Sony Invites You to Hear High-Resolution Audio

You may remember our previous coverage of Sony’s portable media players featuring high-resolution audio. High-resolution audio promises to do for audio what high-definition did for video. If you haven’t yet graced your ears with this, then prepare to hear a lot more from your favourite music than you’ve heard before. Sony has been busy organizing industry efforts behind the scenes to help stimulate the up-take of high-resolution audio. Why bother with dedicated media devices any more? Sony presents: ‘bringing audio quality back’.

Our PlayStation 4-making giant has detailed plans to feature high-resolution tracks from Warner Music, Universal Music and Sony Music on upcoming products. You can expect fifteen tracks from across the music catalog of these companies to enjoy immediately after purchasing one of Sony’s selected music players. John Anderson, Vice President of Home Entertainment & Sound, Sony Europe tells us:

It’s been more than a decade since the first MP3 digital downloads and music players were introduced to the public. Now is the time to offer high-resolution audio products that bring music enthusiasts closer to their favourite recordings, and allow them to experience those recordings the way the artists, producers and engineers originally intended.

Are They Really Trying to Sell Music Players Still?

It might be the age of the portable device, with smartphones happily taking care of your music needs, leaving old iPods on tables everywhere, but Sony sees opportunity. The surge of iTunes-compatible software in the Google Play store tells us conversion is happening. iTunes itself isn’t the center of Apple’s innovation as library-management on the desktop appears to be declining. We’re still moving mobile. So what is Sony up to with its dedicated music players? Niamh O’Reilly, Senior Director of Digital, Sony Music Entertainment:

In a world in which there are more ways than ever of finding and listening to music – be that at home or on the move – there has never been a better time to develop a high quality audio experience.

One could understand this to mean that despite the vast availability of finding and listening to music, there is apparently little regard for audio quality. But we can’t leave that view entirely in Sony’s hands – the last time that you searched for a track to listen to, did you stop to think think about the quality of the track? Did it matter to you?

Here is where Sony comes in. Their audio-loving heritage is well-documented and you could imagine that they have been pulling their hair out watching the last of the record stores close while 128-192kps substitutes in online music stores on iOS, Android, Amazon and others replace them. If you’re not familiar with what has happened here, in short, a vast amount of purchasable online music doesn’t compare in any way to the quality of a compact disc or better still the original recording, factually speaking. The difference in quality is very noticeable to the ears when you hear them both. Yes, your iPod has been lying to your ears.

So, What do the Devices Look Like?

Take a look at a string of portable media devices (let’s run with ‘music players’) that Sony has been sending out into the market: the F-880 Walkman and the NW-ZX1 Walkman as well as the previously mentioned F886 in September. If you only check out only one link, make it the middle one, the Walkman NW-ZX1 as featured below.

The Bottom Line?

At least initially, these devices are not targeting the broad market. The crux of Sony’s marketing with these appear to be targeting ‘die-hard’ music-lovers that wish 128kps tracks would go away quickly. Quality has arguably been lost with the iPod’s convenience. That doesn’t mean that Sony won’t go mass-market on these later though and the glossy-coloured versions linked above suggest that they have iPod-to-Android-converts in focus.

You can read more of this from Sony here. If you would like to read more about hi-resolution audio, Sony tells more here.