[AnakChan]

Just two pix first and a few words later :-
 

 

 

[Nomax]

Looks nice the red case

My Ak380 Copper/Amp is in the Black Case




Regards Nomax

 

[AnakChan]

  Just two pix first and a few words later :-

 

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

 

 

 
So about 1.5 weeks' back I mailed Sony to ask them if I could have a listen to their new MDR-Z1R (and NW-WM1Z player but that's on a separate post). They were nice enough to accept my request and invite me over to their office for a listen. I was there for about 1.5 hrs and spent most of the time talking to the Sony staff. Therefore this isn't so much of an impressions as my listening session was brief. A lot of what I do have to say may have been mentioned here in the thread already - so I do apologise as I've not been following this thread closely.
 
There's no particular order/structure to this post so I'm just going to lay it all out there.
 
The headphone is a decently light headphone at 385g. The drivers are 70mm with a magnesium dome of 30 microns in thickness. To my understanding from my conversations with Sony, although magnesium has been used before in headphones, this is a first for magnesium to be done so thin for a driver dome which was only possible with technology made available 3-4 years ago and as such is the first time magnesium of this thinness to be used as a dome for the drivers. The drivers were designed and measured to 120kHz.
 
The housing is also made up of 3 layers which manage resonance. The inner layer is a polymer with next layer a thin breathable skin made from Canadian (pulp), and finally the outer is a non-magnetic stainless steel mesh. When designing the housing, managing the resonance was one of the primary factors. The earpads are made of lambskin.
 
Sony supplies a 3.5mm TRS black cable along with 4.4mm balanced black cable. They are also developing and will be offering Sony cables engineered together with Kimber Kable as options in various SE and balanced termination options.

How did they feel? To me the the headphones were light (but not the lightest). They look deceiving I expected heavier but they were very comfortable on the head. Cupping them together, it seems they don't leak much sound and they isolate pretty well. This is surprising considering the cup housing is breathable (a little more on that later). There was decent clamping on the headphones but not uncomfortably so...for my head at least. Now for the cup housing, when I had the headphone unplugged and I covered the stainless steel mesh cups with my hands, I had this rather fine/little weird "suction-like" sensation. It was almost akin to say switching on a noise cancellation switch (but not that obvious....this was a lot more subtle). What I didn't understand is if that shows it's breathable, how does it isolate the external noise so well. But overall, I had no complaints in terms of the comfort and feel of the headphones. The cups swivel well enough to suit the shape of my head and position of my ears.
 
For the driver efficiency, to me it was average. I was listening off my AK380+amp high gain, around 110-115 on single ended whilst around 100 on balanced, higher than my Fostex TH-900 but not excessively so. I definitely wasn't maxing out on my AK380+amp for sure.

As for the signature, now this is a personal thing - and varies from individual to individual. For what I'm used to (the TH-900, SR-009, etc.) the MDR-Z1R is more on the warmer side. Again I didn't get to listen to it so long that I could scrutinise every little bit of it but in a brief 2-3 sentence summary, It was a warm, smooth & analogue-ish like signature. The micro details more subtle than "glaring in your face" obvious. It was more musical than analytic to my ears. And in terms of stage presentation, it was more a front row styled presentation to my ears. Soundstage wise to me it is as what one would anticipate from a closed headphone but with decent depth imaging nevertheless. Overall to my ears, it has a more laid back and immersive signature as opposed to say something like the TH-900 which has a more an exciting/engaging kind of signature.
 
For now, those are my early and limited impressions of the headphones. I do wish I have more time to listen to the headphones for a longer period of time with more proper testing.

 

[thanatosguan]

 
The drivers were designed and measured to 120kHz.

 
Did they say something about their obsession with ultra-high frequencies? How exactly do these frequencies affect perception of sound? A lot of people would argue this is way above Nyquist-limit, so most recordings don't contain anything above 22kHz (-ish, depending anti-aliasing filters) so most headphones cap at

44100Hz​

. Did Sony conduct some internal research regarding this?

 

[Mediahound]

   
Did they say something about their obsession with ultra-high frequencies? How exactly do these frequencies affect perception of sound? A lot of people would argue this is way above Nyquist-limit, so most recordings don't contain anything above 22kHz (-ish, depending anti-aliasing filters) so most headphones cap at

44100Hz​

. Did Sony conduct some internal research regarding this?

It just seems like marketing mumbo-jumbo to me. 

 

[thanatosguan]

 
It just seems like marketing mumbo-jumbo to me. 

Thing is, they do reproduce these ultrasonic frequencies... Why?
 
 (Not my own data, snatched off the Internet somewhere. But this is indeed measured from Z7.)

 

[Mediahound]

  Thing is, they do reproduce these ultrasonic frequencies... Why?
 
 (Not my own data, snatched off the Internet somewhere. But this is indeed measured from Z7.)

Probably just becuase the driver technically is able to so they decide to show it. Other headphones probably can too but they don't show it.  

 

[thanatosguan]

 
Probably just becuase the driver technically is able to so they decide to show it. Other headphones probably can too but they don't show it.  

True. But I'd like to see if Sony at least has some explanation for it. It's pretty clear they're not doing this just to flatten the frequency response. They said something about "high-resolution frequency" in the interview with thatonenoob.
 
Another thing is some headphones caps at 50kHz, slightly higher than the usual 44Khz.
 
Most likely a marketing thing, like SACD and DSD, but it'd be nice to know if there's something behind the scene.

 

[goobicii]

 
It just seems like marketing mumbo-jumbo to me. 

 
no its not,its just that people are un educated when it comes to this subject,its like this : headphone that can reach out far beyond 20khz will reproduce freqencies in audible spectrum more accurately,less distortion,better transients....     
 
its same like sampling rate,these people who have no idea what they talk about think that higher sampling rate than 44100hz is only for extended high freqency range whitch is completly useless since the freqency extension is not audible,but in reality there are benefits such as superior dithering & improved time resolution,its same for headphones,does anybody care that Stax can play 50khz? no,but their superb transients and crystal clear 5-20khz audible region is possible becose they can go so high

 

[thanatosguan]

   
no its not,its just that people are un educated when it comes to this subject,its like this : headphone that can reach out far beyond 20khz will reproduce freqencies in audible spectrum more accurately,less distortion,better transients....     
 
its same like sampling rate,these people who have no idea what they talk about think that higher sampling rate than 44100hz is only for extended high freqency range whitch is completly useless since the freqency extension is not audible,but in reality there are benefits such as superior dithering & improved time resolution,its same for headphones,does anybody care that Stax can play 50khz? no,but their superb transients and crystal clear 5-20khz audible region is possible becose they can go so high

So, something like an SA5000(caps at 110kHz), or Z1R(caps at 120kHz) supposed to have really good transient response? Z7 caps at 100kHz.
 
Just to clarify: We're not talking about sampling rate here but the actual soundwave coming out of the cans. Many advantages DSD and high level PCM has over the CD standard like lower noise floor with higher bit depth.

 

[Mediahound]

   
no its not,its just that people are un educated when it comes to this subject,its like this : headphone that can reach out far beyond 20khz will reproduce freqencies in audible spectrum more accurately,less distortion,better transients....     
 
its same like sampling rate,these people who have no idea what they talk about think that higher sampling rate than 44100hz is only for extended high freqency range whitch is completly useless since the freqency extension is not audible,but in reality there are benefits such as superior dithering & improved time resolution,its same for headphones,does anybody care that Stax can play 50khz? no,but their superb transients and crystal clear 5-20khz audible region is possible becose they can go so high

If that were true all headphone manufacturers would be saying this and also designing their drivers to some how be super tweeters to affect the performance of their headphones in the range humans can hear. 

 

[XERO1]

Originally Posted by AnakChan /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 

As for the signature, now this is a personal thing - and varies from individual to individual. For what I'm used to (the TH-900, SR-009, etc.) the MDR-Z1R is more on the warmer side. Again I didn't get to listen to it so long that I could scrutinise every little bit of it but in a brief 2-3 sentence summary, It was a warm, smooth & analogue-ish like signature. The micro details more subtle than "glaring in your face" obvious. It was more musical than analytic to my ears. And in terms of stage presentation, it was more a front row styled presentation to my ears. Soundstage wise to me it is as what one would anticipate from a closed headphone but with decent depth imaging nevertheless. Overall to my ears, it has a more laid back and immersive signature as opposed to say something like the TH-900 which has a more an exciting/engaging kind of signature.
 
For now, those are my early and limited impressions of the headphones. I do wish I have more time to listen to the headphones for a longer period of time with more proper testing.

 
So overall, do you give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down?

 

[grizzlybeast]

You really think he is gonna say thumbs down?

 

[Sonic Defender]

   
no its not,its just that people are un educated when it comes to this subject,its like this : headphone that can reach out far beyond 20khz will reproduce freqencies in audible spectrum more accurately,less distortion,better transients....     
 
its same like sampling rate,these people who have no idea what they talk about think that higher sampling rate than 44100hz is only for extended high freqency range whitch is completly useless since the freqency extension is not audible,but in reality there are benefits such as superior dithering & improved time resolution,its same for headphones,does anybody care that Stax can play 50khz? no,but their superb transients and crystal clear 5-20khz audible region is possible becose they can go so high

What proof do you have for any of this?

 

[Sonic Defender]

Just to clarify: We're not talking about sampling rate here but the actual soundwave coming out of the cans. Many advantages DSD and high level PCM has over the CD standard like lower noise floor with higher bit depth.

Again, in an effort to be clear, is there evidence that these things are audible or just measureable?