Sony HAP-Z1ES Hi-Res Music Player RMAF 2013

Yes, the Hap-Z1es is fully balanced. However, it inverts phase....pins 2 and 3 are backwards to the American standard. The unbalanced is inverted too. Sony is said to be addressing this issue in a software upgrade soon.

The balanced outs have a different op amp in them and different coupling caps with no bypass caps. The unbalanced outs have better Burr-brown op amps and different caps with small bypass caps. I would think the unbalanced might sound better. Never listened to balanced as I use the unit unbalanced and modified.

My modified units have the phase correct on all outputs.

If I want to replace or upgrade the HD, Does any one know, how big the Hard Disc on the Sony HAP-S1 can support, or the SSD in that case?
Regards.

Williedog - could you comment on the before and after of your ssd swap? I have a HAP and thinking of doing this also.

I demod this unit and have the following observations. I demod with a wide variety of music incuding CD's I ripped to it, 96/24 Flac and 176/24 Flac and DSD, My CD player for comparison is a Classe CDP-202 through a Classe SSP-600, Classe AMP and B&W 805 speakers.

If you have DSD remastering turned off the the FLAC files all sound harsh which was not usable. With remastering on this improves. However when comparing 176K/24 bit FLAC files the audio quality was not what I expected as an improvement over 96/24 and with DSD on I hear no improvement.

The Sony compared favorably to my CDP202 however it needs to be run in DSD (guess who invented DSD) remastering mode which from my reading and listening seems to limit the audio quality to about the equivalent of 96K/20 bit.

Has anyone heard alternatives like the NAD or Cambridge unit?

 

I’ve been posting/updating my experience with the M50.2 CD player/digital server. I’m still waiting on the “due by the end of the year (2017)” DSD update, but for FLAC/streaming, I have no complaints. If you bargain hard, you might be able to score one of these units for ~2k, which is a good deal for a unit with AES/EBU and at least one stage of MQA decoding, not to mention integration with HDTracks and Tidal (and amazon music as well as other services).

My M50.2 plugged into a Dac2X V2 DAC, and the sound is fantastic. If NAD/Bluesound can give me DSD playback soon, I can stop searching for an SACD transport and digitize my SACD collection.

With respect to CD rips, I’ve been very surprised and impressed by the sound quality of the CDs I’ve put onto the M50.2. I’m yet to hear any tracks with any issues. According to NAD, the file checksums must match the information on the CD, so it’s pulling bit for bit copies.