Sony Walkman custom firmware (non-Android)

[Sylveon]

When I go to the Wampy download page there are several files like (nw-a50.tar.gz, nw-a50.uninstaller.tar.gz) for different devices. What are these for?

It's for manually installing/uninstalling from Linux/macOS.

 

[J Kelley]

It's for manually installing/uninstalling from Linux/macOS.

Thank you! I really hated to ask....

 

[unknown321123]

Wampy v1.9.2

Now you can force a tape/reel combination for a specific directory by placing cassette.txt in that directory (#35).

Documentation: https://github.com/unknown321/wampy/blob/master/USAGE.md#cassette-skins-per-directory

https://github.com/unknown321/wampy/releases

 

[Meme123]

Wampy v1.9.2

Now you can force a tape/reel combination for a specific directory by placing cassette.txt in that directory (#35).

Documentation: https://github.com/unknown321/wampy/blob/master/USAGE.md#cassette-skins-per-directory

https://github.com/unknown321/wampy/releases

Hail to You and Mr Walkman , both of you gave us support past and now better than most of retail manufacturing, thanks again , really appreciate yours energy to keep Sony DAP long life and new life
regards

 

[WilcoRoger]

About the collaboration - is there something left to collaborate on? Most of inner workings were reverse engineered by either me or @MrWalkman; there is not much left to do.

Fun fact - it's exactly one month ago you wrote this. Then we were at v. 1.6.0 Currently we're at 1.9.2

 

[unknown321123]

Fun fact - it's exactly one month ago you wrote this. Then we were at v. 1.6.0 Currently we're at 1.9.2

Stuff added between 1.6.0 and 1.9.2:

• Spectrum analyzer
• Fm radio
• Audio filters

All discovered by accident, radio and spectrum were done just because I wanted to dynamically change icon colors on home screen (possible, but it always autoreverts to default, needs more reverse engineering). Don't remember why I did audio filters. There is no roadmap anymore, just bugfixes and occasional "neat user feature request, I can do it quickly" features like v1.9.2.

 

[royalemint]

Sorry if this has been answered, but what is the current latest version of the MrWalkman ROM? I have the Walkman One J Test (0303), is this the latest version as of now? Thank you in advance.

 

[Hakkachai]

Does the mod increase the volume on the balanced output of the WM1A ?

 

[autumns]

n00b here but would it be possible to force UAC1 in usb-dac mode through software similar to how JDS Labs has done with some of their devices? I'd love to able to use my A35 with my ps5 but the console is notorious for not supporting uac2 output through usb. i'm currently running walkman one with wampy on it.

 

[MrWalkman]

Stuff added between 1.6.0 and 1.9.2:

• Spectrum analyzer
• Fm radio
• Audio filters

All discovered by accident, radio and spectrum were done just because I wanted to dynamically change icon colors on home screen (possible, but it always autoreverts to default, needs more reverse engineering). Don't remember why I did audio filters. There is no roadmap anymore, just bugfixes and occasional "neat user feature request, I can do it quickly" features like v1.9.2.

Guess what, it's possible

Thanks again!

@royalemint yes, that is the last available version. There might be stuff in the future, but I don't want to make any promises.
@Hakkachai no, but with Wampy you might be able to do some stuff by editing the volume tables. Once I will get my modded WM1A I will tinker a bit with the volume tables to have some version which increase the volume (without distortion).
@autumns maybe @unknown321123 can chime in about this, in theory anything is possible I guess, but it needs someone with time and the know-how.

 

[unknown321123]

@MrWalkman import/export to csv was added to online table editor about 3(?) weeks ago; you probably missed it because it was added to patch notes via post edit. You can bulk edit data, apply math to it...

Does the mod increase the volume on the balanced output of the WM1A ?

You mean past default limit of 120 or...?

n00b here but would it be possible to force UAC1 in usb-dac mode through software similar to how JDS Labs has done with some of their devices? I'd love to able to use my A35 with my ps5 but the console is notorious for not supporting uac2 output through usb. i'm currently running walkman one with wampy on it.

You have tried connecting your device to ps5 and it failed, is that correct? I'm not sure about uac1 compability; don't have any uac1-only devices to check. If it doesn't work, you can ask for uac1 support here - https://github.com/zhangboyang/llusbdac.

 

[WilcoRoger]

@autumns maybe @unknown321123 can chime in about this, in theory anything is possible I guess, but it needs someone with time and the know-how.

It's Linux, so everything IS possible.
If I had the knowledge(!), time, tools - none of which I have - I'd try to optimise the hell out of the kernel especially for memory footprint (I used to do that a good decade ago on my home machine for speed), the Sony engineers might or might not have done that - but looking at what was done to some custom fw on Fiio X5 ( https://www.head-fi.org/threads/fii...volting-new-dac-drivers-and-much-more.906004/) , at least there were a lot space for improvement. Who knows what unnecessary kernel parameters were compiled in (or useful ones left out - RT?) what unneeded modules are loaded, etc, etc.

Of course it would be a major boost if Sony freed the source code of everything on these player(s), which won't happen, I know.

 

[MrWalkman]

It's Linux, so everything IS possible.
If I had the knowledge(!), time, tools - none of which I have - I'd try to optimise the hell out of the kernel especially for memory footprint (I used to do that a good decade ago on my home machine for speed), the Sony engineers might or might not have done that - but looking at what was done to some custom fw on iBasso, at least there were a lot space for improvement. Who knows what unnecessary kernel parameters were compiled in (or useful ones left out - RT?) what unneeded modules are loaded, etc, etc.

Of course it would be a major boost if Sony freed the source code of everything on these player(s), which won't happen, I know.

I don't think you'd be able to build the kernel out of what Sony made available. I remember someone tinkering with this, and them mentioning how some stuff is missing, maybe some Mediatek proprietary stuff.

 

[unknown321123]

I don't think you'd be able to build the kernel out of what Sony made available. I remember someone tinkering with this, and them mentioning how some stuff is missing, maybe some Mediatek proprietary stuff.

I tried to and failed, you need full device tree and (probably) little kernel. Or maybe it was me doing something wrong.

optimise the hell out of the kernel especially for memory footprint

Kernel doesn't do things like this, it just allocates and deallocates memory pages. You are looking for application optimization, standard interface in particular. In fact, Sony did a really good job with memory management, everything fits so nicely and there is always some free space; nothing leaks. There is a built-in service which tracks memory consumption, standard interface takes ~140 megabytes out of ~496 total. Everything else is disk cache and system services, which are nothing special, but it adds up. In the end you have 110-60 megabytes left depending on currently playing song (which is partially stored in memory). Wampy takes about 26 megabytes after loading skins and all that stuff, so even then you have a lot of memory to play with (scrobbler?).

unnecessary kernel parameters were compiled in (or useful ones left out - RT?) what unneeded modules are loaded, etc, etc.

Believe me, all parameters are needed, all modules are needed. You can do some miniscule improvements like disabling nfc and bluetooth service freeing like... 10 megabytes (?), but the tradeoff is that other services will spam "bluetooth unavailable" logs every couple of seconds.

I've also took a look at FiiO optimizations thread and guess what, the biggest improvement is clock increase (which, according to first post, comes with random reboots). Everything else doesn't matter that much. Some features are weird, like these:

- New Faster CPU Governors: interactiveX, PegasusQ,
- New Faster I/O Schedulers: zen, bfq, sio, vr, maple

Do they really need 5+ io schedulers? There is only one working, why don't they choose the best one?
Another thing is that there are no benchmarks; "faster" is not a good word when you describe performance. Is it 5% or 50% faster? In what conditions? What are the tradeoffs? Take a look at this:

- Increased available RAM by 20%
- LZ4 compression for better, faster swap and virtual memory usage
- ZRAM usage for additional system memory

They are compressing memory, compression is done by CPU, therefore they lose some battery on these operations, potentially impacting performance when compressing/decompressing data. How often does that happen? Do they really need 20% more RAM? What for?

A new custom AK4490 driver has been implemented, and a significant portion of redundant and/or unnecessary code has been removed from the sound drivers. Therefore, if not better, the sound should at least feel ‘cleaner’ when compared with previous or vanilla versions.

Statements like this should be taken with a pinch of salt, usually code is written for a reason. And (of course) there is no comparison between regular and new driver, so...

===========================

Why would you need to improve memory footprint anyway? You are not launching new applications, nothing is leaking, everything is stable. You can check memory stats by enabling abd and pulling /var/log/memmon.csv file, which has all the memory stats. In that file you may find the culprit of your issues and then start to think about possible optimizations.

 

[WilcoRoger]

i should have guessed that you tried recompiling the kernel

It is good to hear that the boys at Sony did a good job with the code - as a user I always admired the stability and speed (yes, I am looking at you, Hiby!!)

One could in theory implement alternatives - e.g do you want more battery life vs faster interface (aka CPU speed)? I am not saying this is a thing one should put any effort into, but tinkering is always a good reason.

I am just happy that my 2016 vintage A30 and somewhat younger A50 got new functions, interface, thanks to youse.