Sony Walkman NW-A55

Well first of all I hate touchscreens and wish they would die in a fire. Every smartphone I've had has been too big for me to comfortably use with one hand, compared to older dumbphones which were very easy to use. Even if you find a small smartphone, the touchscreen then gets cramped. A small digital screen and thoughtfully placed physical buttons creates an interface that I can navigate without ever taking it out of my pocket. It also takes up less space, which opens up new possibilities for places to put it or when/where to take it. When you have a small device with physical buttons, you can just do more with it, easier, faster, more reliably. The other thing is, most smartphones today are insanely over-complicated and not reliable at all. They consume an insane amount of system resources, their battery life is piss-poor, they're constantly being updated which leads to more instability. And new devices aren't necessarily backwards compatible with old apps, meaning you might end up with a phone just for music anyway, or end up losing a useful app. A dedicated device with a simpler RTOS can actually function faster, better, more reliably, for longer. And to top it all off, the software of a Sony Walkman is usually top-notch. Good EQ presets, an interface designed to make it easy to navigate, with all the player options you want, with UX front and center. Quality control is high because you have to assume the user will never update the firmware. And having a bunch of MP3s b…

Smartphones are also generally a lot larger, so they don't fit in my pocket very well while cycling or running. I need my smartphone to do a whole bunch of things outside playing music, and restricting myself to specific models with physical audio control buttons and small screens makes the market a lot smaller and would probably leave me with a poorer phone than picking one without needing to think about its ability to play music while exercising. I did this for my previous phone and the result wasn't very pleasant, so went with the separate players this time around. Different headphones might be an option, but again a lot of the better phones are ditching headphone jacks, so it would be restricting my phone options.

I like to keep music playback separate from my phone because I hate having it interrupted by some random app notification. And on my smartphone I have to push the volume to the max to barely reach the level I consider normal with my headphones. On the Walkman that's not an issue and the difference in sound is immediately noticeable. Of course that doesn't matter if you use Bluetooth, but as there isn't a single decent pair of BT headphones with replaceable batteries on the market I'll keep using cables in the foreseeable future (and headphones have a minimum size, so the manufacturers can't even use their typical excuses for using glue). Of course some phones are quite solid in terms of sound, with some music there's no difference either way, but without comparison you can't really know what's missing unfortunately.

> Sennheiser HD-650's (at home) or IE8i's (when exercising). I prefer the 900N outside, and the 1000XM inside. To exercise with some music, I'm waiting for good neckband headphones with active audio cancellation: ideally something like the Anker Soundcore Life U2 - same form factor and USB-C plug, but with LDAC, AptX HD and a quality at least on par with the Shure AONIC. Yes I'm super picky :) > Hearing the sound-stage and subtle do-dads buried by lesser set-ups is a pet-peeve of mine. Oh so much this!! I'm hearing instruments that I hadn't noticed before! The first week, I thought it was in my head, because some of the tracks I've been listening to for years started sounding different!! But no, the Sony is that good. Again, it's worth every dollar. > I'm spoiled Now I'm spoiled too :) I just can't forget how much better it made my favorite tracks! TBH, the Sony has been my best purchase of these last few years: it has even rekindled my interest in music. Right now I'm exploring "pop urbaine", a very interesting genre that I didn't even know existed. My favorite tracks are inbetween EDM and Raeggeton, the best example being "On fleek" by Eva - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_eEW2Ioe-o (starts at 0:30) I would never have expected I'd take a liking to french music, but here I'm! Thank you Sony!! > A very important, perhaps dominant, factor in all of this is how the music was ripped/encoded. This too! I only use FLAC ripped from known-good sources like DDD audio CDs, but aft…

I can’t describe what a breath of fresh air this is compared to how bad modern smartphone music and streaming apps have become. It’s also nice having a dedicated player that isn’t inundated with notifications and other modern distractions. Until you see something done well, we get seduced by "features" and loose track of how nice a really well design thing can be. (Got to hand it to old Apple, they did know design.)

This used to be available in the United States for purchase. I have one, and bought it in 2020 from Best Buy for $170. [0] Good to know it's still available in Japan, but it's a shame it doesn't seem to be in stock in the US anymore since it's a fantastic player. It's free from all the smartphone bloat and runs a slick interface on vanilla linux (and works just fine with linux as USB mass storage device, as well as an FM radio receiver, and a bluetooth client/host). That there is no wifi in my mind is a feature rather than a bug. I also like to think that model name is an homage to the hip hop group, N.W.A. :-P [0] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sony-walkman-nw-a55-hi-res-16gb...

> All smart phone has hardware volume buttons. My Bluetooth earphones have hardware play and pause buttons. I don't care much about volume buttons - it's usually adjusted to what I think is right and rarely tweaked. What I care about is buttons to control the tracks: there are no next/previous track and play button on the smartphones I tried. > And the device we are comparing it against (the new Sony Walkman) is also touchscreen based like smart phones. It also has actual hardware buttons. > So there isn’t really anything between modern Walkmans and smart phones these days Well, if you exclude the buttons I care about, yes. > when I’m listening to lossy music You do, but I don't! > The real differentiator there is what (ear|head)phones Agreed, it's often the limiting factors. I had played with FLAC files before but couldn't find much of a difference. Now that I have proper headphones and earbuds, I do!! And it's actually why I'm waiting for proper neckbad earbuds to consider exercicing with music: just like I don't want to listen to lossy music, I don't want to be exposed to bad earbuds.