Sony announced the Walkman-ZX2, and yes it will be expensive. The price is expected to be $1200 dollars when it is released this Spring. Most of you who read this will automatically think that price is crazy, but that is because you’re probably not an audiophile. This Walkman is clearly not for the general consumer, it is for the person who loves music in it’s truest form, the audiophile.
2014 was a great year for vinyl sales, as vinyl saw a 52% jump in sales from 2013. Vinyl records are known to have excellent sound reproduction, which is something we lose and don’t appreciate when we compress music for streaming over WiFi or cellular.
It’s not out of the question for many people to drop $300 dollars on a set of Beats headphones or Bose Quiet Comforts, but audiophiles have little issue spending $500-1500 on headphones alone, and that’s just for one set of headphones. Many audiophiles have droves of headphones all for different listening experiences. What good are expensive headphones if your source is mediocre? And that’s why Sony released the Walkman-ZX2. Cell phones and streaming devices aren’t good enough for audiophiles and there are only a small handful of ‘premium’ audio devices which are also expensive but lack a good user interface.
The Walkman-ZX2 will run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, which we already know is a couple years old, but we also to know it to be stable with a pleasant interface. Android is a huge bonus over the software developed for those other high-end audio devices. It will also have a digital amplifier, as premium headphones usually require more power to drive the drivers, 128GB of built-in memory for those large uncompressed files, as well as a micro-sd card slot. The ZX2 will also have WiFi and a large battery that provides up to 60-hours of playback.
The NW- ZX2 supports digital music files up to 192 kHz/24 bit and compatible file formats are MP3, WMA, AAC, FLAC, AIFF, WAV and ALAC including DSD.
Technical Specifications
| NW-ZX2 | |
| Memory capacity | 128 GB |
| External memory | microSD (card not included) |
| Key features | High-Resolution Audio playback, S-Master HX Digital Amplifier, DSEE HX (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine), ClearAudio+, Clear Bass, Equaliser, VPT, one-touch listening via NFC and Bluetooth® connectivity |
| Compatible audio formats | MP3, WMA1, FLAC (192KHz/24bit), Linear PCM (192KHz/24bit), WAV (192KHz/24bit), AAC-LC2, HE-AAC, Apple Lossless (192KHz/24bit), AIFF (192KHz/24bit), DSD (2.8MHz, 5.6MHz)*1: Copyright protected WMA files cannot be played back.*2: Copyright protected AAC-LC files cannot be played back |
| Battery life | MP3 up to 60 hours**(MP3 128kbps) |
| Hi-Res Audio 33 hrs**(FLAC 192kHz/24bit) | |
| Charging time | Approximately 4.5 hours |
| Operating platform | Android™ 4.2 |
| Display | 4.0 inch FWVGA (854×480) TRILUMINOS™ Display for mobile |
| Communication mode | Wi-Fi® (IEEE 802.11b/g/n/a) |
| Bluetooth® | Bluetooth® (A2DP/AVRCP/OPP/HID/SPP)Supported Codec: SBC/LDAC |
| NFC | Yes |
| Included applications | Media Go (for Windows), Content Transfer for Mac (for Mac OS) |
| Dimensions | 65.1×131.2×18.5 mm (WxHxD, excluding max. protruding section) |
| Mass | Weight: Approx. 235 g |
| Accessories | USB cable, leather carrying case, spacer (headphones not included) |
I think you need to read this: “24/192 Music Downloads…and why they make no sense” http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html