Sony NW-A105 Digital Audio Player Review

[Saidera]

Now, it seems condensers or capacitors in S-Master amps and walkmans like A55 do need some 'aging' or burn-in, before their characteristics become optimal - muddiness may become clearer upon hundreds of hours later of listening! This is objectively verifiable stuff, but Sony has not released any documents.

 

[Saidera]

I'm familiar with fully digital PWM amplifiers as I have a couple at home (I.AM.D V200). The problem with the NW-A55 is definitely not DSP because my dynamic driver & planar magnetic headphones & dynamic IEMs whose sound balance is unaffected by output impedance all worked really well with the device. My BA IEMs which require low/very low output impedance to work as intended sounded horrible. It's very plainly a problem with the hardware design, not the software or the sleep patterns or work schedules of Sony employees(!)

All the "enhanced" sound modes are irrelevant. For me the device is merely required to properly drive a variety of earphones with all the DSP stuff inactive. It failed.

We should see A55 measured for output impedance via USB DAC mode.
I don't have BA IEMs. I remember some other guy used 3.5 mm BA IEMs on A105 and said DSEE was more suited to BA IEMs not dynamic driver.

 

[julian_hughes]

This has nothing to do with USB DAC mode, the A105 or Sony's DSP and NC modes or marketing buzz words.

Only requirement was unmodified playback via the 3.5mm jack into a variety of commonly found headphone types. The NW-A55 fails because the output impedance of the headphone output is obviously nowhere near the ideal range of 0 to 1. I can't put it more simply than this. Over & out.