[Vitaly2017]

One Japanese, one from Accessory Jack in HK, both full power. Don't start Vitaly, good Tiger

Hahaha

Hisss hisss !

 

[purk]

ZX507 wire mod: Going on 15 hours of burn in. SQ has improved a lot. Stage is 3D like, and solid. Bass is more solid, with strong impact. Vocals are fluid, detailed and just flowing. Vocals just sound "real". No harshness at all. This is what I was hoping/expecting, as the Silver with 1% gold seems special for vocals, that is different from how pure silver sounds.

So it's not fully settled in yet, but already at a point where I am relieved, and can answer to myself whether it was worth the cost and extra work.

Yes, definitely worth the effort.

The cost is not that much, compared to what we pay for cables. Even with ordering extra wires that I did not use, and paying for priority Fedex shipping, the cost was USD140, and I still have enough material to do 1 or 2 other DAPs.
And this will delay my urge to get a Han Sound Kimera cable, which I really wanted, after trying it out. I believe this wire mod gives greater results, and is great value for money, to make the DAP sound better with every cable/IEM that I use.

So the real cost is in the labor and the risk of making a mistake.

Have u done the battery wires mod? This will bring greater sense of dynamic. I love the ZX507 mod....it is so capable.

 

[feverfive]

So.....to drag out this microSD card thing a little more. I swear, slight variations in product ID number (but apparently no difference in read/write specs) justifies this kind if price difference? LMAO

 

[ttt123]

Have u done the battery wires mod? This will bring greater sense of dynamic. I love the ZX507 mod....it is so capable.

If you mean replacing the 4 wires from the battery tot he MB, yes, I replaced with Neotech 0.5mm UPOCC stranded. I pried on the battery to try to lift it, but gave up. Afraid of damaging it, so did go any deeper into the hardware than what you see in the picture.

 

[Chainring]

So.....to drag out this microSD card thing a little more. I swear, slight variations in product ID number (but apparently no difference in read/write specs) justifies this kind if price difference? LMAO

Looks like it's a difference in who's selling the card. The EVO Select series is produced by Samsung for Amazon...house brand, if you will. The more expensive listing is not Amazon and they're tacking on a huge markup.

 

[sander93]

I think you guys got it wrong already, my microsd ranking is actually a beauty pageant contest between the microsd cards. The Extreme Pro has the nicest design, red is always better like Ferrari.

Microsd cards are consumable products, they will eventually wear out or you will run out of space and will require upgrade to a bigger capacity at some point.

My subjective ranking is just a guide/reference, if you wish to make your microsd purchase based on it, it's your own choice. I got no monetary gains from the microsd card manufacturers for doing this.

Maybe microsd card affecting the sound of the walkman may seem absurd and defy logic for some of us here. I think we should consider that Sony audio engineers actually produced a premium sound microsd card back in 2015, which means internally inside Sony walkman department itself they have already reached a joint decision that microsd cards have sound quality effect on their walkman which they cannot eliminate with their walkman circuitry design/shielding.

I highly doubt that the same Sony walkman engineering department who creates some of the most highly ranked digital audio systems will put their reputation on the chopping block to release a "snake oil" product like a premium sound microsd card.

why sony does not produce 512GB and 1TB sd cards?
they have higher read/write speed.

 

[Chainring]

why sony does not produce 512GB and 1TB sd cards?
they have higher read/write speed.

Max read and write speeds only tell one part of the story. I've found that cards rated for high write speeds, such as the Sandisk Extreme, Samsung EVO Select, etc...do really well when writing larger files. When writing lots of smaller files, such as mp3, m4a, etc..., the speeds fall apart.

I'm using the ProGrade Digital UHS-II dual SD card reader.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...hcxcana_pgd_sdxc_uhs_ii_usb.html?sts=pi&pim=Y

Using the card reader above, I tested with a 256GB Samsung EVO Select, writing approximately 40,000 m4a (converted from FLAC) and the speeds were only 20 or so megabytes per second. Yes, around 20 MB/s. The card is rated for somewhere around 90 MB/s. Why so low? It's not optimized for smaller files. It's great for my photography, which is files in the 42 MB range and great for FLAC.

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

Just something interesting I discovered about my own hearing or something related to how we hear.

I stopped listening to my Walkman at 75/120 volume(high gain) and went to take a nap.

After awaking up, I resume listening. When I hit play, I cannot tolerate the sudden loudness from the 75/120 volume setting. I had to drop to 60/120. I tried to go up in volume shortly but it wasn’t possible for my ears to handle it. But after listening for 3mins, now I can once again go back to 75/120(repeat on same song)

Maybe there’s really some brain burn in involved or something. Or it just that my brain needs time to boot up.

 

[rlw6534]

This is probably a stupid question, but is there any technical advantage to running in high gain (i.e more headroom) if I can get sufficient volume on low gain turned way up?

 

[Vitaly2017]

Just something interesting I discovered about my own hearing or something related to how we hear.

I stopped listening to my Walkman at 75/120 volume(high gain) and went to take a nap.

After awaking up, I resume listening. When I hit play, I cannot tolerate the sudden loudness from the 75/120 volume setting. I had to drop to 60/120. I tried to go up in volume shortly but it wasn’t possible for my ears to handle it. But after listening for 3mins, now I can once again go back to 75/120(repeat on same song)

Maybe there’s really some brain burn in involved or something. Or it just that my brain needs time to boot up.

Its your ear drums that has recovered after rest, something to be careful is to know what is the volume limit of your ears as for periods of listen we tend set volumes higher and higher. Thats a risk to have permanent hearing loss over time. In your scenario it was a temporary hearing loss which is probably a normal thing for our body.

When I listen to all day long sessions. I know when I wake up me to I set volume around 65/120 low gain but some music sounds to low so I bump it up by 10/120 even more sometimes.
But latter at the end of the day I reduce the volume as it feels tiring down to 60/120.

I dont recommend going beyond 80/120 for too long as we loose track of the damage and some people can receive the damage permanently.

When I had headphones I got a hearing damage and never realized it. Luckily after 3 months it all came back to normal.
The way it happens is that you lose 10% example and always compensate by increasing the volume and that 1 day can stay permanent lucky it wasnt.

So I saved my precious tiger ears!

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

This is probably a stupid question, but is there any technical advantage to running in high gain (i.e more headroom) if I can get sufficient volume on low gain turned way up?

In my experience, High gain has more dynamic headroom, transients like cymbal clashes can go louder. It is a double edge sword. You gain more treble energy but it can also cause more treble glare for easy to drive iems.

 

[Vitaly2017]

This is probably a stupid question, but is there any technical advantage to running in high gain (i.e more headroom) if I can get sufficient volume on low gain turned way up?

Low gain would be the cleanest approach, high gain almost like low gain but feels boosted in everything

 

[Whitigir]

why sony does not produce 512GB and 1TB sd cards?
they have higher read/write speed.

Imagine the price of their 64Gb audiophile ...multiply toward a total of 1Tb pricing....probably going to cost more than your Walkman LOL

 

[feverfive]

I like high gain, **generally speaking**, for the perception of added note weight.

Also, jeez guys. High gain on 60+ vol on the regular? Dang.... Using my XBA-Z5 and recently purchased ATH-WP900, I listen at 50 - 55 vol level, high gain. I've never considered myself a low volume listener, but maybe I am. I get plenty of dynamics at this volume level.

 

[Ryokan]

Just something interesting I discovered about my own hearing or something related to how we hear.

I stopped listening to my Walkman at 75/120 volume(high gain) and went to take a nap.

After awaking up, I resume listening. When I hit play, I cannot tolerate the sudden loudness from the 75/120 volume setting. I had to drop to 60/120. I tried to go up in volume shortly but it wasn’t possible for my ears to handle it. But after listening for 3mins, now I can once again go back to 75/120(repeat on same song)

Maybe there’s really some brain burn in involved or something. Or it just that my brain needs time to boot up.

I find that in the morning - Jeez I listened to it that loud? But by the afternoon I'm back to the same volume.


On another subject when I had the EU model volume was usually around 85-92+, with the Asian model around 75 is quite loud.