slainte
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2015
- Posts
- 123
- Likes
- 118
Good afternoon everyone. Suddenly I was seized with curiosity. The Sony NW-ZX2 player suddenly became interesting. Of course, I understand that it is already quite outdated, but still, against the background of more modern players in the category of 800-1000 bucks, can it somehow compete?
If you're ok with local file playback, I think it's a fine device. I have mostly FLAC files in CD quality and higher. Also have some DSD files that decode well albeit not in 'native' fashion.
Playback sounds analog to me regardless of format. Wonderful sounding device. My battery (knock on wood) is holding up well and its life has always been a strong point.
My quibbles are music scanning (upon startup or after adding files), local search capabilities, and the lack of software updates.
I feed it directly to my Oppo PM-3 via a Silver Dragon cable that's wired to take advantage of the NW-ZX2's isolated grounds for each channel and the balanced internal wiring of the headphone itself. Think of it as pseudo balanced.
Sounds great regardless.
As mentioned above, the device was the flagship when it launched so it's a top notch build.