Comparing two Sony bass monsters

Q: What's the difference between the Sony XB500 and the XB700? Why are they so sought after?

A: Sony discontinued the awesome XB500/700/1000 and replaced them with abominations, for reasons that no human, except maybe a couple of folks in a building at 171 Konan Minato-ku, can possibly comprehend.

Since then, obviously due to the fact that [1] they were awesome bass monsters, [2] they were discontinued, and [3] supplies dwindled over time, they have become sought-after collectors items, and have naturally increased in value.

The XB700 has bigger drivers. The memory foam pads are about the size of a CD for comparison, so they are bigger around the ears than the XB500. As a consequence the volume of air that resonates is also greater.

The XB500 has more raw bass. XB700 bass is a little more subtle, and a little tighter. Subbass extension is also better than the 500. Kick drums sound a little crisper, and low end basslines are a little more defined than the 500. 500 bass is more in-your-face, and upper bass rolloff bleeds into the mids audibly, as a consequence of which the mids appear to be a little more recessed than those of the 700.

Soundstage is about the same for both, i.e. not very spectacular. I have convinced myself that 700 soundstage is a little wider than the 500, but IMO that is probably a figment of my imagination than real.

Purely as a bass monster, I would rank the 500 higher, but between the two I end up reaching for the 700 more for EDM. The way I think of the 700 is that it is a more refined version of the 500, i.e. the 500 in a tuxedo.

Is the Bravo Ocean tube headphone amp worth buying?

Q: Is the Bravo Ocean tube headphone amp worth buying?

A: Probably not. Its not a real tube amp, but a class A hybrid. It features a meh design, cheap components, bottom-of-the-barrel stock tube (Shu Guang 12AU7, which is one of the truly god-awful sounding tubes out there), QC issues longer than Lindsay Lohan's arrest record, etc.

But having said this, what are your options if you want a cheap hybrid amp? Well there is the HifiMan EF2A, and it does have a built in USB dac, but that has such a high preset gain and noise floor it is essentially unusable with low impedance headphones.

And the xDuoo TA01, which is more unknown than an uncredited extra in the battle scene in a Peter Jackson movie (but at least it has adjustable gain).

And then there is the Bravo trio -- the v1 (best used as a paperweight), the v2 (which is just as meh as the Ocean, mainly because, well, it is pretty much the Ocean, except naked, which means you are more likely to electrocute yourself on the amp) and the v3, which oddly has an equlaizer which is as useful as a third nipple on a dude.

So where does the enthusiast with a desire for tube sound but no money in their wallet go to get their tube fix?

Well the Little Dot Mk 1+ is probably the best choice, if you can get past the lack of customer support and huge expense shipping it back to LD if you get a lemon.

There's the Hifiman EF3, which is basically the EF2A without the DAC and with a gain switch. But tube rolling paired tubes can be expensive, especially if you go NOS.

Or there is the Bravo v2 or Ocean. The Ocean gives you an enclosure and thus better heat dissipation (Bravo uses the enclosure as a heat sink), and you could get a decent 12AU7 tube for cheaper than a pair of 6AK7s for the EF3.

So in sum, its not very good, but one of the cheapest options for getting into hybrid amps.

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed hybrid tube amp is king.

One of the acrylic guard pieces on my Aune T1 MK2 snapped!

Q: One of the acrylic guard pieces on my Aune T1 MK2 snapped when I was trying to remove them. What do I do?

A: Snapped how? They are supposed to come off easy.

Snapped where? If the little tab at the bottom of the acrylic U snapped, you may have a small piece of acrylic rattling around in your enclosure. It's probably not going to short anything out but you may want to pull it out one day.

If the U shaped arm snapped, well, you should find solace in the fact that the T1 looks even better without the acrylic guards.

You may also want to consider modding a metal cage like I have seen some others do. 

Expensive IEMs when travelling

Q: Are top-of-the-line IEMs worth it when the only use case is in trains while travelling?

A: Two reasons not to use a ToTL pair of headphones for your commute:

[1] I have a nasty habit of losing / breaking / destroying the IEMs I use when on the go. If I lose my $100 IEMs, I don't care. But if I lose a pair of $1000 IEMs, I will cry like a baby. For weeks.

[2] Do you really need that level of audiophile clarity when you are on the go? I mean, are you really trying to critically listen to Wayne Shorter breathing during his saxophone solo in "Aja" when the guy next to you is yelling on his cellphone and the baby two seats behind is screaming at the top of her lungs and the train wheels are going clickety-clack in the background?

And when you are in a restaurant eating dinner and listening to Arne Domnerus' "Jazz At The Pawnshop" do you really want to hear the waiters clearing the table in your song while waiters are clearing the table, well, at your table?

Really?

Headphones that don't let sound out....but let sound in?

Q: I'm looking for a pair of headphones with minimal sound leakage. But I'd also be able to hear when the phone rings or when people are talking to me at work.

A: By default if you want headphones to have minimal sound leakage they must be closed, i.e. the earcups don't allow too much sound to escape into the environment.

But by the same token if sound can't get out, well it can't get in either so closed headphones tend to be quite isolating.

The Sony NWZ-A17SLV: The new face of the Walkman

The A17 is an interesting offering from Sony, obviously throwing down a challenge to the Fiios and the iBassos, and shall I say it...the Ponos of the world?

On the surface this is a great looking DAP. What you are really paying for here is Sony's expertise in the audio industry, with their proprietary hardware and firmware tweaks.

Sony has a great track record, from the original Walkman on. Some super hits (the NWZ series of DAPs), some gear that is absolutely stratospherically good (the PHA2, XB500/700/1000) and even some iconic cult classics (the MDRR10, even the TPS-L2).

But more than any other audio manufacturer (yes, including HiFiman!), Sony has broken my heart. I can forgive them the tizzy MDRZ7 and the surprisingly clunky and redundant UDA1/S, but the internet-connected NW ZX1 really took the cake. I lusted after it for months, couldn't wait to get my hands on it, had dreams about it, and then when I finally nabbed one, it was a huge disappointment, mainly because it had an excessively high noise floor. For the price, it wasn't just a trivial nagging background hiss, it made music literally hard to listen to on some of my more finicky IEMs.

But I didn't learn my lesson (and a very expensive lesson it was too) with the ZX1, I went and checked out the A15. Another gorgeously built device from Sony with all the usual Sony bells and whistles, but no internet connectivity, an interface that made even the crappy Fiio X3 interface bearable, and, wait for it, the dreaded hiss.

You would think I had learned my lesson, but then alas I started lusting after the A17. Third time is a charm, I said to myself, they would surely get it right this time, right?

So what is the A17 all about?

It's not internet enabled, though, like the ZX1 or ZX2 are. And it doesn't run Android but a version of the old Sony firmware that I have become familiar with since my NWZ-S616 days.

It does allow you to play almost every audiophile format you can throw at it, including flac and alac and aac (thankfully no ATRAC!), although it doesn't support DSD. Which is not surprising, because how many DSD songs can you get into that 64GB memory? Four? Five?

You can extend memory with a 128GB SDXC card though, although that adds to the cost. But you have to admit that 192GB is plenty of shelf space even for the most die hard audiophiles (you know the ones that are cybernetically connected to their 1st gen iPod classics).

Battery life is the bane of these devices (except my trusty old Cowon D2, which has the kind of battery life you would expect a nuclear powered aircraft carrier to have) but the A17 manages a healthy theoretical 50 hours. I say theoretical because when I was trying it out, it lasted only about 20 hours or thereabouts. I have no idea if that is par for the course or not.

I'm typically not a fan of the gimmicky digital processing that Sony does, for example DSEE, but its amplification design for the A17, including the so-called HMaster HX digital amplification, is on the money. Check out how Sony implemented the amp topology, its pretty cool, for example they used a POSCAP capacitor as the charge pump.

The interface is more intuitive than the crap on my Fiio X3 (Sorry X3 fanboys, but you know that even with the firmware update, the X3 interface is, well, crap) but it is still somewhat clunky. The screen is tiny but well illuminated (OLED?) but even though you can view video, i wouldn't use the A17 as a video player any more than I would use it as a smartphone.

Overall the sound is remarkably neutral. Highs are crisp (something I found lacking with the ZX1) and detail is superb. The only minuses are that it struggles to power even moderate impedance headphones, and there is an irritating hint of a hiss with exacting IEMs (floor noise is what killed the ZX1 for me as well). Which is frustrating, because if you can't pair audiophile DAPs with something like the Shure SE535 (which is great but nitpicks when it comes to floor noise) then what would you pair it with?

And the A17 struggles even with moderate impedance headphones with its 10mW per channel output, so it's really not an option except for portable use.

I suppose the A17 should be on the shortlist for folks looking at a standalone DAP, and I do prefer it to my Fiio X3 (which is languishing in a drawer somewhere because every time I use it I end up more irritated than happy). And
if you don't have prima donna IEMs that act like divas when it comes to amps, then the A17 may be a great choice. The S-Master HX topology is actually very cool and innovative, Sony DSEE is one of the fre implementations of digital sound enhancement that does not strip the music of its soul, the battery runs for longer than you would expect (around 30 hours by my reckoning), plus it charges quick too, the max of 192 GB storage (64 internal + 128 addon) is enough for any audiophile (at least for now), and the build quality is excellent - it just feels solid and right in your hand.

But the damn hiss makes your mambo sound more like a mamba. It makes me wish that Sony included Riki Tikki Tavi in the box with every DAP they sold to me.

And there are three more compelling reasons to pass on the A17.

First, from a price performance perspective its hard to look beyond the Fiio X1, or even the Sony NWZ-E385, which doesn't allow lossless files but then how many people critically listen to flac files when they are on the go anyway?

Second, the lack of internet access is irritating, because most of my on-the-go music now comes from streaming services. The A17 does have Bluetooth streaming though, but I did not test it.

But third (and probably most tellingly), it still doesn't demonstrate a compelling advantage over my Cowon D2, which has been my DAP workhorse for a long time now, mainly because I can't find anything better
But oh yes, one thing I learned during my time with the A17 is that it has an FM tuner.

Who knew FM radio still existed?