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We took a look at Sony’s all new Android-powered Walkman during this year’s CES. It was chunky, ran Ice Cream Sandwich, and priced at $1,200, the Walkman ZX2’s crazy high asking price made the smartphone a strictly audiophile-only affair.
Like we’ve seen Sony do with some of their other premium product lines (the Sony RX1 camera for example), they’re banking on the fact that anyone buying this device is not only an audio enthusiast, but probably has deeper pockets than most.
We suppose that’s what brought Sony to manufacture an expensive new “Premium Sound” micro SD card that will go on sale next month in Japan. Priced at $160 for only 64GB of storage, it’s definitely a lot more expensive than the $35 cards you’ll find on Amazon, but Sony’s SD card claims to produce less electrical noise when reading data, something only those with a really keen ear would be capable of hearing.
A Sony spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that they’re not even sure how well the product will sell, but they’re making it anyway for customers who demand sound quality.
Ok nobody’s hearing is that good, and it seems for that money the walk men should just have better shielding
Nobody’s hearing is that good. The trick of course is making people (with that kinda cash to burn) believe their hearing *is* that good and they should buy this gizmo.
Unfortunately, I don’t know if Sony is up to that task.
The emperor’s cape attitude, basically.
Pr you can spend 5 minutes research what they are trying to sell. Try to sound smart just make you more dumb.
No wonder SONY is swirling down the porcelain altar……
This thing makes no sense. Why did they think it was a good idea?
Wow stupid.
“Sony’s SD card claims to produce less electrical noise when reading data”
What does that even mean? Who cares as long as the DAC and amp is decoupled sufficiently from the noise?
Come on Sony, you can’t make claims like this without publishing some S/N data.
They did, if you go looking at the source
Can you link to the source? The only source I see is the WSJ article, and I don’t see any technical detail pertaining to the performance improvement attained from using the special SD card.
This makes me mad..growing up…if it didn’t have the Sony brand name on it, I didn’t buy it..I even bought the expensive Sony blank CDs to burn my music on my Sony ATRAC-3 CD player!!! I have a Bravia TV and a Sony Shelf Stereo system..PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4..I just purchased my Sony Z3!!
And all this talk of Sony bleeding money, investing in Niche products…and losing market share….this is stupid…embracing a brand just to see dwindle down to smithrrings!!!
Yeap, sony is dying.
Data is read “digitally” off of a microSD card. There’s no “noise” in that process that would affect the mp3 audio quality. If a segment can’t be read then the bits are simply gone.
Just get yourself a non-Sony 128GB card for $80-120 and be done with it.
Wow, you don’t know what you are talking about.
Wow, a nice empty “you’re wrong”. Please include a counterargument, otherwise you’re by definition just trolling ;)
Looks like some Sony shills are commenting here. I bet they have some high speed HDMI cables to sell you too…
Or you can not be so dumb, when you have nothing to say calling some a shill is really easy.
Actually, while you may not be able to hear it, read-out of flash causes noise on the 3.3v line, which in portable music players is also used in many cases to bias analog audio circuitry. While manufacturers try like crazy to isolate the digital section from the analog section, current mode coupling still happens where traces for the analog section run in the same direction as power for the digital section. Providing for decreased current noise at the flash memory COULD indeed decrease overall system noise slightly, in theory and in practice. BUT The decrease would likely be smaller in the average audio player than noise from other sources. It is unlikely that you’d even get a 1 decibel reduction in noise, which is really pathetic when you consider that in a decent product, noise will be well below -60dBu. 1 decibel improvement to -61 dBu would be about 70 millionths of a volt improvement. Not enough to care about. And most good audio players are going to be MUCH better than -60 dBu of noise. Probably closer to -68 dBu for a very high quality player.
For recording, it actually may be significant, since your mic preamp is going to have 30 to 40 dB of gain, from a preamp biased by that same 3.3v line. It could actually make an audible difference in recordings. How can you tell? Well, build a dummy mic rig, record silence (since there isn’t actually a microphone) and gain up the silence on playback. If you hear brief chirps in the noise floor, this product will likely attenuate those chirps.
How could they attenuate noise? Well, include a thin capacitor, something like 10 nanofarads, and an integrated ferrite bead or coil between the card connector and the capacitor. This way, current noise from the card pulls from the capacitor, and a more continuous DC current flows into the card, with all transaction current noise being absorbed by the capacitor’s bulk storage. This would help to keep the noise off of the 3.3v line
SD cards themselves do not make noise… there’s no moving parts, it’s all electronic. They could cause a little EMI that might affect the DAC and add a little noise to the audio, but I seriously doubt they produce enough for anyone to hear, especially if the DAC is anywhere close to good enough to justify the $1200 price tag.
Actually, while you may not be able to hear it, read-out of flash causes noise on the 3.3v line, which in portable music players is also used in many cases to bias analog audio circuitry. While manufacturers try like crazy to isolate the digital section from the analog section, current mode coupling still happens where traces for the analog section run in the same direction as power for the digital section. Providing for decreased current noise at the flash memory COULD indeed decrease overall system noise slightly, in theory and in practice. BUT The decrease would likely be smaller in the average audio player than noise from other sources. It is unlikely that you’d even get a 1 decibel reduction in noise, which is really pathetic when you consider that in a decent product, noise will be well below -60dBu. 1 decibel improvement to -61 dBu would be about 70 millionths of a volt improvement. Not enough to care about. And most good audio players are going to be MUCH better than -60 dBu of noise. Probably closer to -68 dBu for a very high quality player.
For recording, it actually may be significant, since your mic preamp is going to have 30 to 40 dB of gain, from a preamp biased by that same 3.3v line. It could actually make an audible difference in recordings. How can you tell? Well, build a dummy mic rig, record silence (since there isn’t actually a microphone) and gain up the silence on playback. If you hear brief chirps in the noise floor, this product will likely attenuate those chirps.
How could they attenuate noise? Well, include a thin capacitor, something like 10 nanofarads, and an integrated ferrite bead or coil between the card connector and the capacitor. This way, current noise from the card pulls from the capacitor, and a more continuous DC current flows into the card, with all transaction current noise being absorbed by the capacitor’s bulk storage. This would help to keep the noise off of the 3.3v line.
Excellent analysis. I was only thinking of EMI, I totally forgot about power supply line noise (my days as an EE are long past). For $1200, I’d hope Sony went to significant lengths to isolate the analog and digital sections.
I’ll buy one if they offer me about $1,000 cash with the purchase of a $1,200 walkman. Till then my phone will do the trick. You’d have to be pretty serious about sound reproduction or filthy rich to lay down $1,200 for one of these. Especially considering that anyone in the market for something like this already has a smartphone in their pocket that does the same thing. Maybe not as good, but still does it.
What kills me with this is that it’s a concept that could actually be useful done properly. Sony could leverage some nostalgia, pickup a few audiophiles, and have a device that plays more formats than any other all while adding other Android functions. However instead, they’re actually giving us 1,360 reasons why it may never work. Seriously, find a way to drop the price from something only some can own to something that everybody needs to own.
They should ask Neil Young how his overpriced over hyped mediocre sounding PonoPlayer is doing and being received.. and take a cue.
Wow, ok buy a 1200 $ music player, or a 400$ ps4? For 1200$ this should have true voice recognition, basic sensors with a addon so it could follow me around my house, mini hdmi out (dose this thing even play vids¿) …its like sony telling us we are stupid, just buy it. Iy would seriously need to be the most powerful Android device know n to man. It at the very least better play every fn audio format known. Ohh video too..
I get it. Got audiophile friends who spend thousands and thousands of dollars on audio equipment.
The ridiculous price of the Walkman (audiophile grade or not) is one thing, but to suggest $160 value for a 64gb micro SD card? A quick search on Newegg will return their best rated 64gb micro SD (a SanDisk Ultra w/ adapter) for under 40 bucks.
No doubt both the device and the storage unit are of premium quality, but they are hopelessly overpriced to boot.
“A Sony spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that they’re not even sure how well the product will sell, but they’re making it anyway for customers who demand sound quality”
This is UNFAIR. How about customers who want to heat their bagels during their commute to work? Sony must do a Walkman for these people too.
Wow and I thought balmer ran Microsoft onto the ground. Sony’s CEO is as incompetent as they come
Would like to see an mp3 player that runs Google music all access and is on the smaller side.. One that can be used in the gym or playing sports..
In my experiences, sd cards do make a difference in how things can sound but it’s very slight…i mean very slight. This memory card is probably doing that “slight” difference, which is a thing majority of the people won’t care but the small perfectionist will. It will probably give you like 1-5% boost in performance..which is not a lot, but do matter to some people.
Also, the NW-ZX2 is actually a pretty good audio device source and the sound quality is noticable, to lets say something like iphone using the same files. is it good? Yes. is it cheap? No….but honestly, the NW-ZX2 is good for it’s money when you’re comparing to other DAPs out there.
But Audio is hugely to-each-his-own type of field since everyone has different way (and preceive) hearing, just like food tasting. IE. someone might like the 500 dollars steak, but to some, it tastes no different than the steak at Dennys
You are saying you have two identical devices, you have a friend place different SD cards in each (with the same digital files) and you can reliably distinguish which has which SD card? I’m pretty skeptical to say the least.
Of course D/A parts must be protected from all sorts of digital noise in a device and engineers have been cognizant of this for many decades. I have never heard that they have a harder time with SD reads than with other digital operations.
I agree with the Sony is drunk comment. Too bad, the Z series has gotten good reviews and even though Sony lost my trust ages ago with rootkit issues, I’ve sometimes thought I would consider their phone offerings in the future. This stupidity doesn’t help their reputation.
It’s not reliably, i did say slight but it is there. like is aid it’s probably like 1-5% difference so it’s not a needed thing but if you’re a perfectionist, it might be something to satisfy you…
i guess it’s kind of like…if you enjoyed the video game, just a play through will do it…but some of those nitpicking people must platinum the game.
btw, not covering sony on for the price for this, even if it does help, this thing costs more than the proprietary vita card so… zx2 price i can look over due to prices with DAPs in general.
For a $1200 Walkman that $160 should be getting me a 128GB micro SD card, not a 64.
The thing is that the Walkman name isn’t even synonymous with high quality audio. It’s synonymous with being inexpensive and portable with a pair of really cheap headphones.
GO HOME SONY. YOU’RE DRUNK.
Fools and their money will soon be departed. This would fail a blind A-B test so fast it would make your head spin.
Vinyl, on a good turntable with a Tube Amp, through some Magneplanars.
A fool and his money are soon parted.