If you thought the $399 PonoPlayer was expensive then check this out…
Sony Electronics has announced a new High Resolution NW-ZX2 Sony Walkman player, which will retail for about $1,199.99.
Sony says the new Walkman will be able to reproduce master recordings. It can play digital audio files up to 192 kHz/24 bit. The Walkman can play MP3, WMA, AAC, FLAC, AIFF, WAV, and ALAC. It comes with 128GB of memory and an SD card slot. The Walkman can also connect to WiFi and the battery lasts for 60 hours.
The Walkman will be available in spring 2015.
Nina Ulloa covers breaking news, tech, and more. Follow her on Twitter: @nine_u
It MAXES out at 192khz? AND costs $1200?
Complete failure written all over it.
Not that I think this product is going to work at all but what exactly would you expect it to top out at?
There’s only a handful of sound engineers working at 192k or even 96k at the moment the majority are at 44/48k.
The 192 is khz not kbps
They’ll sell a ton of these if they bundle them with a Betamax.
I’m sure it works seamlessly with all those proprietary PONO files I just bought.
I thought Pono store sold DRM free FLAC?
It’s unfortunate that again “high quality audio” looks like an audiophile aimed rip-off business… There is now way to justify such a price tag. Add to this of course that albums recorded at such high rates are not common at all… But wait, people will buy vinyl from digitally recored album and think it sounds more “analog”, so why not ?
exactly!
Well if you put something on to an analog medium it will sound more “analog” because it is analog. It’s the same as people using tape as a processor as opposed to a medium. It does actually make a difference.
It doesn’t however, work with digital resolution like Sony seem to be trying to claim with this.
Some audiophile idiots will buy into it though. I saw an article the other day where some guy was comparing the effect different hard drives had on sonic quality.
Nutters
Slightly OT but for me the idea behind going analog is to avoid AD/DA conversion. You want to keep the sound as it is. Once you have AD/DA conversion somewhere in your chain, then using analog equipment is just adding some “analog” FX on your recording. I don’t say it’s not interesting, sometimes, to do it… but clearly it doesn’t worth all that vinyl hype.
Well, for me the bottom line is that vinyl or high resolution aren’t going to “save” the music industry. A good song on MP3 is still better than shit at 192k encoding anyway…
Exploration of High Resolution and BMW 700 or Tesla customer base will not bring music industry to life.
Sony and Mr. Young and few more would be better off investing time, money and connections to conversion of Radio and streaming to simple discovery based $100B music store.
Can I cram a vinyl record in there?
$1200? At half that price there could be a market for this product: with the SD card slot it can quickly become a 256GB or larger player. Note that the eBay price on the iPod Classic soared above list price after that MP3 player was discontinued. Song hoarders don’t have a lot of player options right now.
Also compare the price to a no-contract 128GB iPhone 6, which sells for about $900.
I want to hear this new Sony player, and the Pono. I’m still looking for the MP3-ish digital audio experience which lets me listen to music for a 8-hour drive without listening fatigue. CDs will give me that, MP3 won’t.
My max price I would pay is $99.