Minidisc in Sydney Australia

Wow oh wow! Why can't we have stores like this in in the USA, or at the very least in Los Angeles? Well actually, stores like this do, exist (Audio Element in Pasadena), but NOT with this vast selection of products. Practically any headphone you can think of, Minidisc has it. They even have Dan's headphones!










Wing Li, the owner, let me have at it with the Sony ZX100 and ZX2. I also got a chance to try out the HD800S finally. Lots of great stuff there to try out. If you guys get a chance, I highly encourage you to try things out at the store and buy from Minidisc.

 

I've had my Sony X Walkman for years now. Actually I was dumb enough to sell it and CEETEE offered me his. Sure these's been new and "better" portable stuff out since the release of the X Walkman, but nothing has made me decide to go elsewhere. Until now...

 

The HD800S was sort of meh. Compared to regular HD800, bass seemed a bit slower with less clarity. Transients seemed less incisive. The good thing is that a lot of the glare and hardness is gone. But with pop recordings (Michael Jackson - Off the Wall), still too bright with grainy and edgy treble. I'd have to agree with @sorrodje that french mods on regular HD800 is preferable. It's like the HD800s glare is gone, but so is quite a bit of everything else. The bass is also warmer, so tonality, that is overall cohesiveness, gets thrown off a bit more.

 

Ended up with ZX2. My goal was to find a portable player (withOUT any other crap, bricks, amps, etc. attached to it) that would drive the Andromeda IEMs and maximize its potential. The Sony S-Master lineage was very obvious among the three players, and I wanted to keep that sound since I haven't exactly been smitten with the sound of other players from the likes of iBasso, AK, Questyle, etc. Some were good, but none of them far exceeded what I had with the X Walkman fed into a Leckerton or the Walkman by itself for easier to drive applications. With Andromeda, my main beef with the X was with the effects of the slightly high output Z (easily correctable with EQ), and the hiss.

The X100 was a good improvement over the original X. More power, bass control, no hiss, and apparently lower output Z. The ZX2 then took sonics up another level: even more power, control, and most importantly, more nuanced - a jump in microdynamic shading. The ZX2 of course comes at a hefty premium, but the increase in sound quality was significant enough for me, and I probably couldn't have dealt the ZX100 lacking a touchscreen since my X has a touchscreen. The ZX2 is a little bit bigger than I would have liked, but hey, it's still smaller than the cassette Walkman that I had in high school.

The ZX2 is Android, so that might open up some possibilities, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm not sure Sony would be good about updates to Android so the latest applications can run. I'm having the ZX2 run in bit before I make any more serious comparisons. One of the intro guide screens on the ZX2 upon initial boot up said that the caps needed 100 hours.