GUI.

With 1Z being my first Sony DAP, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but ended up being pleasantly surprised by the simplicity of its very efficient interface. One thing to mention before getting into GUI, how responsive and fast the navigation of its touch screen is. I never experienced any lag between swiping, and the only complained I had turned out to be due to my unfamiliarity with Sony interface. In order to swipe forward/back through the song, you have to tap and hold the bar for a second and then swipe it to a new position. Instead, I was swiping without tapping first, and couldn’t understand why I was switching between the screens. Tap’n’swipe is actually a good idea, to prevent accidental song forwarding. And of course, you can always use hw control buttons on the right side.

Now, about the GUI. The main Playback screen has a very simple and efficient layout. At the top you have a volume bar, representing 120 steps. You tap on it, and it brings up a large circular volume adjustment in a window where you can tap -/+ or swipe the volume around the dial. Underneath the volume bar at the top, you have file format and bit depth of the file you’re listening to, along with a numeric volume value to the right of it. Just below it you can also find play/pause icon on the left side and the battery indicator on the right side. Underneath of it, half of the screen is occupied by a cover art (if embedded picture is available and valid), which can also be replaced with either Spectrum Analyzer or Analog Level Meter.

In the lower half of the screen you have a swipe bar to fast forward/back through the song with a total song time, current song marker, and a song number in queue. The song name is underneath of it, then below it you have Playback touch controls, with Play/Pause in the middle, Skip Next/Prev (multi-functional with fast forward/back when press’n’hold), and Play Mode controls which have been added in fw 2.0. All the way to the left you have Shuffle Playback select, and all the way to the right you have Repeat off, Repeat all, and Repeat 1 song touch control. These Play Mode controls were already available under Setting, but now they’re conveniently located on top without a need to dig through Settings menu.

From the main Playback screen, you swipe to get to the screen on the right which has 10 Bookmark Lists, or swipe to the screen on the left which has a Play Queue (where you can also choose to view more song details or add it to Playlist or Bookmark List). When you swipe to the screen at the top, you will have a choice of file sorting to view All Songs, Playlist, Hi-Res files, Album, Artist, Genre, Release Year, Composer, Recent Transfers, Folder, or SensMe Channels. This sorting list is easy to customize when you click toolbox icon at the bottom and choose Select Items to Display. As a matter of fact, this toolbox menu icon, will always have a link to the main Settings menu, and also separate settings applicable to that specific screen.

Swiping to the bottom screen brings up a selection of DSP effects which can also been disabled at once by selecting Direct Source On. I will talk in more details about these DSP Effects in the next section of the review. One thing I found very useful is that no matter which screen you go to, except for Settings menu, you always have access to the bottom playback touch controls. And below it, you have a Return back button on the left, and toolbox button on the right. In the middle, you have return to Playback screen button and File sorting screen button.

It does take a few minutes to figure out and get used to this window arrangement, but then it becomes a second nature, very intuitive. The idea is to have everything under your fingertips with a main focus around Playback screen, and everything else within a swipe away.

Settings menu is very simple as well. You start off with Brightness icon (tap to get into the setting) and Bluetooth on/off icon. Next, Basic Settings with Playback, Output, and Device settings. In Playback, you have Play Mode with shuffle and repeat modes, Playback Range, Sleep Timer, Artist list sorting display, and Lyrics display with an option to keep the screen on. In Output setting you have AVLS volume limit enable, High Gain output enable (individually set for either 3.5mm SE or 4.4mm BAL outputs), L/R balance, USB output for DSP (auto or DoP), and DSD Playback setting options.

Device Setting has more generic options such as beep setting, touch panel handling with Hold switch, USB connection options, Auto Power off, Battery care, Clock setting, language setting, Text Input, and Reset/Format where you can reset all the settings, format either internal storage or uSD card, rebuild database, or restore to factory config.

The top main Setting menu also has Bluetooth setting menu to connect to and to add new devices, enable NFC, Bluetooth info, and under Other the unit info where you can confirm FW setting, available storage space, and total hours of audio playback.

DSP Effects.

When Direct Sound is turned off, you are enabling the EQ and DSP effects which can be individually turned on or off. I will talk in more details about each effect below.

Paragraphic EQ (fixed Q)/ Tone Control – In this window you have access to either 10 Band EQ with a fixed frequency bands (31Hz, 62Hz, 125Hz, 250Hz, 500Hz, 1kHz, 2kHz, 4kHz, 8kHz, 16kHz) or a simplified Tone Control adjustment with only three bands for Bass, Middle, and Treble. Each of these bands, either EQ or Tone, could be adjusted in steps from +10 to -10. In general, adjustment was smooth and natural, no artificial aliasing. You switch between EQ and Tone adjustment by tapping tool box, which also has an option to Save a sound setting.

DSEE HX – upscales the original compressed or CD quality audio to the equivalent of high-res audio. Here you have 5 different settings from a drop-down menu:

Standard – to my ears it expands soundstage width/depth/height, and improves some of the dynamics/transparency, and it feels like you have a little more air between the layers of the sound.

Female Voice / Male Voice / Percussion / Strings – across these 4 settings, I hear that we start with Standard dynamics expansion as a baseline, and then vary compression of the sound, focusing specifically on frequency band occupied by either vocals, percussions, or string instruments. It’s a subtle effect which is hard to describe, but I’m hearing it as a sound compression effect with a focus on a bandwidth occupied by specific vocals/sounds.

DC Phase Linerarizer – the effect which makes the low frequency phase characteristics of the player closer to a traditional analog amplifier. It’s like trying different solid-state amplifiers with a focus on low end emphasis. This effect has its own presets with Type A and B, with each having Low and High variations.

Type A Standard – tightens the bass, adds some coloration to low end, has more emphasis on sub-bass, and some lower mids (a little more body).

– Low/High variation – low gives it a little warmer tonality variation with more rumble, while high shifts this tonality variation closer to mid-bass/lower mids.

Type B Standard – tightens the bass, adds some coloration to low end, has more emphasis on mid-bass, while keeping lower mids more neutral.

– Low/High variation – low gives it a little warmer tonality with a shift that’s a little more toward the sub-bass, while high relaxes sub-bass while still keeping lower mids neutral.

These adjustments can really finetune the low end of your song, but to hear the effect of it you need higher res headphones with a good low-end extension.

Dynamic Normalizer – It’s quite an effective hardware type of normalize which first compresses and then raises the volume of the track to match the loudness going from one song to the other. Sony refers to this effect as it minimizes the volume differences between the songs, but at the expense of the compression which raises the volume and kills the dynamics in many tracks I tested. I personally wouldn’t use this effect.

Page 4: Sound analysis, Comparison.

Page 5: Pair up, Wireless connection, Conclusion.