Sony HAP-Z1ES Hi-Res Music Player RMAF 2013

The soundstage is more relaxed and much larger with the DSD remastering engaged. There is a more natural decay to the notes and the leading edge of the note is properly rendered. If you have ever compared a good quality, properly set-up analog system to most digital sources you know exactly what I'm trying to say. As to Sony' software, all I can say its very simple and effective. It took a long time to load all my music (direct LAN cable is recommended) but once loaded it was properly organized by genre, artist, album, and track. Gracenote is the online database used and its generally accurate. You can also create playlists so you can organize them manually by composer if you wish but I don't see any direct user control over how music is searched or cataloged.

Kclone, my thoughts exactly. I'm going to wait for reviews, but the main thing for me will be if Dan Wright offers a mod on this unit. That in my estimation would make this a no brainer, but it could cut into sales on his new DAC, so he may pass on this one. I'll be following this closely, but I won't be an early buyer.

Hi Sbayne,

You said:
"At times I prefer the remastered version to the DSD version and other times I do not."

Are these DSD versions pure DSD recording, re-mastered or re-mixed(???)?

May be this will tell why.

Thank you!

If you want professional reviews The Absolute Sound and What-Hi Fi? have already published some. The output stage is almost the same as the XA-5400ES so there will be plenty of tweakers out there I'm sure.

I'm not as expert on these issues as you guys. So I have a simple, bottom-line question for Sbayne:

If a typical audiophile A/Bs a typical contemporary classical music CD on (a) an Olive and (b) the HAP-Z1ES with DSD remastering, will the HAP-Z1ES sound significantly better?

Will the remastered version almost as good as Hi-Res?

Mike