Sony Walkman NWZ- X1051 16GB Review

The User Reviews

Average User Rating: 10.0

1. One issue concerning sound

   

   By: Chris
   July 28, 2009 @ 9:37 AM

   Hi again,

   After two weeks I am still happy with the new Sony X1051. I found one strange issue with sound though. It’s not something totally fatal or a flaw in the design, but I think it might be interesting to know for other Sony X users.

   I had some recordings of classical music transferred. There you have a wide dynamic range. Especially the silent passages or louder passages that get instantly silent do make the reverberations very audible. I had these reverberations muffled or even eliminated. Also the silent passages were cut off partially. Very annoying if you want to enjoy all the subtleties of a silent piece of music.

   After a few hours of experimenting with my mp3 encoding I still had this issue. It wasn’t the encoding, but rather a setting in the player itself: Music Settings / Dynamic Normalizer.

   If you turn this on (on by default), you can lose a big part of quiet music. As soon as I turned this off, all the details emerged, it sounded a lot richer… like I remembered it from the CD player. Finally, I was happy. Sibelius was back from the dead ;-)

   I don’t know if this is caused by the way a dynamic normalizer works in general. I’ll try to give more attention during the mp3 encoding process. I need to spend a few more hours in researching encoding music in a consistent and correct way! Then I can hopefully switch off this dynamic normalizer of the player for ever.

   Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No

2. A solid peace

   

   By: Chris
   July 13, 2009 @ 9:33 PM

   I am still baffled. Today I replaced my old creative zen which died on me. I made a major jump forward. Boy this is way better, i would give it a 9 from 10.

   The concept is to have a touchscreen as well as some few buttons. The touchscreen can be locked by a simple lock key. On the desktop are a few useful software modules. There’s an fm antenna built in and if you have wlan nearby, then the fun just begins, youtube and podcasts can be viewed or you can surf. It’s loaded by usb, no adapter is needed. The case is metal and pretty thin an light. It lacks a protective jacket though, but you can get one somewhere else. Considering the price that’s a minor drawback.

   On the pc the device can be mounted by the small transfer software from sony and is shown in explorer like any another drive. You can stop there an shovel everything into the player, but there’s also a media library software included and there’s even an interface to itunes.

   The display is just wow. OLED rules, color and contrast beat everything i’ve seen so far on an mp3 player. My photos look sharp a have vibrant colors, this quality stays unchanged when watching video, just WOW. No smearing or jaggies… it seems to work. It’s not as big as the one from apple, but it’s ok.

   The main reason for me to pick the sony player was sound. You can equalize, eliminate noise from outside (to some degree, 17db is better that nothing). You can add surround effects. You have even good old DSEE which helps to revive lost sound in higher frequencies by compression, it’s another wow. There’s also the clear stereo function which eliminates wandering between left and right channel, you get a wider and more stable sound stage by that.

   You can use AVC, H.264, MPEG4 and WMV as well as MP3, AAC und WMA. Thats just what i needed.

   What can i say… i won’t give to anyone. It’s mine, mine mine mine, you can’t have shiny! Mmmmyyyy…. prrrrreecioouuuusssss!!!

   Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No