Sony PCM-D50 as DAP

[a_tumiwa]

http://naomafei.blog.163.com/blog/static/3264933620101491352195/
 
http://erji.net/read.php?tid=810650&page=1&fpage=1

 

[3602]

Oh, this one. Read it before.
If you want me to translate it, I cannot, for that I am at a place where I shouldn't be browsing the web in the first place.

 

[GreenLeo]

I won't do the translation.  In simple terms, 801 was the winner.

 

[gameboy115]

 
Quote:

I won't do the translation.  In simple terms, 801 was the winner.

LOL. Thanks for hype you offer. It is very convincing statement though when I look at your rig

 

[GreenLeo]

Why is it a hype?  That's what it was said in the links.
Quote:

 

LOL. Thanks for hype you offer. It is very convincing statement though when I look at your rig

 

 

[Geissler]

I've had the M10 for a week now so I'll add some observations of how it fares in real-world mp3 playback situations.
 
First of all, it sounds great, and it has no trouble driving my beyer DT150 (250 ohm IIRC) while sounding much tighter than the DAC in, say, my laptop. Not quite as clear sound as from my NI audio kontrol 1 interface (cirrus DAC).
Despite that, the interface is not great. Sony designed this to be an audio recorder, and it accomplishes that task exceedingly well. mp3 playback feels like an afterthought. Problems:

1. So you're listening to an album and you want to browse your music. Hit menu. Nothing happens. You're not allowed to browse the files unless you press "STOP" and stop playback. Huge annoyance.
2. No nested folders. It will detect everything on the memory card, but in the browser it'll lay out only the folders which directly contain audio and place them in the root folder. For example, say you copy a folder called "Calexico" which contains two child folders, "hot rail" and "the black light". The M10's menu will only show "hot rail" and "the black light", alongside every other album you have on there. Everything is put in root regardless of folder structure. Possible annoyance.
3. You can't browse the songs in a folder, at least not with a menu. Hit "play" on a folder and it'll take you to the playing screen. Hit "play" again and song 1 starts playing. The only way of browsing the songs is by using the forward and back buttons here. Annoying, particularly for folders with many files. Also annoying for browsing your recordings because skipping tracks takes far longer than it did with, say, the old MZ-R50 minidisc's clicky wheel.
4. No EQ
5. volume changes slooooooooowly, even if you hold the button, and to top it off the "VOLUME: XX" image takes up the entire screen for 3 seconds every time it's changed, just like the hold screen.
6. changing between internal and card memory takes 8 button presses. It doesn't seem like much, and there's always the cross-memory feature, but if you're listening to music and you need to record something fast, this is less than optimal. On top of that, if the current memory is full the cross-memory feature doesn't work automatically - it simply says "MEMORY FULL" and forces you to change the memory manually with those 8 clicks. I find this so annoying that I'm just ignoring the 4GB internal and using the 8GB microsd for everything.

 
In my opinion you'd be better off sticking with sansa. The M10 is very good at recording but not much else.

 

[solartears]

I am a chinese ,in fact most people do not think d50 is  suitable for listening to music

 

[stmule]

Guys，I`m a chinese who just passing by.
It`s clear that listening MP3 using a DAP is sort of taking contraceptive drugs to cure headache.
Just like some damn ads.
My thinking is very simple， Sony， as we all know， was a company who doing will in mediaplayer business，and it already had a lot decent product lines.
What the hack will coming to their minds to ****** with a DAP and say， as a better mediaplayer ？
In fact， Sony has many MP3 player and CD·s、MD·s， and D50 is only a badass DAP.
Music？ Even sony itself could came up with something much better.

 

[yates7592]

This is an old thread, but canybody recommend a neutral portable DAC (not amp) for pairing with the D50 - i.e. portable DAC-only with optical-in?

 

[liyefei]

I owned a D50 and i used it when i want to buy a headphone, cause it is compact to carry and easy to test

 

[halomusic]

d50 output to earphons not good(with out amp)

 

[tinkertailor]

Hey guys, I am new to headfi but I thought I would weigh in on this. I record my own music and use the PCM-D50 for that reason, it has great mics and build qaulity. I used to ownt he PCM-m10 and the D50 is a nice step up from it (I miss the PCM-M10s portability and battery life but the D50 is worth it!). THe problem with using it as a portable DAC is that it is very specific with the file types and the interface is not convenient. It does have the nice aspect of being able to drag and drop files but there is no sub menus that are easy to navigate. When I was in China (Guangzhou) I happened to pull it out and many Chinese people commented on it being good for listening to music - I was surprised.
 
Sound Quality: I can vouch that it sounds very good. I have never really used a good audio player. But Pairing it with yuin pk2s or Grado Sr80s I get  a good sound. I just feel like I can hear the details and I can turn it way up and just get lost in sounds with it. It is slightly more powerful than an iphone because it can drive a Yuin Pk1 to a listenable level (though not very loud) while the iphone couldn't do a good job at all. And the Pk1 sounded amazing through it without an amp while in the iphone it didn't. I don't know the science behind any of this.
 
If anyone wants we to perform any tests or compare anything with them I would be happy to do so. I am new to headfi and at this point my comparisons and reviews are rather novice.
Cheers.

 

[ste787]

sony PCM-D50 as DAP, so far only the AK240 surpass it. I think maybe Ak380 too, but that is crazy money.

 

[sodasoda]

REALLY NEEDS AMP BRO