Sony's Walkman Makes Comeback

I have come across a pretty important foo-pah in the NWZ-A17:

If you enable "Dynamic Normalization" it makes a big mistake when it encounters passages of intentional silence in a song. It "sucks-out" the volume to absolute zero. Which sounds very unnatural.

I first encountered this on a jazz guitar players' CD, a CD I had just bought and was excited to listen to. I thought it was a "noise gate" effect added to the CD (I also own the vinyl of this release). I knew full well that I had never heard this "flaw" when playing the vinyl.

I guess I had engaged "Dynamic Normalization" the first day I had the A-17 and completely had forgotten about the setting.

Like I said, I thought the CD had crappy mastering...and blamed it on the CD I bought.

Then I played the same ALAC files on an iPod...no such "suck-out/noise-gate" effect was heard and I realized the CD mastering was fine, and that this playback flaw belonged to the A-17.

I heard the "suck-out" again on a song I have owned for years, and that knew had no such effect, in the mastering and again realized, that some setting in the the A-17 was doing this.

Took a while to find out the setting, but it turned out to be Sony's "Dynamic Normalization".

Turn that off and away went the "to absolute zero" suck-out on of volume during intentional silence on the playback of songs.

This is a real shame, as normalization is badly needed on digital files to try and help keep volumes levels in check on big random plays.

I still use Dynamic Normalization when listening to random playback via my bluetooth speakers

But for serious and careful headphone listening, I have to turn it off, because it makes me crazy to hear the noise-gate effect of this setting injects into some songs.

 

I only use the dynamic normalisation on my ZX2 when listening to playlists in the car, otherwise it's off so not noticed the absolute zero sound.

Had the ZX2 since March and have to say I'm impressed with it, wonderful sound quality, plenty of storage, streaming capability and built like a tank.

 

I second that emotion. I've had the ZX2 for about a month. I'm very impressed, too. Dead silence between tracks. Solid build. My whole iTunes library fits on it. Very cool.

 

So the ZX2 is out now, dunno how long it's been out, but this thread doesn't have much discussion on it yet. Here's a couple YouTube vids:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4059oypqWlQ

The madness of iOS 8.4 Music brought me to this thread. It's just gotten so far away from the simplicity of the older versions and functionality aimed at users focused on digital music libraries. Because of Apple's fail, I'm now considering (not seriously considering, but considering) the ZX2. Sure it's a lot of money but it looks really well-built.

Also, I don't have a 'hi-res' digital music library but with 256 GB of storage, I'd consider revisiting some A/B comparisons of lossy and lossless files to see if anything's changed in the 10 years since I last did a rigorous comparison and couldn't hear a difference...
...

 

Just found this:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/sony-walkman-1-200.405041/#post-11645253

(Thread on the ZX2)

 

EDIT: Upon reviewing that thread ^ I unfortunately didn't find a lot of useful conversation regarding the ZX2 itself.

 

NWZ-A20 series forthcoming. Pricing unkown. Includes noise-cancelation ear-buds (and more colours) but not sure any there is any other obvious SQ improvement...

http://thewalkmanblog.blogspot.ca/2015/09/sony-updates-series-walkman-nwz-20.html

(Happy NWZ-A17 owner here)

 

No mention of DSD support so I'm guessing it isn't included. Those ear buds are ok when they stay in. The only difference I see tween the two is support for more robust bluetooth via LDAC.