Sansa Clip+ or xDuoo X2 or Fiio X1

Abhinav_Rakesh

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I have Sansa Clip+ and thinking of getting another player.
I am much inclined towards xDuoo X2 because of Form Factor, I like Small Players, Has anyone heard this player, How it is different in terms of Sound Quality from Fiio X1.
I don't fancy Big colored screens. Just a small Player which has nice sound and pocket friendly
 
as far as other forums ,they praise a lot about sansa clip plus .onli probelm not available in india ,even if available cost is way too high.

fiio x1 may be the best as it has got inbuilt amp.reviews were also excellent

u can try cowon i audio e3 too its feathery light,good sound quality

cowon i9 now selling for 3000 in official website

xduoo is very new to market ,so its better wait and watch for few more days
 
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I just got a Ruizu X08, and it is superb for the price (~$25 from various sources on EBay, AliExpress, etc.).

Pros:

- Extremely lightweight and compact media player
- Plays MP3, WMA, APE, WAV, FLAC (incl. 16/44.1 and 16/48)
- 1.8" colour screen
- 8 GB Flash built-in, expandable up to 72GB with a 64GB microSD card
- rechargeable Li battery runs forever (claimed to be 200 hours, but not tested)
- USB cable for uploading media files as well as charging
- Also plays MP4 videos and has PDF reader for E-books (not tested)
- Built-in FM stereo receiver (not tested)
- Built-in mono speaker (works when earbuds aren't plugged in)

Cons:

- Cheap and lightweight plastic build
- Buttons have poor tactile feedback
- Non-intuitive UI (can be learned with practice)
- Included earbuds are cheap and don't fit snugly in my ear

However, it's easy to work around the earbud issue - I swapped mine initially for Sennheiser CX200, then switched to an old Chinese stethoscope-type earbud that used to be available in a round silver box with brands like I-Music, I-MAXX, etc. printed on it. It's rated as 32 ohms, 18-20 kHz, 125 dB SPL at 1 kHz/1 Vrms and it sounds fabulous with the Ruizu X08!

I listened to some .flacs converted directly from original CD material, and I can confidently say that this sounds better on 16/44.1 loss-less playback than a HifiMeDIY 24/96 Sabre ES9023 DAC (which probably does some up-sampling and/or interpolation with 16/44.1 streams). The perceived sound quality is highly dependent on the earbuds - the stethoscope-type IEMs are the most open-sounding and dynamic.

The next thing on my to-do list is to test it as a line-level source with MyRef Rev C and MiniRef amplifiers, driving folded TABAQ MLTLs. It should have no difficulty with high-Z amplifier inputs. If it turns out to be perceptibly better than my flagship reference CD sources like the Marantz CD4000 (modded) and Technics SLP-999 with Burr-Brown DACs on the same CD material, it will mean that the era of high-end CD audio has come to an end, and the only things worth listening to on decks are SACD and DVD-audio material, which are not that easy to obtain even now. It is a truly amazing development for a single-chip SoC solution to reach this level of performance and convenience - as recently as 5-10 years ago, numerous semiconductor companies had tried (and failed) to produce a high-performance mixed-signal SoC with extremely low power consumption for media-player use.

The only thing that can beat this in media-player applications is an SoC + ES9018K2M implementation for high bit-rate streams like 24/192, but that's not here yet in terms of convenience and battery-life.
 
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Here's a pic of the Ruizu X08 with stethoscope-type IEMs (uploads seem to be heavily compressed and blurry, please bear with the poor picture quality):
 

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I have sansa ..and the quality is great ...Went into a river to take bath with the player in my pocket .....yet its working till date ..........very durable .......great sound


I am not sure about others ...I purchased cowon 160 GB ...and the hard disk failed within a year .. 20K gone ....so I am a bit wary of these Chinese made FIIO ....even though I am tempted looking at the specs ....FIIO - X5 can hold 265 GB .....but not sure if these players will last like sansa does ...

Check the quality of these players ...especially Korean / Taiwan/ Chinese brands ....they are competing with apple ...on specs and price ...quality ?????
 
I just got a Ruizu X08, and it is superb for the price (~$25 from various sources on EBay, AliExpress, etc.)

Thanks for the heads up Siva. You seem to have an innate ability to dig out super stuff from wherever you go. I still remember how good that teeny weeny DAC that you brought for audition when I was at Chennai. Wish I was there to sample it. Any links to the product?
 
Thanks for the heads up Siva. You seem to have an innate ability to dig out super stuff from wherever you go. I still remember how good that teeny weeny DAC that you brought for audition when I was at Chennai. Wish I was there to sample it. Any links to the product?

Rajesh, thanks - actually, I accidentally saw a thread at head-fi about one of the predessors of this one, called the Ruizu X02. Then I searched around and found that there were several later versions, all the way to X10. The best deal seems to be the X08, mainly due to its battery life and expandibility with microSD:

1 8" Ruizu X08 MP3 Player Ultrathin 8GB HiFi Lossless 200 Hours with FM Clock | eBay

(Deep links to EBay pages sometimes don't work - you may have to search on the EBay.com main page for "Ruizu".)

The X01 and X05 seem to be more rugged, with metal bodies, but shorter battery life.
 
Thanks for this nugget. I haven't really got any plans to get a PMP currently, but this device is now on my list.

A few quick questions. Please answer as you're able.

1.>Is it able to handle gapless MP3 playback well ?
This is a crucial ability for many jazz, classical, and progressive rock albums where one song just segues into another. Note that this is something you can only test with MP3 as it has a file format with fixed length block, which prevents true gapless. Most newer lossy formats (Vorbis) or lossy formats (WAV, FLAC) don't need this functionality as their file formats are superior.

2.>How is the actual battery life?
I'm skeptical of the claimed 200hrs, but even an actual 100hrs is excellent by me.

3.>Is it able to remember the last played position in the file?
This would be a necessity for listening to audiobooks.

4.>Replaygain support?
At this price, it'll be really a good surprise to have that.

5.>MP3 formats support?
MP3 supports many variations in bitrates (8 to 320 kbps), and frequencies (8 to 48 kHz). I've noticed that many car players refuse to play non-typical bitrates and frequencies.

6.> Any tag isssues?
I recall that initially even the Ibasso & Fiio players had issues with proper tag support.

I just got a Ruizu X08, and it is superb for the price (~$25 from various sources on EBay, AliExpress, etc.).

...
 
I have Sansa Clip+ and thinking of getting another player.
I am much inclined towards xDuoo X2 because of Form Factor, I like Small Players, Has anyone heard this player, How it is different in terms of Sound Quality from Fiio X1.
I don't fancy Big colored screens. Just a small Player which has nice sound and pocket friendly


So which one did you end-up buying? I'm interested in upgrading to a dap which is definite step-up to Clip Zip but has usable UI. I'm inclined towards X1 but if I get good price, I'll try other daps. Really not sure if I should take the risk with daps like Colorfly C3 and Xduoo X3 or play safe with X1 which has decent UI. Only reason why I'm thinking about upgrade right now, is in the hopes of getting better navigation and usability than small screen on Zip. But when spending about 8k, I'm finding it difficult to spend on something that sounds only marginally better than Clip which costed me 1800 rs. Other features on X1 might be worth it. But for me, Only Sound quality matters and in that regard is X1 a definite level above Sansa? C3 and X3 definitely are as per what I read/saw so far but the UI on those.... :annoyed:
 
I have Sansa Clip+ and thinking of getting another player.
I am much inclined towards xDuoo X2 because of Form Factor, I like Small Players, Has anyone heard this player, How it is different in terms of Sound Quality from Fiio X1.
I don't fancy Big colored screens. Just a small Player which has nice sound and pocket friendly

I have Xduoo X3, and it's almost equal to my Chord Mojo.
Price wies X3 is almost equal to Fiio X1.
So in my opinion you should go for X3.

By the was i bought the X3 some months back to my uncle, and i will buy another Xduoo X3 for my brother next month :).
 
I have Xduoo X3, and it's almost equal to my Chord Mojo.
Price wies X3 is almost equal to Fiio X1.
So in my opinion you should go for X3.

By the was i bought the X3 some months back to my uncle, and i will buy another Xduoo X3 for my brother next month :).

Chord Mojo and X3? Whow! That's Huge!! But yea, I pretty much know by now that X3 is above X1 in SQ. Any idea about Colorfly C3 or Xuelin Ihifi 770 as compared to X3?
 
Chord Mojo and X3? Whow! That's Huge!! But yea, I pretty much know by now that X3 is above X1 in SQ. Any idea about Colorfly C3 or Xuelin Ihifi 770 as compared to X3?

Sorry, no idea about others.
I bought X3, because it has an authorize dealer in India (HifiNage).
Also i knew, it's sound quality will be better, cause it has Cirrus Logic CS4938 DAC chip inside.
To be frank, i liked everything about X3.
 
Sorry, no idea about others.
I bought X3, because it has an authorize dealer in India (HifiNage).
Also i knew, it's sound quality will be better, cause it has Cirrus Logic CS4938 DAC chip inside.
To be frank, i liked everything about X3.
Yea, I heard it's their flagship dac. That along with 2 sd card slots alone justify that price. Someone on head-fi says this is very close to DX50 in SQ. I almost hit buy this morning but still torn between this and X1. My heart is set on X1 due to my time with Sansa fuze and Ipod classic but my mind says, this is the definite step-up from clip Zip which is the whole reason why I started looking for a dap.
 
Yea, I heard it's their flagship dac. That along with 2 sd card slots alone justify that price. Someone on head-fi says this is very close to DX50 in SQ. I almost hit buy this morning but still torn between this and X1. My heart is set on X1 due to my time with Sansa fuze and Ipod classic but my mind says, this is the definite step-up from clip Zip which is the whole reason why I started looking for a dap.

just try doing a bit research on cirrus logic dac chip...you will get to know many insides.
 
Don't make your buy solely on one component like DAC chip from company X. DACs for audio market are dime a dozen.
An "excellent" DAC chip can sound bad if the overall circuit design is poor. Conversely, a "humble no-name" DAC chip can sound good due to proper design implementation.

Choose based on SQ, function, form factor, serviceability etc.
In this case, make sure your cans/buds are a good match too.

Cheers,
Raghu
 
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