Sony Walkman custom firmware (non-Android)

[bigboybowers]

So while I'm waiting for the GURU of Walkmans I have a question.....

Theres a table and on it lay the following players which would you choose? Conditions are you can't sell, so solely for keeps and to enjoy......and you had a lot of DSD material.

1. Sony NW-WM1a
2. Sony NW-ZX2
3. Sony NW-Z507

I own a Samsung S21 Ultra and a Sony NW-A35 and to be honest I think I prefer the fact the walkman isn't Android as I want it solely for music, so all the extra stuff feels like it would get in the way. The WM1a says it handles WMV / H.264 / mpeg4, does this mean I could watch Nirvana unplugged whilst I listen to it? Or is it not that advanced?

Peace

Dan

 

[MrWalkman]

So while I'm waiting for the GURU of Walkmans I have a question.....

Theres a table and on it lay the following players which would you choose? Conditions are you can't sell, so solely for keeps and to enjoy......and you had a lot of DSD material.

1. Sony NW-WM1a
2. Sony NW-ZX2
3. Sony NW-Z507

I own a Samsung S21 Ultra and a Sony NW-A35 and to be honest I think I prefer the fact the walkman isn't Android as I want it solely for music, so all the extra stuff feels like it would get in the way. The WM1a says it handles WMV / H.264 / mpeg4, does this mean I could watch Nirvana unplugged whilst I listen to it? Or is it not that advanced?

Peace

Dan

I'd take the WM1A.

WM1A is more powerful and it should sound better than ZX2. The ZX507 doesn't have a good UI experience - it's a bit sluggish, and the battery runs down fast.

While initial specs for the WM1A mentioned video support, it doesn't show the video part. For some formats it just plays the audio. They planned to have video support, but the idea was scrapped.

 

[bigboybowers]

Hello, I'm not sure what could've happened to get you into this situation.

I'll get back to you with a solution when I'll have some time for this.

Thanks for the help, worked perfectly

 

[Hinomotocho]

Thanks for the help, worked perfectly

Better support than Sony

 

[proedros]

I'd take the WM1A.

WM1A is more powerful and it should sound better than ZX2. T

i used to own zx2 and went on and bought wm1a , wm1a is a better sound no contest about it

 

[Ricardo Daza]

Not sure if this has already been discussed in the thread (couldn't find anything by searching keywords), but I would love if my WM1A skips the library update every time I turn it on. I have a 1TB sd card full of music and it takes like 2 or 3 minutes before I can play music. Other DAPs I've tried either gives you a setting for automatic/manual library update or is smart enough to detect any changes in the sd card to force an update when booting.

This is probably a lot to ask, but has this been considered as a feature for your custom firmwares @MrWalkman ? By the way, I really appreciate your work, I recently installed the WM1Z-J3-Plusv2 tonality and loved it!

 

[Steen Pihl]

Not sure if this has already been discussed in the thread (couldn't find anything by searching keywords), but I would love if my WM1A skips the library update every time I turn it on. I have a 1TB sd card full of music and it takes like 2 or 3 minutes before I can play music. Other DAPs I've tried either gives you a setting for automatic/manual library update or is smart enough to detect any changes in the sd card to force an update when booting.

This is probably a lot to ask, but has this been considered as a feature for your custom firmwares @MrWalkman ? By the way, I really appreciate your work, I recently installed the WM1Z-J3-Plusv2 tonality and loved it!

I have a 1TB card too and if it's a re-scan or installation, it takes aprox. the time you mentioned. Once that's done, it only takes about 30 seconds to reload. That's with hi-res FLAC files and a handful CD resolution albums (the rare & loved ones)!
Bonus: The WM1Z-J3-PlusV2 setting is also the most satisfying here!

 

[Ricardo Daza]

I have a 1TB card too and if it's a re-scan or installation, it takes aprox. the time you mentioned. Once that's done, it only takes about 30 seconds to reload. That's with hi-res FLAC files and a handful CD resolution albums (the rare & loved ones)!
Bonus: The WM1Z-J3-PlusV2 setting is also the most satisfying here!

Makes sense. On my end, every boot (after initial scan) takes definitely more than a minute, which is a bit annoying because Im not very patient I guess load times also depend on file count and file format. My library is not the biggest count-wise, but it does have several DSD files. Maybe indexing DSDs take longer? I'll let the experts talk. Anyway, thanks for sharing your case

 

[nc8000]

If I ever turn my 1Z off it takes about 1 minute to re-scan about 60.000 tracks but normally I just leave it turned on. I think it has been turned off at most 10 times in over 6 years (plus reboots for fw installations).

 

[aceedburn]

Makes sense. On my end, every boot (after initial scan) takes definitely more than a minute, which is a bit annoying because Im not very patient I guess load times also depend on file count and file format. My library is not the biggest count-wise, but it does have several DSD files. Maybe indexing DSDs take longer? I'll let the experts talk. Anyway, thanks for sharing your case

Rebuilding of database on normal reboots shouldn’t take that long. 1 min max depending on number of files you have. If yours is taking longer it could also be due to badly tagged files or missing ID3 info that could slow down the process. That’s why I make it a point to run all my files through Sony music centre which fills in all missing tags into the files. And also updates the music sense feature in the Walkman.

 

[Ricardo Daza]

If I ever turn my 1Z off it takes about 1 minute to re-scan about 60.000 tracks but normally I just leave it turned on. I think it has been turned off at most 10 times in over 6 years (plus reboots for fw installations).

That's a lot more tracks than what I have, so something must be wrong with my library. I will give it a try leaving it on all the time, but I don't think that's the best approach for my use case because I use the WM1A like 3 or 4 times a week, so it will probably use more battery while on standby than actual listening. Thanks for the tip though

Rebuilding of database on normal reboots shouldn’t take that long. 1 min max depending on number of files you have. If yours is taking longer it could also be due to badly tagged files or missing ID3 info that could slow down the process. That’s why I make it a point to run all my files through Sony music centre which fills in all missing tags into the files. And also updates the music sense feature in the Walkman.

I will try running my library through the Sony Music Center app. I use PerfectTunes and I think it adds supported tag versions, but Im not sure if it overwrites existing old versions that might have an impact on library indexing. Thanks for your thoughts!

 

[Hinomotocho]

Regarding tagging, I use Tagscanner as I prefer sometimes to manually tag my music as a lot of it is quite rare, obscure or bootlegs. The settings is ID3v2.3 and I opt for 800x800 art tagged to each track instead of just in the folder so it looks decent when using PC/Foobar. Although my album art choice may not be optimal are there any tips for an efficient filing/tagging of tracks for the Walkmans? My 1TB card is possibly 3/4 full and the load times are pretty quick so I don't feel my choice of tagging each file with art is a slowdown. Is there anything about Sony Music Center tagging that may be optimized for the Walkmans?

 

[nc8000]

Regarding tagging, I use Tagscanner as I prefer sometimes to manually tag my music as a lot of it is quite rare, obscure or bootlegs. The settings is ID3v2.3 and I opt for 800x800 art tagged to each track instead of just in the folder so it looks decent when using PC/Foobar. Although my album art choice may not be optimal are there any tips for an efficient filing/tagging of tracks for the Walkmans? My 1TB card is possibly 3/4 full and the load times are pretty quick so I don't feel my choice of tagging each file with art is a slowdown. Is there anything about Sony Music Center tagging that may be optimized for the Walkmans?

I’ve done all my tagging with mp3tag and I also have cover art embedded in each file but the vast majority is 300x300. For tags I only have artist, album, track title, track number, genre, year and albumsort for pop/rock/jazz/blues where album name is prepadded by year so albums come in release order under the artist. And then mqa tracks have 3 more tags needed for them to be recognised as mqa.

 

[Hinomotocho]

I’ve done all my tagging with mp3tag and I also have cover art embedded in each file but the vast majority is 300x300. For tags I only have artist, album, track title, track number, genre, year and albumsort for pop/rock/jazz/blues where album name is prepadded by year so albums come in release order under the artist. And then mqa tracks have 3 more tags needed for them to be recognised as mqa.

I switched to Tagscanner from mp3tag as it had a 1 click recompress feature that 'fixed' the album art issue on stock firmware Walkmans.
I think I have the same general tag information. I know 800x800 is not necessary for the Walkmans but like the higher resolution for PC playback as I configure Foobar to display album art. Coming from an era of LPs, cassettes and CDs with foldouts I try to maintain some visual connection with the music I'm listening to.

 

[nc8000]

I switched to Tagscanner from mp3tag as it had a 1 click recompress feature that 'fixed' the album art issue on stock firmware Walkmans.
I think I have the same general tag information. I know 800x800 is not necessary for the Walkmans but like the higher resolution for PC playback as I configure Foobar to display album art. Coming from an era of LPs, cassettes and CDs with foldouts I try to maintain some visual connection with the music I'm listening to.

Yes I also use foobar and have it configured to show album art