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Sony HAPZ1 For prospective buyers and owners

I have been encouraged to share my experiences with the new Sony HAPZ1ES. I hope a few who may be considering purchase of this unit will find this useful. I expect those not interested in purchasing this unit will want to tune this thread out. There is going to be some detail here. I will provide a summary statement with significant conclusions at the beginning of each days record for those not interested in the details.

It would probably be good to start with a few words to provide a frame of reference. I’m not a computer geek. I’m a reasonably bright guy, but a computer to me is just a tool. It’s a hammer that enables driving a nail, that’s it. I learn what I need to know to do what I want to do and that is all.

My interest in the new Sony is that I expected it would facilitate a long standing goal of assembling a computer based system. Further, it accommodates Hi Rez files, and does on the fly conversion of PCM to DSD. It also offers streaming audio, allowing convenient playback of internet radio. It has a 1 TB hard drive, so there is a lot of room for my substantial music collection.

For me, the deciding factor in purchase of this piece was Dan Wright’s enthusiasm for the stock unit and rapid development of a ModWright upgrade package which he says takes the HAPZ1 to reference levels.

Day 1- Initial set up easy, sound quality indeterminate.

I unpacked the unit and gave it about 4 hours to return to room temperature before turning it on. First order of business was to establish the wireless connection with my home network. This was straightforward and took less than 30 minutes to complete. The unit comes with a small amount of software on the hard drive, so this allowed me to begin playing without having to begin download of my existing music library to the internal hard drive. I played through the free music twice, just to give the unit a little burn in time. The free music selection was not my cup of tea, so I could not draw any real conclusions about sound quality.

Day 2- Some frustration with getting set up for download. Interactions with Sony Tech support a mixed bag. Concerned about Sony’s ability to help Mac users. Sound quality with a casual listen promising with under 10 hours burn in.

I spent about a half an hour transferring music from CD to my iMac. Once this was complete, I went to the Sony website and downloaded the free HAP music transfer software to my iMac. Again this was completely straightforward. Upon opening the program, I ran into the first snag. The box that popped up asked me to select the device to which I wanted to connect. There were no devices to select. I began a dialogue with Sony using the chat room accessible from their website. The person who attempted to help me was completely clueless. She referred me to documents which did not address my problem, referred me to documents addressing connection problems with windows machines, and finally, after wasting about 20 minutes of my time admitted she couldn’t help me. She gave me the Sony tech support number.
I called the number (1-800-222-7669) and went through about 3 people before I got to the correct department. This wasn’t as frustrating as it sounds- It just took a few seconds to get to the Sony home audio ES support line. There was about a 10 minute wait until someone took my call. The guy I talked to was pretty sharp. However, his ability to help was hampered by the fact that “ we don’t have a Mac here.” Well, I would suggest that Sony get one!
While we were talking, he indicated that sometimes it takes a few minutes for the music transfer software to find the device. We worked on the problem for a few minutes, and while he was looking something up, I figured out what was wrong. My iMac bluetooth was looking for the wrong network. Once I selected the correct network, the music transfer software found the HAPZ1 immediately. I selected the device, and he advised checking the content settings. A new box shows file extensions that you can select or deselect to be transferred. While flac, wav, mp3, and 12 others appeared as options, ALAC (Apple lossless) did not appear. However, the support guy did a quick Google and found that m4a is the correct file type for ALAC, and that is one of the types listed so I was OK there. I also added /users/my user name/Music/iTunes as a folder to be watched, which probably wasn’t necessary.
Next, I went to the transfer settings. I turned the auto transfer feature off, and selected internal HDD as the destination since I don’t have an external hard drive yet. I activated the manual transfer, which I was doing wirelessly to see how long it would take to transfer the 200 files (tracks). I walked away for a few minutes and when I came back, I found that the transfer had stopped incomplete. I started the manual transfer again and walked away again. When I returned, the same thing had occurred. This may be due to an auto standby feature which apparently shuts the HAPZ1 down after a few minutes with no activity. I turned this off, but I had enough music transferred to give a more serious listen to the unit. I listened to part 1 of the Dunedin Consort recording of the Bach Johannes Passion. This is a wonderful performance, with recording quality that I have found to be somewhat spotty. It is wonderful in the aria and recicitives, but rough in the Chorals. Played back through the HAPZ1, this was pretty close to what I remembered playing through my ModWright Sony 5400. Next I played the Purcell Quartet recordings of Bach’s Mass in G minor BWV235. This is a standard redbook CD, so I was interested to see what the conversion to DSD 2 would sound like. In a word, playback of this music was just absolutely lovely! I suspect this unit, stock, may give my ModWright Sony 5400 a run for its money, but a serious A/B is still several days down the road.
brownsfan
brownsfan OP
1,508 posts
 
Richard, at a high level, I have been very happy with the HAPZ1 based on its sonic merits. Its operation is not perfect for our needs, but it is pretty good in most ways and excellent in others. In my opinion, the sonic merits of the stock HAPZ1 justifies any logistical frustrations associated with file transfer.
While I do work hard to keep my cd collection organized, I have some recordings that are MIA. Once a disk is misfiled in my racks, it is a real chore looking through 1500-2000 cds to find it. I've had a Mahler 1 missing for 6 months. The HAPZ1 makes it extremely easy to organize even a very large collection in such a way as to make it extremely easy to find a given recording.

By "recognizing" I assume you mean properly associating album artwork with a particular recording. If that is your meaning, I would say that the sony is probably picking up about 70%. With a little work, my guess is that could go as high as 90%. What I am finding is that when I import the CD to iTunes, iTunes many times has a variety of possible titles for the same recording, one or none of which allows one to import the artwork into iTunes, This data comes from the iTunes store. When you change the title or artist to match the iTunes record associated with the artwork, this change imports into the sony, but the artwork does not always import. However, in many cases, one can do a search within the sony software that allows one to find the correct artwork. Still it is hit or miss, but the Sony database (Gracework) is much better than iTunes at assigning the correct artwork.

As an example, the Padmore/Lewis Winterrise has the correct artwork associated with it in iTunes, but this did not import into the sony, and instead the sony assigned another recording artwork (different tenor and pianist) to the recording. Searching through the database did not turn up the correct recording.

For me, this is more of an annoyance than a problem, since one can change the album title in iTunes to anything you want and this does import into the sony. This means it is no problem to associate an unambiguous title to the album.
uomoragno
17 posts
 
Bmoura - Thanks so much, I'll check it out!!

Brownsfan thanks so much for your review, I love Shosty's 13th and your references I could relate to.

I have one more offering on metadata and cover art: I've now been using db poweramp software (there is a Mac equivalent that is free) and I have found that in the software you can assign the metadata and cover art before/while you rip it and if you use FLAC, ALAC or AIFF, it sticks to what you transfer it to; And if you do it right iTunes takes it as the metadata is imbedded in the file. If ITunes or windows has to guess, it may guess wrong which can destroy organization. The ripping software has access to many databases that allow you to choose/edit the correct cover art and edit track listings, genera, artist, ect., as well before you rip and make it permanent. For example as a fan of Shostakovich I purchased the Haitik RCO London/Decca recordings in the early 80s as they came out. Decca, then what became Universal, re released those with different cover art and track listings, to make it worse, part of that recording cycle included the LSO not the RCO, It can be a mess trying to sort through that but the database presented to me while ripping with the ripping software had all the correct cover art and track listings of the original releases. They even have access to all the old Nimbus stuff - Whaaaat?
Its all in the Rip. Rip it once, rip it right. And rip it with a plan in mind as to how you want to use and access your collection. Mind you I'm sure I will run into a snag here and there, such is the plight of a classical music fan ripping CDs
ITunes/windows media a great way to "see" your collection but as far as organization they stink pure and simple when it comes to classical. I would pay good money for a very complete and thoughtful software product that can organize and stream classical music correctly.
Have fun!
brownsfan OP
1,508 posts
 
Guys, I am pretty sure the HAPZ1 imports cover art directly from Gracenotes, so that what the computer software (iTunes etc) does on cover art is irrelevant. However, the album title and track information does import from the computer program, so you can edit this information to your hearts content. However, this may interfere with the ability of the HAPZ1 to assign the proper cover art.

Those computer programs that use Gracenote as the source of cover art should correlate better with the HAPZ1 than does iTunes, which I think utilizes Gracenote indirectly through the iTunes store. This means that if a work is not available in the iTunes store, it won't show up in your iTunes software, but it may very well show up in the HAPZ1 file imported from iTunes. No doubt, this is all clear as mud.
richardfinegold
196 posts
 
I completely second your comments, Uomorango, and I appreciate your responses, Brownsfan.
I recently digitalized my James Levine/Chicago SO and my freaking itunes an't find it? It doesn't help that I've digitalized 3 other Mahler 3s in the interim.
I wound up purchasing the boxed set of Levine/Mahler, at basically the price of 1 CD, just to reobtain this recording. It makes me very hesitant to rely on itunes to completely digitalize my 3000+ CDS.
brownsfan OP
1,508 posts
 
Richard, It appears that iTunes has it in for Mahler 3. I can't get iTunes to find any of my Mahler 3 recordings! One of them wouldn't even transfer into iTunes properly. I completely agree with respect to iTunes. I am still in the exploratory phase on all of this, so iTunes is OK for now, but I am certainly going to be looking for something else as soon as I have a little time.
In an earlier post, I asked a question about some of the programs that are not free, e.g., audirvana, with respect to use with the HAPZ1. I didn't get any responses. However, it seems to me that the cost is fairly insignificant if the organization and functionality is good. There is a 15 day free trial, so once my unit comes back from ModWright, I may give this a try.
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