FiiO X3 II Second review From Samma3a Audition Tour BY Yazoro

I already own the first X3 and the X3K was given to me to try, so the main point of this review is to compare them to each other and to see if it is worth it to upgrade. Also of course I will try to give my impressions about the experience of using the X3K and its audio quality.

My collection of headphones include:

  • Hifi-Man HE-400i
  • Massdrop AKG K7xx
  • Sennheiser Momentom (First edition Over Ear)
  • Audio Techinca ATH-M50s
  • Shure SE425

My daily use headphones are the Sennheisers which I use at work between 3 and 5 hours a day so most of the tests are done using them by simply using the X3K as my source of music for a couple of days, however I did some tests using the other headphones and I also used both devices as an audio out line to my Marantz 6005 amp which is powering a couple of Magnat floor standing Speakers.

So here are the findings of my tests:

Build & Operation:

The X3K is well built, FIIO products all are, however the original X3 feels a tiny bit better, I really like the black brushed metal look and feel. And the Control circle in the middle of the X3K is a tiny bit flimsy. Also it is worthy to mention that the plastic cover provided with the X3K feels and is better than the one provided with the X3. That said, when it comes to operating the 2, this is when the differences start to merge, the X3K is way much better to handle than the X3, at least the buttons on the X3K make sense and although something still feels strange or missing one will get used to operating it using muscle memory within less than an hour. I had the X3 for more than a year and I still sometimes miss use its buttons.

The operating menus and functionalists of both devices are technically similar, if you are used to the X3 you will feel right at home with the new version, especially if you have upgraded to the firmware V3. Battery life of the X3K was as expected, it lasted me a few days of heavy use and recharging it didn’t take a long time and i was back to business.

Supported file formats:

As far as I am concerned the supported file formats of the X3 are more than enough, I own a huge music library with about 10% of it in formats that are higher than a 1000 bit rate, just a couple of albums of 24 bit which include the Dr. Chesky’s Binaural album which already came with the X3 and no DSD or any of the super high res files and I am not planning on going there so the native support for DSD on the X3K although is a cool feature it is one that is irrelevant to me.

However, the X3 especially with the new firmware did noticeably struggle while playing high res files, even the ones that came with it, a problem I did not notice with the X3K.

By struggle I don’t mean that playing the music was affected but operating the device while listening to the files was affected considerably.

I have just noticed firmware V3.3 for the X3 so ill upgrade to that and maybe the problem will be solved.

Audio Quality:

I guess it all comes down to the Audio quality and i must say that i am impressed. My method of testing does not involve playing a specific song or list of songs and comparing them one by one between two sources, what i do is just listen to my music the same way i always do while working and i usually start noticing things in the music; good or bad; and if something popped out too much and caught my attention I’d change the music source and listen to the same song on the other device to check out what the story was all about.

I was listening to the album “Still on Top” by Van Morrison which i knew by heart. But right away details started catching my attention, the sound of the high hats, the bass guitar and all the brass sounded different, sounded more detailed and layered, not to mention the sound stage which was noticeably more spacious. I went back to the X3 just to make an A-B comparison and it was confirmed, there is a difference between the 2 and it is very noticeable. After that i didn’t go back to my old X3.

Over a few days of testing I listen to an array of music from Angela Hewitt Bach Concertos to Dave Matthews Band to Fairouz, also using a spectrum of file formats between 128 bit MP3s to 24/92 recordings and there has always been something that caught my attention and made me smile 🙂

Conclusion:

The X3 is an impressive audiophile entry level media player, for its price range it is a very good option for someone who is interested in playing high res. music on the go and above that it packs very useful features such as an external DAC, a dedicated line out and coaxial digital out. But it had a few shortcomings, mainly operational issues. And so comes the FIIO X3ii AKA X3K which not only solves most of the problems with the first gen. but also noticeably improves on the audio output quality and packs some extra cool features such as native support for DSD and super high res. formats.

I will buy the X3ii when it is available in my region and I definitely do recommend it to any audio enthusiast out there

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