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Sony Hi-Rez Walkman NWA45/L

Flint

Prodigal Son
Superstar
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.
 
By the way, plugged into my pro-audio interface the Walkman has a S/N ratio of over 112dB, a noise floor of the same, and a frequency response way wider than I ever need. This is one hell of an amazing device.
 
By the way, I've not plugged in headphones at this point. I guess I should try that out.
 
I've been enjoying using my Walkman as a reference test track playback device. I find myself using it far more often than I ever expected. I have even paired with all of my Echo Dots and quickly connect to play music from it around the house - mostly because it allows me to quickly measure any speaker and make adjustments, and the auditioning tracks are easy to access.

Now I am thinking the new 1TB micro-SD card is looking REALLY good. I could put all my music on this thing in full FLAC if I wanted.
 
Could this be a solution to replace my Squeeze Box in the Home Theater. Connection time to the PC Server can take over 20 minutes sometimes and I just what to smash it, into tiny little bits!!!
 
Could this be a solution to replace my Squeeze Box in the Home Theater. Connection time to the PC Server can take over 20 minutes sometimes and I just what to smash it, into tiny little bits!!!

I don't think so. It doesn't play while charging, so you'd have to remember to charge it between listening sessions.
 
I don't think so. It doesn't play while charging, so you'd have to remember to charge it between listening sessions.

I do that with my Squeezebox right now...........

Still looking for the right solution.
 
I do that with my Squeezebox right now...........

Still looking for the right solution.


I just put my 3 year old cheap Toshiba laptop in my downstairs demonstration rig and while it doesn't have any way to control it remotely, it plays everything perfectly. Perhaps that is a solution? Or something similar with a tablet, or such, networked to your music library?
 
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