Sounds to make you sing

A portable digital music player that looks just like an smartphone - and does everything a smartphone can do except make calls - the new Sony Walkman NWZ-F886 boasts a four-inch bright screen and supports high-resolution audio technology that will have you swooning over the sound.

Running on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) operating system and with an impressive 32 gigabytes of storage, it uses the S-Master full digital amplifier for enhancing sound quality. Apart from allowing you to listen to music through headphones, F886 also has built-in speakers with xLoud technology, meaning you can share your favourite tunes with friends in the same room.

Its bright and sharp screen with a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels lets you view photos and watch video clips from YouTube or other outlets that you have stored on its internal storage. And the F886 can play up to Full HD video clips. The Triluminos display provides vivid colour while OptiContrast ensures easy viewing in bright sunlight.

For wireless connectivity, the F886 has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections with NFC-assisting technology so you can tap the back of the F886 to the NFC connection point of a home theatre system or a set of wireless headphones to play the music from the player on the system or headphones.

As an Android-based player, the F886 is easy and intuitive to use. Moreover, it comes with play control buttons and volume rockers on its right side to make it even easier.

Another nice feature is that it provides three modes of noise cancelling. The player has a long battery life of 35 hours playback with MP3 files or up to 26 hours of Hi-Res Audio files. 

The capability to play back high-resolution audio files is an outstanding feature of the F886 but you will need to use it with headphones that support high-resolution audio, such as Sony MDR-10RC.

High-resolution audio is known as the “192kHz/24bit” format, which is the sampling rate of digital sampling of an original analogue audio source. CD audio, which used to amaze us, has the sampling rate of 44.1kHz/16bit.

Due to the amount of data carried in High-Resolution Audio files, the file sizes tend to become very large so the digital recording needs to be done using compression that will not sacrifice the sound quality.

The 192kHz/24bit audio files often use FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) or ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec). And the F886 supports playing Hi-Res FLAC and ALAC formats.

Of course, to make most of the music quality of F886, you also need music files that are encoded in the 192kHz/24bit in FLAC or ALAC format. These files must be bought online and it’s also possible to buy special audio CDs that are encoded in 192kHz/24bit high resolution.

When the F886 plays a Hi-Res audio file, it will display the HR symbol on the screen.

I tested the F886 with the MDR-10RC headphones using high-resolution 192kHz/24bit audio files provided by Sony. I was impressed by the music quality, which sounded almost like a live performance with a lot of music details.

 I listened to “Don’t Know Why” by Norah Jones, which was encoded in 192kHz/24-bit resolution and provided by Sony for the test. Her voice was beautiful and in terrific harmony with all the details of the music. 

The sounds of bass guitar and acoustic guitar, piano were incredibly real while the percussion instruments were clearly audible. It was really good experience to hear such a Hi-Res song.

Sony Thailand has announced that if F886 owners have not yet got access to hi-res songs, they can download and install DSEE (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine) 

HX on the Walkman.

The DSEE HX technology will restore high-range sound that is lost in the compression process so that the music file being played will see its sound quality upscaled to a quality higher than that of CDs.

With the DSEE HX mode turned on, MP3, AAC, WMA and other compressed files can be upscaled to up to 176.4kHz/24 bit sampling rate, resulting in more natural 

quality.

Sony Walkman NWZ-F886 retails for Bt9,990.

 

 

Key specs

_ OS: Android 4.1.1

_ CPU: OMAP4 Coretex-A9 dual core 1.0GHz

_ RAM: 1 GB

_ Storage: 32 GB internal storage

_ Display: 4-inch LCD touchscreen with Triluminos display with 854 x 480 Pixels resolution

_ Audio Technology: S-Master HX, DSEE HX, Clear Audio+

_ Supported audio formats: MP3, AAC, L.PCM (WAV, AIFF), FLAC, Apple lossless (ALAC)

_ Supported video formats: MPEG4/AVC(H.264)/WMV

_ Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC

_ Input/output: USB miniB connecter, Hi-Speed USB (USB 2.0 compliant), Stereo mini-jack

_ Battery: rechargeable Lithium-ion 3.7v up to 35 hours, three hours of charging time

_ Dimension: 5.87 x 11.6 x 8.2mm

_ Weight: 103g

_ In the box: USB cable, Noice Cancelling headphone

 

 

Shopping for Hi-Res

To make most of Hi-Res audio player, you need to buy Hi-Res audio files. These are available from iTunes store as well as a growing number of online music stores that specialise in Hi-Res songs.

They include HD Tracks, ITrax.com, HDTT, Blue Coast Records, Pristine Classical, LINN Records, Gimell and e-onkyo music.

LINN Records has classical music as well as songs by The Rolling Stones, Mark Knopfler, and Jean-Michel Jarre. A Hi-Res album in either FLAC 192kHz/24bit or WMA 96kHz/24bit format costs around 18 pounds (Bt960).

HD Tracks has a huge selection of Hi-Res albums of classic artists, including Steppenwolf, Bob Dylan, Black Sabbath, Billy Joel, Dream Theater, Triumph, James Taylor, Miles Davis, Yes, and Bob Marley.