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One of the best hifi player and bonus a MDR-10RC headphone, great deal.
Sony NWZ-ZX1 128GB Video MP3/MP4 WALKMAN at $699 (BONUS MDR-10RC Valued at $179)
170
Lopenmp123 on 16/04/2014 - 19:36 sony.com.au (1032 clicks)
Last edited 16/04/2014 - 19:40 by 1 other user
Last edited 16/04/2014 - 19:40 by 1 other user
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Do people really spend this amount of money on an mp3 player? You could just get a mobile phone and a 128gb micro sd card for that price. In my opinion a much more versitile package.
There are people who buy Monster Gold plated HDMI cables with lifetime warranty.
And Beats headphones too. ;)
And some people even buy Ferrari's too. Whats your point…
Yeah but no phone offers anywhere near the sound quality a device like this does. If you like music and care about the quality then you won't be using a phone.
yeah, but when you are using a device like this out on the street, you wont notice a single bit of difference with a $100 Phone either. Yes, that includes strapping on those $400 Monster Beats headphones with the best sound reduction / cancellation. This is still a massive rip off by any means.
When I'm out in the streets I notice a whole lot of difference in quality. I know because I have this.
General comments, reflect who far we've all fallen in quality expectation for music, and no one appreciating a good music player even when it smacks them in the face. Man back in the old days…quality was just a walk into a music store.
I +/ive'd this deal, it's the cheapest price in the world right now, and you get free headphones on top of that.
and all this high priced crap to play some shitty quality mp3's
Perhaps you should try looking elsewhere for your music, 'mp3police'. Like I dunno, CD for a start, that's already 10X the quality of mp3's.
Mate that's not how you use the term 'placebo'.
But sure continue to think like that without even trying what these can do, because I have it and enjoy my product, the difference is night/day to me.
Funny thing is, if you look in the specifications of the device - it is nothing more than an Android device running 4.1. Furthermore, anyone with half a sense of technology will know that it is pretty much all digital internally until it is transferred digitally to another device or DAC'ed out. Almost every modern (<3 years) smartphone out there is capable of handling these formats (eg. FLAC 192kbit, PCM 192kbit etc). The only thing it has standing out from the crowd is the marketing "DSEE-HX" and "S-Master HX" which funny enough is mostly done by software that can be loaded onto another device.
There's a difference between handling a format and outputting it cleanly and clearly.
Otherwise any $3 pair of earphones would sound excellent simply because the box says 20Hz - 20kHz.
Specs are one thing, reality is often another.
(that goes both ways - this sony player might have ordinary sound, or it might have spectacular sound. The point is, you cannot compare a phone to a well-designed dedicated audio player.)How is it not "Placebo"? If you believe enough in something, then it is the best device in the world simply because SONY has said so. Of course it will sound better when you are out there in the street with plenty of background noise and it will not matter.
Of course it will sound better when you are out there in the street
Surely the street is not the only place where you listen to music.
Thats the headphones or the speakers part. Not the device itself that renders everything to a CODEC (which is the same across the board to a given standardisation). If you say $1000 headphones may make a difference.. but the main device should be the least in the matter since there is a standard for this type of output.
Its the same as the difference between buying a $5 HDMI cable vs a $100 Monster HDMI cable from Good Guys. Both does the same job since it only transfers a digital signal across. Not like one cable will make it any better.If you want to listen to music at home or somewhere else, there are much better full blown systems to do this with amps and the lot. This device is marketed as a portable device to be taken outside.
If you want to listen to music at home or somewhere else, there are much better full blown systems to do this with amps and the lot. This device is marketed as a portable device to be taken outside.
Have you used your smartphone at home? Why didn't you use your computer or tablet? Those are much better full-blown systems to surf the net with 24" monitors and the lot.
Sometimes you don't want to be attached to your home audio system with a cable. Or spend $2,000 on a good hifi. Or disturb the neighbours.
Or you're listening to music at work.
Or at a park.
Or at the airport.
Or on a plane.
Or at a coffee shop.With in-ears or closed-back headphones, you create your own silent area.
Wrong, with great headphones/earphones/speakers comes a need for great amplifier to drive sufficient power to them cleanly and consistently. Typical music player will only have a single stream that is split into a stereo channel that will never make a clean signal (fine for casual listening). This is a completely different machine, you have dual amplifiers separate for left and right channel and so the signal is never garbled.
I don't understand why you are even comparing this to HDMI, this isn't digital. Once sound leaves a DAC (digital to analog) chip into the amp and then to your headphone/speakers it is 100% analog.
If what you say is true, why does every smartphone sound different to each other? You seem to be greatly confused on the topic.
good guys don't sell monster ;)
you actually stated the wrong thing, this does not use the off the shelf DAC chip, Sony have their own digital amplifier which serves as DAC, also DAC chip alone cant guarantee for sound quality, the circuit implementation and parts chosen are far more important
You don't know much about audio, do you?…
The device supports flac.
You got one Ronnie? I thought they were pre-order?!
I’ll preface this by saying that I upvoted the deal because for those that want it, it’s a comparatively good price even without the bonus headphones.
Even if we take the perceptibility of high-bitrate lossy audio vs. lossless argument out of the equation, give the audiophiles and their amazing golden ears the benefit of the doubt, and assume you’re storing FLAC or Apple Lossless, that plus a good pair of headphones are going to make a much bigger difference than the ZX1 over a phone with a decent DAC.
Believe it or not, there are some good DACs in phones — the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S 3 with the Wolfson DAC are probably the most popular phones AND quite good quality.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-5/audio-quality.htmAudiophiles really don’t want to believe this one, but consumer hi-res audio is pointless (sorry Mr. Young) thanks to the beauty of the Nyquist theorem.
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
http://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtmlSadly, the biggest barrier is that a great majority of popular music is horrifically mastered (if that's where your tastes take you).
DACs have almost little effect to sound quality, since they are all reasonable 'good enough' these days and can decode almost every file format that's popular. A good smartphone cannot hope to achieve sound quality that a dedicated music player whether this or a CD player simply because there is no space on a phone to fit a dedicated circuit for a decent amplifier. On top of this decent amplifiers drain a lot of battery life, no phone company is going to compromise on that since a phone first and foremost needs to have stamina in it's design.
+1.
although, to be clear, a $100 phone is probably not going to have a great DAC/amp in it… ;)
the truth on all this business is that it's somewhere between "placebo" and "audiophile wet dream". that is to say, it's not just a placebo, but it also should be taken with a healthy dose of scepticism that some of it IS placebo.
just be happy with what you're happy with, and don't worry what anyone else chooses, ok? :)
You know, I tell all my friends that not only does Steve Buscemi get on OzBargain, but he's a really nice guy and a real audiophile, and they don't believe me.
I dont agree. DAC makes huge difference. Not only the chip they use but also how the circuit implemented and the power source used. It is as important as amplifier. And for efficient headphones I would say more important than amplifier. It's the source of your analog signal. Crap in crap out rules applies. By all mean an iPod DAC is good enough but there is better. Actually there are lots of DAC is better and yes difference on some is significant
Thanks for the links mate! Well said.
You know, I tell all my friends that not only does Steve Buscemi get on OzBargain, but he's a really nice guy and a real audiophile,
You should be careful with that word… there are audiophiles, and there are golden-ears, silver- cabled audiophiles. :)
Ha ha well said!
Can't agree more. More evidence that Sony are way out of touch with the punters. Such a shame as they were so amazing back in the 80s :(
This isn't for the punters, it's for audio tragics with expensive headphone amps etc.
..who would promptly throw the mediocre headphones included with this deal on ebay
Yeah, fair enough. Each to their own I suppose. I've just been burnt far too many times with Sony gear (even high-end Professional grade) so I'm probably still just bitter.
What high-end professional grade gear burned you? What happened?
A couple of projectors at my workplace were the 'Professional' products, all top-end spec & price but none of them saw 3 years without major problems and multiple lamp replacements at over $1000 a pop. Replaced them with far cheaper generic Epsons etc. and haven't looked back… no problems and most are still on their original lamps 2-3 years later.
Kitted out my home AV system and car with all top-end (Competition Grade in the car) Sony gear back in the mid-late 90s. Spent well over $40k in 1999 and included the first Sony DVD player. None of it saw 2 years without major failures. Luckily I bought the 5 year extended warranty on everything but that still meant I had to lug it to agents to get repaired and those 80cm WEGA CRT TVs were extremely heavy and awkward beasts. Took most of it back to get repaired 2-3 times in its life but once it all hit 5 years I had great satisfaction in taking each component to the recyclers, one-by-one.
I know Australia never saw the 'good' SONY stuff the rest of the world seemed to get but the cost of all this stuff was extreme when compared to other brands at the time. I did learn a very important lesson though as I was still young and impressionable back then and that lesson still holds true today… it's not how much you pay! I now collect and I'm teaching myself to repair vintage Hifi (mainly 70s-90s stuff) and this raises its ugly head over & over again. I've now got four classic 80s B&O Beocenters that would've cost thousands & thousands when new that are now absolutely stuffed due to poor design & manufacture processes. I've also got plenty of similar age Yamaha Amps & receivers that would've been pretty much 'affordable' back in the day that are still going very strong and sound amazing after a simple & quick cleanup (dust blow & pot clean). Fun hobby :)
Ahh ok, so it's really just the projectors that were professional-grade. The AV stuff is consumer-grade. I was curious because I've been quite satisfied with the professional Sony equipment that I've used.
I had a bulb problem with two of their professional-grade projectors, but fortunately they came with professional-grade service. A good description plus photos was good enough for them to courier brand-new bulbs over immediately.
Yeah, my original comment should've read high-end and professional grade. Not all was Pro Grade but all of it was TOTL. Big disappointment.
Unfortunately with the curse of marketing, consumer grade technology can be transformed to pro-grade with a nice casing and good marketing. :)
The "it's not how much you pay" line is definitely still true today. The Sansa Clip Zip sounds excellent, especially for ~$40!
Yep and I'm the first to admit I was probably sucked in by the marketing plus the good reputation they had a decade earlier… two more lessons learnt ;)
I'd love to have the cash to buy all these products and test/compare them all for 3-5 years then travel back in time and offer my review but unfortunately I know neither the cash or time machine will eventuate :(
a conundrum would eventuate however if Sony produced a time machine.
Hell they may as well buy Astell and Kern players at that price
Is music even distributed at "high res audio"? It says it can store up to 800 songs assuming songs are 150mb each.
Its called FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec
FLAC isn't "high res audio", it's just a lossless compression codec. it is a codec that can be used for high res/HD audio, but FLAC it isn't high res audio in and of itself.
I thought Neil Young's pono player was expensive at $399….
On the other hand I happened to listen to this $2499 baby this morning -http://www.moon-audio.com/astell-kern-ak-240.html, so RELATIVELY $699 is cheap! :-P
Pono is actually one of the cheaper models. Especially if you got the earlybird deal at $199 on kickstarter.
advantages of this over say a fiio x3 or a ibasso???
I would put x3 as entry mid level DAP where this would be mid to high end. Would be on par with fiio x5, ibasso dx90 or even ak100.
see thats where I'm not sure. where fiio ibasso and astell&kern are all very upfront even in ur face with what goes into their dacs; chips, balance, input, output etc.
sony doesn't say anything exept a few buzz words that they themselves made up. I'm especially bothered by no listed output power or impedance in the tech specs.despite this the price is deffinatly in line with "high level".. i highly doubt this would stack anywhere near the A&K..
and sony really isnt known for their high quality audi gear these days so u cant just go on repwhere fiio ibasso and astell&kern are all very upfront even in ur face with what goes into their dacs; chips, balance, input, output etc.
They're enthusiast brands marketed towards enthusiasts, so they have to provide all those specs.
I don't think that's the main market Sony is targeting. They're probably targeting the expensive-hifi crowd or people with lots of disposable income who like a little more quality (both in terms of build and sound) but don't have time to learn what an iBasso is.
and sony really isnt known for their high quality audi gear these days so u cant just go on rep
I think that goes for any brand nowadays… they may make good stuff one day, then skimp on the next model.
I have an x5 and I think they are great value for money. Sound quality wise to me its on par with ak100. If you compare with red wine modded ak100 then yes its not as good. Currawong in headfi consider Sony zx1 better than x5 http://www.head-fi.org/t/714374/dap-off-astell-kern-ak240-hi… then again all of this are just opinion. People preferences are different. But its a good indication that Sony zx1 is a great player.
currawong is pretty legit.. i searched headfi but couldnt find many good comapros thanks for that
Very tempted but will wait until further price drop. Just spent 1 grand on Audioengine A5+ for PC and Aktimate Blue for my TV.
Meh. 160gb iPod Classic (ALAC rips) + Fiio E17 + Sennheiser Momentum over ear = cost me less than this.
But you are carrying about an extra device :)
For 700 dollars, I would prefer Fiio x5 and Dunu DN-2000.
That would be a better buy
But does it sounds as good? I have found Fiio products are full of hype but could not delivered and very disappointing when I own a few of their products in the past.
it depends which products uve bought.. i think.. i had the e3 or whatever the mini one was that was useless but i have also had an e7 and an e17 and both were great along with my x3 which is also really nice especaially in that in can drive my 600 ohm beyers without amping
It's been a long time since I've looked at music only devices. I currently use AudioTechnica ATH-M50's on a basic android phone (and my pc). As some general advice to a non-audiophile would something like a Fiio e17 (or similar) make a noticeable difference to my listening experience or should I upgrade the source device first?
It will def upgrade your experience on a PC as the e17 will be the source (if used as a DAC). On the smartphone it is a bit more complicated and harder to achieve…
if you're playing mp3's, on pc meh aslong as you have an ok motherboard with a decent onboard soundcard itd probably be fine.. flac files you can really notice a difference with the e17 outputting 24bit 96khz.. with your phone i would say no not really the m50s are fairly efficient (not hard to drive unlike the beyers) mostly ud be just getting a volume boost so unless you feel you need that I wouldn't worry.
Isn't this just an android device without cellular capability?
Another vote for iPod classic, gee how disappointed you would be if you bought this and the audio sucked, would demo it 1st as audio can be subjective
would demo it 1st as audio can be subjective
OK but then again Kierkegaard said everything is subjective so…
He also said hell is other people XD
Touché!
It's a big discount on what is very possibly the best MP3 player ever made so +1 but it is still bloody expensive for what it does.
pretty sure the astell & kern ak240 is sitting pretty in that position maybe the hifiman hm-901.. not listed .. this
Not really a discount right? you just get the bonus headphones.
I am pretty disappointed at this price it is still using Bluetooth 3 instead of 4 like the Nexus 4 and Samsung galaxy note 2.
Am pretty disappointed in myself for not being able to hold of on my purchase (I imported one from Japan myself on its initial release) must say that it does sound pretty darn amazing using both my JH13 pros and fostex th900. I bought it as an android iPod touch with better sound quality (I wanted to use Rdio or spotify, for the odd time I want to listen to new music or varies shuffle stations) and didn't want to carry around a separate amp/dac like the Vamp Versa and so on as I'm sure many audiophiles who are into portable gear will surely know. I actually compare this to my Burson Conductor and in my opinion I get around 90-95% of the sound quality (disclaimer: I use Winamp pro on the Walkman as it can handle 24/192, and I prefer the sound signature compared to the built-in player which is considerably more linear) so I'm quiet chuffed with that. I have compared it to the AK 120 and have preferred my Walkman, that said, only when I was using Winamp as I have come to loathe the built-in player.
Anyways, just my two cents. hope this helps anyone considering buying it.
P.S. My only real gripe is as I'm quiet used to android devices lasting at least a day, I just wished they could've squeezed a larger battery into there somehow.
$699 for this? You've got to be joking. You can get a phone cheaper than this.
I'd love to get back into audio gear. Loved my little Cowon D2+ but the ears started to ring when there was complete silence :(
Anyone want to buy the headphone from me and if so how much? All I need is the player.
It has no support for DSD and the amp is rather weak. Fix that and I will buy one.
One solution is to have docking station for this portable unit sitting at home for high ohm headphone as an optional accessories.
Also if it had more storage space and/or an SD Card slot i would totally jump on it even without the bonus :)
Wait for the next model I suppose. 2014 is the year High Res music players start to go mainstream.
I thought the walkman was $179, got me excited. Put the price of the walkman in the title, not the headphone.