[Redcarmoose]

So this may be of interest to this thread? Decided to just go ahead and do a comparison between what has been my digital reference...an old Rega Planet CD transport and compare it to using the WM1A as a digital source going into the Sony TA-ZH1ES DAC/amp. Both times testing it with the Z1R headphones.

The 1A with a standard USB cable and dongle won out over the CD transport with RCA toslink cable? And not by some small unnoticeable margins either! So it basicly means for better sound I’m going to have to completely rip my CD collection and put the FLAC files on a big card.

I don’t know how or why there is such a big difference? And I was a sceptic as most of my listening has been best going coaxial to a DAC from my CD player before, as it always seemed a little smoother. But now using these players as a digital file player and joining it to the TA amp is somehow a much better way to go. I was actually hoping it wouldn’t have been such a difference as now I’ll have to start ripping CDs.

The difference was improvement of soundstage, greater detail and overall authority. Not stuff you would even think would change with a change of source. The only thing I can figure is there is something great going on between the portable players being used as transports to the TA amp. The regular coaxial toslink sounded thin in comparison too. I’m both amazed and bewildered.

 

[nanaholic]

For actual portable use I’m just using my iPhone with Tidal and a pair of Beoplay E8 true wireless in ears. The convenience is adictive and I find that out and about in traffic and on public transport the SQ is plenty good enough that I can’t be bothered to carry an extra device or wired phones

My daily phone usage is heavy enough that if I play music off of it I'll need to be carrying a portable battery pack to top up my phone, so I'm carrying that extra box either way, in that case I'll take the DAP.

If I really want to travel light with next to nothing for the afternoon I'll just take my phone and pick either one of my Sony wireless headphones. Too bad headphone jacks are being removed left and right, else the T8iE Mk2 is also a great portable choice for going extreme light and is small as well as tough enough to not need a case to protect it. Maybe I should get that Shure mmcx lighting headphone cable for my T8iE next so I can just always throw it into the pocket....

 

[emrelights1973]

So this may be of interest to this thread? Decided to just go ahead and do a comparison between what has been my digital reference...an old Rega Planet CD transport and compare it to using the WM1A as a digital source going into the Sony TA-ZH1ES DAC/amp. Both times testing it with the Z1R headphones.

The 1A with a standard USB cable and dongle won out over the CD transport with RCA toslink cable? And not by some small unnoticeable margins either! So it basicly means for better sound I’m going to have to completely rip my CD collection and put the FLAC files on a big card.

I don’t know how or why there is such a big difference? And I was a sceptic as most of my listening has been best going coaxial to a DAC from my CD player before, as it always seemed a little smoother. But now using these players as a digital file player and joining it to the TA amp is somehow a much better way to go. I was actually hoping it wouldn’t have been such a difference as now I’ll have to start ripping CDs.

The difference was improvement of soundstage, greater detail and overall authority. Not stuff you would even think would change with a change of source. The only thing I can figure is there is something great going on between the portable players being used as transports to the TA amp. The regular coaxial toslink sounded thin in comparison too. I’m both amazed and bewildered.

Cd players get old with time, fair comparison would be with a similar price new cd player, a new Rega Apollo maybe...

You might be suprised again

 

[Whitigir]

So this may be of interest to this thread? Decided to just go ahead and do a comparison between what has been my digital reference...an old Rega Planet CD transport and compare it to using the WM1A as a digital source going into the Sony TA-ZH1ES DAC/amp. Both times testing it with the Z1R headphones.

The 1A with a standard USB cable and dongle won out over the CD transport with RCA toslink cable? And not by some small unnoticeable margins either! So it basicly means for better sound I’m going to have to completely rip my CD collection and put the FLAC files on a big card.

I don’t know how or why there is such a big difference? And I was a sceptic as most of my listening has been best going coaxial to a DAC from my CD player before, as it always seemed a little smoother. But now using these players as a digital file player and joining it to the TA amp is somehow a much better way to go. I was actually hoping it wouldn’t have been such a difference as now I’ll have to start ripping CDs.

The difference was improvement of soundstage, greater detail and overall authority. Not stuff you would even think would change with a change of source. The only thing I can figure is there is something great going on between the portable players being used as transports to the TA amp. The regular coaxial toslink sounded thin in comparison too. I’m both amazed and bewildered.

Cd players get old with time, fair comparison would be with a similar price new cd player, a new Rega Apollo maybe...

You might be suprised again

There are a lot more to learn with digital. The music digital is a processed kind of digital, and it is different than storage type of digital. Even with storage type digital, the less corruptions will result in faster writing/reading.

Anyways, the case of Toslink toward TA is easy to understand. First, Toslink doesn’t sound as good as Coax, and there are articles about how/why. Regardless, the ears can always tell. Then even Coax, it is digital music signals, which is processed digital and it depends a lot on how it was processed. Yeah, people think transports is just transport, they are dead wrong. Most of the time, please ignore these comments

Now, why would Walkman sound better when you rip CD into Digital ? Simple. The answer is because storage Digital is general, as long as it is stored completely, it is good. Why does it sound better ? Because the way Walkman 1A/1Z is processing digital music Data before it output into WM-port and going into your TA-amplifier. Simply put, your CD-player isn’t capable of good digital music processing. There are Cd-players that can, and usually isn’t cheap. If you love Walkman as digital transport, the best is to get a docking cradle, it will sound better and it will also charge together while playing.

Let me clarify this, Yes, Digital transport will matter, and it matter much more than you think. This is the reason why I have this expensive PC


Also, MicroSD and storage that you are using will impact the sound quality. Some people with better gears may observe it better than others. I was unable to observe it before, but now I can observe it better. The science behind it is “Cell interferences”. Samsung has found a way to solve the problems, and it can be seen on their newest NVME SSD. I briefly tried SATA SSD vs new NVME, the differences were very surprising. So you can see my NVME sitting right there with zip tie-heatsink .

Samsung has an article about this, and you can read it here . Turned out, Sony was not lying about their expensive audiophile MicroSD.
https://www.samsung.com/semiconduct...op-flash-storage-and-why-this-matters-to-you/


For people who is more interested into Digital music quality and so on, you can visit this thread I created. Discuss, and give your findings, feedbacks overthere.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the-importances-of-good-pc-as-digital-transport.880884/

Here is another interesting reading regarding timing processing
https://www.mouser.com/blog/timing-is-everything-a-look-at-oscillators-clocks-buffers-and-redrivers

To get the thread back on topic, WM1Z with a docking cradle is very good digital-transport for such portable device

 

[emrelights1973]

İ find the toshiba sd cards better

 

[Whitigir]

İ find the toshiba sd cards better

Yes, in all 3 brands that I like: Sandisk, Samsung, Toshiba , so I have to agree

 

[Mindstorms]

I have both outputs set to high gain. My Sennheiser IE800 and SONY EX1000 plus my over ear Beyerdynamic headphones run from that setting very well. But they are all our dynamic headphones.

I though IE800 would be oversensitive iem! surprise surprise! so with IE800 on balanced right?
You dont think it hurts soundstage?

 

[pietcux]

I though IE800 would be oversensitive iem! surprise surprise! so with IE800 on balanced right?
You dont think it hurts soundstage?

No the IE800 run unbalanced. The new version IE800S has a balanced splitter connection, which the IE800 has not. So no easy way to go balanced. And no I do not feel differences in soundstage with gain change, only loudness.

 

[alphanumerix1]

There are a lot more to learn with digital. The music digital is a processed kind of digital, and it is different than storage type of digital. Even with storage type digital, the less corruptions will result in faster writing/reading.

Anyways, the case of Toslink toward TA is easy to understand. First, Toslink doesn’t sound as good as Coax, and there are articles about how/why. Regardless, the ears can always tell. Then even Coax, it is digital music signals, which is processed digital and it depends a lot on how it was processed. Yeah, people think transports is just transport, they are dead wrong. Most of the time, please ignore these comments

Now, why would Walkman sound better when you rip CD into Digital ? Simple. The answer is because storage Digital is general, as long as it is stored completely, it is good. Why does it sound better ? Because the way Walkman 1A/1Z is processing digital music Data before it output into WM-port and going into your TA-amplifier. Simply put, your CD-player isn’t capable of good digital music processing. There are Cd-players that can, and usually isn’t cheap. If you love Walkman as digital transport, the best is to get a docking cradle, it will sound better and it will also charge together while playing.

Let me clarify this, Yes, Digital transport will matter, and it matter much more than you think. This is the reason why I have this expensive PC


Also, MicroSD and storage that you are using will impact the sound quality. Some people with better gears may observe it better than others. I was unable to observe it before, but now I can observe it better. The science behind it is “Cell interferences”. Samsung has found a way to solve the problems, and it can be seen on their newest NVME SSD. I briefly tried SATA SSD vs new NVME, the differences were very surprising. So you can see my NVME sitting right there with zip tie-heatsink .

Samsung has an article about this, and you can read it here . Turned out, Sony was not lying about their expensive audiophile MicroSD.
https://www.samsung.com/semiconduct...op-flash-storage-and-why-this-matters-to-you/


For people who is more interested into Digital music quality and so on, you can visit this thread I created. Discuss, and give your findings, feedbacks overthere.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the-importances-of-good-pc-as-digital-transport.880884/

Here is another interesting reading regarding timing processing
https://www.mouser.com/blog/timing-is-everything-a-look-at-oscillators-clocks-buffers-and-redrivers

To get the thread back on topic, WM1Z with a docking cradle is very good digital-transport for such portable device

Can you explain whats going on in that pc? I'll send you a pm.

 

[Mindstorms]

No the IE800 run unbalanced. The new version IE800S has a balanced splitter connection, which the IE800 has not. So no easy way to go balanced. And no I do not feel differences in soundstage with gain change, only loudness.

I PM you on this ty... we aero getting out of toppic lol

 

[Quadfather]

In my opinion the A1 can easily drive the HD650 unbalanced in high gain mode. I am around 80 to 90 volume out of 120. It sounds very much alive. The A1 has around 80 hours on the unbalaced amp section as of today, the HD650 is a few year old and well broken in. I am using the standard cable with the standard adapter. Going balanced is planned and will probably even improve the performance of this combo.

Even though it doesn't go as loud as my Bottlehead Crack, I like the way my Sony NW - WM1A drives the Sennheiser HD 650 headphones better. Sounds way more natural. And that is saying a lot, because I have the Tung Sol 5998 and the Mullard CV4003 installed on the crack.

 

[pietcux]

Even though it doesn't go as loud as my Bottlehead Crack, I like the way my Sony NW - WM1A drives the Sennheiser HD 650 headphones better. Sounds way more natural. And that is saying a lot, because I have the Tung Sol 5998 and the Mullard CV4003 installed on the crack.

As the Crack is hard to get in Europe, I never got my hands on an exemplar, so I trust you and will skip that one. I have the HD650 balanced from a Sennheiser HDVA600, man that is one hell of a combo... But the WM1A on balanced mode drives the HD650 also really good.

 

[tgrosu]

Hi all!

Any experience on the pairing of WM1A with Sennheiser ie800 (not 800s !)? I recently bought the Walkman and I really don't like what I am hearing. The sound is congested and not clear at all. I have close to 100 hours burn-in.

Any suggestions on IEM pairing would be greatly appreciated since I don't have the opportunity to try different pairings.

Thanks a lot, guys!

 

[Mindstorms]

Hi all!

Any experience on the pairing of WM1A with Sennheiser ie800 (not 800s !)? I recently bought the Walkman and I really don't like what I am hearing. The sound is congested and not clear at all. I have close to 100 hours burn-in.

Any suggestions on IEM pairing would be greatly appreciated since I don't have the opportunity to try different pairings.

Thanks a lot, guys!

wait till 200hs clarity wont change, correct me if im wrong guys i think mostly tone/... also what iem your pairing them with, what are you comparing it to?

 

[tgrosu]

wait till 200hs clarity wont change, correct me if im wrong guys i think mostly tone/... also what iem your pairing them with, what are you comparing it to?