Just bought a Sony Walkman NW-A45

I have an older Sony model, but any phone charger you have lying around should do the trick.

 

After a couple months with this, I'm pleased. Using it as a DAC makes Spotify sound much clearer and cleaner, and it makes CD files sound pretty good. Not quite hi res, but the upscaling does make a difference. Good value for the price.

 

NWA45 charges from a normal USB charger. It’s worth getting spare charging / sync cables as the player end has a Sony DMPORT connector on it which is a proprietary design and if the cable breaks without a spare you won’t be able to charge. I got a couple of spares off Amazon for not much cash.

 

I bought my A45 in Amazon’s Black Friday Week (last November). It was a Warehouse Deal (-20% off) for 105 EUR. Described with slight signes of usage but it was completely new. A real bargain.

The A45 replaced my old NWZ A-17 with which I was very satisfied. The A45 is great for mobil use. Great sound and very good usability. Just 2 issues which are really annoying: The EU volume limitation (already solved) and the fact that the database needs to be built up every time if you switch on the player. That lasts about 3 minutes (using a 256 GB micro SD card including 23,000 songs). For that I found a work-around to not turn off the player completely; I just switch on pause and switch off the screen. After that I activate the hold lock. With this trick the player is ready immediately when I need it. OK that costs a little bit more of battery but for me it works fine.

In total I am very pleased with the A45. Very good mobil device with fantastic sound which enable me to have my complete music collection (mainly as 320 kbit mp3 and a few FLACs) with me. Accompanied with Teufel Mute headphones (I think Teufel is only available for EU customers) a perfect couple for me.

Additionally to the A45 I also bought a Pioneer XDP 30. I spent 199 EUR; in the meantime I cannot find it below 300 EUR. I decided to keep this one too and use it as my “at home” player to connect it via Bluetooth to my Stereo or 5.1 devices. The Pioneer has a real line-out to connect it via cable. Also the Pioneer is really great and in my opinion the sound is even a little bit clearer and more transparent as the A45 (but here we talk about very minor nuances and the Sony has a very decent sound!). The Pioneer has two Micro SD card slots and I equipped it with two 200 GB cards. Also here I have my complete music library on my device. Only battery capacity is low compared to the A45. Sony says the A45 battery will work for 45 h. This I have never reached so far, but the battery is very good. The Pioneer’s battery lasts only for about 8 to 10 h depending if display is switched of. But also the pioneer is a very good device. Very recommendable!!!

 

My only (not even major or minor, just eh) things about it? The Bluetooth for me drains the battery. But normally, I used it 7 of 8 hours of a long car trip, then used it 1-2 hours a day during vacation, and didn't have to charge it till the night before I left, 6 days later. And that's with HiRes playback.

 

Got this player a few months ago and am finally getting around to using it the past few weeks. Paid a final price of $145 from Best Buy with some discounts and reward dollars I had. Good bang for the buck player. Nice build and sound quality. Using Audio Technica's ATH-M50X headphones. A Sandisk 512GB Micro-SD Class 10 card works flawlessly. Playing lossless and other Hi-Res files I own. Only thing I don't like is the proprietary cable. Will have to buy a couple of spares. Shouldn't complain as I use USB and Lightning ones as well.

Wanted a player that wasn't tethered to a phone or other internet device that had a good battery life and is easy to carry. Its size is perfect and isn't heavy or bulky. UI is decent, just took a little getting used to having Apple devices for so long. I have a Pono, but it isn't very portable and the battery life is awful, but I understand why it is. Also, have an iPhone 7+ 256GB, but will use it mainly now for streaming services for the vehicle.

 

Agree 100%. I managed to get a couple of spares for not much via Amazon, plus a short cable with a micro USB on it that allows me to drive an external DAC.

 

Anyone ever get error code 24667 when importing MP3s? I was importing an album with 12 tracks all from the same source, and four wouldn’t transfer, triggering this code for each.

 

I have this player and have been using it with my Koss PortaPros (60 ohms) and have had no low volume problem with them. For me, a setting of 40 (out of 120) is loud enough for me. When it comes to headphones, I've found that on-ear headphones (like the Koss PortaPros) work the best for me. They are both comfortable and sound good.

 

I have an older NWZ-A17. I recently bought a 256 GB card for it and it works fine. Anybody else try anything bigger?

 

Yes, I have that model and 400 GB works just fine.

I bought a 512 GB card recently but haven't tried it yet.

 

The Koss Porta Pro is efficient. But more importantly it manages to sound good and sound like it has enough headroom at lower power levels than some headphones that measure more efficient yet seem to want more power. There is a reason the Porta Pro remains popular. It was designed back in the day for walkman style portable tape players run off battery and wimpy headphone outputs. And it continues to be good with current low power portables.

Here's InnerFidelity measurements for the Porta Pro: https://www.innerfidelity.com/images/KossPortaPro.pdf
Note the measurements in the lower right corner. Only 0.04 mW to reach a measured 90 dB with their test tone. There are headphones that claim better efficiency that require more mW to achieve that masured 90 dB level.

And here's AudioBot9000 specs for the Porta Pro: Koss Porta Pro - AUDIOBOT 9000
Note that the target SPL requirements listed there are based on theoretical calculations based on sensitivity and not on actual measurements.

 

Not seen this, but I only have a small number of MP3s. Are you using the Sony Music app, or are you just dragging and dropping the files? Having filled up most of my card using the app, if I want to add a new album I just copy and paste direct to the micro SD card now as I find the Sony app slow.

 

I first tried dragging/dropping files from iTunes into the Sony Music app, which has always, always worked without any trouble whatsoever. Then I tried to import the affected tracks from their file locations - same problem. I Googled it, and found someone else had this problem - no solutions, though. I'll definitely try to copy and past direct to the SD card - thank you for the suggestion!

I suppose there could be some kind of DRM on certain tracks from that album, but again, I've never had that happen.

 

Open the affected files in a tag editor and check if any of the tags have special characters or anything unusual. Special characters could be things like a tilde (~) or an em dash (—) instead of a regular hyphen (-) or similar types of special characters.

Some portable players and in car players have problems if the tags in a file contain some of those types of special characters. I don't know if the Sony may have that type of issue. But it's something to check.

 

This makes me wonder if headphones have moved in a wrong direction. It seems like there is a focus on more and more power, yet I've noticed that you don't need high impedance to get good sound, and the design is also a factor. Despite being around for so long and basically being unchanged, the Koss PortaPros are still competitive with contemporary headphones.

Plus, there is the issue of diminishing returns when it comes to headphones. Although spending more money on headphones might lead to improved sound quality, in my opinion the extra expense might not be worth the increase in sound quality.

 

Picked up an NW-A45 in black during a cyber Monday offer on Amazon. It's replacing a cherished, well used 4th gen iPod nano whose battery lasts under an hour now. As its engraved/personalised from my wife, I'm not about to dispose of it but an hour battery life barely gets me through one album.

I've added a 128GB microSD and loaded it up with my hi-res FLACs (2016 Star Wars soundtrack remasters, Iron Maiden 2015 remasters, Band On The Run 2010 remaster etc). Added to this is a boatload of CD rips as lossless FLACs (Floyd Discovery & Immersion sets, Beatles In Mono etc) and some iTunes Store purchases (Rogue One soundtrack & similar).

I'm using the device, like the OP, with wired Bose QC25s which I've long since been delighted with. The handling of the iTunes purchases (lossy 256Kb/s AAC) is legitimately great, reproducing as much detail as the files hold. The CD rips & HiRes files also fare well, but not quite as well as I was expecting.

Question is, is anyone using any of the equalisation presets or other sound 'enhancement' options? I've turned them all off out of the box. I'm thinking of spending some time, turning them on each in turned in combination with one another. I've found other places on the web with various custom equalisation settings but these seem to favour thumping dance/hip-hop etc rather than classical, classic rock/pop & metal.

Barring feeling that I'm not getting that last 5% of performance/reproduction out of the Nw-A45, I'm broadly impressed with it. Handling HiRes is something new for me, with all of my current and past portable devices being Apple. It's a welcome second piece of portable, personal kit to go along with my phone & streaming service.

 

coffeetime wrote the following as part of a post:

The only sound enhancement I normally use is a small custom adjustment via the equalizer to compensate for my headphones, Koss PortaPros. They sound good but are slightly bassy so I make a small adjustment for the way they color the sound, slightly reducing the bass and slightly raising the higher frequencies. I tried the Clear Audio setting to see how it sounded, but decided that I prefer to leave it off.

 

All switched off for me. These options are unavailable if using Bluetooth or if using an external DAC, both of which I use depending on the situation.

 

Does anyone have a good portable headphone amp to recommend for the NW-A45? I'm using Sennheiser HD 599 headphones and it seems like the player doesn't put out enough power. I've been using my old FiiO Mont Blanc E12 amp, which sounds good but it is getting worn out. Was looking for an amp around the $100 price range.

One thing to mention, I'm using a 1TB card in the NW-A45 and it works great. Works in my Pono too. Just make sure it is a SanDisk, they are the only company making legit cards that I know of.

 

The iFi amps get good reviews. The Oppo HA2 works well but it and the HA2SE are no longer made. I use the HA2 and it happily drives HD600s.

Edit: another new combination. I have got a Sonru BT1002 Bluetooth adapter (£30) connected to my Meridian F80 via the optical in, so now have the NWA45 working via AptxHD into that. Working well. Ideal for those occasions like now when I cannot be bothered to pick up a CD.

 

I bought it a couple of months ago on Amazon as a refurbished item for 130$. It looks like new and I am happy with it.

I am using my "NW-A45" as a player on wire with Sony headphones "WH-H900N". Bluetooth is a nice extra feature to stream music in car or sometimes to headphones but I mostly using it wired because of music quality level.

I did never expect such clean and powerful sound from my small but great Audiopro "Addon T3" speaker (wired). It is really amazing mobile pair: "NW-A45" + "Addon T3"!

I am using "NW-A45" as DAC too.
There is no description on how to set up a PC for DAC function. So, here is a tip for PC users if some one need it - in Windows 10 go to Settings/System/Sound/Choose your output device ("NW-A45" must to be connected to USB and run as DAC)/Device properties/Additional device properties/Advanced/set the Default Format to the right sample rate and bit depth - I am keeping 24 bit, 192000 Hz there. You will see the sample rate number accordingly on "NW-A45" screen during music playback.

I am still confused about real sample rate converted into audio output. I do not get what is the final real sample rate and bits per sample used to convert?

Let's talk about FLAC and DSF.
I have digital media in PCM (*.flac) with [24-192] and "NW-A45" supports this format. Does it processing [24-192] to [24-96] before converting to analog audio output? Do I have to convert [24-192] to [24-96] in foobar2000 with "SoX resampler" before coping files to "NW-A45"?

It is written that DSD (*.dsf) is converted to PCM inside NW-A45 ("...Audio that is converted to Linear PCM is output." - Page 143 of "Sony Help Guide”, W0014714M.pdf).
Does it have sense to copy music as DSD to "NW-A45"? I can convert DSD files to PCM in foobar2000 at [24-176] or at [24-88.2] to save space on card.
Any thoughts and recommendations?

 

so are you ripping your albums as one track and using a cue file to browse tracks? because i know you can do that with foobar but i just wanted to reply to this thread and let you know I've had a "Hifi Walker H2" for a while now and being that i also have a ton of cd's ripped with EAC and the H2 has a gapless mode albums like Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" play like they're suppose to. It also uses Burr Brown PCM5102 DAC so it sounds excellent and also plays DSD files and is expandable up to 400GB w/ microSD. Best part is it's only $120

figured i'd throw that info out there being I see some of these "Hi-Res" players going for sometimes close to like $800 and some don't even have expandable memory or gapless mode. gotta have my gapless!!!

 

My understanding is that by their very nature FLAC files are gapless (the only "gap" that would appear is if it was in the original music file), while the MP3 format by design is not gapless. A trick I used to get gapless playback with MP3 files is to rip an entire album as a single file. I did it with Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon and it worked fine, although I also ripped it as individual tracks in the case that I wanted to listen to an individual song to to individual songs. However, since I've moved to FLAC files gapless playback hasn't been an issue for me.

 

The iPod couldn't do lossless until the software update for the 5th gen players. I remember Madonna's Confessions on a Dancefloor album being available in two versions on the iTunes Store; individual tracks and as a single, continuous track. A firmer update for the iPod line later that year allowed gapless albums ripped as individual files (The Wall etc) gapless playback. Most other players quickly followed suite. It was annoying to have gaps in the playback of gapless album prior to that though.