Nicely done TS!

E3 user here. Maybe I'll buy more Fiio's products soon. E10, E17, X3..

Great job!! Poison the E9 users by telling us the improvements.

Since you want to replace your sound card, E7 is the only one that can get the job done, out of all current Fiio's audiophile products that is. Alternatives:
-Fiio D5: Also a sound card, but SQ is less than E7 as it's made for the general consumers, not audiophiles.
-Future Fiio products like the E10 and E17. ETA: E10: October, E17: Feb '12, but sometime b4 this year ends.

No offense, but the thought "won't all on-board sounds bad if paired w/ stock Nokia headset?" still lingers in my head.

EDIT: Edited E17's ETA

This post has been edited by Agnaem: Sep 10 2011, 06:35 PM

Assuming:
-Headset/headphone/external speaker works fine on players@sources other than your laptop
-Almost all types of headset/headphone/external speaker sounds bad w/ ur on-board SC.
-The only crappy thing is the on-board SC
then the answer is yes.

But if the cause of your problem is laptop's crappy power supply@circuit, external DACs @ USB SCs would/could sound bad as well.

Example would be my current laptop. Its on-board is fine, but I can hear electrical noises when using a USB Sound Card w/ it. No such problems w/ my older laptops though. shawn87's problem could be a case of bad laptop's power supply, but thank god a powered usb hub solved his problem.

Solution: Go to Jaben and try some USB DACs w/ your laptop.

EDIT: Sometimes headset w/ TRRS connector might not work w/ some laptop. Happened to me a couple of times. The resulting sound will have distortion regardless of the volume and is probably caused by bad contact.

EDIT2: Thought it might be worth mentioning that a powered usb hub also solves my noise problem w/ the SB Play! The hub I'm using is this one.

This post has been edited by Agnaem: Sep 12 2011, 11:52 PM

Glad it's solved. Mind sharing the player and codec that you are/were using? Will be helpful if someone else have a similar problem.

Same here too. So basically an old pack messed up the sound..

I guess it's a combination of pack, player n audio driver. In this case, your driver may have no problem w/ an old pack. Just IMO.

I check my version at the add/remove program; and download updates through codecguide.com

Another pic of E10.

This post has been edited by Agnaem: Sep 19 2011, 12:48 AM


Attached thumbnail(s)

@nordingh
I feel ya man. The almost perfect product, but it's not cuz for only one more thing and it makes ya go

@Lennox
Last I read, it's designed with that in mind and is supposed to work w/ E9's dock.

This post has been edited by Agnaem: Sep 19 2011, 01:02 AM

+1

Laptop on-board usually SQ is just so-so; or some would say is rubbish. Amp a rubbish source, you get an amplified rubbish sound.

Get a decent source first, then you can think about an amp.

I LOLed. Hard.




This post has been edited by Agnaem: Sep 24 2011, 09:23 PM

That's where you're wrong dude. If you've read any of E7 reviews or went to Fiio's website, you'll know it's a DAC/AMP.

Absolutely. That's what amps are made for. Usually a line-out from DAP is recommended, but some headphone-out works good too.


I think you're missing the point. What you mentioned is just the difference between E7 and E10, not desktop vs portable in general.

The use of the word portable itself is pretty vague. IMO, calling E10 a desktop DAC+AMP is a little inaccurate. Sure, it can't work as a portable AMP; thanks to having no battery and no analog input, but it's still a portable DAC+AMP combo. Mainly b'cuz I can use it anywhere w/ my laptop w/o needing a wall socket. Other DAC/AMP combo like Maverick D1 is what I call NOT portable. Another would be the Fiio upcoming E15.

This post has been edited by Agnaem: Sep 30 2011, 10:55 PM

There's also a review by headfonia, and it was posted way before ClieOS'.

@Aku_Lugua
How does one compare a DAC to an AMP?

If it's E11 vs cMoy BB, then it's doable. These 2 posts pretty much summed it up IMO.

Sweet!

There's a 3.5mm line out at the back of E10. Connect that to your amp.

Wah! Fast. Me poslambat klang->shah alam nearly a week.

@nordingh
E10 is nice right.

I don't hear any popping w/ mine, but w/ Eterna, I can hear buzz noise from the right earpiece. It disappears when I've anything playing though, so not a big problem.
Went to your all new AD300?

This post has been edited by Agnaem: Oct 23 2011, 01:16 AM

I don't have a nice AVR like yours to test. So I took a 24bit/96kHz song and run in w/ foobar. It played just fine, so it works.

Foobar doesn't do re-sampling by default, that said, if the DAC doesn't support the bit/sample rate, it won't play.

p/s: Add E10 to my inventory(user list) whenever you've the time.

Nice.