[Mörchingen]

Very good write up sir, big respect for you. Thank you for sharing the knowledge, it really helps and is what I needed to know. Thanks a lot. I stay on ipod ecosystem another 13 years.

Thank you and I am happy that this very personal testimony could interest you.

Personally, I have worked with different generations of iPod nano for a long time. Then I wanted to get out of this closed ecosystem in which Apple does not deign to offer a FLAC or ALAC version of the music it sells on its platform.

It was the purchase of an Auralic Aries network player that forced me to buy an ipod touch because the dedicated application only works on IOS. And I have to say that in general I have found that specific apps (Yamaha, Advance) work much better on the iPod than on my Android phone. Ditto for music players like Neutron.
For several years, applications have made it possible to load FLAC files on your iPod touch or iPhone (CopyTrans Filey for example). So we feel less locked in the Apple ecosystem.

But I have never regretted buying the ZX300, which has accompanied me everywhere for almost 4 years, without ever having encountered any bugs.

 

[imparanoic]

i note that there is one drawback with sony own os, which realised a few days ago, when the dap goes complete power mode off after a day of not using it (but does not if in sleep mode) , standard procedure is that it needs to arrange the 'creating database', this is standard procedure, way back with 2009 nw-x1000 with only 32gb storage (no sd), took 10 seconds, with my old sony nw-zx100 from 2016 and 64gb sd and 128gb built in, takes around 20-30 seconds, but on the same machine but with 128gb sd, takes around 2-3 min, but with my new nw-zx300m and 512gb sd card, takes around 4-5 mins to arrange the create database, probably better if i turn the option to 24 hours before the automatic power off mode kicks in, a bit annoying, gather that the problem with such large sd cards.

 

[jwbrent]

i note that there is one drawback with sony own os, which realised a few days ago, when the dap goes complete power mode off after a day of not using it (but does not if in sleep mode) , standard procedure is that it needs to arrange the 'creating database', this is standard procedure, way back with 2009 nw-x1000 with only 32gb storage (no sd), took 10 seconds, with my old sony nw-zx100 from 2016 and 64gb sd and 128gb built in, takes around 20-30 seconds, but on the same machine but with 128gb sd, takes around 2-3 min, but with my new nw-zx300m and 512gb sd card, takes around 4-5 mins to arrange the create database, probably better if i turn the option to 24 hours before the automatic power off mode kicks in, a bit annoying, gather that the problem with such large sd cards.

I typically leave my ZX300 on with the screen off if I know I’ll be using it later on that day. I find doing this draws little battery power, and this way I don’t have to wait for indexing like I do when powering it up. Additionally, a dap’s digital section usually needs to reach its optimal thermal temperature for it to sound its best, and this can take some time from boot up.

 

[imparanoic]

I typically leave my ZX300 on with the screen off if I know I’ll be using it later on that day. I find doing this draws little battery power, and this way I don’t have to wait for indexing like I do when powering it up. Additionally, a dap’s digital section usually needs to reach its optimal thermal temperature for it to sound its best, and this can take some time from boot up.

gather that using larger sd cards (400gb, 512gb) is more noticable with this issue and the work around uses more power, but considering it's sleep mode uses not much power, apparantly up to a 3-4 weeks, not a problem, unlike android based nw-zx507 which probably runs out of power on sleep mode within 36 hours from full.

 

[jwbrent]

gather that using larger sd cards (400gb, 512gb) is more noticable with this issue and the work around uses more power, but considering it's sleep mode uses not much power, apparantly up to a 3-4 weeks, not a problem, unlike android based nw-zx507 which probably runs out of power on sleep mode within 36 hours from full.

I really hope Sony is planning on introducing new daps soon to replace the WMZ1, WM1A, and the ZX300. I really like the small design of the ZX300, and I really like the battery life completely dispelling the notion you need a phablet sized dap for a long battery. With @MrWalkman’s custom firmware, my ZX300 sounds very good, but I crave more.

 

[n00b]

Just got a ZX300 in and with CFW it sounds amazing, just wish it had the same modernized design as the ZX507. The WM1A/Z are too big for my hands as well.

Anyway, I noticed despite having my flac files properly tagged with Year, the majority of my files show up as “Unknown” when sorting by Release Year. Tracks I’ve ripped from CDs work properly, ones from Qobuz don’t seem to. Any idea for a fix?

 

[imparanoic]

Just got a ZX300 in and with CFW it sounds amazing, just wish it had the same modernized design as the ZX507. The WM1A/Z are too big for my hands as well.

Anyway, I noticed despite having my flac files properly tagged with Year, the majority of my files show up as “Unknown” when sorting by Release Year. Tracks I’ve ripped from CDs work properly, ones from Qobuz don’t seem to. Any idea for a fix?

the flac files with missing data such as year or incorrect titles or if they have high res album art (slows down your zx300), can be edited with media monkey, easy to use, also download the low res album art from google and change the orginal high res ones

 

[imparanoic]

I really hope Sony is planning on introducing new daps soon to replace the WMZ1, WM1A, and the ZX300. I really like the small design of the ZX300, and I really like the battery life completely dispelling the notion you need a phablet sized dap for a long battery. With @MrWalkman’s custom firmware, my ZX300 sounds very good, but I crave more.

doubt there will be walkman os sucessor to zx507, next walkman will be zx700 and more than likely use andriod but improvements, more than likely announced late 2021

 

[n00b]

I use Meta on Mac OS to check that the Year is tagged properly, they show up on my astell & kern players as “Year” but on Sony devices the “Release Year” is unknown still. That goes for the android version of walkman app on the ZX507, too. I tried comparing files that worked and files that didnt in Meta but I couldn’t find an obvious distinction.. at a loss here.

 

[Mörchingen]

Following your comments, I consulted the information displayed on my ZX300. In the classification of tracks by “Release Year”, of the 26,000 tracks loaded on the DAP, only 43 appear under “unknow”.

I randomly inspected some of these tracks, and found that the Year tag was indeed missing for these tracks in the source files.

For all others, once the Year tag is entered, the information is correctly displayed by the ZX300.

As I listen to a lot of classical music, this tag is difficult to use because the year can indeed correspond to the year of recording, but sometimes it corresponds to the year of composition of the song. Thus, the oldest year in my case corresponds to 1713, the year of composition of a piece by François Couperin !

For the problem you are talking about, it should be possible to verify that even if the information was present in the source file, it is also present in the file copied to your DAP and that the transfer did not lead to erasing this information.

Because there is no reason why the year should not be managed correctly if the information was originally present, and in the file transferred to the DAP.

 

[n00b]

Yeah, turns out the release year works if I delete the existing value I had then re-enter it manually using Meta (presumably any id3 tagger would work). I wished there was an easier way to do this but it's better to figure it out now and just do it as I go/add to my collection. Thanks for chiming in.

EDIT: redid my whole library and even then about a third or so still show as unknown, i think it might be an error on my end from batch-editing large amounts of files and then some possible error when transferring to sd card (samsung evo) or when building the database in walkman os/app (tried rebuilding database and still shows as unknown). anyway, i think this is a me issue and not a sony issue

 

[Lookout57]

I use Meta on Mac OS to check that the Year is tagged properly, they show up on my astell & kern players as “Year” but on Sony devices the “Release Year” is unknown still. That goes for the android version of walkman app on the ZX507, too. I tried comparing files that worked and files that didnt in Meta but I couldn’t find an obvious distinction.. at a loss here.

I use Kid3 on macOS to ensure that the meta tag names are correct.

 

[jwbrent]

I use Kid3 on macOS to ensure that the meta tag names are correct.

Kid3 is a great tag editor, and it’s open source as well.

 

[imparanoic]

Finally upgraded from nw-zx100 to nw-zx300 with original case and using astell and kern Michelle limited, sounds lovely.

 

[FrankieZappa]

I love my ipods, but in the future, I would like to switch to something more modern. Is the NW55 better than ipod classic V5 or v6 already, or should I spend the extra on something like this 300? It is just for listening on the noisy streets when walking...

I own both the iPod touch and the Classic V6 and the ZX300 as well. The comparison is like between night and day, ZX300 is so so so much better than the Classic which sound muffled and with little soundstage. I assume the NW-55 is already a better player than the iPod even without resorting to the ZX300.
iPods were amazing back in the days. Were.