16GB Sony NW-A55 Walkman Digital Audio Player (Grayish Black) Expired

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https://www.head-fi.org/threads/s...id.943661/

This unit can apparently be flashed with the sound signature of Sony's highest end music player, further improving the sound.
Naturally, at your own risk.
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Quote from sks009 : is there any difference listening music from smartphone over Digital Audio Player ?

Yes - But depends on several factors.

1. Your Ears.
If you've exposed your ears to excessively loud music too long (even 80+dB for hours a day), you probably have hearing loss that prevents you from hearing much of the difference between good and very good.

Without having both devices side by side with high quality headphones and music files, discerning between very good and excellent can be difficult for many, especially those without extensive music training and exposure to great, live music performances.

2. Your audio source
The majority of the young nowadays have stopped using records, tapes, and CDs, even radios. The quality of audio used to be poor in the early days of am/fm radio, records and tapes - noise and hiss in quiet passages. Later on, sound quality improved greatly with CDs that were urlhasbeenblockedrded and mastered.

But, the internet came and people moved away from the high quality wav rips of cds that were equally high quality, to smaller, poorer quality mp3 files that could be sent faster.

By stepping backwards to mp3/aac and music streaming services, the quality dropped from cd quality down to fm quality. That is the general quality you get nowadays with streaming Spotify, Pandora, youtube, etc.

Only recently was there a push toward high quality streaming music by various vendors, eg. sony hires branding, so nowadays you have tidal hd streaming, flac/dsd/mqa music files, etc. that match or exceed cd quality.

eg. https://www.whathifi.com/advice/w...s-and-more
https://www.sony.com/electronics/hi-res-audio


3. Your listening environment and headphone quality
In the old days, there were no portable audio players of note, and everyone could listen to the quietest passages of music in their quiet homes in front of huge speakers that could reproduce the full range of frequencies and nuances. Here, you can say the noise floor is very low - or the dynamic sound range between the loudest and quietest is large. (eg. 80db of range).

Today, you have people trying to listen to their music in noisy city sidewalks and gyms, through earbuds that have tiny speakers and often poor quality frequency and sound reproduction. Here, the noise floor is high, or the dynamic range of sounds you can hear is basically between loud and very loud. (eg. 20dB range)

A noisy listening environment is like a bad set of headphones - you can't hear the subtle differences in music, and you can't really tell how bad the headphones are. Doesn't matter if you have the best headphones and dap and music files if it's that noisy.

Higher quality dap, music files, and headphones matter if you have a quieter listening environment.

4. Your phone or music player (dap - digital audio player).
In the old days, phone cameras and audio dac (digital audio converters) sucked.
iphone 1, flip phones, etc. These all could play mp3 files, but were generally fm quality or worse when you plugged in headphones.

Over the years, phone makers ran out of features to add to sell the consumer on next year's new phone, so they focused on improving the camera and audio quality. The first major that actually stepped up was LG. IPhones up to then were ok as the typical mp3/aac music player, but they certainly didn't exceed what had been accomplished in the past with cd players and high quality mastered cds.

LG upped the field by dropping in some serious DACs into their top-end phones like the LG V20, G7, and newer, as well as critical support for uncompressed, higher quality flac/wav files that went beyond cd quality recording quality by integrating high quality dac chips that were used by DAPs.

(note - NO IPHONE/IPOD SUPPORTS FLAC, not to mention even higher quality DSD recordings. ie. true path from flac/dsd to dac to headphones while maintaining the FULL range, resolution, and quality.)

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So, if you are using an old phone with mp3/aac, any good DAP will exceed the quality produced by those phones.
If you are using a newer phone, or iphone, that doesn't have a high-quality dap dac and flac/wav/dsd/mqa music support, then you might not hear the difference depending on #1-3 above.

If you are using a newer phone that has a top-quality daq (certain lg phones, sony xperia phones with the hires label, etc), and have top-quality music sources, and nice headphones, then you will easily match the quality of many cheaper high-quality DAPs.

For example, if you have a LG G7 with a JBL E55bt wired with FLAC music files, this Sony DAP isn't going to change your world much. On the other hand, if you have an older Samsung S8 with the same headphones and files, you will hear the difference. (Lack of a high-quality dac and higher noise floor in the S8 result in poorer music reproduction that you can hear the difference.)
eg. https://www.audiosciencereview.co...hone.4468/
THIS is where the majority of today's users are - either a phone with a top quality dac, or an everyday phone that doesn't. THEY WILL ONLY be able to hear a big difference if #1-3 above is in favor of a quiet environment, good headphones, and high quality music sources; OTHERWISE, it won't matter - you simply can't hear the difference in noisy environments with crap streaming music and crap headphones.

(This includes all the users who think most beats, earpods, and anything $10-250~ is amazing. Nope, not going to hear the difference. Start with a Sony HiRes or mid-range Sennheiser over-the-ear headphones.... or
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/s...15.433318/
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/b...ed.634201/ )

If you go all out, an Astell&Kern ($3000+ dap https://www.astellnkern.com/eng/c...de=SC35590)
with a top end planar or hires headphones (eg. $1000+ Audeze lcd-x https://www.audeze.com/products/lcd-x
Sennheiser HD800s https://en-us.sennheiser.com/high...o-hd-800-s)
with top quality flac/dsd/mqa files, then oh, holy YES you can HEAR the "Light"!!!!

(That is when you sign up for head-fi.org and join the other hq music nuts salivating over subtle things like which $100+ tube to drop into a $5000+ tube amp results in the best quality on your $1000+ pair of headphones.)

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