[Liono]

What a gorgeous combination!

Legend, I love Above and Beyond. Realised recently that their Group Therapy casts are now on Amazon Music HD in lossless rather than crappy 128mp3. I've ordered one of those TPU cases even though I don't have a unit yet

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

My Micron card from Mouser arrived very quickly. As it's industrial does this mean it can be formatted more than times than ordinary micro cards? Filling it now, 25mb/s on average.

It will have better wear leveling algorithms than consumer cards with the same type of QLC nand cells, thus it will endure more sequential writes(like writing music files). For music playback, we don't really wear down the card that quickly as compared to 24/7 video recording or other usages, so expect your card to last for years or until there's a next increase in max nand storage sizes(likely 5yrs or even longer).

Do let us know if you hear any difference between your previous microsd and/or internal memory of the walkman.

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

@Whitigir @TonyStarks

Just found out that my Swissbit S-55u 256GB is actually using Micron 3D TLC Nand and comes with 120bit LDPC Error Correction. It is really a brand new product, fresh out of factory, with the press release published just 4 days ago.

The new S-55 and S-58 series are based on Micron flash chips and complement Swissbit's existing S-50 and S-56 series, which use Kioxia 3D NAND.

Maximum reliability is also ensured by 120bit LDPC error correction, full page fail protection, read disturb management, background data refresh, data recovery following a sudden power loss, and sophisticated static and dynamic wear leveling.

https://www.swissbit.com/ja/company...card-portfolio-with-the-s-55-and-s-58-series/

 

[nc8000]

I use this remote from Sony with almost all my android device (smartphones and daps), windows (tablets/notebooks) and of course the WM1A ... (I own and use 3 of them)
It can manage :
-> volume up and down
-> Next/Previous track
-> fast forward and rewind
-> play/pause
Battery has huge play life (many months) and it's the tiniest and efficient remote I could find.

which is sufficient to leave the DAP/Smartphone in a pocket or on the desktop and play some music playlists with this remote only...

The original question was about being able to navigate the library, ie. moving back up to another artist/genre/album and selecting that and this the Sony remote can’t do

 

[xryptic]

I just realised the sampler music included with the Walkman titled "Snowflake" has a typo on the Artist's name. Mine shows "Lara Ruggels" when her name is actually "Lara Ruggles"..... Had to immediately rename it.

 

[psikey]

So my time with the EU limited version of the 1ZM2 is over and its all packed up ready for return to Sony. Didn't want to play too long and risk any damage they could charge me for.

I'm glad I had this for a test as its convinced me of 5 things.

1) Sounds amazing even before burn-in.
The Z with its copper/gold case looks fabulous but not £3300 vs £1300 fabulous compared to A1M2 seeing as others have said the A1M2 is just as good sonically, just slight signature variation.
2) For me the Z at 500g is too heavy even though the weight does add to its feeling of getting something for your money. The Gold hue miss-match between Copper Case and Aluminium back and buttons actually cheapens the look, as if not put enough gold coating on it. It will not be as hard wearing as the black passivated aluminium of the 1AM2.
3) The speed/operation of Android 11 seems perfectly fine, no issues for me and all streaming apps I tried in 32/192 Hi mode sounded perfect even though technically not bit-perfect.
4) No way anyone should be paying what is a significant price for the volume crippled EU versions. Makes it only usable for easy to drive IEM's IMO*. Based on my time with a EU and Japanese ZX507 even without High Gain your at 30 volume steps higher on EU version compared to Non-EU version for same volume.
5) I will now patiently wait for the Japanese A1M2 to come back in stock.


* I have one of those iFi IEMatch impedence adapters that I orininally bought to remove the background hiss with noisy DAP's with my SE846's. It basically makes the 8ohm SE846 50 Ohm with one switch poition and over 100 Ohm at the other position or something like that. I wondered if the Sony somehow altered its own max volume by determining impedence a bit like the old LG V30 smartphone. Result... No, it basically made my SE846 via 3.5mm unusable because max volume was too low even at 120/120.

 

[psikey]

I just realised the sampler music included with the Walkman titled "Snowflake" has a typo on the Artist's name. Mine shows "Lara Ruggels" when her name is actually "Lara Ruggles"..... Had to immediately rename it.

Suffer from OCD?

 

[WAmadeusM]

Using 3.5mm, volume limit warning comes in at 80/120. My listening level with my K10U needs to be 90-95/120 This playing a 24/192 MQA in Walkman player. Below 80/120 its too low to enjoy.

Using 4.4mm my level with K10U needs to be ~ 85-90/120. Full volume of 120/120 would not hurt your ears!

This should all mean driving headphones will be pathetic.

This is exactly the situation I found with the UK ZX507. With my SE846's with the UK version I would be at 85/120 while on the Japanese version 50/120.

Oh well, saves me £3,300! Will do more testing for a few days but this will be going straight back to them next week.

A rockbox region tweak away as HG is buried in there of course....a tweak that may never come as a sony android has not been cracked according to @MrWalkman ...UK customs rubbing hands at the news....

 

[Lookout57]

The only way it will ever be cracked is if someone can create an unlocked boot loader that the DAP can recognize and load.

It's been years since I had an Android phone and then I only purchased the ones that could be unlocked ad customized.

 

[psikey]

A rockbox region tweak away as HG is buried in there of course....a tweak that may never come as a sony android has not been cracked according to @MrWalkman ...UK customs rubbing hands at the news....

Its actually cheaper to import one from Amazon Japan including delivery/fees/customs. Over £100 cheaper than UK rrp. Only slight downside is more troublesome if you need to claim under warranty.

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

Did you know back in the ZX507 thread, there WAS a way to firmware update your japanese hardware ZX507 with Chinese ZX507 firmware. You have to place the Chinese firmware update file inside your walkman's internal storage root directory and update it. Once you done the chinese firmware update, all traces of google playstore and google related apps all goes away. Music Playback time actually increased by 1 hour(typically) due to the removed google framework.

Afterwards you must not perform any Over the Air (Wifi) firmware updates as it pulls the correct region firmware of your hardware. And once you updated a firmware, there's no going back to previous version. Though the next time a new firmware is released, you can revert your Chinese firmware Japanese hardware ZX507 back to Japanese firmware by doing OTA update. Hope I am not too confusing with the sentences I used.

I wonder if it's possble to do the same with the European M2 Walkman since there's an update from 1.08 to 1.10 recently. Maybe it is possible to exploit the volume limit by flashing a European hardware with an international firmware? Wonder if the volume limiter is hardware coded or firmware based.

 

[MrWalkman]

Did you know back in the ZX507 thread, there WAS a way to firmware update your japanese hardware ZX507 with Chinese ZX507 firmware. You have to place the Chinese firmware update file inside your walkman's internal storage root directory and update it. Once you done the chinese firmware update, all traces of google playstore and google related apps all goes away. Music Playback time actually increased by 1 hour(typically) due to the removed google framework.

Though you must not perform any Over the Air (Wifi) firmware updates as it pulls the correct region firmware of your hardware. And once you updated a firmware, there's no going back to previous version. Though the next time a new firmware is released, you can revert your Chinese firmware Japanese hardware ZX507 back to Japanese firmware by doing OTA update. Hope I am not too confusing with the sentences I used.

I wonder if it's possble to do the same with the European M2 Walkman since there's an update from 1.08 to 1.10 recently. Maybe it is possible to exploit the volume limit by flashing a European hardware with an international firmware? Wonder if the volume limiter is hardware coded or firmware based.

It's not possible to get past the volume limit like this

Even if you update to the Japanese FW, for example, the region of the player will still be the EU one, and the volume limit will apply.

The volume limit is not hardware-based, but the region is stored in a place that stays the same between firmware updates.

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

I guess It's best to avoid European Region Walkman like the plague.

 

[twister6]

Probably should have posted here earlier

Btw, anybody know if "High-Res streaming" option under Sound settings bypasses Android 11 SRC downsampling?

*** EDIT *** answered already, everything gets upsampled to 192kHz/32b with High-Res Streaming enabled.

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Golden Brick 2.0

 

[Kiats]

Very nice photos of the 2 gorgeous DAPs, @twister6 ! Both absolutely enjoyable in their own way.