Recommendations for a digital audio player

[mville]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

If 32 GB internal RAM (not ROM) is insufficient for you, you might consider the M11 Pro, which has 64 GB.

The FiiO M11 website is stating 3GB RAM, 32GB ROM, 4TB Expanded Storage (2TB micro-SD x 2).

[Dat Ei]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

Hey mville,

Please let us now how you get on with this device (I am looking to replace my 2 x iPod 160GB Classics), my concern being it's paltry 32GB ROM and the cost of large micro-SD cards.

I will report on the FiiO M11, when I've made my first experiences. If 32 GB internal RAM (not ROM) is insufficient for you, you might consider the M11 Pro, which has 64 GB. But keep in mind the price of the Pro is even higher (about 200,- Euros higher). Look at the ohter differences if this model is worth the extra money.

The costs of large microSD cards went down the last months. Good and fast microSD cards with 512 GB capacity (like Samsung) are available for 90-100 Euros. Now, during the Black Friday Week and the period of Cyber Monday, you find even lower offerings.

I've decided to go with the M11 for several reasons:

- responsive user interface
- 2 microSD slots with up to 2 TB each
- support of aptX HD
- WIFI with 2.4 and 5 GHz
- good connectivity (i.e. can be remote controlled by mobile phone)
- support of qobuz (as other streaming services)
- support of replay gain (track and album)
- support of gapless
- 13 hour battery life / 1.200 hours stand by
- a lot of reviews with a very, very positiv feedback

Beside all the positive there are cons too. even though this device comes with Android, you can't use googles app store, because this device comes with Android 7 and isn't certified. To compensate this FiiO offers a special FiiO app store. Aside of that you can upload and install any apk file as long as the software is compatible with Android 7 at all.


Dat Ei

[mville]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

So it's time to wave goodbye to my iPod (or Ei-Pott like I used to spell it in german language) and say hello to its successor, a FiiO M11.

Very interesting.

Please let us now how you get on with this device (I am looking to replace my 2 x iPod 160GB Classics), my concern being it's paltry 32GB ROM and the cost of large micro-SD cards.

[Oggy]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

Apologize for reanimating this old thread, but a couple of hours ago, I've decided to terminate the service of my over 12 year old iPod classic. The iPod is still in a good shape and does its job without any problems. But its capacity shrinks from year to year whhile my collection is still growing. So it's time to wave goodbye to my iPod (or Ei-Pott like I used to spell it in german language) and say hello to its successor, a FiiO M11.


Dat Ei

Nice!

[Dat Ei]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

Apologize for reanimating this old thread, but a couple of hours ago, I've decided to terminate the service of my over 12 year old iPod classic. The iPod is still in a good shape and does its job without any problems. But its capacity shrinks from year to year whhile my collection is still growing. So it's time to wave goodbye to my iPod (or Ei-Pott like I used to spell it in german language) and say hello to its successor, a FiiO M11.


Dat Ei

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

Hi Chippe,

Thanks for your input.

I will keep this short as I don't want to inadvertently reiterate what may have previously been discussed here.

It does look a great machine and I was actually not even aware of this model. I am pleased to hear that you like it. I can not see how anyone could dislike it?! However, it is totally out of my price range and I am very happy with my A-45.

Before purchasing my Walkman I went through weeks of testing out different combinations of players with phones. My ears were tired after so many A/B comparisons and I don't know if I would want to go through it again! I decided to stick with Sony for the phones also. In fact, I additionally purchased a pair of Sony wireless buds for the gym!

Cheers,

Paul

[chippe01]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

Re-opening an older thread, I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Sony NW-WM1A.

I do own the NW-A45, and I love it, and now use that as my "bedtime" player.

The NW-WM1A isn't cheap, but it has a lot of quality features. It has dual amplifiers for balanced output, and a standard headphone jack. It's got a high gain amplifier, which blows away the volume on the A45. High gain can be turned on and off for both the balanced and standard connections. I have paired this with a balanced wired headphone, which was also pretty expensive and the sound is just amazing and LOUD.

There are a number of sound settings, and you can adjust the tone with either a 10 band customizable EQ or standard Bass, Mid, and Treble settings. Battery is rated for about 20 hours. I don't use Bluetooth or NFC and have those turned off. With the high gain setting, and balanced wired connection, I have not had the battery quit on me yet. I listen at pretty high volume, and after about 2 hours, the battery meter goes from 4 bars to 3. I've never had the battery go below 2 bars.

Putting all the Sony bull aside, I do use the Music Center software. While it's not the friendliest software, it gets the job done. I have my entire collection in FLAC (Standard CD quality from my ripped CDs thanks to dBPowerAmp) with the exception of my LP's which I ripped myself in Hi Res format (both 96Khz 24 bit and DSD 5.6). Thanks to the Sony Hi-Res turntable, I can rip from standard CD quality up to DSD 11.2. I have also purchased about 20 Hi-Res albums online, ranging from 24 bit 44.1K to DSD 5.6.

I have almost 11,000 tracks on the Walkman on a 512GB card, and still have almost 150GB free. The player has built in 128GB memory, but I have everything on the SD card except the music that was installed on the device - a few Hi Res DSD and FLAC files.

By the way, I had this same 512GB card in the NW-A45 and it worked without an issue. I now have a 400GB card in the A45.

There are quirks with the software and both of the players, but I have incorporated the workarounds into my normal routines when putting music on both players. The music center software just got an update, although it's not much more user friendly now than before. For instance, I posted some time ago about a bug with the year display in the software, It always subtracts 1 from the actual year. If the year is 1960, the year displayed in Music center is 1959 - even though the correct year is tagged in the file. This was not fixed. I also make sure my album art is in the correct JPG Baseline format before adding the art to the FLAC files.

Anyway, the unit and headphones commanded a hefty price tag, but to my ears at least, the sound quality is incredible. The A45 is the MUCH cheaper alternative with less volume and features, but has good sound for a compact player. I'm using the A45 with a pair of Sony Hi-Res earbuds and they sound great. The battery on this is rated for 30 hours, and seems to last incredibly long.

I love the user interface on both the A45 and WM1A, it's very user friendly in my opinion.

FYI, with the max volume limit on the European units, there is a way to disable this. There are articles on the internet on how to do this.

[Dat Ei]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

iBasso has released a new DAP lately called DX120. It as no Wifi, no Blutooth and no changeable amplifier, but two card slots, an uptime up to 16 hours with one charge. The new model is inexpensive if you compare it to the bigger models like DX150 or DX200.


Dat Ei

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

Another multi-value tag would be the STYLE tag, which I believe you were using. Although I doubt if many players display style. You may have decided to not use them.

As expected, the STYLE tag is not displayed. But yes, I have still used STYLE in all of my tagging. As you know, from a previous thread, I spent a good while compiling these - though am still stuck on quite a few CLASSICALs at present.

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

An example would be genre. I have albums where the genre is Jazz and Pop.

Hi GaryG,

I took a look for you last night.

The Sony Walkman has:

ARTIST - this can be set to ARTIST or ALBUM ARTIST (I have it to the latter)

RELEASE YEAR - the year the album was released (I manually entered this data during tagging). I don't use this category as a search function to be honest. Personally, I would have preferred RECORDED YEAR.

ALBUM - is an alphabetical list of every album (all GENRES combined) in an A to Z list. I don't use this category.

COMPOSER - gives you a list of how many ALBUMS a composer has contributed to. So, if a composer has written 50 songs across 20 albums, the result will indicate the amount of '20'. I may end up using this once I get around to listening to some CLASSICALs.

GENRE - I use this one all of the time! I currently have: Choral, Classical, Country, Holistic, Jazz, Languages, Popular, Prog-Rock, Stage & Screen, Self-Development, and Xmas.

Upon checking this info. for you, I have noticed something odd which is occurring in my library. The folder containing all of Chick Corea's albums does not appear under the letter 'C'?, but rather between 'F' and 'G'. Similarly, George Shearing appears between 'M' and 'O'! Though I have not investigated this thoroughly as of yet.

Paul

[mville]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

From DAPs, full-size and in car, missing cover art seems a massive issue as there are no standards, and different manufacturers implement this differently. Folder.jpg or Embedded, maximum/minimum pixel size often in tandem with different maximum file size, and now Baseline DCT!

No wonder there are issues.....

Spoon, I believe the baseline (standard) versus progressive format for .jpg files, is something that could be incorporated into dBpoweramp Image Converter, maybe as a DSP?

[GaryG45]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

Paul,
An example would be genre. I have albums where the genre is Jazz and Pop. Another multi-value tag would be the STYLE tag, which I believe you were using. Although I doubt if many players display style. You may have decided to not use them.

Gary

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

I use embedded art in mp3 files in my car player, and it refreshes like your Walkman. Foobar mobile on my iPhone doesn't do a refresh for embedded art in mp3 files.

I'm interested in how the Walkman handles multi-value tags, if you use them.

Hi GaryG,

Thanks for the info.

I am afraid I only use FLAC format now; and I only listen using my Sony Walkman, Win_10 PC, and Amazon Fire. The latter two are through foobar app.

"Multi value tags"; I seem to remember hearing/thinking about this sometime last year? So much has gone on through my journey of FLACs/ripping, etc! And so please remind me just in case I am able to return some assistance.

Paul

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

Not surprising, because evidently with the walkman, it only sees the embedded art. So each track has "new" art, even if it happens to be the exact same artwork. It loads artwork for EACH track. Foobar doesn't likely do this as it can read the folder.jpg.

Hi Garym,

You are probably correct here. Yes, the Walkman treats each new artwork-file as if it were different, even though the image is the exactly same!

I think, by default, foobar is reading the 'folder' art. Hence there is no refreshing of any track-images (unless of course it's a box-set with multiple-arts). I just tried it using foobar on my PC. btw - the FLAC folder it is reading is the one on my C: drive which has both 'embedded' and 'folder' (same FLAC folder as on the Walkman SD-card).

Cheers.

[GaryG45]

Re: Recommendations for a digital audio player

I use embedded art in mp3 files in my car player, and it refreshes like your Walkman. Foobar mobile on my iPhone doesn't do a refresh for embedded art in mp3 files.

I'm interested in how the Walkman handles multi-value tags, if you use them.