Well, the model name sorta sucks, but I recently acquired the Sony Walkman NWA45A/L high resolution portable player for use as a source for my speaker building, testing, and demonstration.
https://www.sony.com/electronics/walkman/nw-a40-series/buy/nwa45-l
It is a pretty damn nice device. Loading songs is super easy as it appears as a USB storage device when plugged into the PC, so I can just drag and drop the tracks I need on it. I use the Sony PC software to create playlists which I mostly manage via the player's interface. The sound quality is absolutely top notch. Running test tones it shows a perfectly flat frequency response from 2Hz to the limit of 40kHz using my Roland Professional audio interface to capture the output signal at line level. It also has effectively zero noise, THD, and IMD when sending a line level output to my audio interface.
So, it is perfect for testing speakers. It sounds outstanding with not audible artifacts when playing high quality audio files as a line level source to my audio equipment. It just sounds good, period.
As for complaints, there are two:
There is a weird buzz sound when it is loading, skipping, or starting to play a track. I think it is intentional to let the user know it is working on the input from the user. But it is fucking annoying to me. If I press the stop button, or the skip button, I don't need a low level sound to let me know it is working on it.
The user interface won't let me get back to the playback screen for the current track without pressing the track in the playlist or song listing screen which restarts the track being played. If a song is playing and I am scrolling through the tracks on the device and find I want to get all the details on the track being played, the only way I can do that is to click on the track again which restarts it. I find that annoying, but manageable.
Overall, I love it.
My needs are specific to testing and demoing speaker, so I am happy with the built in memory capacity. But I can easily add up to 400GB of additional storage via a MicroSD card if I choose. I don't need that now, but I could.
https://www.sony.com/electronics/walkman/nw-a40-series/buy/nwa45-l
It is a pretty damn nice device. Loading songs is super easy as it appears as a USB storage device when plugged into the PC, so I can just drag and drop the tracks I need on it. I use the Sony PC software to create playlists which I mostly manage via the player's interface. The sound quality is absolutely top notch. Running test tones it shows a perfectly flat frequency response from 2Hz to the limit of 40kHz using my Roland Professional audio interface to capture the output signal at line level. It also has effectively zero noise, THD, and IMD when sending a line level output to my audio interface.
So, it is perfect for testing speakers. It sounds outstanding with not audible artifacts when playing high quality audio files as a line level source to my audio equipment. It just sounds good, period.
As for complaints, there are two:
There is a weird buzz sound when it is loading, skipping, or starting to play a track. I think it is intentional to let the user know it is working on the input from the user. But it is fucking annoying to me. If I press the stop button, or the skip button, I don't need a low level sound to let me know it is working on it.
The user interface won't let me get back to the playback screen for the current track without pressing the track in the playlist or song listing screen which restarts the track being played. If a song is playing and I am scrolling through the tracks on the device and find I want to get all the details on the track being played, the only way I can do that is to click on the track again which restarts it. I find that annoying, but manageable.
Overall, I love it.
My needs are specific to testing and demoing speaker, so I am happy with the built in memory capacity. But I can easily add up to 400GB of additional storage via a MicroSD card if I choose. I don't need that now, but I could.