[ianeith]

The cable I am using is not an LOD one. The purchase of a separate LOD cable is necessary for the implementation of the setup that you mention.. I think it's an extra €20-30 incl. shipping to order it on Amazon.

 

[ianeith]

The cable I am using is not an LOD one. The purchase of a separate LOD cable is necessary for the implementation of the setup that you mention.. I think it's an extra €20-30 incl. shipping to order it on Amazon.

 

[cuiter23]

  I was ready to go for X1 until I read about Sony A-Series and now I'm a bit confused... 

 

What I really like about the Sony A15 is the convenient slim design as well as the significantly longer battery runtime (up to 30 hours of Hi-Res playback).

On the other hand it doesn't have a DAC and I'm pretty sure it's amp is weaker than X1's, which probably makes a difference in sound quality.

I'd be really interested to hear what you guys have to say regarding the efficiency of those players since they are more or less in the same league.

 

I'll use whichever I get with my Sennheiser IE60 and HD465 in order to listen to FLAC files.

 

 

 
How can the A15 not have a DAC? Every music player has a DAC or else it wouldn't be able to encrypt the PCM waves. The DAC of the A15 is within the S-Master HX. Take a look here:
 
http://www.sony.co.in/product/resources/en_TH/images/Overview/PA/walkman/F880/F886/s-master-digital-amplifier.jpg
 
Also, the DAC in the X1 is a low-mid end and a bit dated but for the price you pay for it (even cheaper than the A series) its a great value option! I just can't get over how ugly their players are.

 

[castleofargh]

 

  I was ready to go for X1 until I read about Sony A-Series and now I'm a bit confused... 

 

What I really like about the Sony A15 is the convenient slim design as well as the significantly longer battery runtime (up to 30 hours of Hi-Res playback).

On the other hand it doesn't have a DAC and I'm pretty sure it's amp is weaker than X1's, which probably makes a difference in sound quality.

I'd be really interested to hear what you guys have to say regarding the efficiency of those players since they are more or less in the same league.

 

I'll use whichever I get with my Sennheiser IE60 and HD465 in order to listen to FLAC files.

 

 

 
How can the A15 not have a DAC? Every music player has a DAC or else it wouldn't be able to encrypt the PCM waves. The DAC of the A15 is within the S-Master HX. Take a look here:
 
http://www.sony.co.in/product/resources/en_TH/images/Overview/PA/walkman/F880/F886/s-master-digital-amplifier.jpg
 
Also, the DAC in the X1 is a low-mid end and a bit dated but for the price you pay for it (even cheaper than the A series) its a great value option! I just can't get over how ugly their players are.

just to be clear on the DAC intuition, it's not a yoghurt and the year of release doesn't tell anything about how good the final output signal will be.(people should really stop with the all this " what DAC chipset is better?" thing). as a matter of fact the X1 does measure better than the A10 in most situations(because guess what? amps matter too^_^). the A10 is 100000000 nicer to use, but it certainly doesn't outperform the X1 in sound fidelity, impedance, driving power, noise...

 

[cuiter23]

 
just to be clear on the DAC intuition, it's not a yoghurt and the year of release doesn't tell anything about how good the final output signal will be.(people should really stop with the all this " what DAC chipset is better?" thing). as a matter of fact the X1 does measure better than the A10 in most situations(because guess what? amps matter too^_^). the A10 is 100000000 nicer to use, but it certainly doesn't outperform the X1 in sound fidelity, impedance, driving power, noise...

 
So you're saying a PCM5142 ouperforms a Sabre 9018s chip? I highly doubt that. But I do agree with you that the amplication is just as or even more important. 
 
Sony players lack power (although they are more than loud enough for me). If amplification is your concern just get an L5 LOD out to an amp. For me, one of the most important things is usability and the Sony just has a much more fluid and appealing UI. Not knocking on any of the FiiO products here as I do own some of their products and find them quite nice for the $$$.

 

[ClieOS]

   
How can the A15 not have a DAC? Every music player has a DAC or else it wouldn't be able to encrypt the PCM waves. The DAC of the A15 is within the S-Master HX. Take a look here:
 
http://www.sony.co.in/product/resources/en_TH/images/Overview/PA/walkman/F880/F886/s-master-digital-amplifier.jpg
 
Also, the DAC in the X1 is a low-mid end and a bit dated but for the price you pay for it (even cheaper than the A series) its a great value option! I just can't get over how ugly their players are.

 
Sony makes their own DAC chip, though it doesn't make it a better chip. As far as actual performance measurement goes, X1 is better than A10 in pretty much all front.
 
Also, the so called 'S-Master HX' is pretty much a Sony marketing term. PWM based amplifier has been in the market for quite some time now and they are not invented by Sony. Sony might like to call it S-Master, we just call it Class-D. There is nothing special about them.
 
I don't know where you get the idea that the DAC inside X1 is 'dated'. It is actually one of the rather recent release in TI's line of DAC, released less than 2.5 year ago. ES9018 is in fact more 'dated', from 6 years ago.
 

   
So you're saying a PCM5142 ouperforms a Sabre 9018s chip? I highly doubt that. But I do agree with you that the amplication is just as or even more important. 
...

 
Did he say anything about ES9018? Well, I didn't see it. Certainly the A10 series doesn't have one.

 

[cuiter23]

Sony makes their own DAC chip, though it doesn't make it a better chip. As far as actual performance measurement goes, X1 is better than A10 in pretty much all front.

Also, the so called 'S-Master HX' is pretty much a Sony marketing term. PWM based amplifier has been in the market for quite some time now and they are not invented by Sony. Sony might like to call it S-Master, we just call it Class-D. There is nothing special about them.

I don't know where you get the idea that the DAC inside X1 is 'dated'. It is actually one of the rather recent release in TI's line of DAC, released less than 2.5 year ago. ES9018 is in fact more 'dated', from 6 years ago.


Did he say anything about ES9018? Well, I didn't see it. Certainly the A10 series doesn't have one.

Thanks for the great info and I apologize for getting the dac dates wrong. He didnt say anything about the es9018 but he did say that dacs dont really matter so as a reference point I used the 9018.

And if we talk solely on measurements might as well buy the iphone 6s

 

[ClieOS]

If going by measurement alone, the Audio Precision Audio Analyzer result that I saw on iPhone 6, though solid as it is, still isn't going to beat X1.

 

[castleofargh]

 

Sony makes their own DAC chip, though it doesn't make it a better chip. As far as actual performance measurement goes, X1 is better than A10 in pretty much all front.

Also, the so called 'S-Master HX' is pretty much a Sony marketing term. PWM based amplifier has been in the market for quite some time now and they are not invented by Sony. Sony might like to call it S-Master, we just call it Class-D. There is nothing special about them.

I don't know where you get the idea that the DAC inside X1 is 'dated'. It is actually one of the rather recent release in TI's line of DAC, released less than 2.5 year ago. ES9018 is in fact more 'dated', from 6 years ago.


Did he say anything about ES9018? Well, I didn't see it. Certainly the A10 series doesn't have one.

Thanks for the great info and I apologize for getting the dac dates wrong. He didnt say anything about the es9018 but he did say that dacs dont really matter so as a reference point I used the 9018.

And if we talk solely on measurements might as well buy the iphone 6s

if you just isolate 1 component for comparison, then sure everything matters and some stuff will indeed be superior. I'm not saying all DAC chips are equal, that would be a lie. but even some pretty dated DACs can do up to 100db resolution when well used. look at DAP specs and you'll see that not many can pretend to such high numbers overall at the amp output. so in practice it makes the DAC part a not so important part simply because the rest isn't up to DAC specs.
like having the best engine in your car only really matters when you actually have 4 tires. (yeah I suck at analogies

)

 

[cuiter23]

 
if you just isolate 1 component for comparison, then sure everything matters and some stuff will indeed be superior. I'm not saying all DAC chips are equal, that would be a lie. but even some pretty dated DACs can do up to 100db resolution when well used. look at DAP specs and you'll see that not many can pretend to such high numbers overall at the amp output. so in practice it makes the DAC part a not so important part simply because the rest isn't up to DAC specs.
like having the best engine in your car only really matters when you actually have 4 tires. (yeah I suck at analogies

)

 
I completely agree with you. 
 
A better analogy would be a "bottleneck" lol. 

 

[Ekeng23]

.

I use primarily 24/96 or 192 FLAC and the rest is 16/44 FLAC, no MP3 or AAC at all.  I use Sony XBA-A3 IEM and it sounds great! Sounded good with the MDR-1A Sony headphones too!

I use it with no amp or other DAC, it's a great sounding unit, no enhancements or EQ either...

which do you prefer in soundings, a3 or mdr a1? Im a bit confused to choose between them...

 

[simonsullivan1]

  ........ and sometimes no matter what i do it just wont display album art for some albums no matter how many times i apply it, ive even used sonys own software and still nothing...

 
I've been looking for 3 days to a solution to the missing album art quandary, and think I've found a solution. 
 
I have the NWZ-A15 walkman and use a 128GB Sandisk card.
 
I have transferred by music onto the card via a card reader and also directly whilst the card is in the walkman.  The strange thing was I was getting album art for any ALAC albums I had but not mp3.  
 
I read somewhere that the walkman would not load progressive jpegs but would only load baseline jpegs. So I converted all to baseline (on a mac this is done [apparently] by converting to .png, then back to.JPG) - but this still didn't change the situation.  Having a jpeg in the album folder entitled folder.JPG, also doesn't help (at least for mp3's).  
 
Anyway to cut a long story short, using mp3tag for mac (someone has kindly ported a version that works via wine on the mac) I converted all the ID3 tags from ID3v2.4 UTF-8 to ID3v2.3 UTF-16 and now I have all my album art working.
 
Hope this helps others, and I assume it will work for other models also.

 

[castleofargh]

 

  ........ and sometimes no matter what i do it just wont display album art for some albums no matter how many times i apply it, ive even used sonys own software and still nothing...

 
I've been looking for 3 days to a solution to the missing album art quandary, and think I've found a solution. 
 
I have the NWZ-A15 walkman and use a 128GB Sandisk card.
 
I have transferred by music onto the card via a card reader and also directly whilst the card is in the walkman.  The strange thing was I was getting album art for any ALAC albums I had but not mp3.  
 
I read somewhere that the walkman would not load progressive jpegs but would only load baseline jpegs. So I converted all to baseline (on a mac this is done [apparently] by converting to .png, then back to.JPG) - but this still didn't change the situation.  Having a jpeg in the album folder entitled folder.JPG, also doesn't help (at least for mp3's).  
 
Anyway to cut a long story short, using mp3tag for mac (someone has kindly ported a version that works via wine on the mac) I converted all the ID3 tags from ID3v2.4 UTF-8 to ID3v2.3 UTF-16 and now I have all my album art working.
 
Hope this helps others, and I assume it will work for other models also.

we mentioned the ID3 thing a few times on the A10's topic. sorry you didn't find it sooner.
as an old grumpy guy, I just tend to stay with what works until it stops working, so I never went to ID3 2.4 and never had any trouble, be it with sony or other brands. it's counter intuitive in a world where updating stuff is often the only way to keep them running, but 2.3 is the universal one still to this day.

 

[simonsullivan1]

 
we mentioned the ID3 thing a few times on the A10's topic. sorry you didn't find it sooner.
as an old grumpy guy, I just tend to stay with what works until it stops working, so I never went to ID3 2.4 and never had any trouble, be it with sony or other brands. it's counter intuitive in a world where updating stuff is often the only way to keep them running, but 2.3 is the universal one still to this day.

Well bugger me - I knew the answer would have been somewhere in here - poor searching.
 
As a similarly grumpy guy I agree with the updating comment - there are plenty of instances where updates coming out that state 'bug fixes' but seem to contain a raft of new ones!  
 
Needless to say I'll be sticking with 2.3 here on out.
 
Cheers Castle

 

[jamor]

ive been going back and forth between sony and fiio and I think Im leaning towards the A17.    Battery life, portability, and easy of use are huge for me. 50 hours if you're playing your mp3s? wowza  30-50 hours vs 10-15 hours and still smaller? kind of a no brainer.