[WayTooCrazy]

I just saw these going on sale at the HiFiMan store for $279. Looks GREAT for that price. I was wondering, should I do this, or stick with my Galaxy Note 3 with OTG out to a Cambridge XS or something similar?

 

[drbluenewmexico]

^^^ I'm just guessing from what I've read on HF threads that HM650 will be the more technical choice (but still warm/relaxed), whereas HM803S is going to be the very warm/relaxed choice for just chilling out and relaxing with your tunes.

you nailed it it nikoloaus!  did you get your 603s yet? looking forward to your listening impressions!

 

[nmatheis]

Not yet drbluenewmexico. You know. The whole shipping from China thing can take awhile...

 

[CJG888]

Try the 603 through Grados (not on the subway though, please)!

 

[Gerryhatrick]

Just taken delivery of a 650 bought during the sale period - initial impressions are good. Loaded a 64 GB card witth around a dozen albums which all show cover art on my ibasso dx80. About a quarter of the albums do not show cover art on the 650. Clearly album art is embedded in the files so there is no obvious reason for the problem.

Anyone have a similar issue? Putting a JPEG in the folder probably won't help as the manual states that all files other than music files will be ignored.

 

[Gerryhatrick]

Just taken delivery of a 650 bought during the sale period - initial impressions are good. Loaded a 64 GB card witth around a dozen albums which all show cover art on my ibasso dx80. About a quarter of the albums do not show cover art on the 650. Clearly album art is embedded in the files so there is no obvious reason for the problem.

Anyone have a similar issue? Putting a JPEG in the folder probably won't help as the manual states that all files other than music files will be ignored.

Edit - my bad I think.For Most of the missing artwork on the 650 the album art is in fact not embedded but the folder contains a folder.jpg which the ibasso recognises but the 650 does not.

 

[LetheFB]

Just taken delivery of a 650 bought during the sale period - initial impressions are good. Loaded a 64 GB card witth around a dozen albums which all show cover art on my ibasso dx80. About a quarter of the albums do not show cover art on the 650. Clearly album art is embedded in the files so there is no obvious reason for the problem.

Anyone have a similar issue? Putting a JPEG in the folder probably won't help as the manual states that all files other than music files will be ignored.

What is the format of your albums? If your quarter of albums were ripped in Wav format, than it is normal because wav files don't  allow for embedding of album art. 

 

[Gerryhatrick]

What is the format of your albums? If your quarter of albums were ripped in Wav format, than it is normal because wav files don't  [COLOR=252525]allow for embedding of album art. [/COLOR]

They are all flac or m4a - see my edit, some album arts were in fact missing from the tags. Correcting them now to see if that solves the problem. A couple of Nora Jones albums (24 bit flacs)do have embedded art but do not show In the 650's but do in the dx80's which is odd...

 

[chawya22]

They are all flac or m4a - see my edit, some album arts were in fact missing from the tags. Correcting them now to see if that solves the problem. A couple of Nora Jones albums (24 bit flacs)do have embedded art but do not show In the 650's but do in the dx80's which is odd...

 
I just received my sale HM650 as well. This is my second time around. My first had FW 2.001 and I got rid of it before 2.004 was available. The thing that seems to be consistent with the 650's FW is that it's not consistent. All the files that I loaded to the SD card for 650, play and display on all my other source devices perfectly but with the 650, it's a hit or miss. All files have embedded artwork but the 650 displays some and not others. One day when I have nothing else to do, I may try adjusting the jpeg resolution to see if that makes a difference. One surprise for me is that Flac gapless works most of the time now. The previous FW gapless never worked. The other thing, so far, no crashes when scrolling through directories.  I'm glad I gave the 650 a second chance because HiFiMAN's designers really are hardware master. The sound is definitely impressive. If only they could get the Firmware up to speed.

 

[Gerryhatrick]

I just received my sale HM650 as well. This is my second time around. My first had FW 2.001 and I got rid of it before 2.004 was available. The thing that seems to be consistent with the 650's FW is that it's not consistent. All the files that I loaded to the SD card for 650, play and display on all my other source devices perfectly but with the 650, it's a hit or miss. All files have embedded artwork but the 650 displays some and not others. One day when I have nothing else to do, I may try adjusting the jpeg resolution to see if that makes a difference. One surprise for me is that Flac gapless works most of the time now. The previous FW gapless never worked. The other thing, so far, no crashes when scrolling through directories.  I'm glad I gave the 650 a second chance because HiFiMAN's designers really are hardware master. The sound is definitely impressive. If only they could get the Firmware up to speed.

Thanks for the response, sounds like we are seeing the same inconsistency. Great idea re jpg resolution. I use music bee to embed album art so I'll try deleting the Nora Jones artwork and replacing it with jpg's of different resolution. May take a while but I'm a bit anal about these things!

Agreed the sound is really impressive and the UI is not as bad as reported by many. Looking forward to comparing my BW P7's with open back AKG 702's which arrive in the next day or 2.

 

[puppyfi]

I have just received my HM650.
Brief observation:
1. Art work issue as pointed out few posts before me (I can live with that).
2. I am using a class 10 128GB microSD (this is the same card used on my other daps) with an adapter. Currently experiencing frequent 'reading card error' message whenever I power on the unit.
Tested briefly with a class 10 64GB microSD, so far it seems to be ok without any 'reading card error'.
3. It takes about one minute every time, for device to be ready for any listening from fresh power up. (Power switch on> screen displays Hifiman Logo> black screen> blue screen> screen displays 'loading'> screen displays preparing SD Card) 
4. The High Gain setting doesn't seem to be much higher than Low Gain setting (or is it my unit is faulty?)

 

[chawya22]

  I have just received my HM650.
Brief observation:
1. Art work issue as pointed out few posts before me (I can live with that).
2. I am using a class 10 128GB microSD (this is the same card used on my other daps) with an adapter. Currently experiencing frequent 'reading card error' message whenever I power on the unit.
Tested briefly with a class 10 64GB microSD, so far it seems to be ok without any 'reading card error'.
3. It takes about one minute every time, for device to be ready for any listening from fresh power up. (Power switch on> screen displays Hifiman Logo> black screen> blue screen> screen displays 'loading'> screen displays preparing SD Card) 
4. The High Gain setting doesn't seem to be much higher than Low Gain setting (or is it my unit is faulty?)

Which card did you purchase? My previous HM650 had the standard amp card and there was really no difference between the gain settings. This time I got the Power II Amp card and there's a significant difference between the two settings. Just for reference I posted the questions I emailed HiFiMAN's support last year and their replies, one being the gain setting switch. Click Here.

 

[puppyfi]

  Which card did you purchase? My previous HM650 had the standard amp card and there was really no difference between the gain settings. This time I got the Power II Amp card and there's a significant difference between the two settings. Just for reference I posted the questions I emailed HiFiMAN's support last year and their replies, one being the gain setting switch. Click Here.

 
I have the standard classic II card.
So High/Low Gain doesn't apply? Still, I thought I could hear faintly, there was a slight gain increase on vocal with High Gain.
 
Oh, btw...this HM650 reminds me so much of my previous SE 990i phone (the pre apple/samsung era) that I used to own. 

 

 

[Gerryhatrick]

Thanks for the response, sounds like we are seeing the same inconsistency. Great idea re jpg resolution. I use music bee to embed album art so I'll try deleting the Nora Jones artwork and replacing it with jpg's of different resolution. May take a while but I'm a bit anal about these things!

Agreed the sound is really impressive and the UI is not as bad as reported by many. Looking forward to comparing my BW P7's with open back AKG 702's which arrive in the next day or 2.

OK Think I have solved the album art problem. Checked the size of the embedded art files which were not showing up and they varied between 390 x 400 and 1200 x 1200 (My Nora Jones albums). Replacing these with either 300 x 300 or 220 x 200 worked.
 
I used Music Bee to acheive the edits.
 
Tranferred another bunch of music onto a second card and 80% of the artwork is missing! Some more editing is required - luckily I am retired and have the time....
 
Efforts may not be worthwhile if missing artwork doesn't faze you!

 

[chawya22]

 
OK Think I have solved the album art problem. Checked the size of the embedded art files which were not showing up and they varied between 390 x 400 and 1200 x 1200 (My Nora Jones albums). Replacing these with either 300 x 300 or 220 x 200 worked.
 
I used Music Bee to acheive the edits.
 
Tranferred another bunch of music onto a second card and 80% of the artwork is missing! Some more editing is required - luckily I am retired and have the time....
 
Efforts may not be worthwhile if missing artwork doesn't faze you!

I spent some time, just trying to see if there was a pattern to the artwork mystery. The end results is, the HM650 artwork display, is completely arbitrary. I had 1500x1500 resolution jpegs that displayed fine and 300x300 .jpegs that wouldn't display until I re-embedded the same image again. What I did notice is that a lot of the artwork files, that wouldn't display, had an extension of .png. Those were easy to fix by replacing the .png with a .jpeg, but most just remained a mystery. I have a 128GB card thats full of Flac/Wav/DSD files and the amount of time and effort it would require, just isn't worth it. I hope you were rewarded for your efforts. I still hope a future FW update will address this and a few other issues.