Sony HAP-Z1ES high-resolution file player

I've said it before and I'll say it again: High-end audio is the tail of the dog that is the consumer audio business. We have little leverage in determining where the technology is going, even though we undoubtedly know more about it than the average buyer. On the other hand, after the mainstream has determined where it's going (or thinks it's going), the high-end business must accept that, and try to optimize it for those of us who care deeply about getting the best sound. The ubiquitous iPod and its fellow MP3 players kicked off the playing of music files and allowed listeners to carry around their music wherever they went.

It's now hard to find any place where there aren't people with wires hanging from their ears, and it's difficult to deny those listeners their convenience. Of course, the downloading of files to a computer meant that one could also play them at home through a regular stereo system, despite the fact that, at first, the files were always mercilessly compressed in order to accommodate the limited storage of the little 'Pods. Still, I know of a number of audiophiles who were seduced by the convenience.

Since then, people have been ripping their own CDs into uncompressed LPCM formats like WAV and AIFF or lossless-compressed formats like FLAC and ALAC, and a few began buying uncompressed music files of higher resolutions. For those listeners, Stereophile has been reporting on devices, such as USB DACs, that will support high-definition playback and our colleagues at AudioStream.com cover the wider range of storage, servers, and streamers, in both hardware and software products. In January, at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show, there was a series of panel discussions about efforts to coordinate the hi-def download business. Perhaps not so surprising is that Sony is a major supporter of this effort.

Two big things are needed in order to bring this about and, hopefully, attract the attention of the wider market for downloaded music, which listens only to compressed files on such portable devices as headphones or computer speakers. The first requirements are the availability of a large number of hi-def files of music and recordings that people actually want to buy, and easily accessible outlets for their distribution. That was the topic of the CES discussions, whose panelists included representatives of the major labels and the prominent audiophile labels. Second, mainstream audio manufacturers need to offer high-quality, simple-to-operate playback devices. With a new product line headed up by the subject of this review—and the release of many classic recordings remastered as DSD files—Sony has taken a bold step in the translation of file-playing from modest mobile devices to high-resolution, high-quality listening in the home.

First Impressions
Basically, the Sony HAP-Z1ES is a music-file player like an iPod, but it improves on Apple's paradigm in every way but portability. First, it can play—and enhance the sound of—almost any format, lossless, or lossy: DSD (DSF, DSDIFF at 2.8 or 5.6MHz), PCM (16-, 24-, or 32-bit at 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, or 192kHz), WAV, AIFF, FLAC, ALAC, ATRAC Advanced Lossless, ATRAC, MP3, AAC, and WMA. Second, it has a 1TB hard drive for storage, and supports the attachment of an additional drive via USB. Third, it offers wired and wireless network connectivity to/from your computer, so that you can upload, download, back up, and restore your files, and enjoy Internet radio streaming via vTuner. Fourth, the HAP-Z1ES, which Sony calls a DSD Remastering Engine, can upconvert any digital source to 128fs DSD. And fifth, Sony has included its Digital Sound Enhancement Engine (DSEE), which, it says, restores a natural sound to compressed files.

The box I received from Sony contained the HAP-Z1ES and a Sony Xperia tablet, along with documents and accessories. I was surprised by the HAP-Z1ES's 32 lbs—it reminded me of a similar experience I had a decade ago with Sony's SCD-XA9000ES SACD/CD player. In both cases, Sony has clearly invested a lot in constructing a remarkably stable and rigid environment; the frame-and-beam chassis with dual-panel baseplate ensures a low center of gravity. That plate sits on specially designed anti-feedback feet. Inside are separate transformers, which isolate the digital and analog power supplies from each other. Most of the other internal components, notably the DSD Remastering Engine board and even the cooling fan, are compliantly mounted to isolate them from each other. The only front-panel knob, used for file navigation, is mounted on an iron plate to ensure rigidity and provide a satisfying feel. Clearly, Sony has spared little in building the HAP-Z1ES.

The front panel is dominated by a bright, clear color display. At the far left are the power button and remote-control receiver window. Immediately to the left of the display is the LED indicating whether DSEE processing is active; to the display's right is the navigation knob, surrounded by three navigation pushbuttons: Home, Back, Enter. To the extreme right is the Play/Pause button. This seems relatively minimal, but I found it effective for all basic operations; with the display's visual feedback, functional control was completely intuitive.

The HAP-Z1ES comes with a remote control that offers On/Off, Play/Pause, Skip Forward/Back, Mute, and Volume Up/Down. It works, but I rarely used it; the front panel served as well, and the Android/iOS application did more and better. Also, I was continually annoyed by the remote's volume controls, which are irrelevant, unless one has a compatible (presumably, Sony) control amp. You can't adjust the volume of the HAP-Z1ES's analog outputs, and therefore can't connect it directly to a power amp or to powered speakers. Too bad.

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The rear panel sports, from left to right, stereo XLR and RCA output jacks, an output jack for an IR link, an RJ-45 Ethernet jack, an USB Type A jack for adding external storage, and an IEC power connector.

Installing the HAP-Z1ES was easy. I connected its analog XLR and RCA outputs to stereo inputs on my Audio Research MP1 preamp and powered up the AC. Since the Sony came preloaded with a dozen or so files, I was able to begin listening almost immediately without referring to any of the documentation or accessories.

My first impression was emphatically positive. Although I was familiar with only a few of the preloaded selections, and none are what I would call "modern" recordings, they sounded notably clear and dynamic, often belying their vintage dates. I then connected the HAP-Z1ES to my home network to access some familiar Internet radio sites and had the same positive reaction, regardless of the bit rate (always compressed) at which a given station was operating.

Serious Setup
The real purpose of the HAP-Z1ES, however, is to ease and enhance the listener's enjoyment of a large library of music, and for this, one does have to expend a little effort. First, one has to obtain a library of music files, and despite the network connection, one can't do this directly from the Sony. As when using a mobile player, one browses, buys, and downloads the music to a regular computer. Then, with Sony's HAP Music Transfer application, you can select the computer directories/folders that contain the files you want to send to the HAP-Z1ES. You can also flag them "Watch," so that files added to such directories will be uploaded to the HAP-Z1ES, automatically or at your bidding. You can select which formats you want transferred automatically. That said, HAP Music Transfer didn't discriminate between stereo and multichannel files, even though the multichannel ones were grayed out on the HAP-Z1ES's display and couldn't be played.

I downloaded some new files and added them to the music directories on my PC. Even though Sony had provided only a dozen free tracks on the HAP-Z1ES's 1TB drive, I decided not to upload my own library to the review sample. Instead, I took advantage of another important feature of the HAP-Z1ES, which permits the connection of additional storage via USB. First, I plugged a preloaded portable drive into the rear-panel USB port, but the HAP-Z1ES responded with a message on its display asking me to approve the formatting of my USB drive. I've learned that any computer-related device that asks that question is indicating that granting that permission has consequences; I declined. Clearly, Sony has chosen a different format for this additional local storage, and I didn't want to lose what was on that drive. My solution was to use a blank, 75GB portable drive, which the HAP-Z1ES formatted in less than a minute (footnote 1). I selected the option to have HAP Music Transfer put the files from my music library on the external drive. Uploading was quite swift, but it will depend on file size and your network's speed.

I went back to the music system—all the new files were there, integrated (with help from the GraceNote database) into the HAP-Z1ES lists by genre, album, performer, etc. But now the lists were simply too long for the small screen and the manual controls, especially since the scroll control worked opposite to expectation: I turned it clockwise, the cursor went down, and vice versa. Yes, I know, it's analogous to swiping a touchscreen—but it's a knob.



Footnote 1: I later tried to read that drive on my PC, which couldn't recognize it at all. Sony uses a version of the ext file system, created specifically for the Linux kernel. It took the download of new utilities from the drive's manufacturer, elimination of all partitions, and a low-level reformatting to recover normal use of the drive. Lesson learned: Use a drive that you intend to use only with the HAP-Z1ES, unless you use a Linux system.—Kalman Rubinson
COMPANY INFO
Sony Electronics Inc.
16530 Via Esprillo
San Diego, CA 92127
(858) 942-2400
ARTICLE CONTENTS

COMMENTS
skris88's picture

Okay. It's time you gave us a detailed article on how up-conversion works. In fact my brain tells me it CANNOT work. I'm a digital fan. I don't have vinyl. But I don't believe you can make something out of nothing, that a compressed MP3 file or similarly compressed Internet Radio stream could be up-converted to Hi Res digital audio. The ball's in YOUR court now, Stereophile!

John Atkinson's picture
skris88 wrote:
I don't believe you can make something out of nothing, that a compressed MP3 file or similarly compressed Internet Radio stream could be up-converted to Hi Res digital audio.

No-one has said that up-converting an MP3 file will produce the equivalent of a hi-res file. Nothing can put back the audio data that was discarded by a lossy codec. However, up-conversion to a faster sample rate is a legitimate tool in digital signal processing, and it is possible for an upsampled version of low-resolution data to sound better.

I first came across this technique in 1982, when looking at the chip set for the first Philips CD players. Each 44.1kHz sample was interspersed with three samples of zero value. The effect was to reduce the signal level by 12dB but also to quadruple the effective sample rate to 176.4kHz. No information was added above the original Nyquist Frequency (22.05kHz) but now a better-behaved digital reconstruction filter could be used. In addition, noiseshaping of the higher-sample rate digital data allowed Philips to wrest higher-resolution from the 14-bit DAC chips they had developed. (Before Sony got involved in development of the CD specification, the original CD proposal was for data to be stored as 14-bit words.)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Dr.Kamiya's picture

Just think of anti-aliasing when you think of up-conversion. We do it all the time for fonts and graphics, so there's absolutely no reason it can't work for sound.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/images/anti-aliasing/aliased-vs-anti.gif

Anti-aliasing allows us to take rasterized fonts and blow them up to extreme sizes, while still retaining smooth edges and outlines.

This tech has been in development for decades in the world of visuals. Font-smoothing, subpixel-rendering, plus any number of different anti-aliasing methods. At the end of the day it's all about creating a smooth line from a jagged source, and it's just as applicable to audio as it is to graphics.

Just_Me's picture

I know this is an OLD post :-) But its a fascinating topic, as much because the terminology is so vague and misleading. Up-sampling? Oversampling? Difference? No and yes. Ignore.

Anyway, there are several techniques that can be applied if one increases the number of samples. Most fundamentally interpolation. Imagine that you had two dots, and good reason to believe they were connect by a straight line. You could plot dots along that line. Doing so in audio mostly make sit easier to build phase-correct and good sounding analog reconstruction filters. very common.

A higher frequency also suggests tighter jitter tolerances, which is important aurally. I wont go into the science, but it is.

Finally, there are algorithms that can essentially reverse-engineer (very imperfectly) even lossy compression algorithms, although their effectiveness is limited and they will many times guess wrong.

No one creates something out of nothing. It is more a method to improve filtering.

G

zounder1's picture

Sigh... when are manufacturers going to realize a lot of folks don't want a player with a built in hard drive? For those technically competent they long ago purchased a NAS to share files on their home network.
And why in the world do I have to go through the hassle of transferring my music collection and purchases from my computer to the Sony player? I can tolerate music players that are targeted at folks that just want to feed the machine disc after disc to digitize their collection without effort. But the Sony does not even do that?
So Sony has released a product that won't appeal to Luddites that want simplicity. (Asking my dad to transfer files to this machine would painful.) And it doesn't appeal to folks like me that already have digitized and organized my music collection on a home network.
This Sony player would be much, much nicer if it could simply play music from a NAS or network share. So sell me this player for less with no hard drive thanks. Besides, 1TB of built in storage is completely inadequate if you want to collect DSD files. Heck my very small music collection (FLAC mainly) tips the scales at 400GB! Any serious collection of lossless music (DSDm FLAC, WAV, ALAC, etc) is likely already way, way past 1TB in music.

SJNIETO's picture

zounder1, is this correct? It can not stream from a NAS or Net share?

zounder1's picture

Yes, according to the review you cannot stream from a NAS to this device. Miyou must copy the files.

To quote the article
"As when using a mobile player, one browses, buys, and downloads the music to a regular computer. Then, with Sony's HAP Music Transfer application, you can select the computer directories/folders that contain the files you want to send to the HAP-Z1ES. "

This means you use a utility to copy files to the sony. I find that quite pathetic.

SJNIETO's picture

This means one can copy the files over wireless but not play the files over wireless?
It's has WiFi but it can not play streams? Strange...

alvester's picture

If you elect to install and use it, the software does all the transferring for you. Once it's loaded with you music, if your NAS and/or network is down or malfunctioning this unit can still to continue to run without needing the network. (If you fully lose network connectivity you would be forced to use the physical remote rather than an app.)

I used to play back only via a NAS/Home Server and after using this Sony unit I've come to the conclusion this is a great and more reliable option to have. I also both network playback throughout our home (via Bubble UPnP Server/Asset UPnP Server to multiple Chromecast Audio devices and Audio Groups) but the Sony has the better sound in our main listening room.

By having the music reside directly on the Sony too, it removes the frustrating variables of NAS as well as having an easy to use interface via its hardware, physical remote and an app which runs on both Android and Apple devices.

With the latest firmware version the Sony can also serve as media server within your home if you have a UPnP compatible app running on your Android or iOS device. So even though it can't support playback FROM network storage it in of itself can function as NAS Storage and Media Server on your Local Network.

For years I used multiple Squeezebox 2s tied to NAS storage but adding the Sony into our home's music playback systems has been a much easier and enjoyable piece of hardware. It's great when folks are over for a listen - I can hand them an extra Android device and let them browse and choose music directly on the player.

yuppi's picture

I just buy a HAP-Z1ES and found that the XLR jacks being wired with pin 2 hot...

mrvco's picture

This would be an interesting product if the USB port could be used to connect an external DAC. I'm sure the built-in DAC is great, but why limit its lifespan and versatility?

tmsorosk's picture

I do want a built in stand alone hard drive, who wouldn't ? Take it anywhere.
Link it to your computer for a few hours and all your music is on it, a one time deal.
Sweet .

ALTY2718's picture

I purchased the HAP-Z1ES last November (2014). My impressions to date are as follows. 1. The unit is very well constructed. 2. As I had ripped my CD's to my computers HD it was an easy, though slow process (using wifi) to transfer the files to the HAP-Z1ES. I ripped some 200 cd's as FLAC's, took up approx. 70GB which is no big deal. I also had some 10GB of higher res. downloads which I added. 3. The Sony sounded better with my B&W 805 Diamond speakers (on my 'B' system) than with my Focal 1027 Be speakers (on my 'A' system). On my main (A) system I am using an Oppo 105B blue ray player and a 125GB usb stick (as storage), which sounds better to my ears than the Sony in that combination of components. 4. The Sony unit is easy to use, I make use of both the Ipad app. and the remote/front of unit controls depending on whether my wifi system is on. The Ipad app. is fantastic, I have set up the 'favourites' option and make regular use of it. 5. One frustration I have had is that the copyright protection built into the Sony unit prevents one 'Sony music' cd I burnt from playing on the unit. This is frustrating as I have already paid for that music! If you have a lot of Sony cd's this my be something you need to consider. The Oppo played the same cd's without any problem. Despite this glitch I am really enjoying using the HAP-Z1ES.

klosterman's picture

I own this and love it. Question: should I swap the speaker cables (or ICs) to address the inversion?

klosterman's picture

So who besides me is experimenting with swapping one end of their interconnects coming out of the Sony?

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