Share the love, tell us your opinion when it arrives
It has been a little over a month now since the X3 arrived and has been in everyday use. I did have a few 'starting' problems, initially with loading the new firmware (3.0) and then formatting a 64GB-C10 Sandisk microSDHC card to FAT32. After six or seven aborted tries, it finally formatted all 64GB of it.
Intial trials were with MP3 tracks (320/44.1) and a Sennheiser PX100-II, immediately I found it startlingly good. More dynamics, cleaner highs, tighter bass, more space between instruments, wider and deeper sound-stage, etc. etc. Then the older Sennheiser HD320 came out of the 'audio-bin' for a try. The sound got more mature (?) but sounded a bit laid-back. FLAC tracks were only just marginally better than MP3, but still extremely good. I know for a fact that the PX-100-II is a bit bass heavy that can add to listening fatigue, and on the other hand, the HD320 just too smooth and a little laid-back. Perhaps a better pair of cans was in order to get the best out of the X3, I thought. Ta-Da...! Sennheiser HD558 arrived and (after some 20 hours of burn-in) things started to move in the right direction - dynamics, stage, imaging, more of everything and fatigue-free. FLAC format of "Jazz At The Pawnshop" (FIM) was now running day-in and day-out and I am beginning to hear things that I could hear only on my turntable, valve preamp and class A power amp.
Now I desperately needed to know what 24/196 would sound like (I am still very much an analogue guy, and not much into digital gizmo). So, I downloaded the following tracks from HDTracks:
Bill Evans "Waltz for Debbie - Take 1" - OJC Records 192/24 (I have the original LP and a CD version).
Sara K "Brick House" from Album "Hobo" - Chesky Records 96/24 (I have the Chesky CD).
Vienna Phily - Beethoven Symphony 5 in C minor Op.67 "Allegro" - Deutsche Gramaphone 84/24 (I have the CD).
Then I loaded these same tracks at mp3 (at 320/44.1KHz) and FLAC from my CDs.
After three days of trials and travails, frankly, I don't know what all this big fuss being made about 24bit/192KHz resolution recordings? I made out very little in terms of sonic advantage here over FLAC or even mp3 at 320/44.1. Sometimes I didn't know which was which. Don't get me wrong, 24/192 tracks do sound brilliant, but not by that kind of leaps and bounds over FLAC or mp3. To me, 24/192 seems more like a rip-off or an alternate thought, perhaps you need a real high-end pair of headphones, say in the region of $500+ to 'hear' the benefits of 24/192 audio tracks. If you ask me, I think FLAC (though compressed, but lossless) is the best way to go with the X3. FLAC does take up a bit more than twice the space on the memory card as mp3/320/44, it is still a big saving in disc space over other uncompressed/lossless formats.
Another accidental discovery I made, using the same source material from CD ripped at 320/44.1 resolution, mp3 tracks ripped using LAME encoder (on Nero 8) sounds marginally cleaner than those ripped using FhG (Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft) encoder (on Nero 10). The optical drive on the PC is a constant. And I'm not sure if my brain cells are playing games with me.
What do I think? The user interface is still a mess on the X3, but one gets used to it over time, I guess. A touch screen would have been nice and easier to navigate. All those shortcomings are overcome by the sheer sound quality - leaning towards warmer (valve-like) than colder (digital) sound signature.
Thanks again for your advice, I saved the cost difference between AK100-II and the X3, and I don't think you can get a better deal than that as far as sound quality to cost ratio goes. I will recommend it to anyone who takes his/her music seriously.
