Learning from Sony Walkman

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Review: Sony NWZ-ZX1 Part 1

Introduction - Why I Choose Sony NWZ-ZX1

Among all high end, or rather high resolution, Digital Audio Players, Sony has not been in consideration for years due to their stubborn policy of not playing several popular formats of high resolution audio recordings such as: FLAC, ALAC, AIFF, and more. This decision positioned Sony as the producer of retail mid end DAP that relies solely on MP3 based format. Even with research on developing MP3 format to a higher sounding format, not many fanatics of high resolution audio listeners were interested to use Sony's Walkman as their main DAP.

Until 2014, 35 years after Sony hatched the first product line of portable audio called Walkman, Sony decided to open the door and accepted their products to play nearly all formats of high end audio recording, the result: the 35th Anniversary Walkman called NWZ-ZX1.



I first got my interest on ZX1 after the Sony's announcement of the next portable high resolution audio player Walkman series A (NWZ-A15 and A17). Those 2 new units are sexy, well built and most likely to storm the market and win a lot casual listeners. I was about to shop for iBasso DX50 or AK100, which for those keen on high resolution audio immediately recognized as 2 of most preferred DAP in the market. And after reading tons of references in the Internet I found so many stories about how great both products are that I tested them both. They are exemplary excellent DAP in their own rights.

One notable feature that AK100 and ZX1 both have is Bluetooth; AK100 employs Bluetooth 3.0 (AK100 II uses Bluetooth 4.0) and ZX1 uses Bluetooth 3.0. So both are able to stream higher resolution sounds.

The Review

Design

All are designed to last and abuse, although DX50 is sturdier in comparison, ZX1 has its own perk of being the lightest and tiniest volume-wise among the three.

However, when walking around listening to music, I found ZX1 is more comfortable in my hand especially for prolonged listening for its lighter weight and smartphone sized body. Even with the lower back protruding in an awkward way, it tends to assist my hand in avoiding slippage combined with the leather-like material to cover the aluminium frame.

The touch screen is well-sized, and the physical buttons are well placed and again well-thought-out to present easy access by soft touch recognition, with little dots and different sizes. I love using the physical buttons since they are easy to recognize even without looking at the unit. However, the hardened leather-like case lacking access to the buttons really sucks.


User Interface

I'll keep it short, it's an older Android OS. Easy to use and access. Not the richest in features but adequate for listeners. Later on I'll review the apps available for this unit.


The Sound Impression

I put a lot consideration on how to represent the sound impression I get. I prefer to approach it differently this time around since talking about high end DAP won't be fair if not paired with the headphone used. That means the combination will come to account, since I have (although cheaper variances) several unique sound headphones, I will try to provide combination impression. So here we go, I hope you enjoy my approach.


Sony NWZ-ZX1 with Sennheiser MX760



Both are known for the wide sound staging. So what happened if I paired them together?

First of all, Senn MX760 is definitely a treble rich earbud with deep bass and big sound stage. So I tested it without EQ, but the treble becomes a bit too much. Then I turned on the ClearSound+ feature which nullified all eq settings to Sony pre-programmed sound signature, both literally become a new favorite matching for serious detail-minded listening.

I played Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful Day and if I close my eyes, I swear I can imagine Louis standing in front with violin players close to his left and drums and guitar further on his rear right side, bass player right side closer than the drums. The music and voice so clear that I have high appreciation on the 24 bit and 96 kHz recording. Even Louis signature lips play can be heard.

Then I played Linkin Park's In Pieces (from Minutes to Midnight album with 16/44 recording) and for a small earbud to represent ZX1 sound, it is unbelievably enjoyable experience. Big impact and deep bass, voice and instruments separation are clear and well-placed, smooth treble. The sound are loaded with details.

Those 2 songs I think has represented how well they both match up.

Note: Warning high impact bass means do not start the music with high volume, especially over 80%. It will be painful. I used 60% max volume which are plenty already.

On the downer side, some treble heavy songs and lower recording quality (128kbps MP3 or lower) becomes too sharp and too noisy to listen due to MX760 sensitivity of details, despite of Sony's DSEE HX feature turned on to smoothen the roughness.


Bonus Impression:
SanDisk Sansa Clip+ with Sennheiser MX760

Sansa Clip+ is a cheap but a high quality player, however it doesn't have the range ZX1 has. Two major differences that separates the two:

- Clip+ bass is tight and detailed but lacking the depth and clarity.
- Clip+ has a smaller sound staging, the right analogy would be comparing a 1x1x1 cubical meter (Clip+) to a Studio size room (ZX1)

Don't get me wrong, I love my Clip+ as a casual daily driver. I have been using it for a couple of years. It's tiny size and light weight just slip to my shirt pocket inconspicuously without becoming a burden. While ZX1 requires a belt wallet or case to be used without bothering my movement.

Each has their own purpose.

So there, my first part of Sony NWZ-ZX1 impression. Next I will pair it with Sony MDR1RBT Mark II, wired and Bluetooth connected. Each has it's own sound signature that a little different one to another, especially with some hidden Sony NWZ-ZX1 features turned on.

Basic Knowledge to Digital Music Part 1

The music and it's format:

In this part, we discuss the numerous formats music is available in this digital age. Let's consider that CD/DVD are the source that use PCM audio format (big files, a 4 minute song can be stored at 50MB size file) , so any ripped musics from the source needs to be converted into a certain format of digital music file. Here are some of the most important to know:

- MP3
This is a standard format to get a smaller size of music. Of course, being smaller in size means there are quality to sacrifice. Most common in today's are 64kbps-320 kbIt/s. The higher the better. However, even at the highest conversion, the music quality will still lost parts of the music when compared to the original or higher end format. Regular music file in MP3 format usually is 3MB-12MB depending on the conversion method.  By audiophiles and Headfi-ers, mp3 is considered a lossy format since some of the music are cut off due to the smaller size of the file.

- Apple and Windows format
Both Microsoft and Apple produces wma and m4a as their standard format. Both also has lossless version which has more details, but still loss details. These 2 formats are better than Mp3. However, each has different quality. wma has bigger size file. Mostly sized at 4MB-20MB.
Both Apple and Microsoft also built a lossless format called ALAC and WAVE.

- FLAC
FLAC format is commonly know among the audiophiles and Headfi-ers as the minimum standard of high fidelity music file. The details are more apparent and significantly higher quality compared to the previous formats. The file also significantly larger: +/- 30MB.
FLAC measurement is using unit data measurement between 8-24 bit.

- WAVE
This format is is probably the closest to the source and even has more details compared to the rest. Significantly more high quality means the listeners can listen to all instruments played in a music as presented and intended by the musicians. Close to original means the loss of quality is very little that human ears usually can't recognize the difference immediately. The file size is usually +/-40MB depending on the conversion and music duration. A 2 minute song would be around 20MB in size when converted to WAVE format.
Although there are still arguments, WAVE is considered to be the best digital format available for digital music. However also the lost difficult to play. The measurement standard is also measured in kHz instead of kbps. Most common standard found is 8-24 bit.
To those not familiar with high definition recording, Wave format musics are considered bright, high in treble. This is due to the high details contained in the music file. Hence you will need a higher level headphones or speakers to play the file to reproduce it's high detailed music.

- ALAC
Apple lossless format is also common in iPod and iPhone. Like Wave format, the file is is large, bit not as large as the  original. It is smaller than Wave and has different musical characteristic since it has Apple musical signature of sound. Although it is also high in details, more boomy bass is apparent.
Alac can only be played in Apple standard player: iTunes, iPod, iPad and iPhone. With this limitation, Wave is more popular among Headfi-ers and audiophiles.

There several lore formats available, but it is less common, like ogg, aiff, etc.
If you found a high end mp3 player capable of playing high end music format, don't be surprised that at 64 MB is still considered a small player. High end music player examples: SanDisk Sansa, Cowon, iRiver, HiFiMan, and so on. Although iPod is capable to play lossless formats, most audiophiles considered them lower level quality in  term sound produced.
As an example, even at lossless format, iPod will play drum beats with boomy beats or guitar riffs extended to mask the lost details. While in other high end players, you can heard the drum stick hitting the drum skin or guitar pick striking the string of guitar.
The result is a different experience of listening. Higher details means we listen to music as intended by the musicians. While lossy music is just a music played like in an FM radio (reproduced to equal as 128kbps mp3).

Warning: Once you got used to hear the high end music standard format, you will always feel lossy format lack of "spirit".

Source:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_formats

Android Music Player Review: JetAudio vs PlayerPro

Listening to music is probably one of the most usable features of Android Smartphones. So useful that some manufactures boast about the capability of their smartphones musical capability.

I'm using Asus Padfone 2 and the original Samsung Galaxy Note N7000, despite of being the underdog compared to Samsung Galaxy S3 & S4, Sony Xperia Z, and HTC One, I'm quite surprise that musically it is a capable, if not excellent, audio player. It has flat neutral tone and clarity as a player.  So all I need is to find the most capable Audio/Music Player application for this PadFone2.

Side note: sound reproduction quality Asus Padfone 2 vs Samsung Galaxy Note: SGNote is warmer with more power on bass, but details rather sacrificed. Asus Padfone 2 is flatter with tighter bass and higher details. Quality wise, Asus Padfone 2 wins.

I have been testing several apps ever since I owned Asus Padfone 2: Google Music, WinAmp, PowerAmp, JetAudio, Neutron Player, PlayerPro and SoundMax.

My requirements for suitable music player are as follows:
- It needs to be able to play FLAC and Wave lossless format music
- Clarity for details and sound stage
- Flat tone preferences
- Able to support my collection of headphones and earphones
- All those must be fulfilled without any equalizer adjustment (EQ off)
Note: Equalizer needs to be off or set to flat/normal to make sure that the sound characteristic tuning is accordingly to the recorders/musicians attended sound or musical characteristics.

Out of all, I dropped out Google Music (no FLAC playing), WinAmp (sound quality not to my preference), and PowerAmp (too much sibilance and bad sound staging).  Later on, I dropped SonicMax, despite it is the only app and does BBE sound setting and very customizable, it doesn't have the EQ off setting, meaning everything is already set as sound tuning effect and it is the most bass-focussed player I tested.

The selection comes to JetAudio and PlayerPro.  Both have similar characteristics:
- Play FLAC and WAVE
- Read Folders
- Able to play music as it is (EQ off)
- Good sound tone characteristics: excellent brightness (excellent details, excellent sound separations, acceptable sound staging)
- Both can support my headphones and earphones (Super lux HD381F, UE700, Sennheiser MX760, Ultrasone HFI 450 and Jays V-Jays)
- Both have simulated amp setting, to adjust the volume out to support bigger headphones (preamp setting), pretty good for my Ultasone HFI 450 since it requires higher amp out.

The differences are as follows:

(Pre-note: songs used for testing are GnR's Welcome to the Jungle, Hans Zimmer's Molossus, Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerard's Now We are Free, Yasuharu Takanashi's Fairy Tail Theme, Slipknot's Psychosocial,  Susan Wong's First of May, Nightwish's Wish I Had an Angel, and Maroon 5's Move Like Jagger.)

JetAudio:
- Mid frequency is adequate, almost every vocals sound as they are supposed to sound, except when the singer has the tendency of having higher pitch sound characteristic (it rolled off)
- Bass impact is excellent, tight but powerful, all music become warmer
- High frequency details is adequate and controllable, no sibilance.
- Sound staging is leaning towards a smaller space; imagine you are listening the music in your bedroom or living room, you can allocate the source and they are at close range.
- Sound separation detail is sacrificed due to the enhancement of bass tonality. Nightwish's Wish I Had an Angel lost its cymbals percussions and parts of bass guitar. Hans Zimmer's Molossus percussions are inseparable.
- PreAmp enables the songs to have higher power up to a small level
- However, when played using speakers, JetAudio sounds excellent and well balanced and relax, if not laid back. Very enjoyable.
- Gapless play is poor quality. Not recommended, better turn it off.
- Recommended for pop, hip hop, dance, techno and other genres that requires more bass tonality.

PlayerPro:
- Mid frequency is good and clear
- Bass is tight and less boomy, but keeps adequate impact.
- High frequency is very good, producing details and controlled treble. Sibilance only heard when using higher PreAmp level.
- Sound staging is acceptable. I can recognize where were the musicians of each instrument were located.
- Sound separation is surprisingly better, the separation of each instrument is clearer in symphonic metal and classical musics.
- PreAmp enables the song to have higher power up to a small level
- Recommended for acoustic, classical, jazz, rock and metal songs.

With this summary, I recommend PlayerPro. Get the paid version since it comes with 2x equalizer adjustment frequency to tweak for those who prefer customized music reproduction.