[Mmet]

It comes down to perspective, and personal choice. We expect good engineering and reliability from Sony, as a base expectation, so the marketing focuses on other elements, to provide a flavor of what the engineers think, and investigated in the course of the development of the product. If their base engineering was not a given, I would be much less inclined to even look at Sony.

To many buyers, the information in the interviews is equally, or more important than the specs. The audio addiction "personality" of their engineers, and the perceived interests of their user base, is the basis of Sony's marketing. And I do find the interviews useful and interesting. Personally, unless Specs are abnormal, I do not look at them too closely. Every company publishes specs, some more detailed, and some less detailed. By themselves, they do not answer the most important question. How well will it produce music? Of course the specs do give a "feel", and an indication of capabilities. But are not enough by themselves to base a buy decision on.

Specs are mostly not that different from each other, and do not tell whether a DAP produces music that you will enjoy. Only a personal listen will tell you that. And previous experience with a company's products, and some experience with their reliability, and User Interface, are also necessary.

To me, I find it interesting to read about the solder with trace gold, the care they took with component/material selection, their through hole soldering, and special soldering for SMD devices, the special coils and capacitors, etc., etc. These do give a feel of Sony's audio focus, so their marketing is fine, in my eyes.

Your preference is specs, as you deem them the most relevant. That is what is important to you, and you want Sony to emphasize those aspects. Perfectly understandable.

If you are unhappy with Sony's marketing, then maybe you should be looking at other companies/products that you are happy with? After all, if they (Sony) are focusing on things that to you are irrelevant, then that is a clue that there is a mismatch in expectations, and design/engineering philosophy? No need to be angry at them, is my thought. Just buy from another company that meets your expectations. Get a DAP with impeccable specs from another company.

Thanks for your reply .. actually if the specs all what matters to me i wouldn't be here for the first place .. i know sony and love their walkman's sound
Was Just sharing my thoughts about that interview loudly .. that's it

Well if you are interested in the measurements side of things, here’s a video review that has both measurements and as well as sound demonstrations:

thanks for the video .. I've watched it many times .. that what i hoped sony engineers to talk about among the other things they mentioned..
I guess that i will keep buying walkmans and take their interviews as an entertaining stuff only

 

[BrandonSLi]

Well, the "remote control" function can be partially realized by KDE connect, and we can stream other device's media content by Audiorelay. Although those ways are not as satisfactory as the solutions via BT, it's better than nothing.

 

[Dron86]

Hi! I’m stuck in a choice between Zx707 and Shanling m6 Ultra. So, maybe someone had an experience with both daps? The main point is the sound quality.

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

Thanks for your reply .. actually if the specs all what matters to me i wouldn't be here for the first place .. i know sony and love their walkman's sound
Was Just sharing my thoughts about that interview loudly .. that's it


thanks for the video .. I've watched it many times .. that what i hoped sony engineers to talk about among the other things they mentioned..
I guess that i will keep buying walkmans and take their interviews as an entertaining stuff only

I won’t think Sony would be trying to entertain you with their engineering interviews, it’s not a movie or show. I would view it more as partly Marketing material and partly as a craftsmanship showcase by them.

These Japanese employees are insanely skilled/passionate/perfectionist about their products and sometimes would make design choices that is not visible/not important to the end consumer, but to them these matters a lot. Steve jobs actually was very inspired by the engineering of Sony and Apple till today still uses Sony oem components(camera sensor).

I would view Sony as somewhat idiosyncratic in the sense that they often would go out of the way to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes they get it right but sometimes they do fail as well.

 

[Duartisimo]

I am about to hit the purchase button for the ZX707 from Rakuten via FromJapan... how do I know if this particular one is uncapped? or are all those from Japan like this?

 

[purk]

I am about to hit the purchase button for the ZX707 from Rakuten via FromJapan... how do I know if this particular one is uncapped? or are all those from Japan like this?

All Japanese domestic units should not be volume capped

 

[Duartisimo]

All Japanese domestic units should not be volume capped

thank you sir, pulled the trigger.

 

[SolarCetacean]

The Sony Music Player app has grown on me, despite its weird lyrics handling quirks and a few UI bugs (listing by album will combine albums from different artists but the same album title). The panel switching via directional swipes feels nice to use and the app is remarkably robust in certain areas compared to other players. I went on a search for a different player since I wished that the Sony player could do EQ when using a USB DAC but ended up coming back to the default player.

USB Audio Player Pro seemed like the best option, as it had good EQ options and integrated UPNP functionality along with an attractive UI. I had used it on my phones before, but it was very unstable with Android Auto. It seemed to work well, but when it came to playlists, it totally dropped the ball. My playlists are stored on the SD card as m3u files with Walkman-customized absolute paths for all entries in the playlist, so there should be no confusion as to where an entry is located. Well, UAPP will say "parsing X/350" songs when I first load the playlist, but then the actual playlist it displays after parsing only contains a few songs. On one playlist with over 200 songs, it only shows 18. On another playlist with 80 songs, it only shows 8 after parsing. I've seen playlist issues using UAPP on my phone like it not loading any songs after parsing the m3u file, but this issue of only a few songs being parsed is a new one to me. Which songs are seen in UAPP are consistent even if I delete the UAPP playlist and re-parse from the m3u, and it persisted after deleting and reinstalling the app. Weird! I decided to not bother trying to figure out why those songs weren't being loaded and gave up on UAPP.

Poweramp was my next bet. It has extremely comprehensive EQ capabilities as well as in-depth output options as well as USB output support. The seek bar is kind of weird though, since it doesn't show the whole length at a time. But it yet again falls short on playlist parsing, because it doesn't seem to actually follow absolute paths. It looks at the filename, and if there are multiple songs with the same filename, it looks at the containing folder's name. If both file and folder name match, it picks the first one seen in the filesystem. This can result in the wrong song being placed in the playlist if two artists released songs with the same name! This problem is most acute with single releases, as the album name will match the song title. I have to go around changing the filenames to avoid this issue, which is annoying when I have used a certain naming convention (album-artist/album/dd.nn title) for years.

The default Sony player, to its credit, has no issues loading those same m3u playlists. Every path is followed, and there are no weird cases of missing or incorrect songs in playlists. I'm a big playlist user, and the next time I sync my music and playlists to the Walkman, I don't want to worry about whether the wrong song was placed in a playlist or if all of the playlist's songs will appear. So I'm sticking with the stock player for the time being. Does anyone know the right contact email for Walkman software? All of my UI issues with the player seem to be fixable in a patch, so if I could alert the dev team about these, they could fix them in an upcoming firmware.

 

[lucius72]

I've bought a NW-ZX707 from Japan but unfortunately the seller forgot to remove the passcode from the unit before the reset and now I own a nice brick. Because I don't have the original receipt Sony wouldn't fix it for me. Does anyone know how to get into recovery mode? I've tried different combinations of buttons but it just restarts. I know it won't remove the Google lock but at least I will have it in the original state so I can try some other options.

 

[MudEnjoyer]

I went on a search for a different player since I wished that the Sony player could do EQ when using a USB DAC

But it does? I mean, as long as you are happy with a lame graphical 10 band EQ.

 

[iskender299]

Can’t the seller just tell you the password?

I've bought a NW-ZX707 from Japan but unfortunately the seller forgot to remove the passcode from the unit before the reset and now I own a nice brick. Because I don't have the original receipt Sony wouldn't fix it for me. Does anyone know how to get into recovery mode? I've tried different combinations of buttons but it just restarts. I know it won't remove the Google lock but at least I will have it in the original state so I can try some other options.

 

[SolarCetacean]

But it does? I mean, as long as you are happy with a lame graphical 10 band EQ.

I can't use it though. When I go to the Sound Adjustments, it says that adjustments are not available with USB output. This is the Walkman using an external DAC, not the Walkman being used as a DAC.

 

[lucius72]

Can’t the seller just tell you the password?

Thanks. That would be the easiest but unfortunately no.

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

Try this to enter recovery mode:

djselbeck said:
In case anyone needs to do that in the future.

• Power off the device
• Press and hold Power and Vol- until the sony logo comes up
• Release buttons. After a while an open Android and "No Command" should appear
• Press and hold Power, press Vol+, Release Vol+, Release power

You now have the recovery menu where you can select items with vol+/- and enter with Power button

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

Not sure if this will work for ZX707, this method worked for WM1-M2 to bypass google account check:

AT LAST, I follow this to solve my problem.