SONY NW-WM1Z / WM1A

Just some basic troubleshooting.

I had experienced a couple crashes using 3.0.

I noticed they occurred when playing music stored on the SD card. I moved all those files to the internal hard drive, removed the card, haven't had a single crash since. Not sure if this is the root, but figured I'd share.

 

Mine crashed in BT receiver mode, playing files in internal memory and playing songs in external memory. After each reboot what made it crash played fine

 

How many songs do you have and what format?

The first thing I did when I got my players was to do a factory reset and I formatted the SD cards in the player. All content was copied to either the SD card using a USB3 card reader or player internal memory using the macOS Finder. I also used BlueHarvest to clean the macOS metadata from both volumes (internal and SD card).

So I have 8806 songs on my 1Z spread between internal and a 400GB card with only a couple of hundred MB free on each. On my 1A I have 7108 songs spread between internal and a 400GB card with a couple of GB free on each. On both DAPs the songs are either FLAC 16/44.1 up to 24/192 or DSF (downloads and rips). It takes either player approximately 5 minutes to rebuild the database (I haven't timed it to get exact numbers) and I've never had a crash.

What I did do is go painstakingly went thru every track and rescaled all artwork with Metadatics to 600x600. I also verified that all the required tags were there and clean (found some that had tabs and/or carriage returns in them using Kid3).

I wonder could the long rebuild time and crashes be due to either a corrupt database or possibly a tag that the player doesn't like.

Does anyone know if the manual database rebuild deletes the old version or just updates what's in place? If it deletes it, maybe you should try that. Otherwise you might have to do a factory reset and reload all your content to be safe if the tags and artwork is clean.

 

I have about 30.000 16/44 flac tracks with embedded cover art 300x300 baseline jpg. All tags and artwork are perfect and I only have the bare minimum tags (album name, artist name, track name, track number, genre).

Build time went up by at least 50% with 3.0 and came back down when I went back to 2.0.

As I don’t need any of the 3.0 features I can’t be bothered to spend time dealing with it.

 

I got a response from the eBay seller of this adapter - https://www.ebay.com/itm/122592817765?ul_noapp=true

The seller states the RCA GND is connected to the respective R- and L- rungs of the 4.4mm plug. I don't plan to order one of these just to confirm. Assuming this is true, I don't see how this works without shorting the balanced amp.

 

I love the new turntable effects. Very subtle and cool!

 

For those who has taken long time to rebuild database, why not split into few microSD cards . It took much shorter time and also to avoid crash. So far so good, no crash in my WM1A as I power off everytime.

 

How come it has to rebuild database each time?

 

Balanced and single ended are fairly close with volume output in 3.0. I actually have two sets of the exact same IEM only a couple serial numbers apart. I plugged one into balanced and one into single ended.

The 1Z shuts off the single-ended output when in balanced mode. So I stuck both IEMs in my ears the balanced on the right and single ended on the left. Single-ended is still slightly lower on volume. I know IEM cables have slightly different resistance from time to time, but have no way to test the two cables.

Balanced is also still the better way to go due to the noise cancellation process inherent in the balanced process. Though somehow it may be true there IS less difference between the two methods on the 1Z than there was.

 

Isn't it rebuild database when one turn on? I have noticed it in 2.0 too.

Please correct me if I am wrong

 

The main difference between 2.0 and 3.0 is the latest version is significantly slower than 2.0, by a factor of 2 or 3 times.
I had the auto power off feature on and this is no longer usable, so I leave the unit on, idle. It doesn't lose a lot of battery and it is ready to go immediately.

Sony, if you read us, I'd love to have some user experience improvement here.
If this database building process can't be accelerated, please introduce an auto-power off feature, and we could have an auto-pause after some time (1h, 2h, 4h...), or when no headphones are connected (either balanced or SE).​

 

Shoutout for anyone out here.

Have tried several top-end IEMs like QDC Gemini, Jomo Audio Flamenco, Xelento and Acoustune HS1650CU. Was disappointed with the first two as the sound didn't blend well and impressed with the rest.

Any recommendations on other IEM/CIEM that I should pair with WM1Z? No budget for purchase

 

@AllenWalker I've been contemplating picking up the Acoustune HS1650CU as well for my 1Z. Can you offer any additional thoughts? Thanks.

 

The whole thing about rebuilding database doesn't make sense. We know it takes time to read and parse some thousands of song metadata (unless it is a Lotoo player), so how about read them in the background, and let us browse and listen via folder view???

AK can do it, why can't you Sony???

 

dB increase is as follows:

+3 dB = 2x power (mW)
+6 dB = 2x amplitude (voltage)
+10 dB = perceived doubling of sound volume

At most, I would expect the NW-WM1a/z balanced to output no more than +6 dB versus SE.