[musicdragoon]

Well, when you are able to see whats inside a $2400 AK240 which is full of off the shelf components and actually not much audiophile grade treatments, perheps you can make better judgement on what's worth you penny or not. Enjoy your gear.

http://www.head-fi.org/t/697166/the-astell-kern-ak240/5655#post_10984706

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

Various daps have various levels of SQ with their internal memory setups, for example, with DX90, a good micro SD sounded cleaner than the internal memory, but an average micro SD was onpar with internal.

ZX1 had fairly good clean sound from its internal memory, noticeably better than DX90, and I expect ZX2 to be even better due to the power supply filtering and higher quality circuitry components all round.

Those of you complaining about the special Sony audio Micro SD's have NO idea what you are talking about (not aimed at A good SD card DOES make an audible difference. Instead of complaining, you should be giving kudos to Sony for being the first to come out with such a product after all these years of micro SD on the market.

 

[starfly]

So I've been reading stories about people saying that the digital amp used in Sony DAPS causes a lot of hiss (especially with multi-BA iems), such as this story: http://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/2rgxei/sony_introduces_the_brand_new_walkman_nwzx2_128gb/cng5a7e
 
So you early ZX2 owners, please let us know how low/high the noisefloor is on the ZX2 on multi-BA iems, and also how well it's able to drive those. No one knows what the output impedance is of the ZX2, but I'm curious to find out.

 

[Currawong]

Well, when you are able to see whats inside a $2400 AK240 which is full of off the shelf components and actually not much audiophile grade treatments, perheps you can make better judgement on what's worth you penny or not. Enjoy your gear.

http://www.head-fi.org/t/697166/the-astell-kern-ak240/5655#post_10984706

 
Everything we discuss on Head-Fi, with rare exceptions, uses "off the shelf components". Throwing a bunch of them into a box doesn't result in a music player (or anything else). I suggest that, if you haven't already, you might enjoy the Schiit Happened story to get some of the idea what goes into producing a product.

 

[jamato8]

Various daps have various levels of SQ with their internal memory setups, for example, with DX90, a good micro SD sounded cleaner than the internal memory, but an average micro SD was onpar with internal.

ZX1 had fairly good clean sound from its internal memory, noticeably better than DX90, and I expect ZX2 to be even better due to the power supply filtering and higher quality circuitry components all round.

Those of you complaining about the special Sony audio Micro SD's have NO idea what you are talking about (not aimed at A good SD card DOES make an audible difference. Instead of complaining, you should be giving kudos to Sony for being the first to come out with such a product after all these years of micro SD on the market.

Ok, and having heard many changes in sound due to things that many say won't make a difference, $200 for a 64gb card is almost 1/5 the cost of the ZX2 and the micro SD card topology is pretty well done. They may have made some improvements but 200 for a 64gb card when you can buy Sandisk 64 for 39 dollars? 

 

[rcoleman1]

The specs look awesome and Sony makes some awesome sounding gear but I've already invested in a Geek Wave...wish me luck!

 

[purk]

The specs look awesome and Sony makes some awesome sounding gear but I've already invested in a Geek Wave...wish me luck!

I hope u will get it soon. I am still waiting for my geek puse x and it has been 18 long month now.

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

 
Ok, and having heard many changes in sound due to things that many say won't make a difference, $200 for a 64gb card is almost 1/5 the cost of the ZX2 and the micro SD card topology is pretty well done. They may have made some improvements but 200 for a 64gb card when you can buy Sandisk 64 for 39 dollars? 

 
No one is forcing you to buy it. All I'm saying is that I have heard significant differences between SD cards, they actually alter frequency balance on the DX90 and my Phone, and in the exact same way between specific SD cards, its like each SD cards introduces its own specific sound sig, as well different SD cards also having different noise floors. It is not some tiny improvement, it is clearly audible. So your last statement is like saying, why buy a ZX2 for 1.2K when you can buy an iPod for $300. The reason is because the ZX2 has better SQ right? Is the increase in SQ justified in its huge jump in price? Hmm. Same thing goes for Sony's 64gb SD card, I'm sure it will sound better than any other 64gb SD, thus the price increase. Why is it such a big price increase? Sony had to put engineering into this new product, very well knowing that not many people will buy it, audiophile daps like 1.2K ZX2 are a niche market, audiophile SD cards, are an evener nicher market, lol. I think the main reason Sony created this SD card is that when people eventually realize that the internal memory of ZX2 sounds better than their SD card, they will go and buy this, instead of complaining to Sony that their micro SD slot sounds bad, lol. Sony is just covering their own ass just in case.

 

[Replicant187]

there are people who buy $500 short cable for thier $500 portable amp so...yeah

 

[jamato8]

   
No one is forcing you to buy it. All I'm saying is that I have heard significant differences between SD cards, they actually alter frequency balance on the DX90 and my Phone, and in the exact same way between specific SD cards, its like each SD cards introduces its own specific sound sig, as well different SD cards also having different noise floors. It is not some tiny improvement, it is clearly audible. So your last statement is like saying, why buy a ZX2 for 1.2K when you can buy an iPod for $300. The reason is because the ZX2 has better SQ right? Is the increase in SQ justified in its huge jump in price? Hmm. Same thing goes for Sony's 64gb SD card, I'm sure it will sound better than any other 64gb SD, thus the price increase. Why is it such a big price increase? Sony had to put engineering into this new product, very well knowing that not many people will buy it, audiophile daps like 1.2K ZX2 are a niche market, audiophile SD cards, are an evener nicher market, lol. I think the main reason Sony created this SD card is that when people eventually realize that the internal memory of ZX2 sounds better than their SD card, they will go and buy this, instead of complaining to Sony that their micro SD slot sounds bad, lol. Sony is just covering their own ass just in case.

What I am saying is the components in the card are far less and the technology is pretty well done than what would have gone into the updated ZX2. Sure some refinements can get the better sound they are claiming and no, I don't have to buy it but is there really 150 in cost ratio improvement? By cost ratio I am talking about the mark-up from cost to final retail. Is their cost really bumping from a retail of even 89 dollars for the new high speed 64gb cards? Even the digital out to USB for the Sonys are 50 to 77 dollars (I don't remember what the Sony retail is, 80 or 90) on something that most places would charge 25 or 30 dollars retail. 
 
On the other hand, the card like other things in the chain are part of the total. So will this card sound better than the internal memory? People often complain about the price of tubes but they are a circuit and some of the rare tubes command a price like a Western Electric 300B or some of the Telefunken tubes I have. 
Oh well. I am enjoying the music. :^) 

 

[musicdragoon]

Everything we discuss on Head-Fi, with rare exceptions, uses "off the shelf components". Throwing a bunch of them into a box doesn't result in a music player (or anything else). I suggest that, if you haven't already, you might enjoy the Schiit Happened story to get some of the idea what goes into producing a product.

Sounds like some startup story beginning from garage? Will have a look into it.

It's nothing wrong for throwing other's inventions into their own products, as not much company still do their own chips / parts R&D these days, they still have to work hard to make these components work together to give good performance. The user market will eventually reflect if that product is successful or not, AK240 is still a top tier performer of stand alone DAP.

On the user's end, any of these efforts on production side just being invisible, we just wants better sounding products that fits our own taste and within our budget targets. We may just bash things out of our target or not fitting to our favourite, that's humanity

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

 
What I am saying is the components in the card are far less and the technology is pretty well done than what would have gone into the updated ZX2. Sure some refinements can get the better sound they are claiming and no, I don't have to buy it but is there really 150 in cost ratio improvement? By cost ratio I am talking about the mark-up from cost to final retail. Is their cost really bumping from a retail of even 89 dollars for the new high speed 64gb cards? Even the digital out to USB for the Sonys are 50 to 77 dollars (I don't remember what the Sony retail is, 80 or 90) on something that most places would charge 25 or 30 dollars retail. 
 
On the other hand, the card like other things in the chain are part of the total. So will this card sound better than the internal memory? People often complain about the price of tubes but they are a circuit and some of the rare tubes command a price like a Western Electric 300B or some of the Telefunken tubes I have. 
Oh well. I am enjoying the music. :^) 
 

 
^ Well as I said, Sony would have done development research and testing, that any other normal SD card would not have needed. You are right in that the actual cost of the SD card would probably be no different than any other SD card, but they need to make back money on research and testing though. Of course Sony would have experimented and tested to achieve a lower noise SD card, if it didn't need research and testing then all SD cards would sound great, and they don't. Example: With DX90 my Samsung 64gb has harsher treble/rolled off treble, thinner mids, mid bass hump/rolled off bass. With Toshiba 16gb mids are clear, only very slight bump in bass and treble. The only completely balancing sounding SD card I've tried on DX90 is a Toshiba Exceria 8gb 

 So I'm hoping that Sony's new tech will have larger capacity cards like 64gb sounding good.
 
Factoring in the extra R&D costs in, you may or may not have a point about disproportionate cost increase, we will never know how much it cost Sony to develop this new SD card, or what possible new tech was employed, or just how much Sony spend on R&D trying to perfect the card, or if Sony just stuck the words "premium sound" on a normal SD card and jacked up the price lol. I personally think its fairly obvious that Sony put in the hard yards to create a quality sounding SD card, just in case people are wondering why their regular SD cards don't sound as good as ZX2 internal memory, they will know that memory quality can vary.

 

[musicdragoon]

^ Actually I installed SD insight and found my ZX2 use Toshiba flash as internal memory

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

^ I do rate Toshiba as the best Flash memory producer, they are the only company that design and make their flash memory in Japan, including their Exceria SD and Micro SD cards, all designed and made in Japan.

 

[musicdragoon]

^ Actually my ZX2 used 2 64 GB toshiba, while in ZX1 it is a single Sandisk 128GB. Don't know if that also affects the sound performance between these 2 brothers.