Groundbreaking for $3,600 these days, for example, would be an implated player with cochlear implants that you can feed inductively with MP3 and that draws its power from the temperature difference between body and outside temperature.
That's what I would call groundbreaking today.

 

"High quality solder containing gold
The exceptional conductivity of gold ensures absolute minimum signal loss. For clearer sound and vocals, a premium, audio-grade lead-free solder with a small amount of gold connects the circuit of the WM1ZM2 to the battery."

audiophile scene is filled with a ton of snake oil scammers

 

I would think the 40th anniversary NW-A100TPS is more predestined for this. But it's cheaper...

According to its specifications, it even supports 5,645 kHz.

 

for 3k this is kinda bullshit, NFT level of bullshit.

 

When on the road, I'll just to music on the phone I already have, and all it's terrible sound quality

I agree with the people saying that this is on the "snake oil" end of things, or for collectors, or people with way too much money to burn. Now if Sony comes out with the Walkman Vinyl Edition........

 

The old Walkmans are rarities and collectibles. Sometimes the rich have a collecting hobby and then the price goes on ebay (online auction house) to the highest bidder.

Now what about Sony. Every big company has 3 target groups or buyer groups. 1.) Low 2.) Mid 3.) High Budget. So products are made for the poorer buyer class for supermarkets. Then the middle range, employees and high earners. And as the last area rich and super rich.

Low Budget



Mid Budget



High Budget

 

those who can afford it will be happy about it and the others stay in the internet forums ....

 

Last edited: Feb 14, 2022

and by now, we all expect this. But from Sony? Do they often make products like this? That is the more surprising part. This thing looks like DJ Khaled made a mad dash past the entire Japanese R+D and QA departments. Granted, you try to tackle that guy yourself....

There's an interesting mental picture for you

 

Last edited: Feb 14, 2022

ill buy both, the gold as an investment, the alu for daily use

 

maybe the first series will even be worth much more than what follows

 

The very first Walkman, Sony TPS-L2 from 1979 (EBAY from 150 EUR to 1.049,00 EUR)
https://www.ebay.de/b/Walkman-Tps-L2/15053/bn_7005505760

 

If that's the case, then my beloved hi-fi system is also an investment ...

 

Nonsense Ad-speak by the way. For audiophiles hearing no physics but social science in college:
Silver is by far the best metallic conductor at room temperature. Even copper is a better conductor than Gold.
Gold is used in electrical connectors not because its a good conductor but because it does not oxidize by normal operating conditions.

 

Last edited: Feb 14, 2022

I had owned a model from around 1980. It was whole light blue, and so were the headphones (stiff on the ears). The batteries made it a bit heavy, and the tape transport made them wear out within a couple of days. The tape transport went out of order rather soon, within two years (Japanese quality), so I listened to FM radio only later on. Then I threw it into garbage. No regrets. The sound lacked top highs, and the bass was absent even much more. So its quality is just a legend. And using gold parts to listen to a crappy mp3 is just stupid.

 

Well I got to say I'm dissapointed in what they've done.

It's not the price, to behonest the price is the only thing that isn't a supprise. you have to remeber that this is a 40th annaversay product and they are always expensive collectors items.

it's the fact that there is nothing in it that couldn't have been done 10 to 15 years ago.

this may turn into a rant but I will now attempt to complain my way through all the features.

Purer materials for purer sound, not always the case but ok. We have 99.99% oxygen fee copper caseing, how dose this help? we normally want this level of pureity in our cables to the speakers so we have the same level of resistance and therefore the same level of volume at each speaker. In this product it's in the case, to allow less resistance in the electricity to flow into your leg when in your pocket?
also gold plated, incase the copper didn't have a good enough conductiverty.

Faithful sound reproduction. questionable as you'll see in a bit the sound is processed heavly. under this claim, a shit 128kb/s mp3 should sound like a shit 128 file.

even stronger power supply. why should we care when it can't power 100w speakers. the power supply only needs to be strong because of the other components. you could just see it as a was of battery life. Later I found in the technical spec's it can only do 250mW and 16Ω.

Large solid high polymer capacitor. a samll portable device and you chose to put something large in it? why not just lots of small capacitors in parallel? it'd give the same capacitance, the same low resistance, the same impedance and have the added benifits of being smaller and less likely to experiance electolite rot after years of charging.

FT CAP3 (High polymer capacitor), ok I'll admit I can't complainabout it since it's just a statment about a component.

OFC milled block, because milling it out of a bigger bit of mettal is better then pressing the shape out. I mean you won't gent any waste metal if you press it. eather way it's just a sheild between the circuit boards. for the voltage levels a sheet of tim foil from the kitchen would do the job. a sheet of gold or even better lead would work be better then the super conductive oxygen-free copper. I'm starting to get the feeling they ad a lot of oxygen-free copper laying around.

Kimber Kable, yes a branded cable runs from the mini amp? (digital to analoge converter) to the balanced audio out put because you know it will have superiour sound to the unbalnced output that has a solid linlk to the amp and is on the same part of the circuit board judging from the picture. lets ignore the fact that the Kimber Kable looks like any other copper twisted pair cable.

Crystal Oscillators, you mean it actually has quartz crystals as the ocillators just like almost any other device that needs a acurate clock. I didn't expect that. The Casio I had in school had one of those. What was in Sony's last mp3 player? a 741 op amp?

Fine sound register. I can't tell if this is a voltage regulator, a type of circut layout or a set of heat sinks. All of which would achive what they've stated and is something that should be done on any circuit that isn't part of something disposable. lets move on.

Newly developed reflow solder contining gold. Creative made their sound blaster gold card and used 100% gold 15 years ago, but lets screw our original plan of pure materials and use a aloy of the solder. it's not like the metals might seperate when melted. I mean we can't use lead, not because it's dirt cheap with the same conductiverty but it might harm the helth of the workers. the robots that make the circuts might breathe it in and.... never mind. Why not silver?

Optimised circuit board layout. the power, storage/processing part and the analoge auido circuits are on differant parts of the boards. This was thought about and didn't just happen like it dose for everyone else when differant department create differant parts.

DSD remastering engine. so which is it, acurate reproduction of the stored audio file or a improved recreation of the audio stored in the file? where do you stand? acuracy or enhanced?

Balanced connections. Just incase you have difficulties getting dirt stuck in your jack sockets, they put them both on the top with no covers so when you use one socket the other can fill with all the dirt that falls in your pocket.

Familiar features, we could also call it being unimaginative but really I'm glad it has buttons. I'm curious to know if the hold switch turns off the touch screen or just disables the side buttons. shame I'll never have the money to find out.

Wi-fi. so it can't do 5G internet or 4 or 3 but it has wi-fi. you can tell the design team didn't get to take it out of the office. so they never got if realise the wi-fi signal dosen't reach around the world.

Since we got this far might as well move on to the specifications

Size and weight. its about the same size as my phone and twice as thick. it's 3x the thickness of the new Samsung S22.
It's twice the weight of my phone and 4x the weight of a S22+.

Wi-fi, it can do 2.4 / 5 GHz. not shareing what type, and if it can only do a/b/g and not n then it'll seem useless.

Power, now the usefull info. we get 40 hours if we like basic mp3 on unbalance head phones, just like the ipods and mp3 players of 15 years ago but this drops down to 14 hours if we use the balanced audio ourput with a decent file format.

Storage, 256GB. I take it they bought Sandisk SD cards on amazon during the black friday sale around £15. it's abit small for high quality file formats and way to small for any audio collectors. good thing they added a SD card slot.

Playback & display. I think they actually managed to do this bit right, I can't think of a format they missed.
MP3,WMA, FLAC, WAV, AAC, HE-AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, DSD, APE & MQA.
the 10 band EQ is a nice change but its a shame there's no compressor/ limitor, I always like to beable to boost the volume a bit more. Before someone says you can't get them on mp3 playsers I had a audio technica that did.

Heaphone jack, anyone have anything to say?

Software. Android 11, this will be what uses most the power as far as I'm aware and it's abit over kill for what you'll use it for.

Well that was fun and took out most my stress from work.

Thanks for bringing this up

 

Exactly, the video was just audiophile cringe, just marketing, i bet that if you do a blind to the buyers with a cheap smartphone most won't be able to tell a difference, but it looks soo nice and has GOLD in it (lol) so it must sound amazing..

Obviously there are differences between dacs but being realistic those differences are like 00.1 %, it's just Placebo or plain fanaticism IMO.

 

Right, but you need to take into consideration that the owners are drooling like a dog all the time about their fancy gadget and this causes severe corrosion.