough
| power. or are you concerned with battery usage?
|
| just a sidenote: the sundara you mention have 37 ohm which is
| pretty standard and they should be easy to drive.
| herbst wrote:
| Except the fact that you need an additional device anyway, FiiO
| has an amazing battery life and you don't have to drain your
| phone, plus you can put SD cards up to whatever is available
| today. Which is necessary for big lossless collections.
| trbfred wrote:
| Anyone here with practical experiences compared to the slightly
| more expensive M3 Pro? (except it's not supported by Rockbox)
| fyolnish wrote:
| The Walkman ZX300 (appearance of which the M3K copies pretty well
| :) is by far my favorite player.
|
| Although in a perfect world I'd just have an iPod with a
| headphone amp as good as the current Walkmans/Fiios.
|
| That said, why is an audio player review from 2018 on the front
| page? o_O
| walterbell wrote:
| Wow, the ZX300 has a $700 list price.
|
| _> why is an audio player review from 2018 on the front page_
|
| It's the newest audio player with support for Rockbox firmware
| and FLAC. Pointers to better alternatives with Rockbox support
| would be appreciated.
| fyolnish wrote:
| It's been out a while, You can get them used below 300.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| Unfortunately I don't think Sony sell the ZX300 series anymore.
|
| They sell the ZX500 series currently, it runs android, is
| missing USB DAC functionality and has regional volume
| restrictions which completely gut the potency of the amplifier,
| and for which there is no known workaround currently as root
| has not yet been publicly obtained.
| fyolnish wrote:
| I bought and sold a zx500. It basically got rid of everything
| good about the 300 except for the form factor.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| I bought a zx500 because I wanted access to my streaming
| services, on top of my usual Flac library, because I cannot
| trust myself not to fiddle around in a web browser on any
| other machine haha.
|
| The only thing I'm not happy with is the volume limit (I
| have an EU machine). It doesn't leave me any headroom on
| insensitive planar magnetic headphones like Fostex T50's
| and Dan Clark Aeon's. Worse than that, they limit the 4.4mm
| output to the same power output as the 3.5mm and have
| removed high/low gain completely in software in these
| systems
| mouldysammich wrote:
| I would love a media player that supports rockbox and could also
| take a 1-2tb ssd. i tried with an ipod classic with 4 256gb sd
| cards but it seemed to corrupt music files sometimes which was a
| shame
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| You might want a newer model flash board, I think they're
| pretty reliable these days
|
| I want (which does exist) A classic, with a 2T drive, with a
| supersized battery (10x the original) and bluetooth. I'll
| probably have to wait another decade till my current one
| finally kicks the bucket though!
| mouldysammich wrote:
| I only got the iflash recently, but i think ill try setting
| it up again and format each sd first.
|
| rockbox was a delightful experience, such a cool project.
| 2ion wrote:
| I'm still using my Sansa Clip+ which I bought in 2010. Fantastic
| hardware at a fantastic price point, and it supports Rockbox (if
| you want to):
| https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SansaClip#Sansa_Clip_43.
|
| A device such as this barely obsoletes as long as the audio
| codecs can still be handled; you can easily switch batteries on
| these relatively "simple" devices, too.
| hyperpl wrote:
| I live by my Sansa Clip Zip. It's amazing that nothing as good
| has been released since. It's super light, with rockbox it
| works extremely well. Sound quality is better than my phone
| (pixel 4a). Only gripe is that it doesn't support ext2,3,4 or
| similar and I'm forced to use fat32.
| opan wrote:
| Is UDF an option?
| globalc wrote:
| I can recommend the FiiO M3K, especially loaded with
| https://www.rockbox.org/ . There is now a native Rockbox build
| (with some caveats), I use the older one from
| https://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,52952.0.html - works
| very nice.
| chimen wrote:
| What's better with "Rockbox"?
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Rockbox is the only reason I'd really want to get a new PMP.
| Still have my Sansa Fuze somewhere running Rockbox.
| mszcz wrote:
| The site lists the FiiO M3K port under _unusable_. Did you find
| it usable?
| walterbell wrote:
| It appears there are 2 rockbox firmware versions for the M3K.
| The older one is binary-only from a .ru site and it uses the
| linux kernel from the stock firmware. The newer, bare-metal
| version is still in development. So there's something that
| works today and a better version in active development.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26870940
| mszcz wrote:
| Oh, ok, thanks!
| globalc wrote:
| +1
|
| I use the older one which uses the kernel from the stock
| firmware. To my understanding done by the guys who worked
| also on the original firmware. I have seen just a single
| issue, it's minor: fast forward/rewind does not work
| properly. It does forward/rewind, but slower than expected.
|
| The new native port lists quite some downsides/TODO's, so I
| did not yet switch over.
| leoedin wrote:
| In the world of IoT, everything-is-an-app and disposable
| electronics, I'm increasingly appreciating "appliance"
| electronics. Things that do one thing well.
|
| I recently got a baby monitor - there's plenty of IoT enabled
| wifi ones which use your phone as the display, but the one I
| chose was simple and standalone. It just works. No software, no
| app, no security implications. I can give it to someone else and
| it'll work for them too.
|
| I wonder what other areas of our life we should be unbundling
| again into appliances?
| tiagod wrote:
| >no security implications It's broadcasting video through some
| unknown protocol, are you sure it's (properly) encrypting it?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Even a fully unencrypted local video feed would require
| someone to park outside your house for the duration of the
| broadcast to capture it all. Meanwhile, in the cloud, user
| data sometimes gets dumped into unsecured S3 buckets that
| _anyone in the world_ could access. Even if the video is
| properly secured, there 's no guarantee the service in
| question is not keeping it indefinitely for
| marketing/machine-learning/other purposes and it eventually
| leaks in a security breach.
| jtsiskin wrote:
| It's sounds like it's closed loop, and not connected to the
| internet/WiFi. I would say that makes it thousands of times
| less likely to be hacked, even if there was some fundamental
| issue with the encryption.
| tediousdemise wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Do_One_Thing_a...
| 1-more wrote:
| I was recently shopping for bicycle power meters because I want
| to know exactly how bad I am at pretending cars don't exist
| (I'm slow, folks). There's been an explosion in direct-to-
| consumer companies making them. I was looking at a self-
| installed crank strain gauge model where the tradeoff is that
| in exchange for your own DIY skills and time it costs less than
| half what pedal meters would cost. But I found out the company
| folded, the app isn't supported anymore meaning you can't
| calibrate the unit, so you might end up being unable to do
| anything with one of the units you happen to come across.
| Brutal!
|
| https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2017/02/watteam-powerbeat-gen2-p...
| walterbell wrote:
| _> I 'm increasingly appreciating "appliance" electronics.
| Things that do one thing well._
|
| Plus dedicated physical buttons! FiiO provides a rotary volume
| control on their flagship $1000 player,
| https://audiosolace.com/2020/09/04/fiio-m15-review/
| alpaca128 wrote:
| They also put a rotary volume control on my external
| DAC/headphone amp that cost a tiny fraction. And I must say I
| love that now I don't have to choose between two volume
| levels which are either a bit too quiet or a bit too loud.
|
| And that no software automatically dials back the volume
| every 10-15 minutes with a notification telling me that it's
| convinced I'm damaging my ears.
| petepete wrote:
| I feel like this every time I use my cameras. They do one thing
| and do it exceedingly well. They feel like _tools_ rather than
| gadgets or devices.
| voisin wrote:
| I think a lot of consumers are going to wake up in a few years
| and feel ripped off when their smart thermostat or smart lock
| or smart lights are no longer supported and have lost the
| functionality they've paid extra for.
|
| I miss the days when you pay for some set of functionality and
| it stays with the device for the duration of ownership. The
| standard seems to be to buy on one set of value propositions
| and to find them degraded over time (see Peloton eliminating
| Apple Watch support for all exercises but cycling this week as
| a recent example). I think this is what makes Tesla special
| with regular OTA updates increasing functionality.
| awat wrote:
| I totally agree. My personal philosophy has been to only buy
| OT devices that fail/stop being supported to being manual and
| not fail to being e-waste.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| and the more built-in and capital intensive, the worse it
| will be. It's not so bad to have an internet radio die, as
| has happened with several architectures thus far, but it's
| painful when there's real money involved.
|
| I always marvel at the people who built new homes with
| subfloor heating systems who usually have a closet full of
| manifolds, valves, custom PCBs-in-a-box, none of which will
| be available in a decade or two.
|
| In addition, even if well supported (like Tesla), there's a
| number of product families that are priced like long term
| investments (electric cars, solar panel/battery setups) but
| have shorter term PC-style turnovers in technology. They may
| still work, but will be obsolete.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| Recommend reading "Ghost Fleet" where even your toilet
| stops working when we go to war with a country that
| manufactures many of our electronic components.
|
| When you get bored, list all of your connected home and
| personal items that rely on wired, cable, wifi, bluetooth,
| rfid, infrared, cellular, etc. Put them in a spreadsheet.
|
| Then you will not be as surprised when your lighting
| system, refrigerator, or washer/dryer is hit with
| ransomware.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Subfloor heating systems aren't just a water boiler in the
| basement and bunch of dumb water tubes?
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Yeah I don't think the person you're replying to has any
| experience in building control systems. I used to be an
| energy engineer and I would predict sub-floor heating
| owners will have no real issues here.
| voisin wrote:
| The point does stand generally though. I have had to
| replace entire HVACs because the coolant is no longer
| available or because the cost to replace a certain
| component is too high because the parts are no longer
| readily available.
|
| I think the only solution is to try to build as minimally
| as possible. A huge amount can be accomplished through
| passive heating and cooling (windows placement and size,
| site location and angle toward prevailing winds and
| morning / afternoon sun, etc etc). We are too often
| reliant on technology to allow us to ignore these things
| and we do so at our peril.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >experience in building control systems
|
| lol. If you mean 'design', you'd be surprised.
| Admittedly, I'm not aware of the full array of
| residential heating control systems, but I've sure seen
| some over-complex ones.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I've seen some that most definitely were not, usually
| along with a bunch of other high-efficiency tech. To be
| fair, I've seen minimum systems also, so it can be done.
|
| My general take on home design is simple-passive-
| accessible. Someone in the future will thank you.
|
| It's worth poking around manufacturer's websites.
| http://www.pexheat.com/Catalog/Controls
|
| and consider the lifespan of a house vs. the lifespan of
| the subsystems. My general take is that the more built-in
| and difficult to modify it is, the madder someone will be
| in 50 years. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm no
| fan of radiant heating systems having seen the issues of
| parts availability, latency, the tearing up of floors for
| repair,and a strong preference for point sources of heat
| (gas stoves for example), so it might show through in the
| comment.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Especially with the rising cancer known as SaaS. Soon you'll
| need to be paying $10/mo for your thermostat to work, and
| you'll need to fork over another $200 every other year to
| upgrade the hardware.
| ahepp wrote:
| This is actually an improvement. It aligns the incentives
| of the guys making your thermostat's web UI. Otherwise your
| thermostat wouldn't get new features and security updates
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Its a fucking thermostat.
|
| I don't need the company to be bankrolling a $2mm/yr AI
| team so that the thermostat can try to make better guess
| about when I want to turn on the heat.
| kumarsw wrote:
| SaaS gets hated on too much here. The incentives work out
| as well for desktop software - there's no longer the
| incentive to add new features to justify customers
| purchasing a new version (or withhold features until the
| new version). The problem I've seen is that it almost
| always comes with a big price hike when compared to an
| alternative of upgrading every 3 years. The only
| exception to this I can think of is Office 365 which
| still remains a deal.
| goodpoint wrote:
| No, I want security updates without surveillance, without
| lock-in and without a monthly fee.
|
| Sounds like too much to ask?
|
| This is what Linux distributions has been providing for
| decades. And my 486 PC was less powerful than some
| thermostat.
| voisin wrote:
| And then the company will be purchased by a FAANG and you
| will immediately be forced into using new accounts and new
| workflows for the same functionality (yes, suddenly
| thermostats have workflows now...)
| devenblake wrote:
| It's a small price to pay for the new Amazon Lord of the
| RingsTM television event where everyone's heaters will
| kick on at max whenever there's fire on screen.
| hokumguru wrote:
| This is absolutely why I refuse to purchase any smart home
| products that aren't fully functional within the Apple Home
| app. If something cannot work offline and without a central
| service then it doesn't belong in my home.
|
| I think that's the primary value proposition for Apple
| HomeKit and I'm really quite sad that more companies, and
| Apple themselves, don't put more effort into supporting it.
| voisin wrote:
| I am an admitted Apple fanboy, but even I recognize that
| Apple is an offender in this field. We have tons of old
| Apple iPhones and iPads that had functionality that no
| longer works - app developers stopped supporting the only
| iOS that can be loaded on the device. It is only a matter
| of time before this happens to HomeKit too.
| mcshicks wrote:
| I bought some FEIT rgb smartbulbs at costco (there were on
| sale I think it was $5 or $10 each) but yes I don't like the
| outsourced service (tuya), even though I normally turn them
| off with a switch. I even wrote FEIT suggesting they make a
| slightly more expensive hobby version where you can still
| overwrite the esp32 firmware, etc so you don't need this
| "free" service and could connect the directly to say
| something like home assistant. I think I would willing to pay
| something (maybe $5) just for the keys to overwrite the
| firmware, like the license you have to buy for your raspberry
| pi to use the mpeg-2.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| >No software, no app, no security implications. I can give it
| to someone else and it'll work for them too.
|
| Is it like a wired connection between the Camera and the
| Monitor?
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| >> I recently got a baby monitor ... no security implications.
|
| There's one somewhere near me that broadcasts crystal clear
| audio on 49.990MHz - right smack on the edge of the 6 metre
| band in very crisp 15khz wide FM. This audio quality beats all
| my local ham radio buddies. I can hear a pin drop in their
| house.
|
| I've no idea who's house, briefly before the pandemic i made a
| reasonable effort to track down the house and let them know,
| it's not a house in my street, no one has the young children
| that can be heard.
|
| Every time I'm on 6m i always see it on my band scope, 20db
| over.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| I don't recommend you do it, but engineer in me is trying to
| find technical solutions to _all_ problems. If you can hear
| them presumably they can hear you on the same frequency. So
| you could get in contact by broadcasting on the same
| frequency. You can already hear them on the radio, so if they
| hear you on a child monitor that would be a weird-but-
| functional walkie talkie setup.
|
| Depending on where you are, it's possible that stress from
| knowing that their child monitor is unsecured is much higher
| than the risk of anyone within broadcast range abusing the
| vulnerability. Moreover, it's possible that whatever they
| replace the device with will have more significant problems
| to worry about. For example cloud vulnerable to the whole
| world instead of enthusiasts with radios in a small local
| area.
| epakai wrote:
| Surprising people are still building dedicated players without
| real track control buttons. Capacitive buttons are hard to
| operate from a pocket. This feels like an updated clone of
| Cowon's iAudio 9.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Were I in the market for a dedicated music player, a front-
| mounted play button I can feel through the fabric of my jeans and
| push without putting my hands in my pockets would be a
| requirement.
| post_break wrote:
| It's 2021, I refuse to buy anything with microusb at this point.
| It's my hard line in the sand and I know it may seem kind of
| ridiculous but I'm choosing to vote with my wallet. The only
| thing left is my iPhone and that I wireless charge and only plug
| into a dock in my car. I know this device is older but it's still
| a problem for me.
| depsypher wrote:
| I got the FiiO M6 recently and am mildly disappointed. The audio
| sounds fine to me and it plays all the file formats I care about,
| but it lacks some features I thought would be standard at this
| point.
|
| The most glaring omission is the built in player has no concept
| of a music queue. You cannot decide to play a new song while
| listening; the only way to queue up music is to create a playlist
| ahead of time.
|
| You can't install new apps via the Play Store from what I can
| tell. By default it whitelists what can be installed over a usb
| cable. Luckily you can remove the whitelist and install any apk
| you want by clicking on a particular page in the settings 6 times
| (iirfc). I ended up installing Poweramp this way and it turned my
| opinion of the purchase from a massive disappointment into a mild
| one.
|
| Other complaints are that they advertise Airplay compatibility
| but it turns out it's for receiving only, not sending. So you can
| send music from your iPhone to the FiiO and have it send it out
| from there using the FiiO's DAC. I was hoping to actually use
| Airplay to send to my home receiver from the FiiO, but that isn't
| possible. I use Bluetooth instead, but the range isn't great and
| when I scroll through my library while music plays I get skipping
| (possibly because the Poweramp app is hogging cpu, but again, the
| built in app for playing music is a non-starter for me).
|
| I would really love for there to be a dedicated music player that
| went above and beyond in terms of user experience as well as
| audio quality, but for me the FiiO M6 at least isn't it.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> dedicated music player that went above and beyond in terms
| of user experience_
|
| This is why Rockbox exists, which is available for the M3K:
| https://rockbox.org
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26871084
| twobitshifter wrote:
| The play store requires a google account, and the manufacturer
| may have not wanted to go through with that. It's also possible
| as you said that many Android apps aren't optimized enough to
| run on the device. People may complain if candy crush can't
| run.
|
| I would think that Android is overkill for a player like this
| and running a full OS would lower audio quality, but everything
| is so powerful these days it may not make a practical
| difference.
| herbst wrote:
| My FiiO died about a year ago, i loved it. And the reason it died
| was getting completely underwater repeatly with an already
| slightly bent case. Before that it survived things you can't even
| imagine.
|
| Every few months i look up new options, but none of them has
| actual buttons or are WAY to expensive (ok to pay up to $3-400)
|
| I can't use a touch device on a bike. I want F* buttons.
|
| Any suggestions?
| epakai wrote:
| I've been on a cowon J3, and their S9 (but its slider/switches
| wear out) before that. Both are discontinued. The SanDisk Clip
| series is alright as a spare device but they just don't have
| the battery capacity so I consider them high maintenance.
|
| Recently I got a used single samsung galaxy bud, and have been
| using my phone. The touch controls on the earbud work through
| my fingered gloves. Wind noise is an issue though. I might try
| something like https://www.cat-ears.com to block the wind
| without making it hot.
| keyringlight wrote:
| The one I keep coming back to when I go looking for an mp3
| player with buttons is the Sandisk Sansa clips, and maybe the
| few copycats of that style. It'll have a smaller battery just
| by nature of being physically smaller, but for when you're
| outside or not in a perfect listening environment I'm sure it's
| 99% as effective for the core task of playing audio. Most of
| the range supports Rockbox as well.
|
| I'm a bit paranoid that WD (who now own Sandisk) will stop
| making them, leaving a gap in the market when stock empties
| out.
| herbst wrote:
| Maybe its time to give them a go. Do you know if those
| "Sports Plus" Clips are the "good ones" or does it not matter
| in terms of audio quality? Going to check the rockbox wiki
| for specific models i guess :)
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| From what I know the sport models have more limited
| processing capabilities to older models so its not feasible
| to port Rockbox to them. Think it has something to do with
| the drop in market size for mp3 players in general
| resulting in the quality of low cost parts declining.
| herbst wrote:
| What a shame. I'll check some classifieds then i guess.
| Thanks
| shantara wrote:
| I've been using 1st generation Fiio X5 since its release in 2014
| up to this day. It has been everything I wished from a portable
| audio player: great sound quality, easily drivees even high
| impedance headphones with plenty of volume headroom, could be
| used as an external AMP, good battery life, extremely solid
| build, physical buttons, no OS and apps, no connectivity, no
| touchscreen.
|
| It's been easy enough to replace the battery when it stopped
| holding charge. I'm dreading the day the player dies on me, as
| all its replacements seem to be moving against the design
| decisions that made this device so great for me.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| FiiO make great-sounding products, but rather than carry a
| standalone music player, one might consider the FiiO BTR3
| Bluetooth amp that lets you listen to music off your phone at
| high quality. I wouldn't be surprised if the two FiiO devices
| shared the same DAC.
| lima wrote:
| Wouldn't the low bluetooth bitrate eliminate most of the
| advantage?
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| The FiiO BTR3 advertises itself (a logo on the back of the
| device) as supporting hi-res Bluetooth audio, so one simply
| needs a phone that supports the same.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Yes indeed, they make great sounding products for the price. I
| have bought and recommended some of their DACs.
|
| SMSL is another company like that, I highly recommend their
| class-D amplifiers - especially the ones based on
| ST[microelectronics] chips. The SA-50 (ST) sounds better than
| the SA-60 (TI) - I have both.
| EveYoung wrote:
| Yes, they both use the same AK4376A chip.
| elagost wrote:
| I own one of these. Using it is the physical manifestation of
| delayed gratification and I love it.
|
| - Getting new music or Podcasts requires plugging it in to a real
| computer, transferring files, and updating the media library. It
| takes a while.
|
| - Without a touchscreen you can't "scrub" through files and must
| fast-forward with the buttons. Fast-forwarding to your place in a
| 90-minute podcast takes a while.
|
| - If you plug it in while in the middle of a podcast, or reboot
| it, it will lose your place many times. It has a setting to not
| do this but it is unreliable.
|
| - Due to the above two points I really got in the habit of
| ensuring I had enough time to listen to a full show in one shot,
| and that made me subscribe to less podcasts. This is a plus.
|
| - You cannot view show notes for a podcast or click on links in
| those notes. You must sit down at a PC to do this.
|
| - This device helped me to not take my phone with me everywhere.
| That's a plus.
|
| - It doesn't "fast charge" or anything. The battery indicator is
| imprecise so sometimes it will shut off while you're using it.
| The battery lasts forever so that's OK.
|
| You have to want to use something like this. It is better for you
| brain than a smartphone. I encourage everyone to try it. It is
| high quality, built well, and inexpensive, so very much worth a
| shot. If you want a bluetooth and USB-C version, the Fiio M5 is
| also good.
| angrais wrote:
| Have you considered moving into sales? Because you just turned
| all the downsides into (faked) strengths.
|
| As I see it, none of what you listed has practical benefits.
| That's why we have Spotify and all the software to overcome
| these drawbacks.
|
| Perhaps "slow tech" is a thing, but certainly not widespread or
| advantageous.
| whall6 wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing. Maybe he is in sales for this
| company.
| elagost wrote:
| I'm not in sales. I'm a devops/sysadmin person. And I didn't
| mean to do a sales pitch, sorry.
|
| The downsides all wind up being worth it to me because I'm
| starting from the premise of "I want my smartphone as far
| away from me as often as possible". It allows me to decouple
| the primary reason I'd carry my smartphone, and carry
| something less unwanted instead. I'm guessing you can figure
| out the reasons; feeds, notifications, alerts, an operating
| system built for annoyance/addiction that is not Free
| Software, etc.
|
| Really, though, I encourage you to try it out. Think about
| how much more time you had to think while walking your dog or
| something 20 years ago.
| StavrosK wrote:
| > Think about how much more time you had to think while
| walking your dog or something 20 years ago.
|
| This is an excellent point. I recently mused about how all
| my ideas for writing articles come in the shower, and your
| comment made me realize it's because I have nothing to
| distract me.
|
| I'll try removing distractions/being bored more often,
| thanks!
| Answerawake wrote:
| I use an old iPod classic with a flash memory upgrade for
| offline audio listening and was considering this device because
| of perceived audio quality. From your description it sounds
| like this device is in the class of alibaba junk. It sounds
| like the software was an afterthought, fair enough. How does
| the audio quality compare to things like an iPhone/iPod etc?
| elagost wrote:
| The sound quality (via Sony MDR-7506) is comparable to an
| iPod. Detailed and clear. It can get very loud and drive much
| nicer headphones than mine. It loads and plays FLACs and
| other large files much faster than the iPod can because the
| iPod is 20 years old and doesn't have the horsepower.
|
| The software, honestly, is not nearly as bad as "alibaba
| junk". It is just fine. The iPod's software is more thought-
| out and consistent. The Fiio software is much more user
| friendly than Rockbox though. It responds well and hardly
| ever crashes. It has all the settings you'd expect and then
| some. It will be annoying if you expect perfection, but it
| never skips tracks on its own, the buttons always do what you
| want, settings aren't reset on you. The M5 is more fiddly
| than the M3K but I usually use the M5 anyway. I'm willing to
| tolerate the less-than-perfect software.
| walterbell wrote:
| That's why the software can be replaced with Rockbox,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26876247
|
| Audio/DAC quality:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26871983
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| FiiO appears to make a slightly newer model, the FiiO M3 Pro[0],
| which has USB-C charging instead of legacy micro-USB. That would
| be a selling point for me, but it looks like the trade-off is
| worse battery life due to the full touchscreen. Also, I'm
| _guessing_ part of the attraction to M3K is work-in-progress
| Rockbox support.[1]
|
| Love the build-quality, though. I've always regretted giving away
| my Sansa Fuze when I got my first smartphone, and at least
| microUSB is a _standard_ instead of relying on Sansa 's
| proprietary cables.
|
| [0]https://www.amazon.com/FiiO-M3-Pro-Resolution-
| Touchscreen/dp...
|
| [1] https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/FiioM3K
| Stanzilla wrote:
| Hardware is nice but FiiO is really bad at software and drivers
| and support. You can get a good look at that in their forums.
| aquir wrote:
| I would rather buy a Dragonfly DAC for my phone. I had a FiiO but
| the problem is that you have 2 devices to charge and copy music
| to. I am using a Dragonfly Black with my laptop and I am
| recommending it to everybody. It's around PS100 and the
| difference in the audio quality is lightyears or even parsecs
| from any internal soundcard.
| walterbell wrote:
| This wired-only M3K could be good for environments which don't
| allow wireless devices. Hopefully the claimed 25hr battery life
| will enable a week of intermittent use.
| 600frogs wrote:
| I'm always wary of claims like this as there's so much snake
| oil targeted at audiophiles that I can never tell if the
| product offers a genuine improvement or if it's an expensive
| placebo. Would you be able to tell the difference between this
| and e.g. an iPhone DAC in a blind test?
| 0x008 wrote:
| I don't know how good the iphone DAC is compared to the
| dragonfly, but I could easily tell the difference between my
| macbook dac and an external $100 DAC.
| sjwright wrote:
| I believe you are sincere. But I think that if you were
| able to run a sufficiently rigorous blind test (note:
| precise level matching is _critical_ ) you'd surprise
| yourself.
| mrkeen wrote:
| I second this. Personally I can't tell a Dragonfly from a
| Fulla 2 from a Fiio E10K from anything else. Well, my Fulla 2
| is louder in its left channel and crackles when I change the
| volume. But no discernible difference in 'quality'.
| mszcz wrote:
| IIRC FiiO makes BTR3/5 Bluetooth DACs. You can use those to
| bluetoothize your high end headphones as well as a USB DAC.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| I do the same with a Radstone EarStudio ES100:
| https://earstudio.store/products/es100
|
| You can also use it on your desktop/laptop which may have
| outdated Bluetooth hardware as a transmitter to your modern
| Bluetooth headphones.
| nanagojo wrote:
| They also have a BTA30 which allows me to add bluetooth to my
| PC and listen via LDAC to my sony headphones
| kohlerm wrote:
| FIIO has some nice build products. I have got a FIIO BTR1K
| which works well as a bluetooth mic as well as making my
| IEMs wireless. The measurement results for their products
| are not always that good. Check audiosciencereview.com .
| This might not matter that much because these days DACs are
| so accurate anyway that most of the differences are not
| audible anyway.
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| I can recommend the FiiOs. The built in mic is also good
| quality. I have used both the FiiO BTR1K and the Dragonfly
| Red as a DAC and the Dragonfly does some sort of dynamic
| range compression (introduced in a later firmware) that I
| don't like.
| 0x008 wrote:
| Just remember that depending in the bluetooth features the
| sender and receiver each support, you may end up with
| horribly compressed audio.
|
| Apple devices will always use AAC codec if I remember which
| is is not only compressed, but will also try to compress with
| lower bitrates than say a regular mp3 cbr compression by
| judging which parts of the audio signal can be compressed
| more heavily according to what we should be able to hear. I
| think apple devices do not support lossless bluetooth.
|
| Android devices were known in the past to use a bitrate that
| is dependant on the amount of processing power the encoder
| gets assigned from the system. This means that on some phones
| with power management that is not designed with encoding for
| bluetooth in mind you would end up with horribly low bitrates
| because the power management would take away processing
| resources from the encoder to save battery. This of course
| would not apply to lossless codecs, if the sender and
| receiver support them both and the software picks it up
| correctly.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| I'm not quite certain if I'm spreading incorrect
| information as it's been a long time since I've looked at
| the subject. I thought for a given bitrate AAC produced
| measurably better results than MP3. I wonder does the iOS
| Bluetooth audio stack transcode existing AAC audio to a
| lower bitrate or does it pass it through?
|
| You are right though, iOS devices don't support anything
| other than AAC or SBC over Bluetooth. MacOS devices do seem
| to additionally support AptX, but none of the low latency
| or lossless variants.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Apple planned to roll
| their own AAC lossless codec given the movement of Spotify
| to lossless streaming, leaving Apple with no high tier
| offering.
| [deleted]
| chimen wrote:
| Yes iOS devices use AAC but a better implementation so it's
| not that bad.
| tediousdemise wrote:
| I genuinely cannot tell the difference between hi-fi audio and
| regular audio.
|
| My brain says _this audio is certainly better since I paid a lot
| of money for it_ , but my ears are in disagreement. Perhaps it's
| because I suffer from tinnitus.
|
| Is anyone else in the same boat?
| ilikejam wrote:
| Good speakers or headphones make a genuine difference.
|
| Amplifiers don't tend to matter much any more - cheap class B
| solid-state amps are all fine these days (heaphone amps are a
| lottery though).
|
| Digital sources have largely sounded perfect for the past 20
| years.
|
| A properly set up pair of good speakers in a room big enough to
| let them do their thing can be an _astonishing_ thing to hear.
| alias_neo wrote:
| If your audio is of sufficient quality, it really does come
| down to the headphones and being sufficiently able to drive
| them.
|
| I used to be a earphones or nought when I was a kid, then I
| started using some "expensive" Sony headphones, had those
| almost a decade now but have since started using a
| combination of IEMs, monitor speakers and a pair of planar
| magnetic headphones with big drivers.
|
| Even though I'm decades older than when I started, and in
| theory my hearing is worse, I hear things in music I've
| listened to for all of this time that I didn't before.
|
| I have a high res audio player, I buy high res music and all
| that, but the single biggest difference I'd say is having a
| good size driver, 40mm+ for headphones, the ability to drive
| them well (a cheapish but not too cheap amp) and some decent
| quality music, ideally MP3 320 or something or lossless.
|
| As someone who doesn't make music or content I wouldn't
| recommend monitor speakers for general listening unless
| you're a true purist, they don't sound "fun", they're
| extremely directional and I can only describe them as
| "clinical".
|
| The same can be said for many IEMs, but not always.
| samvher wrote:
| I think there are some diminishing returns and you need
| multiple components to line up. I have decent (EUR250 or so)
| headphones, the M3K and high quality MP3s and then I definitely
| hear a world of difference compared to e.g. stock iPhone buds
| on an old iPhone with 128k MP3s. But I doubt that I would
| notice a difference with still more expensive headphones, FLACs
| and a more expensive device.
|
| On the setup I have 128k/transcoded MP3 also definitely has
| less interesting detail than higher quality files.
| sjwright wrote:
| > 128k MP3s
|
| Twenty years ago, such files would have been barely
| listenable. Ten years ago, this would have been tolerable but
| obviously compromised. Today, with the best encoders, 128k
| MP3s are shockingly good. Certainly not perfect. But _good._
|
| MP3 encoding has come a long way.
| samvher wrote:
| Interesting - I didn't realize this had improved so much. A
| large part of my library is definitely 10 or more years old
| so that might explain it.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| A big difference is AAC. 256kbps AAC sounds pretty good.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Yep. My old man used to be a sound engineer for the bbc and he
| has a ridiculous hifi setup, and he's convinced he can hear a
| difference between 24/192 vs a normal 320 mp3 but I sure can't
| and the blind tests I've done on him does make me think he's
| taking shit.
|
| Xiph seems to agree:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200124190800/https://people.xi...
| _joel wrote:
| If anything higher sample rates causes more stress on the
| ear. Shannon-Nyquist theory is definitely a thing.
| sjwright wrote:
| And more stress on the speaker/tweeter drivers.
|
| Of course, when you look at these high resolution
| recordings, the amplitude of material above 20kHz is
| piddling. The amount of harmonics/overtones in acoustic
| instruments is minuscule in the first place.
| Arainach wrote:
| You're confusing frequency and resolution. Just because a
| set of music fits in a certain frequency range doesn't
| mean that all representations of it are equal. For
| example, consider this in graphical form:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/ZgU1bgI.jpg
| https://i.imgur.com/RZpbyyI.jpg
|
| Both have the same 24-bit color space. Both have the same
| blackest black and whitest white. Both have the same
| resolution. And yet one preserves more detail and
| information. This is the nature of lossy compression.
| Tepix wrote:
| German c't magazine did a test in 2000. In the end most of
| the listeners (several audio professionals among them) liked
| the 256kbit MP3 as much as the original.
|
| Here's an english copy of the test:
|
| http://www.geocities.ws/altbinariessoundsmusicclassical/mp3t.
| ..
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I certainly am.
|
| But I can also believe that it is at least somewhat different
| for audiophiles. I once took a beer judge certification course,
| and, by the end of it, I could easily distinguish flavor
| subtleties that were completely imperceptible to me at the
| start of the class. Not just in a "I think I can" way, but
| reliably in blind tests. And I've had a similar experience of
| imperceptible differences becoming easy to spot when learning
| to speak new languages. So it seems possible to me that simply
| being an audiophile makes it possible to care about subtleties
| that non-audiophiles can't even hear, because brains are
| magical like that.
| easygenes wrote:
| For me it took getting some good balanced armature IEMs and
| lying somewhere calm and quiet with a 24-slider EQ and
| listening repeatedly to familiar music with different EQ
| adjustments. Play a song. Move one or two sliders. Play it
| again. You pick up on a lot of subtleties you'd miss
| otherwise.
| EL_Loco wrote:
| There was a famous (in the diy audio community at least)
| blind test where music was played in audiophile equipment
| with some premium audio cable that cost a lot, and then the
| same music was played with a bent coathanger used as a cable.
| The order was randomized, and the audiophiles couldn't tell
| the difference. There have been other blind tests with
| different equipment, like hi end amplifiers vs mid-level
| consumer grade equipment (like your average Sony) with same
| results. You can search audio forums for the details. From
| all that I've read over the years, and from my own experience
| of quite a few years listening to the best recorded classical
| music, pretty much every good consumer player, amplifier, dac
| today is good enough for every audiophile. Where you'll find
| the difference is in the speakers, and to a lesser extent,
| headphones.
|
| TL;DR: If I had 5,000 dollars to spend on high end audio
| equipment for my living room, I'd spend 3,500-4,000 on the
| speakers. But I wouldn't, personally. I'd spend half of that
| and get 98% of the quality.
| audiothrowsway wrote:
| I think there is varying degrees of craziness with
| audiophiles and then they all get lumped together making
| them look worse.
|
| For example you have the Japanese audiophiles spending
| 100,000 on speakers but live in a 10x10 room, or install
| power lines as they say they can hear the difference.
|
| Audio reaches diminishing returns pretty quickly, you
| aren't going to see massive audio gains by upping your
| budget from $2,000 to $20,000 but you will by going from
| $200 to $2,000. At a certain point you are paying for a
| sound curve that suits you over the end all be all music
| reproduction.
|
| A lot of stuff is getting cheaper too with good class D
| amplifiers with very low distortion being available to DIY
| and custom builders for relatively cheap (as long as you
| aren't in the class D is garbage audiophile crowd, which I
| think is similar to the my $1,000 dollar wire is better
| than your $50 dollar wires).
| [deleted]
| sjwright wrote:
| The crucial difference is that compared to our other senses,
| our ears are _really, really, astonishingly shit._ They can
| be highly precise in one context and ludicrously imprecise in
| another context. And they lie. They often tell us we 're
| hearing what our eyes expect to hear.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| OTOH, there aren't many other sensory systems that operate
| over 3 orders of magnitude in frequency and 6 o.o.m. in
| amplitude.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| So far, the highest frequency that we've been able to determine
| that humans can process is about 28khz. That's about 1/3rd of
| an octave above what the limits of CD and most streaming
| services provide.
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range#Humans
|
| "Old-fashioned" CD, when mastered with modern noise shaping,
| gets super-close to the fundamental limits of human hearing.
| Furthermore, as the above link points out, older people often
| can't hear above 15khz. Thus, if you're older, you might not be
| capable of hearing the difference between a CD and the same mix
| on BluRay or DVD.
|
| FWIW: There's a lot of psuedoscience in the audiophile market.
| Things like DSD and sampling rates about 96khz make little
| sense outside of the recording studio. (This is because the
| absolute upper limit of human hearing is 28khz. 96khz exceeds
| the human hearing range by almost an octave.)
| Arainach wrote:
| You're confusing frequency and resolution. Just because a set
| of music fits in a certain frequency range doesn't mean that
| all representations of it are equal. For example, consider
| this in graphical form:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/ZgU1bgI.jpg
| https://i.imgur.com/RZpbyyI.jpg
|
| Both have the same 24-bit color space. Both have the same
| blackest black and whitest white. Both have the same
| resolution. And yet one preserves more detail and
| information. This is the nature of lossy compression.
| moftz wrote:
| The sampling rate and frequency range are tied together
| though. The Nyquist rate says the sampling rate must be 2x
| the bandwidth. If you sample at 96KHz, the most bandwidth
| you'd get is sound waves up to 48KHz and still be able to
| accurately reproduce them. However, if human hearing taps
| out at 28KHz, then you could sample up to 56KHz and still
| reliably reproduce the same sound.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| At that point, the only real advantage to 96khz is that
| it pushes any potential distortion out of the audible
| range.
|
| But going above 96khz or DSD is silly outside of the
| recording studio.
| jedimastert wrote:
| There is a vast well of diminishing audio in the Hi-Fi world.
|
| I think for almost anyone who doesn't want to actively turn
| listening to music into a hobby, I think ~$100 each headphones
| and a DAC is the highest end anyone will ever notice.
| [deleted]
| khazhoux wrote:
| I went down this rabbit-hole a few years ago. Had some FiiOs,
| expensive in-ears, and lots of FLACs.
|
| I did hear a difference, but it's not obvious. It's not a "OMG
| WHOA" when you put on the latest crisp FLAC compared to
| whatever streamed from Apple Music. On some tracks, the
| difference is nil. But on the occasional track, the hi-fi
| version is just clearer end-to-end. And on a few tracks, you
| will hear _tiny_ little things you 'd never heard before, and
| this can be actually exhilarating -- like, there will be a
| track I've listened to 100 times, and now suddenly I hear the
| bit of sticky-spit sound as the singer opens his mouth right
| before starting to sing... and that instantly makes it like
| you're _standing right next to the microphone_. Sounds silly,
| but it 's cool.
| doix wrote:
| I was at a conference where someone was showing off the TIDAL
| studio master stuff. It definitely sounded different, I heard
| things in songs that I've listened to for years that I've not
| heard before.
|
| I then realized that the headphones cost around $2000 (Audeze
| LCD-3) and a dac that I didn't recognize, but I'm sure it
| wasn't cheap.
|
| But there were too many variables to tell what made the
| difference. Was it the expensive headphones + dac? Was it the
| better quality audio? Was it the different mastering of the
| song that I know?
|
| Either way, I still listen to my "shit" audio setup because
| it's good enough for me and what I'm used too.
| sjwright wrote:
| > It definitely sounded different, I heard things in songs
| that I've listened to for years that I've not heard before.
|
| That usually means one of two things--
|
| 1. the frequency response of this new system is different,
| changing the relative loudness of different instruments;
|
| 2. the context caused you to concentrate on the music
| differently and your experience of it was therefore
| different.
|
| The critical thing nobody ever says is _" I heard things I
| never heard before, then I went back to my regular system and
| I stopped hearing the new thing."_ That never[0] happens--
| because the thing you hadn't noticed was there all along.
|
| [0] Edit: Okay yes, so not never. I was assuming that the
| regular system is a reasonably competent modern setup. The
| median intentional audio system, shall we say.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > The critical thing nobody ever says is "I heard things I
| never heard before, then I went back to my regular system
| and I stopped hearing the new thing."
|
| ...well, I have, but only when I was a child, and my
| "regular system" was a thing my parents bought for probably
| less than $20.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| I can tell you it probably was none of them.
|
| I own Stax, electrostats that make Audeze look plebian,
| plugged into their fancy Stax amp (although not the
| fanciest), plugged into a Theta DAC that is basically a
| 44.1/48khz Schiit Yggy, and there isn't some amazing leap.
|
| Also, fun fact, want a 90% Audeze LCD clone? Monoprice M1070
| and M1570. I have the predecessor, the M1060, fucking amazing
| for a $300 can, but flawed enough that I recommend the newer
| models of it.
| lucideer wrote:
| Another thing to add to the siblings pointing out that
| headphones/speakers make a bigger difference than
| AMPs/DACs/etc.: the room also makes an outsized difference in
| the case of speakers, even to untrained ears. So I'd say focus
| on headphones if you want to notice significant improvements.
| djitz wrote:
| What Hi-Fi audio equipment have you listened to
| tediousdemise wrote:
| Philips SHP9500 headphones, TIN HiFi T2 Pro IEMs, AudioQuest
| DragonFly Black DAC.
| darthrupert wrote:
| I have a pair of headphones that cost several thousand $. I can
| hear things I haven't heard before in songs that I've listened
| to since I was a teenager.
|
| Is it worth the money? Honestly I'm not sure. I probably
| could've gotten there with an investment of $500-1000. But now
| I have a beautiful piece of hardware that might last a decade
| or two.
| _joel wrote:
| That's the quality of the reproduction though, not the stuff
| you put into it. Agreed, I have Shure semi-opens I use for
| production that you hear things in that you wouldn't hear in
| buds but that's still just via regular old 16bit/44Khz WAV.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Link to item?
| Tepix wrote:
| The Stax electrostatic headphones ("earspeakers") have that
| effect whenever i put them on.
| darthrupert wrote:
| https://www.focal.com/headphones/stellia/
| snvzz wrote:
| Sennheiser HD600 are definitely worth the money.
| postit wrote:
| I have a FiiO X3 and its the only way I can properly hear music
| nowadays. I'm a freelancer musician from time to time I have to
| spend proper time with high quality audio files as folks who
| transcribe music sometimes eat notes for pleasure or mistake.
|
| Also, thanks to a friend who was into whatcd, my entire entire CD
| collection was ripped in a great way. I moved abroad a few years
| ago and I'm thankful that I could donate the less rare ones to
| the local library and avoid shipping a bunch of boxes to my new
| place.
|
| I still purchase the majority of albums I want from bandcamp and
| HDtracks and having a dedicated device that can take a
| profissional headphone is great for my study.
| dn3500 wrote:
| I have an X3 and I find it unusable. No way to queue up a track
| to play next. No way to even find a track unless you already
| know the artist or album. Navigation way too slow, it can take
| 12 seconds between a button press and reaction from the device.
| This M3K gets good reviews but I am reluctant to buy another
| FiiO. Agreed the audio quality is excellent.
| kop316 wrote:
| As a shout out, I have a XDuoo X3 and it supports Rockbox!
|
| https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/XDuooX3
|
| The Xudoo X20 should support Rockbox as well:
|
| https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/XDuooX3ii
|
| I forgot how much I liked using Rockbox, and I am so happy I can
| use it again.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Can it adjust speed without altering pitch the way VLC and
| YouTube do?
|
| Is it hackable/programmable? I need a short nice bell every n
| seconds.
|
| If it can do both I'm buying...
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| The FiiO M3 Pro (successor model) can also be used as a USB
| Headphone preamp, thinking about getting one myself. Does anybody
| know if it is possible to adjust left/right balance via the
| software (when using as music player or DAC)? My right ear is
| slightly impaired and would need higher volume on the right - or
| at least enable stereo-to-mono downmix. Genuinely interested if
| this device would support this.
| bigfudge wrote:
| You can on the btr3 k through the fiio app so my guess would be
| yes.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| Thanks, that really helps a lot. I tried googling of course,
| but since there are special "balanced amps" (nothing to do
| with L/R balance) this became almost impossible.
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