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What the heck is an "informal ape soundtrack"? Monkey's Audio is a codec for compressing WAV files, so why would a player have trouble decoding some APE files and not others?

James@Fiio is either really excited about his job or he missed school the day everyone learned what a period is.

[quote="chengdude"]Yeah, you really wouldn't need to pair the E7 with the X3 because the X3 will probably be using the same WM8740 DAC as the E7. The E11, on the other hand, is a dedicated portable amp and likely produce a "better"/more powerful signal than the amp section of the E7.

If you have the E9, you could pair it with the E7 when connecting to your computer or the X3 when you don't want to fuss with with PC or laptop.

If you're on the go, you'll face the decision of your own player paired with the E7, E11 or -not to forget- the E5...or your X3 paired with the E11 or E5.

It's a clever strategy]

If what i have been reading is right then the X3 and E7 should have a similar sound, so pairing the two would be redundant.

I really like how fiio have branched out and maintained a good quality of products, James definitely listens to customers, be them end retail or resellers like us. Looking forward to when this rolls out.

Looking forward to some reviews myself.

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I haven't keep track on this thread but I think I can answer (or semi-confirm) some of the discussion here:

1) X3 will has a similar DAC and amp section as E7, so it will sounds very close to E7 (as used on PC). The reason not to use E11 amp section in X3 is because it will eat a lot of battery, so E7-like amp section makes more sense.

2) RockBox is a longshot. As much as FiiO like to see it as an option for customer to port RB to X3, they can't really do anything to force the controller provider (which is also doing the firmware for FiiO) to release their SDK if that company doesn't want to. SDK is really the core technology on the controller and asking people to hand it out freely isn't something likely to happen. FOr the least I can tell you is that company has develop firmware for big brand name and so the quality of the firmware should be pretty decent and better than the RockChip / SigmaTel solutions. This is the main reason why FiiO chooses this company in the first place - because they have better firmware support than the others.

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[InEarMatters.net] : Earphones' news and reviews

Can you confirm any of this:
Album art Support and/or Cover flow (seeing a 'flow' of album arts and choosing it
Fast music browsing

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Unboxing of Window G85 & Newsmy Momo M-toucht + PT2
Review of the Ainol V6000HDT (Updated: 09/06)
Unboxing of the Nationite HDVP-1

Album art is definitely supported. No too sure about the rest.

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[InEarMatters.net] : Earphones' news and reviews

So great to hear about the attention to firmware...a Fiio DAP with a well-thought out and optimized firmware is gold.



One minor nitpick: a SigmaTel/Freescale solution is certainly capable; after all, historically they ended up with much of Rio's IP and, just recently, you have the Sansa Fuze+. But yeah, with no development effort from the client, the bone-stock result on older STMP chips is certainly, umm, basic.

Sigmatel have got a bit of a bad rap due to how their chips have been used in the lower end China players, but they actually can be well done, but the design houses in China don't really work to hard to improve the quality of the firmware from the bare base that you normally see.

The issue with SigmaTel, at least after the global economy crisis at 2008 is, the company is sold to FreeScale. However, FreeScale's main interest in SigmaTel is the company's IP, not the actual production. So since 2008, most of the product development on SigmaTel have been shutdown or reassigned to FreeScale's own products. Many engineers and workers have been laid off and plants have been shutdown. IIRC, no new SigmaTel chipset is currently scheduled and the sale and support of current products are 'till the products life cycle reach it end' - meaning once the demand of current chip slow down, they will shut down the remaining SigmaTel operation and integrate whatever remaining into FreeScale. SigmaTel is currently many refers as 'ghost company' waiting to be closed down for good. FreeScale already announces the shutdown of all STMP37xx production except STMP3770 and 3780 in mid 2012. As for how long STMP3770 and STMP3780 will last - it is anybody's guest. This is a big reason why FiiO is trying to avoid using SigmaTel.

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[InEarMatters.net] : Earphones' news and reviews

A few sneak pics, i am still kicking myself that i couldn't go back on Sunday to the audio exhibition to checkout the prototype they had for the X3. I am not sure if it was a working model or a dummy model, but i would have liked to have snapped a few better pictures than the ones i got emailed to me.

http://mp4nation.net/blog/2011/01/i-spy ... ak-photos/