[Closed] New Walkman coming soon 🤔

Not a fan of all the jargon but there's room in my life for a device which does music streaming and nothing else. It's the last thing keeping me attached to a smartphone.

Give me a pocket size box with just Spotify and I'll happily use a Nokia brick for calls and texts.

Does it work with Airpods?

There’s still a market for portable music players and other companies making similar products. Much more niche now we all have phones in our pocket but it’s there.

I almost certainly can't afford it, but I would like one assuming it does radio as well. Would prefer more analogue buttons and less touchscreen though.

Despite oxygen-free copper (OFC) being notoriously difficult to machine process, the WM1ZM2 features a gold-plated OFC chassis – just like its predecessor. This time though, OFC purity has been upgraded to 99.99% (four nines), offering even greater benefits in terms of audio quality and high rigidity. Bass notes are clear and powerful, the atmosphere is more expansive, and mid to high range sounds linger beautifully

Wow Such bullshit.

apparently will cost £1300-£3350 depending on the model 🤣

...it won't be in the Argos catalogue then! 🙂

I had one of these

and a weird purple / lilac Sony affair that I can only assume I stole from my sister.

You have to applaud Sony though. It's a complete nonsense product with zero practical target market (99.99% of people already own a product that can do everything this can, almost as well), but wallies with too much money will see this and want/buy it so merely by announcing & releasing it they will be creating a market. Genius 😃

- storage to keep music offline - check
- links to a NAS for streaming - check (I think so anyway)
- plug for a normal headphone jack - check

I'd be in the market for one of those! Not for over 300quid though.

Love this: "Vinyl Processor -
Give the warmth and character of vinyl back to your digital tracks. Enjoy subtle reproduction of the low-frequency resonance, tone-arm resistance and surface noise to deliver an authentic listening experience." haha, yeah best thing about vinyl is the surface noise. I so miss that 😆

– storage to keep music offline – check
– links to a NAS for streaming – check (I think so anyway)
– plug for a normal headphone jack – check

I’d be in the market for one of those! Not for over 300quid though.

Interesting but hardly a new product - Astell & Kern have been making high end portable players for a while. I'm not sure if they support DSD. If they don't, and the Sony product does, that will be an interesting first. Although there is precious little natively recorded DSD music out there, even where the files are converted to DSD from a PCM recording process, the results are still significantly improved over standard PCM. Where files are recorded natively in DSD they are superlative.

Edit - the top A&K player supports native DSD512k and costs north of £3k so the Sony version is really a 'catch up' product. Even as an audiophille myself, I've never really got the point of these products. The DSP element is one thing but for it to be truly portable product you need to be able to plug your head phones into the unit, at which point the point is lost because the best headphones need a lot of current to work well and the only way to get that with a portable decide is via Class D, which sounds (to my ears) awful. Combining them with a portable headphone amp/DAC does make some sense but then you're into a £7k system and I'd rather spend that on my home system.

As said above, very very limited appeal.

What would be preferable would be a classic ipod with 1tb drive and the ability to use Spotify

pretty much any old smartphone would do that though

I know - mine does (aside from the 256gb storage). Or should I say, mine do - I have 3 old phones dotted about the house. But it'd nice to have a dedicated "IPod" type thing (with added vinyl crackle 😛 ) For when the iPods do die. I have so many ipods.

Although there is precious little natively recorded DSD music out there, even where the files are converted to DSD from a PCM recording process, the results are still significantly improved over standard PCM. Where files are recorded natively in DSD they are superlative.

DSD files contain nothing but ultrasonic frequencies/introduced noise above 22000khz and as such they contain no worth at all, this has been proven in signal analysis.

The only reason for using DSD is as a pissing contest regarding sample rates.

They keep it pretty low-key that it's 'Android powered', I suppose they don't want too many customers making the perfectly reasonable conclusion it's a 5" Android with fancy materials for £1300.

How long as Android OS supported for? You'd expect a bit of old-school decade long longevity for that kind of money.

Check out Dankpods on YouTube for reviews of expensive headphones and these stand alone players. It seems there is a market for them if you seriously into your music. I've watchs loads of his reviews of stuff I'm actually not even remotely interested in or would ever consider buying. I expect to see one of these on his channel soon

He also does a fair few reviews ripping apart (sometimes literally) old 2000s era MP3 tat

DSD files contain nothing but ultrasonic frequencies/introduced noise above 22000khz and as such they contain no worth at all, this has been proven in signal analysis.

That is true for 'converted' media, i.e. media originally recorded in PCM at 24bit 44.1KHz; it's not true for media recorded in DSD natively, but as I say, there's very little content of this around for obvious reason.

However, even the PCM converted DSD sound better for reasons explained here:

EDIT - it may be that the reason DSD sounds so much better might not be for the reasons I stated above, it might be for other reasons and maybe there is indeed no 'additional' information in the signal.

However, it categorically DOES sound better and everyone I've demonstrated this to agree. If you won't or can't hear the difference that's your problem not mine.

It seems there is a market for them if you seriously into your music hi-fidelity sound quality perception

However, even the PCM converted DSD sound better for reasons explained here

I had a watch to see what you thought the reason was. Have I got this right:

1) DSD sounds better because it's easy to convert DSD to analogue audio.
2) PCM sounds bad because it's a complex process to convert PCM to analogue audio.
3) PCM -> DSD -> Audio sounds better than PCM -> Audio because DSD -> Audio sounds better than PCM -> Audio.

The chap makes no mention of why it's easier to convert PCM to DSD than to convert PCM to Audio, although to me that's implied.

He also doesn't explain why having the studio convert PCM -> DSD would be better than having your device (which I'm guessing is an expensive audiophile one) convert PCM -> DSD and then to audio.

pretty much any old smartphone would do that though – just run the Plex app, and run a Plex server on your NAS (or whatever).

You don't even need to do that. My phone can "see" the network drive when on wifi and VLC will play anything that is on it.

It seems there is a market for them if you seriously into your music hi-fidelity sound quality perception you're a halfwit.

I haven't read so much psuedoscientific bollocks since that Hi-Fi comparison of hard disks.

However, even the PCM converted DSD sound better for reasons explained here:

A Paul McGown video attempting to describe the conversions between PCM to DSD is nothing but audiophoo for the poorly informed, much like his many hifi products and numerous tweeks available for a small fortune on his website.

I admit he has a degree of knowledge that he unfortunately extrapolates into infomercials shilling his products, but when faced down/questioned by studio engineers/producers who have vastly more experience he bans them from his website/forum.

PCM/DSD analysis here, clearly zero benefit for audio reproduction.

I love listening to music and really would jump on something that gave me an extra few % of enjoyment/resolution but its snake oil, much like the majority of audiophile utter nonsense. Ive got £3k of acoustic treatment in my living room tuned by an Acoustic engineer using REW and measurement mics, Parametric EQ set up through my £3k of Dynaudio LYD 48 Studio monitors/Dynaudio 18s Subwoofer from my Cambridge Audio CXN v2 source and 2tb of files, I use Roon/Tidal/Qoboz/Apple Music for streaming and anything other than cd quality is nothing more than audiophiles engaging in a circle jerk for oneupmanship over how good their hearing is.

CD quality gives 96db of range, which is more than the range of human hearing.

Where's that gods damned Like Button?

I've got a NW-A55L which with a big SD card has 500+ FLAC albums, which is good for where there's no available data for streaming. It works really well except for the typically Sony interface which has quirks.

CD quality gives 96db of range, which is more than the range of human hearing.

That's in theory - just based on number of bits.

However, there is a whole world of complexity in the implementation of DACs and the actual Sprurious Free Dynamic Range (SFDR) they achieve varies quite a lot. Years ago my department did lots of work measuring this for Mobile Base Stations as SFDR is important in any DAC process (not just Hifi).

So your 16 bit DAC will achieve less than 96 dB as 96 dB is the theoretical limit and every imperfection (of which there are loads) will reduce that.

If you're interested you can test DACs by generating 2 and 3 tone test signals and then looking for the mixer products (you basically know where the sprogs will be). If the DAC was perfectly linear they wouldn't exist, but they're always there - just a matter of how far down.

SFDR is a big problem for mobile base stations as all your carriers are evenly spaced which means the mixer products always sit in a known channel, so any non linearity in the DAC (or entire transmit chain) pollutes your own channels at source.

EVen if you implemented a perfectly linear DAC the clock source you drive it with, which determines the exact moment each bit is processed, won't be noise free and the phase noise of the source clock effectively modulates its noise onto the DAC output.

When we measured a DAC we'd have a £10k Rubidium clock source driving the test kit (as you want the measurement error to be less than the device under test).

So no matter how much money you spend, the answer is always less than 96 dB.

I couldn't read all of that without killing myself.  Going on about fancy ass caps and then having them lie on their side with the longest leads known to man

Anyway, was there not some triangular piece or overpriced nonsense about 8 years ago that tried to nail the same market and died, even with lots of high value names pushing it?

Have to scratch my head a bit on that

In reality, spending £000's on fancy assed digital music devices and decent wired headphones - how much discernable difference would the average person be able to hear over, say my phone streaming Tidal HQ tracks to Sony WHXM3's?

Oh cool.

Pretty sure my iRiver would cost less to get a couple of broken buttons sorted and an SD card (or 4) installed though. No touchscreen nonsense either.

Still, nice to see they've moved on from proprietary software nonsense at last.

Anyway, was there not some triangular piece or overpriced nonsense about 8 years ago that tried to nail the same market and died,

That'd be Neil Young and his "Pono" audio player, whilst it was a well intentioned approach to driving up the standard of audio reproduction unfortunately the execution of the engineering behind the device left a lot to be desired, I tend to consider it vanity project. Saying that, I do applaud the rise of higher quality audio recording and reproduction that is measurably beneficial, sadly there is also a glut of snake oil sellers (and hifi magazines/reviewers) out there who wilfully shun basic engineering principles and measurement standards whilst stating in flowery prose the sonic differences between such shiny trinkets.

I do applaud the rise of higher quality audio recording and reproduction that is measurably beneficial,

Got to agree.  I really do like listening to tracks on tidal even though I feel like I shouldn't really be able to hear the difference.  Never got on so well with Spotify but Tidal is different

Sony Walkman? I still have one of these:

That’s an absolute gem of player/recorder, worth keeping hold of especially if it’s working and the heads are still in good condition but if not there’s a good network of folk who will service and test the deck to make sure it’s still in spec - one of the best tape decks available, my entry into decent hifi was back in 1987 as I spent all my Xmas and 15th birthday money to buy a Walkman DC2 and a pair of koss porta pros, absolutely loved that player and it’s probably responsible for my lifelong love of music.

Interesting but hardly a new product – Astell & Kern have been making high end portable players for a while.

As have Sony...this is just the latest model I assume

From what I can remember about DSD, what makes it special for mastering is that it's 1 bit, making the conversion process to multiple sample rates/bit depths much easier?

I liked my Sony minidisc, loved the way 1 AA battery would last the whole week. Sold it to buy a RIO mp3 player. I should have kept the minidisc.

I had a tiny Aiwa player which was barely bigger than the cassette tape itself - had a tiny lead acid rechargeable battery. Amazing bit of engineering, but died on me and didn't play anymore.

Just found it: AIWA HS-PX410

https://www.walkman-archive.com/gadgets/series_aiwa_px_line.html

I had one of these...

Had a rechargeable battery and you could clip an AA battery onto the end for extra play time. I loved it. Cost about £100 bitd.

I always find hi-fi threads on this forum so very amusing. I mean my word you guys tie yourselves up in knots, desperately trying to prove that everything you’ve never experienced and don’t want to believe in this the product of someone else’s furtive imagination. And Lorde don’t the derogatory remarks about individual character just spring forth like music from a speaker. Why is that do you think why are you so at pains to desperately claim somebody else’s experience and knowledge as wrong?

There is a difference between subjective vs objective, ie subjective personal listening is wholly dependant on trusting what you hear which is extremely variable as has been proven in genuine double blind studies whereas objectivists rely on a repeatable and quantifiable measurement.

Why is that do you think why are you so at pains to desperately claim somebody else’s experience and knowledge as wrong?

It's not so much claiming that your experience is wrong, your experience is your experience alone whereas I cannot begin to experience what perception bias is at play, I take issue with flowery word salad claims and non-scientific voodoo that cannot be backed up by a quantifiable measurement - the scientific method.

TLDR : show me the evidence.

Did you do loads of double blind tests when configuring your system? I remember when I had a set of speakers which I loved, but were notoriously bass light. Got a sub in, but found that I spent an awful lot of time tweaking instead of enjoying music. Eventually I just got a bigger set of speakers 🙂

Did you do loads of double blind tests when configuring your system?

Nope, not a single one. I selected speakers/sub based on measurements/freq response/crossover/drive units, db rating etc and network streamer based on balance xlr outputs, sinad response and features that I wanted (it helped that ive been around studios and have a decent knowledge on what works and why). I then employed a mate who's an acoustician/ foley sound engineer to set my room up/take measurements/select speaker/sub position and decide how to get the most out of everything using parametric eq to control room modes (within reason, nothing is perfect but its as good as can be for what I had to spend).

Saying that I'd throw it all out for a pair of Kii Three's and matching BXT extension drive unitsbut I don't have a spare £30,000+ lying around like my mate (working studio)

I always find hi-fi threads on this forum so very amusing. I mean my word you guys tie yourselves up in knots, desperately trying to prove that everything you’ve never experienced and don’t want to believe in this the product of someone else’s furtive imagination. And Lorde don’t the derogatory remarks about individual character just spring forth like music from a speaker. Why is that do you think why are you so at pains to desperately claim somebody else’s experience and knowledge as wrong?

And what value does this add to the thread, exactly?

Artist formerly known as, would you notice the difference? You definitely could if listening for it. Would you care though? Maybe not, depends if you heart something you really like and some people do.

I remember almost 30 years ago going to my bosses house to listen to his turntable. I am off the CD generation and we'd talked ment times and I'd stated a decent cd player should sound as good as a turntable, or better. Well after a few hours listening where I could have sworn Joan armatrading was singing to me from behind the sofa, I left realising my ears need to be trusted, it's about enjoying the music, not always clear from the maths.

I have a Sony mnwhd5 player which uses their atrac lossless system which is great. However, Sony seem to drop support for their products (sonicstage, clie )too easily so probably wouldn’t buy another sony product that I would like to keep for any length of time

It seems there is a market for them if you seriously into your music hi-fidelity sound quality perception you’re a gullible halfwit.

😉

how much discernable difference would the average person be able to hear over, say my phone streaming Tidal HQ tracks to Sony WHXM3’s?

Depends - are they being used wirelessly, or wired?
If the former, then no difference, because BT doesn’t have the bandwidth to transmit anything more than about 256Kb/sec, IIRC, certainly nothing classed as Lossless. Streaming sucks anyway, especially Spotify, which has a business model built on paying artists effectively nothing - all the royalties are paid in a lump sum to the record companies, who then parcel it out on a pro rata basis. Also, unless there’s a full strength 4G signal available, streaming just doesn’t work worth a damn; there are plenty of places I go where there’s a barely usable 3G signal available, for Christ’s sake!

I download from Apple Music, and listen via IEM’s connected to my iPhone 11Pro Max with a custom MMCX to Lightning cable, so I can take advantage of Lossless downloads, but there are albums I’ve added to my phone library but forgot to download, and I know straight away that it’s streaming, because after a minute or two, the track starts to play intermittently then stops completely, and that’s in the centre of town, not way out in the middle of nowhere.

Currently, I’ve got over 50,000 tracks in my Apple Music Library - thankfully my next phone upgrade will have 1Tb of storage.

Regarding iPod Classics, there are mods available that come with a new battery and internals that take SDXC cards, up to 2Tb, I believe.

there are mods available that come with a new battery and internals that take SDXC cards, up to 2Tb, I believe

Indeed there are. I breathed fresh life into my 2-Gen iPod with a new battery but kept the original 20GB HDD. I replaced the battery in an iPod Photo (4-Gen iPod) and replaced the 60GB (dead) HDD with an adapter and 256GB SD card. Both are still pretty good. Wondering whether to replace the battery in my iPod Touch (1-Gen). It still works well but not for long enough and ‘cover flow’ is still a really nice feature.

So how will this be any different to a smart phone apart from having less functionality?

Depends – are they being used wirelessly, or wired?

If the former, then no difference, because BT doesn’t have the bandwidth to transmit anything more than about 256Kb/sec

The Sony's have LDAC - up to 990Kb/s

So how will this be any different to a smart phone apart from having less functionality?

At a guess:

It'll have a proper, dedicated headphone amp circuit.
It'll have much more capable DSP and dedicated DAC and clock circuitry.
Circuit design in general will have been biased to audio performance.
It won't have a GSM antenna built in, which I'd assume isn't helpful to a low noise environment.

So how will this be any different to a smart phone apart from having less functionality?

It’s substantially more expensive than any regular smartphone I’ve seen for the top end model. And it features all sorts of Hi-Fi marketing buzz words: it must be better?

My iPods have slightly less funtionality than my phone, doesn't stop me using them. They're just different.

I saw a bloke in his 20’s at Charing Cross the other day listening to an old tape Walkman with the front held on with an elastic band

tape making a comeback!

It’ll have a proper, dedicated headphone amp circuit.
It’ll have much more capable DSP and dedicated DAC and clock circuitry.
Circuit design in general will have been biased to audio performance.
It won’t have a GSM antenna built in, which I’d assume isn’t helpful to a low noise environment.

Maybe, maybe not. Without proper testing you wouldn't know.

The processing power in a modern iPhone will be orders of magnitude more than any CD player you can buy, so the second point it complete nonsense.

It won’t have a GSM antenna built in, which I’d assume isn’t helpful to a low noise environment.

As a radio engineer this is quite an ironic post! The noise requirements for GSM are orders of magnitude lower than for human audio - so the actual design challenge is the other way around, it's meeting the spec for GSM sensitivity whilst having a built in MP3 player sat next to it. Anything low noise in the Hifi world is several orders of magnitude more noisy than 'low noise' in terms of radio receiver design where you're dealing with signals a few dBs above thermal noise (thermal noise is the random movement of electrons in conductors which occurs at temperatures above absolute zero).

Doesn't really matter at all about the limited functionality, the sound quality, the electrons, storage capacity etc etc - some people just like gadgets and some people have a lot of spare cash to chuck at them.

I always find hi-fi threads on this forum so very amusing.

Me too, but for different reasons 🙂

I saw a bloke in his 20’s at Charing Cross the other day listening to an old tape Walkman with the front held on with an elastic band

tape making a comeback!

After looking up my old Aiwa walkman on this thread, I found a working one on Ebay, tempted to buy it as I still have a load of mix tapes in a cupboard somewere I can't play anymore.....

Although I suspect it might be a profound dissapointment....

The processing power in a modern iPhone will be orders of magnitude more than any CD player you can buy, so the second point it complete nonsense.

Fair enough, maybe it is nonsense. But I have worked around engineers in the pro audio and hi-fi world for 30 years. So I've seen different iterative approaches depending on BOM target costs. And they always seem to involve spending more of the available costs in those areas. So you'd have mono DAC's rather than stereo or integrated, higher quality independently regulated power supplies to segregated areas, more accurate clock circuitry etc.

As a radio engineer this is quite an ironic post! The noise requirements for GSM are orders of magnitude lower than for human audio – so the actual design challenge is the other way around, it’s meeting the spec for GSM sensitivity whilst having a built in MP3 player sat next to it. Anything low noise in the Hifi world is several orders of magnitude more noisy than ‘low noise’ in terms of radio receiver design where you’re dealing with signals a few dBs above thermal noise (thermal noise is the random movement of electrons in conductors which occurs at temperatures above absolute zero).

Fair point, that one was a bit of a stretch! But you raise another point, in that there are significant elements of a mobile phone design that are required for it to work as a phone, which are not rewquired for a device like this.

Thanks footflaps, I'd not heard of thermal noise before, everyday is a school day etc 🙂

'auto reverse' was a big deal for me. I remember hankering after a Walkman* with autoreverse but never had the money

*Never actually had a Sony Walkman, but deffo had an Aiwa 'portable tape player'

Yeah, auto reverse was the dogs bollox

‘auto reverse’ was a big deal for me. I remember hankering after a Walkman* with autoreverse but never had the money

Was amazing but over time the parts would wear and the head alignment would deteriorate which reduced signal quality.

But you raise another point, in that there are significant elements of a mobile phone design that are required for it to work as a phone, which are not rewquired for a device like this.

There are but that doesn't mean it still can't have excellent audio reproduction esp as you're only driving headphones / bluetooth which is all very low power (less power than needed for the RF PA). Having a mobile phone drive a set of 100W speakers would be more of a challenge.

Mobile handsets are incredible designs which are strictly tested for comformance (unlike Hifi) - have a power supply which dips on current surges, will pull your phased locked loops off frequency and you'll fail conformance. Build an expensive Stereo with a power supply that can't cope with surges and no one notices because it says 'New Class A' or whatever on the case and has gold plated contacts and cost £2000 so must be 'high quality'.

Buy the cheapest possible GSM phone for a few $ and it performs exactly to the GSM standard, which is no mean feat. All down to standards and conformance testing.

@footflaps all great in theory but...

At this point I should point out I'm a firm hi-fi non-believer. After a certain point it's all marginal gains and all about the speakers and room acoustics. Nothing else. Directional cables, little pylons for cables, £100000 USB cables, £2000 kettle leads and the like are all the very worst of consumerism.

That all said my phone is utterly awful to use as an audio player. The storage gets swamped with other stuff, there isn't a decent program, it doesn't support the files I use (yes, I went down the .ogg path many moons ago and still can't face re-ripping everything) and the control interface is useless as it's all touch based. It doesn't have optical input or output, open source firmware or a very simple USB interface for flinging stuff on and off of it. I can attach it to any hi-fi system and drive it natively through the 3.5mm or optical jack or use it as a caddy via the USB.

Now some of that can be fixed but other stuff is just completely superfluous for probably 99% of the potential users so for sound reasons just isn't an option. And I'm fine with that, I like being able to just leave my phone behind and use my player for days between charges. Different target audience.

£xxxx is rather extreme though when you can buy an old iRiver/iPod and customise it to your hearts content almost 20 years after they came out.

There are but that doesn’t mean it still can’t have excellent audio reproduction esp as you’re only driving headphones / bluetooth which is all very low power (less power than needed for the RF PA). Having a mobile phone drive a set of 100W speakers would be more of a challenge.

Maybe, maybe not - I guess that's part of the skill in engineering. But if a decent chunk of your BOM cost is dedicated to the GSM side, not having it there does give you more budget and PCB real estate to help improve your audio performance.

Mobile handsets are incredible designs which are strictly tested for comformance (unlike Hifi) – have a power supply which dips on current surges, will pull your phased locked loops off frequency and you’ll fail conformance. Build an expensive Stereo with a power supply that can’t cope with surges and no one notices because it says ‘New Class A’ or whatever on the case and has gold plated contacts and cost £2000 so must be ‘high quality’.

There is compliance testing for Hi-fi products, or you wouldn't be allowed to sell it. Anything, like this device, with bluetooth, wifi etc will also need to pass conformance to those standards as well. Apple and Google have their own standards which you need to meet in order to make products using their licenced connectivity.
I'd agree, it's possible to design and release, say, a power amp, with a woefully inadequate PSU and actually launch it. Where I'd guess I get a bit defensive is that it shouldn't mean all engineers in audio are not capable of understanding how to design an adequate PSU.

there are albums I’ve added to my phone library but forgot to download, and I know straight away that it’s streaming, because after a minute or two, the track starts to play intermittently

Hang on. That's not 'straight away', straight away would be a noticeable drop in quality. Yet you're seemingly oblivious to this until it starts cutting out.

Maybe, maybe not. Without proper testing you wouldn’t know.

But surely that's the whole point? If you wouldn't know then it doesn't matter. It may well be important to an audio engineer but as a consumer it's an irrelevance, I listen to music using ears not an oscilloscope.

But surely that’s the whole point? If you wouldn’t know then it doesn’t matter. It may well be important to an audio engineer but as a consumer it’s an irrelevance, I listen to music using ears not an oscilloscope.

I would expect the things mentioned to have measurable differences, which could translate to being audible and are just based on good engineering principles. I'd also expect the engineer to be doing listening tests through the design process.

Also technically, you listen to music with your brain. That's why even Coldplay can appear acceptable musically if you befuddle your senses with enough booze.

Also technically, you listen to music with your brain. That’s why even Coldplay can appear acceptable musically if you befuddle your senses with enough booze

This is true! I was out of it in a club on a ski trip once - DJ played Blue's "All Rise" and I was like "WHAT'S THIS!?!" - so embarrassed when I got home to discover the sober reality 😆

I've been thinking of a dap for a while, £3-400 maybe, plenue d3, fiio something, ibasso, shanking, cayin, a pre owned astell and Kern sr15.... Anyone got any experience of daps in this price range?

Also technically, you listen to music with your brain. That’s why even Coldplay can appear acceptable musically if you befuddle your senses with enough booze.

That's pretty much moot since the quantities necessary would have rendered Lemmy comatose.

It's a bit like 'beatz' headphones.. Basically a Panasonic design, and guess what, the Panasonic is less than half the price.

I take issue with flowery word salad claims and non-scientific voodoo that cannot be backed up by a quantifiable measurement – the scientific method.

To do what you ask would be as pointless and flawed as trying to offer you empirical evidence for why a Monet is better than a Madrigal. There is no scientific method for measuring it.

Two Hi-Fi systems built with entirely different circuit topologies and design parameters will sound different because they are different. I think we can both agree in that right? If one sounds better to you then why that is might be something that can try to explain from an engineering perspective, class A SET vs class AB solid state for example, but there is no way to measure the nuanced experience and any attempt to do is largely redundant.

And what value does this add to the thread, exactly?

About as much as your own comment does I guess.

I'm sure Apple are watching keenly. A reissued iPod with SSD and WiFi would get my money. Son1 lost my classic when I leant it to him. Do you prefer a multitool or a ball ended Allen key when you work on your bike? Sometimes having just the right tool for the job is the right answer.

And bitd I so wanted that Walkman Professional (was £299 if I recall?). Up there with a Nakamichi for hifi use, but could be carried around. Was the standard tool for radio recording.

https://www.stereonet.com/uk/features/past-masters-sony-wm-d6c

To do what you ask would be as pointless and flawed as trying to offer you empirical evidence for why a Monet is better than a Madrigal. There is no scientific method for measuring it.

There is. Double blind testing.

But nobody wants to do that for some reason.

You're still totally missing the point and labouring under the impression that people who call themselves audiophiles are trying to prove empirically that A is better than B. That's not what most of us care about.

We care about whether we prefer A over B and for that there is no test needed other than listening and (subjective) opinion.

We can at least agree that it's entirely possible for system A to sound different to system B right? I mean let's establish what your actual premise is here since it just seems like you're saying that 'all hifi equipment sounds exactly the same'.

That said blind testing happens all the time But it’s really of little value because it assumes that what a piece of kit looks like has a material effect on what you hear. Maybe that’s true with very very high end pieces of equipment that look very expensive but I’ve listened to plenty of systems like that not like them because they sound to clinical.

Now listening without knowing the price is a much more useful exercise but the most useful exercise of all is just listening. Some people are better at that then others.

All bits of kit sound different, even at the same price point.

Amps are a great example - play some music through an older Arcam (say an Alpha 7), a Mission Cyrus 2 and a Marantz PM66 and it's obvious they were designed to do the same thing in different ways.
They all sound very, very different.

The specs give you a clue, especially with speakers - look at the frequency response curve.
But a metal tweeter will not sound like a fabric dome or a horn, even if the frequency response is similar.

If you haven't experienced this, then probably best not to comment.
It just makes you look a bit daft.

An objective test:

Do you have a copy of 'Permission To Land' on CD?
Have a listen and tell me what's wrong with the production.
It's pretty obvious and can't be unheard once you've noticed it.

Another:
Can you hear the swearing on 'Hey Jude'? 🙂

There's loads more, but those are both good examples of how accurately your system resolves source info.

It might have been posted on a previous thread, but have we done the audiophile SSD drive yet? 😉

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvme-ssd-for-audiophiles

There’s loads more, but those are both good examples of how accurately your system resolves source info.

Once you have a half decent sound system (and I'm not talking about £1000+ systems) you can actually hear the difference in production quality on various CD's.
Michael Jacksons 'bad' album for example is superbly produced, as opposed to some compilation albums that sound flat and canned with no sound stage.

I think once you are at that point, spending more is snake oil, or at best very diminished returns for the extra money spent on hardware.