[WYWH1975]

Have not tried the Kioxia but I do own a Sandisk High Endurance card, I have the 64GB model.

I feel that the High Endurance 64GB card sounds slightly better than Sandisk Extreme Pro 256GB as it doesn't have the FM radio grain distortion. The overall sound signature is more neutral sounding, not as dynamic as Extreme pro. A good choice for low budget in my opinion for it's improved clarity over extreme pro. Though I think the Industrial cards are the go to if you want the best sound possible.

It's important to understand the difference between analog and digital. With an analog signal you can have degradation, it can go from really good to less good to bad to no signal at all. With digital you either get a perfect signal or you don't get a signal, there's nothing between those two. So if it works you get 100% and if it doesn't work you get 0%.
The same applies to digital storage like hard drives, SSDs and memorycards.

Buying SanDisk makes sense as they make high quality memory cards with a much lower failure rate than lower quality memory cards but the audio quality is going to be exactly the same. A SanDisk Extreme Pro 256 GB MicroSD card is 35$ and the cheapest card I can find with the same capacity is 15$. I'd gladly pay 20$ more for the SanDisk, not for the audio quality (as it is the same) but for the durability.

 

[andrewski]

It's important to understand the difference between analog and digital. With an analog signal you can have degradation, it can go from really good to less good to bad to no signal at all. With digital you either get a perfect signal or you don't get a signal, there's nothing between those two. So if it works you get 100% and if it doesn't work you get 0%.
The same applies to digital storage like hard drives, SSDs and memorycards.

Buying SanDisk makes sense as they make high quality memory cards with a much lower failure rate than lower quality memory cards but the audio quality is going to be exactly the same. A SanDisk Extreme Pro 256 GB MicroSD card is 35$ and the cheapest card I can find with the same capacity is 15$. I'd gladly pay 20$ more for the SanDisk, not for the audio quality (as it is the same) but for the durability.

By that logic streaming really is better than local

 

[andrewski]

Sorry everybody. My sarcasm and hyperbole have been unhelpful. And it's rude to laugh at someone. I apologize. This discussion has brought out the worst (not really) in me. I'll stop saying how awesome the 256G Swissbit is. So awesome I bought two more. And they're $50 cheaper than last year. Mine shipped to Canada from Mouser

https://www.mouser.ca/ProductDetail/Swissbit/SFSD256GN1AM1MT-I-7G-211-STD?qs=sPbYRqrBIVmLv5sLjAf58Q==

Done

Edit: @The1Signature I was laughing with you. I seriously fell down. But I'd still like to apologize. I'm sorry. That wasn't cool

 

[TonyStarks]

Sorry everybody. My sarcasm and hyperbole have been unhelpful. And it's rude to laugh at someone. I apologize. This discussion has brought out the worst (not really) in me. I'll stop saying how awesome the 256G Swissbit is. So awesome I bought two more. And they're $50 cheaper than last year. Mine shipped to Canada from Mouser

https://www.mouser.ca/ProductDetail/Swissbit/SFSD256GN1AM1MT-I-7G-211-STD?qs=sPbYRqrBIVmLv5sLjAf58Q==

Done

Edit: @The1Signature I was laughing with you. I seriously fell down. But I'd still like to apologize. I'm sorry. That wasn't cool

I was tempted to buy swissbit but I am happy with Edge.

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

Certainly, digital(in the context of storage) works in the principles of ones and zeros, thus its either working or not working and there are many error correction layers that protects against failures and malfunctions, but in the context of high quality digital audio delivery, we are also dealing with accurate timing of signals and the logical processing of electrical voltage being perfectly sync/timed too. Can these imperfections in transmission timing cause audio degradation? How much degradation is acceptable? Do remember that we are talking about transmission delivery of high resolution audio here, not low data rate VOIP speech audio.

I think Mr Hans has done a very informative video on jitter in the context of digital circuits:


As for how and why microsd can influence the sound of the walkman, here is my theory.

Microsd card have electrical signal connections to the walkman's digital circuity and is drawing power from the walkman's battery thus it means that EMI noise generated from the microsd card can seep more easily into the walkman's digital circuity as there is a connected pathway. High performance Audio devices like the walkman is going to be much more sensitive to the noise of EMI which causes jitter in comparison to a typical smartphone.

Can the EMI noise from the microsd card affect the digital clocking circuity of the walkman? As I do not own a million dollar costing EMC lab, thus there is no way for a normal person to provide data on this.

It can be argued that the well experienced Walkman audio engineers should have done their job to ensure such electrical noise is not influencing or degrading the sound of the Walkman. On the more premium Walkman like the ZX707, WM1AM2, ZM2, alot of the cost of the parts is around the huge copper EMI shielding. But do note that EMI shielding is not "free", it has cost, weight and size/complexity. Also EMI shielding is often more of mitigation, not a total elimination.

 

[spendthrift]

It can be argued that the well experienced Walkman audio engineers should have done their job to ensure such electrical noise is not influencing or degrading the sound of the Walkman.

This ^^

If the card we used was so crucial to achieving the best audio quality, am pretty sure Sony would have packaged it with the zm2 atleast - especially when they coated that frigging thing with gold and charges 4k USD.

Edit -
.. or made a 1TB ZM2 with no expandable storage .. to put an end to the debate.

 

[andrewski]

easy mod

Thought this would be appropriate to share again.

And more internal storage wouldn't work for me. I genuinely prefer the sound of the Swissbit over the internal storage by a large degree.

And $4000USD didn't get me a line out.

K I'm done, I'm done, I'm done ... I'm done

For real

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

prices are as of today, Amazon.com and Mouser for Swissbit in USD):
Swissbit S-55U 256GB: 97MB/sec Read, 60MB/sec Write $117.39
Sandisk Extreme Pro 256GB: 200MB/sec Read 140MB/sec Write $27.96
Samsung Pro Plus 256GB: 180MB/sec Read, 130MB/sec Write $19.90

So why would I pay $100 more for industrial card, when a Sandisk works perfectly and is higher performance? Am I crazy foolish and stupid? One can buy a 1TB Sandisk Extreme Pro for the price of the Swissbit 256GB.

The fact is Industrial Microsd Manufacturers like Swissbit, Micron or WD has never advertise/marketed nor designed their industrial card intentionally as an audiophile product. It is just that some of us here in head-fi have discovered that the choice of microsd card can have it's sound quality influence on the DAP. And somehow, the more costly industrial card seems to be subjectively better sounding to some of us. Most educated people will right out call this totally absurd to suggest this. I would suggest for those who are willing to experiment, to compare the sound of a music file stored on their DAP's internal NAND memory vs the sound of the same file stored on microsd card, especially when this experiment is cost free as long as you own an exisiting microsd card already. See if your ears/equipment is able to hear a difference. Please do note that obviously this is not going to be a day and night difference between these two nand, some might not even hear any difference at all but for those who have "super human hearing", who knows? Maybe you have made a new discovery like these folks did: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/sony-nw-wm1z-m2-wm1a-m2.962054/page-837#post-17734351

Idle power consumption difference between consumer cards vs Industiral card : 0.15mA vs 1.45mA vs 1.25mA

https://goughlui.com/2021/02/27/experiment-microsd-card-power-consumption-spi-performance/

 

[israikc]

prices are as of today, Amazon.com and Mouser for Swissbit in USD):
Swissbit S-55U 256GB: 97MB/sec Read, 60MB/sec Write $117.39
Sandisk Extreme Pro 256GB: 200MB/sec Read 140MB/sec Write $27.96
Samsung Pro Plus 256GB: 180MB/sec Read, 130MB/sec Write $19.90

So why would I pay $100 more for industrial card, when a Sandisk works perfectly and is higher performance? Am I crazy foolish and stupid? One can buy a 1TB Sandisk Extreme Pro for the price of the Swissbit 256GB.

The fact is Industrial Microsd Manufacturers like Swissbit, Micron or WD has never advertise/marketed nor designed their industrial card intentionally as an audiophile product. It is just that some of us here in head-fi have discovered that the choice of microsd card can have it's sound quality influence on the DAP. And somehow, the more costly industrial card seems to be subjectively better sounding to some of us. Most educated people will right out call this totally absurd to suggest this. I would suggest for those who are will to experiment, to compare the sound of a music file stored on their DAP's internal NAND memory vs the sound of the same file stored on microsd card, especially when this experiment is cost free as long as you own an exisiting microsd card already. See if your ears/equipment is able to hear a difference. Please do note that obviously this is not going to be a day and night difference between these two nand, some might not even hear any difference at all but for those who have "super human hearing", who knows? Maybe you have made a new discovery like these folks did: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/sony-nw-wm1z-m2-wm1a-m2.962054/page-837#post-17734351

Idle power consumption difference between consumer cards vs Industiral card : 0.15mA vs 1.45mA vs 1.25mA

https://goughlui.com/2021/02/27/experiment-microsd-card-power-consumption-spi-performance/

That study is not exactly showing the industrial card as better than the others.
The industrial card has more current peaks, which means it will affect all other circuitry more so than the consumer cards.
Idle power may be lower, but since the card is slower it would be far less idle than the other cards since it would take longer to transfer the music files from the card to the buffers/RAM on a DAP, meaning a higher chance of disruption.

Would this affect sound quality? I don’t know, but it sure is fun to think about.

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

That study is not exactly showing the industrial card as better than the others.
The industrial card has more current peaks, which means it will affect all other circuitry more so than the consumer cards.
Idle power may be lower, but since the card is slower it would be far less idle than the other cards since it would take longer to transfer the music files from the card to the buffers/RAM on a DAP, meaning a higher chance of disruption.

Would this affect sound quality? I don’t know, but it sure is fun to think about.

Although the newer walkman do not have a microsd activity LED, the older ZX2 Walkman did have an activity led that is situated at the microsd slot as shown below, the small black round hole at the top left of the microsd slot is where the LED activity light is located.

From my obesrvations of how my old ZX2 walkman works, when you press play on a typically sized ~25MB FLAC track, the led light will be blinking roughly around 5secs to 10seconds(depending on bit-rate/size of the track) which after there is no more data LED activity from the Walkman at all until the start of the next track. However if you play a larger file, for example a 600MB CD audio wave, at some point(maybe about 5 to 10 mins of playback) when the buffer runs out, the LED activity will blink again another 5sec to 10sec to continue to pre-buffer the remainder of the track.

What this likely means that Sony engineers likely designed the walkman music app to pre-buffer the audio file(up to a certain specific MB threshold) into the Walkman's RAM and is not constantly/actively streaming data directly from the microsd card.

As this newer WM1 M2 series does not contain the LED activity light, we do not know if the new walkman is doing the same type of pre-buffering but I would make a good guess that Sony is likely still deploying the same pre-buffering method.

What it means is that the microsd card inside the Walkman is likely to be working in idle power mode most of the time and not in active reading mode. Thus I believe that idle power consumption of the microsd card is a bigger factor than active reading power draw when talking about how microsd power consumption affects the performance/power supply of the walkman.

Also to note is that the typical audio FLAC file is only ~25MB, ~300MB for uncompress 24/192 PCM and up to 1GB for DSD 11.2MHz.
The read speeds of almost all(both industrial and consumer) modern microsd card is already more than sufficient for audio playback/problem-less pre-buffering.

 

[karloil]

My 2cents on the microSD card topic.

Did this experience years ago when I had my Opus #1 (equiped with dual mSD slots). Did it dead of night so that I had less distractions/noise.

I had 2 mSD cards, 1 was a Sandisk Ultra (Red/Grey) and the other was a Samsung Evo Plus (White/Orange) - already forgot what capacities I had.

Loaded the same files, same bit rate, same format - even the same file location (root) in the microSD. Used Balance, same volume, same IEM/HP.

I even asked my wife to do the switching from 1 mSD card to the other. I mean, it can't get any fairer than this.

The only delay in listening was when I switch from 1 mSD to the other - quite easy as this is just done in software (no need to physically swap the mSD out)

Conclusion:

Take if with a grain of salt (or maybe I still had better ears back then) - but I was really able to hear an 'improvement'.

Was the improvement a lot? In critical listening, I would say yes. Samsung had better/darker background than the Sandisk. It was really noticeable on careful listening how cleaner the background was on the Samsung. Overall (from what I can remember) the tracks were just presented in a more 'cleaner' way. But in everyday, outside listening - doubt I can hear/notice this.

Posted this in a local forum and was also branded as dilusional

After that, I've been strictly a Samsung mSD buyer.

End of story for me

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

Also to note, this issue is also unique to Lexar, especially coming directly from DAP manufacturer(which typically do not issue any statements with regards to microsd choices/brands etc, modern microsd shouldn't have any read speed/throughput issues for audio playback) :

Q2: Regarding Lexar SD/Micro SD card compatibility issue:​

A: It has been brought to our attention that users of the Lotoo PAW Gold/Gold Touch/6000 may encounter an issue regarding compatibility with Lexar SD/Micro SD cards.
When playing high bitrate music files (e.g. 24bit/384KHz or DSD256), noises/pop sound can sometimes be heard if the card has been used for around 20-30 mins. A speed test shows the read rate can drop down to 700-800k byte/s in this case.
This issue is mainly found on Lexar 667x and 633x SD/ Micro SD cards.

http://www.lotoo.cn/english/bottom/Service/FAQ/

 

[The1Signature]

Edit: @The1Signature I was laughing with you. I seriously fell down. But I'd still like to apologize. I'm sorry. That wasn't cool

what in particular?
did you laugh with me or at me?

 

[boodi]

I've just ordered a Swissbit 256 curious to hear the difference VS internal storage (1zm2 )

Firmware 1.07: it was very immediate to me to hear a change

I felt that Firmware 1.07's DSEE Ultimate has quite a major sound change. It is noticeably more expanded/wider in sound field and also vocals exhibit more spatial depth/spacing.

DSEE has gone a leap further ( much better space/sound info , kept the refined retrieval of details but ..somewhat widened their rendering(?) and it's easier to see some of them now ,widened stage too to my ears )
I see someone else can listen and say 'its the same really..'

Change is definitely very significant , very appreciable, to me , and of course it may be minor thing or un-noticeable to someone else , sure thing . You take a Paganini and a good violin and see who notice the strikling difference and who does not : normal , in my vocabulary .

Nice thing you did Sony eng!, I concurr with other users and grateful for the continued support..very significant to me in this case

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

I've just ordered a Swissbit 256 curious to hear the difference VS internal storage (1zm2 )

Firmware 1.07: it was very immediate to me to hear a change

DSEE is gone a leap further ( much better space/sound info , ekot the refined retrieval of detail but somewhat widened their rendering(?) ,widened stage too to my ears )


I see someone else can listen and say 'its the same really..'

Change is definitely very significant and appreciable to me - and of course it may be minor thing or un-noticeable to someone else , sure thing , again take a Paganini and a good violin and see who notice the strikling difference and who does not .
#normal , in my vocabulary .

Nice thing you did Sony eng!, i concurr with other users nd grateful for the continued support..

Given how much R&D investment that Sony does for AI & spatial audio, I think it shouldn't be surprising that even better AI sound technology advancement gets implemented into the Walkman.

https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/technology/stories/AI_Sound_Separation/

https://www.sony.net/Products/create360RA/360VME/



This article is worth a read, it describes the future of cutting edge audio technology being developed.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/3d-audio

Just as audio moved from mono to stereo, and from stereo to surround and spatial audio, it is now starting to move to soundstage. In those earlier eras, audiophiles evaluated a sound system by its fidelity, based on such parameters as bandwidth, harmonic distortion, data resolution, response time, lossless or lossy data compression, and other signal-related factors. Now, soundstage can be added as another dimension to sound fidelity—and, we dare say, the most fundamental one. To human ears, the impact of soundstage, with its spatial cues and gripping immediacy, is much more significant than incremental improvements in fidelity. This extraordinary feature offers capabilities previously beyond the experience of even the most deep-pocketed audiophiles.

Technology has fueled previous revolutions in the audio industry, and it is now launching another one. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and digital signal processing are tapping in to psychoacoustics to give audio enthusiasts capabilities they’ve never had. At the same time, these technologies are giving recording companies and artists new tools that will breathe new life into old recordings and open up new avenues for creativity. At last, the century-old goal of convincingly re-creating the sounds of the concert hall has been achieved.