Sony Updates the Walkman As a $5,900 Gold-Plated MP3 Player (theregister.com) 63
Sony has revived its Walkman lineup with three Android 16-powered high-end music players ranging from $1,900 to $5,900, topped by the gold-plated NW-WM1ZM3 with 256GB of storage. The Register reports: The Japanese giant named the new models the NW-WM1ZM3, NW-WM1AM3 and NW-ZX900. All can store and play many codecs, including MP3s, WMA, and FLAC files, plus others like Direct Stream Digital (DSD) and Apple Lossless, which use various tricks to avoid nasty artefacts accruing during the digitization process. Sony also says it has used "key components made from oxygen-free copper" because that apparently delivers "uncompromising sound quality."
The machines also include "screws featuring a low-resistance gold-plated treatment ... providing a stable ground connection that delivers powerful bass, an expansive soundstage and smooth, extended high frequencies." Sony claims even the cabling it's used in the devices "further reduces noise and preserves signal integrity for rich, detailed sound." They're also housed in carefully-milled slabs of copper -- gold-plated in the case of the NW-WM1ZM3 -- because that apparently improves sound, too.
And then Sony's gone and spoiled it all by offering Bluetooth connectivity, a notorious music-mangler, in addition to wired headphone ports. Sony's US site lists all three devices, which run Android 16 and include Wi-Fi so they can access streaming music services. All are USB-chargeable and Sony claims their batteries allow 30-odd hours of music playback.
The machines also include "screws featuring a low-resistance gold-plated treatment ... providing a stable ground connection that delivers powerful bass, an expansive soundstage and smooth, extended high frequencies." Sony claims even the cabling it's used in the devices "further reduces noise and preserves signal integrity for rich, detailed sound." They're also housed in carefully-milled slabs of copper -- gold-plated in the case of the NW-WM1ZM3 -- because that apparently improves sound, too.
And then Sony's gone and spoiled it all by offering Bluetooth connectivity, a notorious music-mangler, in addition to wired headphone ports. Sony's US site lists all three devices, which run Android 16 and include Wi-Fi so they can access streaming music services. All are USB-chargeable and Sony claims their batteries allow 30-odd hours of music playback.
At that price (Score:5, Insightful)
This could well be some project by a gifted hobbyist with each one hand-made. I wonder who will buy this. Clearly people with more money than sense, but are there enough of those.
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Oh, and they are ugly as hell.
Re: At that price (Score:5, Funny)
Do they work with my Monster Cables?
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Probably.
Re: At that price (Score:5, Funny)
Do they work with my Monster Cables?
With all the gold screws and cables - that "improve" the sound ... *sniff* they grow up so fast, so proud. [wipes tear] :-)
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Re: At that price (Score:3)
At that price range, you absolutely need audioquest cables and their moon-blessed magic spacers to lift the cables a bit off the floor!
If the cable costs less than the device, clearly you are losing sound quality and soundstage and all that.
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Ah, yes, the Monster cables.... so more music flows to the speakers.
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Only if you upgrade to goldtooth.
Re:At that price (Score:5, Insightful)
They are fashion accessories for people who like to flaunt their wealth, and marketing for everyone else.
They get some press reminding everyone that they still make portable music players, and that they do high end hifi.
If you want an actually good and reasonably priced device, there are some great Chinese companies making these things, and your ears won't be able to tell the difference. Most people just use their phone and Bluetooth anyway.
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"They are fashion accessories for people who like to flaunt their wealth, "
Want to get hit over the head and mugged in the street more likely.
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Yes, probably. I call these "personality prosthetics" because apparently people doing these things are severely lacking in that.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I can tell, this is an Android phone minus the phone. It is the iPod Touch of the Android world (which Apple discontinued years ago for lack of any real-world demand beyond use as a developer test device).
Why are they building this?
The Sony NW-ZX900 digital music player pairs an aluminum-alloy main frame with a gold-plated oxygen-free copper (OFC) rear chassis.
Oh. For "audiophiles" (in the "I don't understand how anything works, but making the back of the device out of some special kind of metal sounds like it could make the sound better, so I'll spend thousands of dollars on it" sense of the word). Now I understand.
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Just extracting money for nostalgia sake. You should see what original Walkmans sell for on ebay.
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This is why potholes ruin music.
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Audiophilles will be convinced they can hear a difference. They can't, but they will be convinced of it.
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As far as I can tell, this is an Android phone minus the phone.
Yes, there is a whole Android Walkman series from Sony. A dozen models currently, priced 200-800 €.
Why are they building this?
For people who want a high-resolution DAC that can drive headphones. Many people have phones that don't have a jack, as Sony phones (that do have a jack) are not available everywhere, at least not in subsidised plans.
Oh. For "audiophiles"
Audiophiles will buy one of the 800 € Sony Walkman models. A $5,900 MP3 gold-plated player is not for audiophiles, it is for the petromonarchy elites who literally don't know what to do
Monster Cable lives! (Score:1)
Good to see the gag still works.
Oh boy! (Score:5, Informative)
A device that costs a minimum 2x more than my phone, looks to be roughly 2x the size of my phone, runs the same software as my phone, but isn't a phone... all for a negligible increase in audio quality over my phone? Zero increase if using Bluetooth?
Do people still remember "oxygen-free copper"? (Score:5, Informative)
"Screws featuring a low-resistance gold-plated treatment" are irrelevant to "providing a stable ground connection that delivers powerful [digital] bass, an expansive [digital] soundstage and smooth, extended [digital] high frequencies".
"Carefully-milled slabs of copper" are irrelevant to "improved [digital] sound".
C'mon Sony, do better! At least in the analog world nobody could disprove the audiophiles' ridiculous superstitions. Digital, however, is either mathematically flawless, or fundamentally broken by design. There is no "better" or "worse" - Well, at least not until you run it over Bluetooth, which takes all of the above as a challenge to make it worse.
Re:Do people still remember "oxygen-free copper"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Digital, however, is either mathematically flawless, or fundamentally broken by design.
this is a myth (heard it many times before).
sent through a physical metal cable, digital 1s and 0s are represented by analog voltage ranges
interference can cause a 0 to be read as 1, and with no ECC this might be heard as a pop/click/buzz/anything... an artifact, if you will. and it wont cause the entire song to stop playing.
and the analog side of DACs are still being improved to this day.
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If you've got speakers with ethernet then they've got multiple levels of error correction involved and then the final result depends on the codec and how it's implemented. You could reasonably send audio with ECC which allowed you to reconstruct lost data over spdif, but I don't think I've ever heard of that or anything.
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digital audio transmission standards are slower than dog shit, they do not have bit errors.
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digital audio transmission standards are slower than dog shit, they do not have bit errors.
They can, because toslink uses a normal LED, and there's lots of shitty toslink "cables" out there, people get them dirty and don't clean them, etc. It's arguably better to use coaxial spdif, but optical is neato. OTOH, no ground loops with optical...
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LOL tell everyone how ignorant you are. Is digital transmission of data error-prone?
Digital is perfect, it is either flawless of failed. That is not a myth, that is a test of your stupidity.
DACs are not purely in the digital domain, "perfect" does not apply to DACs.
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DACs are not purely in the digital domain, "perfect" does not apply to DACs.
Indeed the exact same digital stream played through different DAC chips with their supporting algorithms and filters can sound quite significantly different. My own DAP has an AKM chip, but some people prefer ESS, Wolfson, TI/Burr-Brown, etc. I did not actually RTFA, but historically Sony has used their own DAC chips, some of which have been quite good, so I assume that remains the case here. That is probably more meaningful to people who care about sound than the gold plated screws.
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People are responding to my comment like we're talking about end-to-end high-entropy multi-GHz signals. Comparing the human auditory range with modern ultra-high-speed DACs, we may as well be talking about DC for all the difference it makes.
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LOL tell everyone how ignorant you are. Is digital transmission of data error-prone?
Digital is perfect, it is either flawless of failed. That is not a myth, that is a test of your stupidity.
pray where you like, but the presence of ECC is a clue regarding your god's fragility
11010 stored in A is the exact same as 11010 stored in B... but A may change in transit to B.
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Sent through a physical cable you either receive the original data or not.
Once you are receiving the original data - either through clean transmission, or because error correction has fixed any transmission errors, it doesn't get any better.
At the relatively low bandwidth needed for audio data, there are many protocols and physical carriers capable of transmitting the data and ensuring a perfect copy is received even over low quality cabling.
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Digital data may be a 1 or a 0 but the process of converting it to analogue is reliant on a time domain accuracy of that 1 to 0 transition. It's not relevant for this device since it really is only an issue with data transmission and not clocking data within a device, but if you fuck with when that 1 or 0 arrives or make the transition of that 1 to 0 a bit unsteady it does have a measurable effect on the analogue signal.
Now this is a solved problem in audio, well and truly, but the reality is more complicat
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As for the rest - If they have such serious signal degradation between the DAC and the jack, I stand by my assertion that it's fundamentally broken by design. Keep in mind we're talking about mere kilohertz signals traveling under two meters, this ain't exactly trying to squeeze 10 gig over 100m of UTP. If there's still significant jitter on the outputs half a million cycles later, I repeat, "design flaw".
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C'mon Sony, do better!
Why should they "do better"? They are producing product suitable for a specific target audience. You may not know what audiophools are, but they very much exist, and I'm sure they'll line up to buy these because your Android phone isn't "oxygen free".
You're not the target audience. For you they have the A20 walkman that's around $200 and even then I don't think you're the audience.
This expensive bauble is not gonna sell (Score:1)
Late Stage Empire (Score:3)
They did things like this at the end of Rome.
P.T. Barnumus.
This makes no sense (Score:3)
Not trying to bilk "audiophiles" because nothing makes more sense than fleecing the second most gullible idiots in the world (after people who thought Trump would lower gas prices) but what doesn't make sense is putting a Sony logo on it. The very last thing any of them would do is buy anything from Sony.
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I live up in Humboldt. Here we have a pickup with a Trump sticker and a "[M4 outline] Dead Pedophiles Don't Reoffend" sticker on it. I forget if it's a Dodge or a Chevy. Most of the maggots drive American up here, despite our having some of the highest fuel prices in the nation.
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Principles don't pay the grocery bill and SuperKendall drives what his dad bought him.
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please tell us the high school mascot there is the squid.
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I'm not from here so despite needing to know about all the schools, I don't know that much.
lolol I tried duck.ai and it said "The mascots of schools in Humboldt County, California, vary by district and school. For specific mascots, you would need to check individual school websites or local education resources, as there isn't a comprehensive list available." fuck a duck, duck! no fucking shit! I finally found a clanker more worthless than Gemini! ...Gemini figured out four of them and none are squid, but we
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The very last thing any of them would do is buy anything from Sony.
Why not? Sony products were well revered in the audiophile community. Maybe not the consumer trash you find at your local Walmart, but Sony products command a premium for their more vintage line and you can easily spend $1000+ on an amplifier from the 80s from them. Their current turntables are well received. Oh and many audiophile brands used to proudly advertise they used Sony transports in their CD players.
While their consumer toys are laughed at, their name still very much means something in the audioph
Re: This makes no sense (Score:2)
"Sony products were well revered in the audiophile community"
Hahahhahaahhahahahhahah
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I mean if you don't know your history you may laugh and look like a lunatic, but you do you. I'll give you one more change to learn something. Google Sony TA-N77ES. It was a member of the Elevated Series of audio stack. The amp alone cost $3000 back in the 80s, and having a full ES stack in your living room would easily have set you back over $10k. Oh and that amp still fetches that price in second hand audiophile circles today. But I don't expect you to know that because you heard the name Sony and turned
Losers In This Thread (Score:5, Funny)
The losers in this thread don't even know what this is. This is an epic release from Sony.
This Walkman combined with a nice set of $8,000 high oxygen copper low electron bias wired ear buds gives some of the most authentic audio reproduction available today. At any price.
Of course the tone deaf losers here are going to be clueless and complain about the price. LOL! IFYKYK
Re: Losers In This Thread (Score:2)
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maybe Sony can rename them "no true scotsman" in response to your comment
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"No True Walkman"
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Pretty happy with my Beats by Dre headphones that come filled with a nice piece of lead.
Oxygen Free Copper (Score:2)
I am an audiophile and this is hilariously a joke (Score:3)
I am an audiophile and this is hilariously a joke. It's all about high end DACs. Who wants a standalone thing like this when you could get a real award winning DAC that can drive your Planar Magnetics using your phone or desktop.
This is missing the mark on so many levels.
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Are you one of those people who connects an external DAC and headphone amplifier to your phone while you sit on a train? ;-)
This isn't missing the mark. "The Mark" for audiophiles is targeting people who have more dollars than sense. For you that is "award winning DAC". Me as an audiophile I laugh at your comment that you think that is important, that said I also laugh at this device. Someone else however may laugh at what I think is important while they focus on replacing their fuses with gold plated ones.
Reasonable amount to spend (Score:3)
On a used motorcycle. Which is both more fun, more practical, and more likely to help you impress the sex of your preference.
Snake oil (Score:2)
Just what I need. (Score:2)
Great, this is just what I need to recreate the whooshing and warbling distortion sounds of my highly compressed mp3 files I snagged from Napster back in the day. In perfect gold plated glorious sound.
Hip to Be Square (Score:2)
Does it authentically reproduce Hip to Be Square by Huey Lewis and the News?
Their early work was a little too new wave for my taste. But when Sports came out in 83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost!
Well that was a wiff and a miss (Score:1)
WTF (Score:2)
Sony jumped the shark long ago. Only fanboi's buy Sony products these days. Overpriced under-performing junk. I remember back in the 80's a Sony Trinitron was the shiznit, now all their stuff is just plain shit.
Sony Walkman tribute song (Score:2)
The Cliff Richard song "Wired for Sound" was a tribute to the introduction of the Sony Walkman in 1981 https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And my casette tapes? (Score:2)
These are TDK as advertised in vintage Bladerunner laserdisc