Last month, I talked to Mr. Tom Gibbs about his new home and listening environment. He mentioned about reviewing Fiio X5iii so I sent him my Purist ROM that I was working on at that time for him to try hoping he’ll enjoy the music while preparing a new room.

Today he sent me his finished review about X5iii and he also talked about how Fidelizer came to the rescue as below.

Fidelizer to the rescue!!

I let the X5 burn in for a while by playing on repeat for a couple of days before doing any serious listening; I honestly believe the sound quality of both the X5 and the accompanying F5 headphones improved significantly with about 50-100 hours of play time. I also did a couple of firmware updates to the system; at this point, I started to feel as though something had gone quite wrong with the overall sound quality of the system. In an email exchange with Keetakawee Punpeng of Fidelizer, we were talking about how things were going for me in my new home and new listening environment, and I happened to mention that I had the X5 Gen III in house and under review. He immediately emailed me a link to a firmware modification he developed in cooperation with Fiio; apparently, many had complained about the sound quality of the F5 after performing updates. He started checking all this out, and found that an earlier iteration of the F5 Gen III sounded significantly better prior to all the updates. He then developed an installer program with his contacts at Fiio that would update the operational aspects of the upgrade, but would also roll the pertinent aspects of the sound quality back to the best iteration.

The install was just a tad tricky (not unlike most anything with any of the DAPs I’ve had recent experience with), but I have to admit: the great sound was once again back! Now, when the X5 opens for the first time, a Fidelizer splash screen appears prior to the usual Android stuff. What a really strange coincidence, how this all worked out, and my hat is off to Keetakawee and Fidelizer for helping fix what should have never been monkeyed with in the first place! He also tells me that he can make additional modifications to the X5 Gen III that will lift it into the same level of performance as some AK units; you can get more information about those services HERE.

It’s great to know how $399.95 DAP packed with all kinds of features can do from a professional reviewer. You can read his full review to see how it truly is the best bang of the buck especially with Fidelizer ROM.

Fiio X5iii is the DAP with most potentials for improvements in my opinion. As I already explained in Portable Products section, Fiio X5iii Ultimate mod version costs only $899.95 with very close performance to flagship devices out there. 🙂