@oblgny That's exactly the information I've been after with respect to the Sony HAP unit. We seem to share the principle of keeping computers the heck out of one's listening room, at least to the extent possible these days. What you describe --- Apple USB CD drive for loading disks (mine and those of music-listening visitors) at leisure into the HAP --- is what I'd had in mind, and you've confirmed that this works fine. The new firmware, which according to the excellent post by @stereo5 now allows the addition of outboard DACs, is another great development. Guess I'll need to just go ahead and buy the HAP and see how long I can resist getting it hot-rodded by Dan Wright.
New Sony HAP-Z1ES Firmware Out Today
I installed the newest firmware today and was pleasantly surprised that the player now supports an external DAC via the USB connection. It now does DSD over USB2 and there is a provision to turn it on/off. I played a couple of different artists and the player seems to work perfectly with the iPad remote. Here is the skinny, direct from Sony:
This firmware upgrade (version 18033R) provides the following improvements over version 17384R:
- Adds support for the Media Server function
- Adds support for the USB digital output function (USB hub support for connecting each of one HDD drive, one CD drive, and one USB DAC)
- Adds support for Seek operations
- Adds support for the Fade In/Out function
- Adds the Go to genre/artist/album/folder function to the Options menu
- Adds the following operations:
- Queuing the track next to the one currently playing, and queuing the track last
- Deleting the track from the play queue
- Creating a playlist with the play queue
- Deleting the playlist
- Deleting the track from the playlist
- Deleting the information of a disconnected external hard disk drive
- ...
- 55 posts total
- 55 posts total