[growltiger]

I would be surprised too.   Are you implying that they tune their Walkman phone app to magnify the difference between their phones and their DAPs?  (Haven't investigated the latter, or the software differences, I hasten to say). 

 

[kramer5150]

  I have only come to the idea of using my phone for music because, having bought a Z3 for general phone functionality,  my iBasso DX50 decided to stop working (headphone jack came apart inside,for the second time).  What to do?  While researching the options for repair or replacement, it seemed obvious to slip an SD card into the Z3 and plug in the Shure S535 phones.  
 
Despite Sony's advertising claims about  HD sound (and the capacity to play lossless files, which had been a marginal selling point), at first I was surprised that that, being a phone, the sound was anything other than pathetic. Using either the Walkman app (more below) or a free music player that appears to use the native Sony software modules (same equaliser, menu of surround sound effects etc), the sound was reasonably musical.  Compared with dedicated music players of even a few years ago, really not bad.  But after a few hours. the deficiencies became clear. Though warm, the sound was pretty mushy, the entire sound stage being heard through a thin layer of soup, and completely lacking in layering, or precise location of instruments.  This was with all "effects" and equalisation switched off.  I experimented with the surround options, to see if this induced a better spatial illusion, but all I got from it was a added reverb and a few db of extra loudness. 
 
So, while researching my next DAP purchase, I came to this thread.  A lot of the assumptions behind the debate were not really ones I shared (including the premise that even a top-class phone can be a satisfactory music player). It certainly doesn't strike me as sane to buy a £400 phone and then root it, in the near certain knowledge that some functionality will be lost and the warranty invalidated. On the other hand, I could see that there was more genuine audio technology in the Z3 than I had realised,  and serious people were prepared to  compare it to at least a Fiio X1.   Despite this, the sound was like soup.
 
A breakthrough came, thanks to a sane voice on this thread, which referred to the possibility of downloading different player apps, specifically Neutron.  This removed the soup, banished the unwanted warmth of the Walkman app, and created a layered soundstage with pinpoint location (specifically the winds and the different string sections in a Mozart piano concerto).  The phrasing of the individual parts came to life, and the logic of the performance emerged.  An hour or two of A v B listening established that this was not some sort of placebo effect. On the other hand, thought decent, the sound was pretty lean. It could be criticised for being a bit more digital, less musical, than is ideal. It is not as good as I had been getting from my DX50.  But at least the music can be heard, and enjoyed.   And, as mentioned earlier in the thread, Neutron does contain an independent virtual volume slider that has more stops on it than the rather coarse physical volume control on the Z3.    It is surprising that a media technology company like Sony should, apparently, have so little understanding of what the end-user wants from the product;  their software approach entirely masks the potentialities of the hardware. 
 
Where does this leave me?   The Z3+Neutron combination is good enough to save me from buying an entry-level DAP as a stop-gap.   On days when only one device can be carried around, this is going to be quite satisfactory. For under £5 additional outlay, that is pretty good.   The combination is not good enough, on the evidence of my ears, to be the solution. So I shall continue to search for a dedicated DAP that makes a more complete job of realising the musicality, as well as the analytical structure, of the music that is on my files. 

Curious is the Neutron player any louder than the Walkman OEM one?

 

[cuiter23]

  I would be surprised too.   Are you implying that they tune their Walkman phone app to magnify the difference between their phones and their DAPs?  (Haven't investigated the latter, or the software differences, I hasten to say). 

 
No I don't think so. I don't think music player applications really make any differences it could just be placebo. Its more so the hardware used in Sony phones is lacking. 
 
I had a Z2 before and the sound was not up to par. 

 

[growltiger]

@kramer5150 
 
"Curious is the Neutron player any louder than the Walkman OEM one?"
 
How to put this?  The gain control in the Neutron player overrides the setting on the Z3 volume control. It also has many more stops on it, in fact from 0 to 100% gain.   But the 100% is 100% of what the phone is set up to do.  I have not experimented with settings of much above the neutral 50% position, as this is generally (depending on recorded level of the source file, and my IEMs) generally loud enough for me. I should say that when using the Walkman app, and moving the Z3 volume control up to about 6 (out of about 10) there would be a pop-up message on the screen warning against damage to hearing from prolonged use at such levels.  I guess on my Z3 there is not a hard European Union limit to the gain, unlike what is reported by some others. In ages past, when I had a Cowon S9 player, I had to set it to China, to avoid this problem, as the EU geographical setting was terribly quiet.  This is much louder, even at 50% on the Neutron. 

 

[growltiger]

   
No I don't think so. I don't think music player applications really make any differences it could just be placebo. Its more so the hardware used in Sony phones is lacking. 
 
I had a Z2 before and the sound was not up to par. 

The choice of a different music player app is not entirely placebo, as I can definitely use Neutron to strip out hidden settings used in the Walkman app, such as a significant degree of crossfeed, which in Walkman narrows soundstage and muddies separation.  I know this is correct, because the Neutron has a crossfeed control that enables me to put back much of the mushy effect of the Walkman.   
 
As I said in my original post, I think the Z3 is about adequate with Neutron, but not really good enough to be my default player. Without Neutron, it was definitely not up to par, as you say. 

 

[thepooh]

No I don't think so. I don't think music player applications really make any differences it could just be placebo. Its more so the hardware used in Sony phones is lacking. 

I had a Z2 before and the sound was not up to par. 

That reminds me of a lil chat regarding improvements from 3rd party applications, experienced reviewers and sound engineers will always deny the fact that for e.g Neutron or Poweramp add some true amplification by software tuning. However, within my experience, I managed to get more juice from the Z3 just by adding some artifacts from these applications. You won't be able to drive high impedance cans but you'll definitely notice the difference from your usual sensitive iems. Additionally, the hardware is factory locked on some functions, this is where rooting will give you access to unlock those device's capabilities, but it's at your own risk !!!

 

[cuiter23]

That reminds me of a lil chat regarding improvements from 3rd party applications, experienced reviewers and sound engineers will always deny the fact that for e.g Neutron or Poweramp add some true amplification by software tuning. However, within my experience, I managed to get more juice from the Z3 just by adding some artifacts from these applications. You won't be able to drive high impedance cans but you'll definitely notice the difference from your usual sensitive iems. Additionally, the hardware is factory locked on some functions, this is where rooting will give you access to unlock those device's capabilities, but it's at your own risk !!!

Thanks for this. Although there are ways to make the Z3 sound slightly better, its bottleneck is in its hardware it seems.

 

[growltiger]

Thanks for this. Although there are ways to make the Z3 sound slightly better, its bottleneck is in its hardware it seems.

Seems pretty clear there are hardware limitations, but a weekend of experimentation has persuaded me that it can be made to sound noticeably less bad than it does when using the Walkman app. It is clear to me that there are some hidden crossfeed and DPS settings in the Walkman app (and in the parts of it that are picked up by "players" that merely use the native software on the Z3).  For what it is worth, substituting Neutron did enable me to turn off all these "easy listening" aesthetic choices that the Sony software engineers had made.  This was definitely less bad.  But hardware limitations remain, as you say.

 

[mellio]

growltiger's message notwithstanding - he may be a much more experienced user of DAP devices than I am. My experience is different.
Since first writing, I have achieved much better results.
On a whim I decided to re-rip my CDs using dbpoweramp instead of EAC - fortunately I had only ripped about 10. I had read almost everywhere that they were equivalent, well I've found that not to be true at all, with dbpoweramp being miles better. My ripped files now sound as good as the FLAC files I had bought online. Those gave me a useful reference point as to how good the z3 could sound. Now I get the same great sound with FLAC files ripped from my own collection. dbpoweramp is straightforward, I only enabled one effect, Replay Gain as it seemed recommended by various sources. Then I tried two new things in the Walkman app: 1) enable a setting called in my French interface "Réglage dynamique", which may or may not be a translation of "Replay Gain", especially for files from average-sounding recordings; 2) in the headphones options, select the Sony headphone model that looked most like mine, and WOW, any remaining slight "blanket" effect I had on some files, GONE; this in effect acts as EQ. The headphones I use a lot these days are some Griffin Woodtones; I had wanted to get the wood in-ears everybody was raving about a few weeks ago, but they were not available for export, I found the Griffins instead.
The problem I think before was that excellent CDs had yielded good FLACs, and average recordings, worse (hardly listenable) FLAC files. With the dppoweramp ripping and the new settings, the excellent recordings, like the Lucinda Williams masterpiece Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, sound absolutely gorgeous; the average recordings sound excellent and perfectly listenable, with every detail present. I mean it's a totally different experience from what I was used to. It's high-end sound to me, audio bliss.
 
Oh and another thing: I simply don't understand the criticisms about the volume output because I've found zero issues there... To me it's adequate. I have the volume set at 60% most of the time and it is plenty loud, 100% would be deafening. Mine is a Swiss purchase, so maybe not subject to EU rules? Don't know whether Switzerland applies those particular regulations or not.

 

[growltiger]

  growltiger's message notwithstanding - he may be a much more experienced user of DAP devices than I am. My experience is different.
Since first writing, I have achieved much better results.
On a whim I decided to re-rip my CDs using dbpoweramp instead of EAC - fortunately I had only ripped about 10. I had read almost everywhere that they were equivalent, well I've found that not to be true at all, with dbpoweramp being miles better. My ripped files now sound as good as the FLAC files I had bought online. Those gave me a useful reference point as to how good the z3 could sound. Now I get the same great sound with FLAC files ripped from my own collection. dbpoweramp is straightforward, I only enabled one effect, Replay Gain as it seemed recommended by various sources. Then I tried two new things in the Walkman app: 1) enable a setting called in my French interface "Réglage dynamique", which may or may not be a translation of "Replay Gain", especially for files from average-sounding recordings; 2) in the headphones options, select the Sony headphone model that looked most like mine, and WOW, any remaining slight "blanket" effect I had on some files, GONE; this in effect acts as EQ. The headphones I use a lot these days are some Griffin Woodtones; I had wanted to get the wood in-ears everybody was raving about a few weeks ago, but they were not available for export, I found the Griffins instead.
The problem I think before was that excellent CDs had yielded good FLACs, and average recordings, worse (hardly listenable) FLAC files. With the dppoweramp ripping and the new settings, the excellent recordings, like the Lucinda Williams masterpiece Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, sound absolutely gorgeous; the average recordings sound excellent and perfectly listenable, with every detail present. I mean it's a totally different experience from what I was used to. It's high-end sound to me, audio bliss.
 
Oh and another thing: I simply don't understand the criticisms about the volume output because I've found zero issues there... To me it's adequate. I have the volume set at 60% most of the time and it is plenty loud, 100% would be deafening. Mine is a Swiss purchase, so maybe not subject to EU rules? Don't know whether Switzerland applies those particular regulations or not.

Few things.
 
First:  "Réglage dynamique" is a utility in Walkman ("Dynamic Normaliser" in English) that is supposed to make all the tracks play at the same volume.  I haven't tried it, because the music is meant to be at all sort of different levels.  I remember reading that it also levels out the dynamics within tracks, but that may be a libel.
 
Second:  I agree with you that the Z3 is plenty loud enough, and would be deafening at the top of the range.  Others seem to have reported that output volumes are limited by EU regulation, and I believe this is supposed to be the case, but I don't think it has been universally implemented on the Sony devices.
 
Third:  It may be helpful that you were able to select a headphone-matching option that altered some of the internal settings of the Walkman app.  In my case, none of the Sony options seemed comparable with the phones I was using, so I stayed with the "General" option.  It may be I missed something here.
 
Finally:  I am sure that it matters a lot which software is used for ripping CDs. When creating FLAC files it is important to experiment with the space compression, and also the type of anti-jitter that is selected.  I have been doing this for about 10 years, and have followed a fairly usual upgrade path from mp3 to FLAC.  In recent years, I have used Media Monkey, which also has a good database.  The FLAC files that sound poor on the Walkman (but less poor on the Z3 without Walkman) sound really excellent on the iBasso DX50, provided the source material was decent in the first place.

 

[mellio]

The Dynamic Normalizer I wouldn't necessarily use on all files, but I haven't found it hampers dynamics. I'm thinking here in particular about a Verve jazz album recorded in the 1990s where the bass was really buried and muddy. That setting cleared up the muddiness to the point notes and lines are now very clear and dynamic and detailed.
About the headphone matching, I found it interesting that it wasn't improving anything on my old files, but worked on the newly ripped ones.
Thanks for referencing Neutron, I will be testing it for the next few days; it has a few features I don't know how to use though, such as the parametric EQ.

 

[cuiter23]

  Seems pretty clear there are hardware limitations, but a weekend of experimentation has persuaded me that it can be made to sound noticeably less bad than it does when using the Walkman app. It is clear to me that there are some hidden crossfeed and DPS settings in the Walkman app (and in the parts of it that are picked up by "players" that merely use the native software on the Z3).  For what it is worth, substituting Neutron did enable me to turn off all these "easy listening" aesthetic choices that the Sony software engineers had made.  This was definitely less bad.  But hardware limitations remain, as you say.

 
The built-in DAC of the MDR-1A will definitely clean up the sound further. It's an option if you are looking for headphone matching with the Z3
 

  growltiger's message notwithstanding - he may be a much more experienced user of DAP devices than I am. My experience is different.
Since first writing, I have achieved much better results.
On a whim I decided to re-rip my CDs using dbpoweramp instead of EAC - fortunately I had only ripped about 10. I had read almost everywhere that they were equivalent, well I've found that not to be true at all, with dbpoweramp being miles better. My ripped files now sound as good as the FLAC files I had bought online. Those gave me a useful reference point as to how good the z3 could sound. Now I get the same great sound with FLAC files ripped from my own collection. dbpoweramp is straightforward, I only enabled one effect, Replay Gain as it seemed recommended by various sources. Then I tried two new things in the Walkman app: 1) enable a setting called in my French interface "Réglage dynamique", which may or may not be a translation of "Replay Gain", especially for files from average-sounding recordings; 2) in the headphones options, select the Sony headphone model that looked most like mine, and WOW, any remaining slight "blanket" effect I had on some files, GONE; this in effect acts as EQ. The headphones I use a lot these days are some Griffin Woodtones; I had wanted to get the wood in-ears everybody was raving about a few weeks ago, but they were not available for export, I found the Griffins instead.
The problem I think before was that excellent CDs had yielded good FLACs, and average recordings, worse (hardly listenable) FLAC files. With the dppoweramp ripping and the new settings, the excellent recordings, like the Lucinda Williams masterpiece Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, sound absolutely gorgeous; the average recordings sound excellent and perfectly listenable, with every detail present. I mean it's a totally different experience from what I was used to. It's high-end sound to me, audio bliss.
 
Oh and another thing: I simply don't understand the criticisms about the volume output because I've found zero issues there... To me it's adequate. I have the volume set at 60% most of the time and it is plenty loud, 100% would be deafening. Mine is a Swiss purchase, so maybe not subject to EU rules? Don't know whether Switzerland applies those particular regulations or not.

 
Try using the Tidal app. You won't have to go through all the ripping and encoding and the Tidal HiFi sounds no different to my ears than any CD that I've ripped in the past.
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/733233/tidal-lossless-streaming

 

[pcourtney]

   
Third:  It may be helpful that you were able to select a headphone-matching option that altered some of the internal settings of the Walkman app.  In my case, none of the Sony options seemed comparable with the phones I was using, so I stayed with the "General" option.  It may be I missed something here.
 
 

 
if you want to, try using the headphone matching option preset STH-30  ( it works for me quite well, using Shure E-500 iems's - which are the same family as the newer SE-535's ) 
 
http://www.headphone.com/products/shure-se535-sound-isolating-earphones

 

[growltiger]

   
if you want to, try using the headphone matching option preset STH-30  ( it works for me quite well, using Shure E-500 iems's - which are the same family as the newer SE-535's ) 
 
http://www.headphone.com/products/shure-se535-sound-isolating-earphones

Thanks.   I will give that a try.   Having now replaced my damaged iBasso DX50 with the superior DX90  (which I am enjoying a lot)  the Z3 is definitely my spare DAP, rather than everyday music source.  But matching the headphones in the settings would be good idea!

 

[m1ku]

  Is there a Sound quality difference between the Compact and Standard Z3 ?

 
I'm interest to know too. I couldn't find any teardown of the Z3c that shows the chips like the Z3 did. I would assume they will be using the same chip which means the same SQ? looks like everyone missed this post @.@