Exit the X1

 Getting a bit close to Christmas here and I'll work out the blog publishing and forum arrangements for that shortly if we can avoid being run out of time and we do have a Thanksgiving present although it wasn't originally planned to be.

Around twenty fifteen and sixteen I thought had this digital audio player business sorted, I had been using mainly my portable minidisc recorder for run of the mill portable music  having established several hundred discs most recorded on various home recorders but in twenty sixteen the last home recorder died and let's say the ergonomics of my two thousand and four Sony Hi-MD portable were frankly ghastly.

Around that time better quality downloads became available and I'd bought the dbPoweramp cd ripping program to make quick work of making them into files for the digital audio players to play.

That had resulted in a lot of cards which being tiny you wouldn't want to be changing on the bus - they'd fly out to anywhere you couldn't find in seconds - so I bought a budget Fii0 X1 but recently the scrolling jog wheel started acting up so i wanted an inexpensive replacement.
 

That was where the Surfans F20 came in being roughly the same price as the X1 was a decade or so earlier.

 

 It borrows a lot from those earlier Fii0 X1, X3 and X5 players in using a rotary encoder made by Alps and a centre okay/pause button to navigate menus and can be stepped through categories like Albums (which is what I prefer), songs, files and so on.

Where it scores is you can use upto 256 gb micro sd card where the X1 was limited to 128gb and the 5,800 odd songs limit for indexing doesn't apply. Like the X1 it lacks a digital output but then for around £100 you can't expect absolutely everything and you do have a fixed line out output for active speakers or your hifi.

In use it's more like a modern X1, easy enough to navigate to your albums, can be set to play gapless which is a must making a great replacement.

It drives my BayerDynamic DT 770 32ohm X's well.