[grumpy213]

Hi all,

Currently the owner of a Hiby R5 Saber with a very outdated version of android and an old SoC which doesn’t suit my use of streaming apps and their hi res options.

But curiously I’ve recently noticed that the R5 has a higher noise floor leading to some noise with sensitive IEMs. Was just wondering if anyone can chime in on the ZX707’s noise floor and general UX.

Thanks!

 

[lomenhk]

If you like how it sounds before the update and you don’t have any other issues that was fixed by the update I would recommend keeping it as it is.

I contacted Sony JP and they are asking me to send the Walkman to Japan for repair because they cannot revert the firmware

Some findings and magic happened this morning.

By the time I did the 1.01.04 firmware update, I was in the middle of the earphone burn-in process (I got the Final Audio A5000 recently and at that moment it had reached to 120 hours of burn-in. I plugged it to the 3.5mm Jack of my ZX707 so that such setup can both burn-in the A5000 and the 3.5mm jack of ZX707. they have been both running in an overnight sessions for 6-8 hours weekly). After the update I suddenly found the sub bass was tamed a lot, as stated in my previous post.

The "sub-bass lost" situation stays till this morning, as both of my devices had reached to 150 hours approx. (30 hours of further burn-in). I picked up and auditioned them for almost two hours and I found the sub-bass is back on all songs!! Although not to the extent of the bass offered by the previous firmware, now the bass resumes to 90% of it. I am satisfied again with the quantity (which increases back to the normal level) and quality, although the deep punch is still a tad behind the firmware ver. 1.00.12, but very close now.

The change is very obvious as I just auditioned both A5000 and ZX707 last night and the sub-bass was still missing. After an overnight burn-in session, the bass is now a day and night situation. I am very happy with this and I hope both devices keep improving till the burn-in reaches 200 hours.

Maybe it is a coincidence that the sub-bass lost was caused by:

1- the A5000 was changing the timbre during the burn-in.
2- the firmware update changed the timbre of the ZX707 to a bit of bright side, and also the 3.5mm jack is still in the middle of the burn-in process (timbre was also changing).

A double impact and effect indeed, if I am not wrong.

I did check the 4.4mm jack during the "sub-bass lost" period. I found that it has a slight bass roll off when I listened with my IE600 and EE Valkyrie MKII with 4.4mm balanced output. Although I have burned in the 4.4mm jack for 326 hours, I think I need to burn in for further 20 hours more then review the bass output from the 4.4mm jack.

 

[spl237]

I‘m new to Head-Fi,
I asked Sony about the NW ZX707 maximum number of tracks. The specifications on the website inform about 20.000 songs for a guaranteed working. Well, I have more songs and I don‘t want to select which ones to copy. I use streaming just to discover new music.
I once owned the Sony Hap-S1, a stationary HDD player. This device wasn‘t properly working after I transfered over 20.000 songs. The problem is the building of a data bank.
So my question is, does the player accept more tracks? Does anyone use a large collection of files on the 707? Thank you!

I've got around 30,000 Apple Lossless files on a 1TB card in my 707 - seems to work absolutely fine.

 

[yeowyap]

Wow, that was a terrible "review."

I wonder if they spent more than a day or two with the DAP and if they used any mid to top tier IEMs with it at all, in balanced 4.4mm output.

They were comparing apples to oranges throughout the video, constantly comparing the ZX707 to flagship smartphones. They didn't bother comparing it to other mid to top tier DAPs. If they had, they wouldn't have been complaining about the SoC, screen quality, or "Android experience" at all. Which by the way, are all average or above average with the 707 if compared with other DAPs. They even complained about it being on Android 12, not the newest Android 13 on flagship phones. Most new DAPs are at least 2-3 Android versions stuck behind the 707.

The only thing I can maybe agree with them on is the $900 price tag being too much money, especially when it's the nerfed NA version of the 707, which they didn't even mention or complain about. I would not buy the capped 707 for $900, which is why I imported the uncapped Japanese version for under $700.

It's a shame that one of the first English ZX-707 reviews on YouTube came from these guys and was so poorly done.

True that on terrible review.

It's just "content" for a YouTube channel / consumer electronics "review" company to churn out every few weeks. They don't actually give a crap about the products they review, its use cases, the target consumers of said products, or even making a good review in the first place. It's all about that viewership and YT ad revenue.

They even ended it by saying he prefers listening to AirPods, iPhone, and Apple Music. Then did a cringe bit like the 707 is being voted off of a show like America's Got Talent.

If you have read the comment under that youtube video, it is even more cringy
I once saw an audio gear review video and i really like one statement he said when asked why he spent thousand dollars on "MP3" player instead of just using iphone:
"Sure, Iphone has great camera. But will you use it for taking your wedding photo?"

 

[MASA242]

I've got around 30,000 Apple Lossless files on a 1TB card in my 707 - seems to work absolutely fine.

Good news, thanks! I will give this device a try!

 

[Click]

True that on terrible review.

If you have read the comment under that youtube video, it is even more cringy
I once saw an audio gear review video and i really like one statement he said when asked why he spent thousand dollars on "MP3" player instead of just using iphone:
"Sure, Iphone has great camera. But will you use it for taking your wedding photo?"

Most YouTube comments are biased trash from fans or haters of the YT channel or the topic they're discussing. I try not to read YT comments too much and if I do read it, I don't take what they say too seriously or get bothered by what they say.

You'd be surprised how many people, including the groom and bride, use their phones to take selfies at weddings. They're dumb/cheap/poor af if they don't also hire a professional photographer with a high quality camera to take the official photos though.

Anyway, I hope an actual audiophile with good IEMs, headphones, and experience in the audio world makes a good English video review of the ZX-707 soon. I don't even care if they make legit criticisms or give negative opinions about the DAP, as long as they actually tested it thoroughly and spent enough time to come to a fair conclusion.

 

[nioh]

Some findings and magic happened this morning.

By the time I did the 1.01.04 firmware update, I was in the middle of the earphone burn-in process (I got the Final Audio A5000 recently and at that moment it had reached to 120 hours of burn-in. I plugged it to the 3.5mm Jack of my ZX707 so that such setup can both burn-in the A5000 and the 3.5mm jack of ZX707. they have been both running in an overnight sessions for 6-8 hours weekly). After the update I suddenly found the sub bass was tamed a lot, as stated in my previous post.

The "sub-bass lost" situation stays till this morning, as both of my devices had reached to 150 hours approx. (30 hours of further burn-in). I picked up and auditioned them for almost two hours and I found the sub-bass is back on all songs!! Although not to the extent of the bass offered by the previous firmware, now the bass resumes to 90% of it. I am satisfied again with the quantity (which increases back to the normal level) and quality, although the deep punch is still a tad behind the firmware ver. 1.00.12, but very close now.

The change is very obvious as I just auditioned both A5000 and ZX707 last night and the sub-bass was still missing. After an overnight burn-in session, the bass is now a day and night situation. I am very happy with this and I hope both devices keep improving till the burn-in reaches 200 hours.

Maybe it is a coincidence that the sub-bass lost was caused by:

1- the A5000 was changing the timbre during the burn-in.
2- the firmware update changed the timbre of the ZX707 to a bit of bright side, and also the 3.5mm jack is still in the middle of the burn-in process (timbre was also changing).

A double impact and effect indeed, if I am not wrong.

I did check the 4.4mm jack during the "sub-bass lost" period. I found that it has a slight bass roll off when I listened with my IE600 and EE Valkyrie MKII with 4.4mm balanced output. Although I have burned in the 4.4mm jack for 326 hours, I think I need to burn in for further 20 hours more then review the bass output from the 4.4mm jack.

Glad that you’re happy after the burn-in. The deep rumble with the Bone Conduction + 2x Dynamic drivers in my Odyssey is gone after the update and nothing is going to bring it back I’m afraid. With my other IEMs and headphones I don’t hear a huge difference because they weren’t that deep to begin with. Although some headphones like the iBasso SR3 which has a flat tuning sounds quite flat now, hardly any bass there.

I got a reply from Sony Japan. They said they have forwarded the request to flash different firmwares in the future. Although there is no promise, there is hope.

 

[Shannon Chng]

Tidal anyone?
When I try to restore my 4.000 titel (albums & playlists) it always stuck after ca. 2.000 downloaded titles (<100GB) The app crashes or freezes, the download list stops downloading and the app is getting totaly unreponsive. With only a few downloaded titels everything work like charm. I already tried differeńt sd cards and sizes without luck. My old Pioneer XDP-300 does not have any problems with the complete database.
The Tidal support is having no clue…
Is someone else observing similar problems?

Yes, I've been trying to get my files downloaded locally, I've got 300+ albums. Mostly crashes at the midway mark, Tidal starts behaving strangely. Suddenly those that had been downloaded were marked as not downloaded. I've been tearing my hair out.

 

[Dithyrambes]

@nioh Thanks for the hard work. I hope they are aware of the situation, and rectify a fix somehow. Its just awful that you can love a product, then you suddenly can't stand it. They should test their firmware more, but I have a feeling it was intentional for their product line up. I think most people that find this issue more glaring are people that have iems with dynamic drivers, compared to all BA. I would be willing to send my zx707 to Sony, for "repair" but it seems like a terrible solution to put a customer in, when they are the ones at fault.

 

[Laurentinus]

thank god the update require you to plug you player with power source to update. otherwise my player would be updated too

 

[alsorkin]

Wondering if anyone else is seeing that the ZX707 when streaming Amazon Music Ultra HD tracks that are 24-Bit/192 KHz shows both Device and Output at the full originating 24-bit/192 KHz quality? This has not been the case with other of my streaming sources such as the 300Max Ti DAP and Galaxy S23 Ultra with Questyle - M15. So there must be something Sony has done to enable this that the others have not.

 

[nioh]

Sony High-Res streaming (ON) upscales everything to 24/192. Could that be why it’s showing that ?

 

[PuDerBaer]

Yes, I've been trying to get my files downloaded locally, I've got 300+ albums. Mostly crashes at the midway mark, Tidal starts behaving strangely. Suddenly those that had been downloaded were marked as not downloaded. I've been tearing my hair out.

With Tidal and the download problem for me the device is completely useless. The question is if the problem comes from the device or the app?
In my case the mess starts between 1.500 and 2.000 downloaded titles.

 

[greenm]

With Tidal and the download problem for me the device is completely useless. The question is if the problem comes from the device or the app?
In my case the mess starts between 1.500 and 2.000 downloaded titles.

Try deleting Tidal and re-installing, you may need to download all your files again though Tidal downloads work for me (albeit slowly)

 

[greenm]

No difference after the firmware upgrade (High Gain Version) with Legend X or MDR-ZR1, you do have to turn the ZR1's volume way up (around 105) to get the best from them though