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
It's baaaaack!

Week 1 of ModWright HAPZ1 burn in. ~ 20 hours burn in.
Summary:

Reduction of grain and improved depth of sound stage over stock unit perceived. Improvement in dynamics and resolution to be monitored.
Developed an album transfer strategy and supporting protocol enabling use of aiff and wav where advantageous.

Details:
I am going to be paying particular attention to grain and depth of soundstage. I've already gotten an indication that I can expect an improvement over the stock unit in these areas with only 20 hrs burn in. Dynamics also may be improved, but this may be tough to accurately discern. I bought a cryoed new production Gold Lion GZ34 rectifier for the power supply. The 6922s are the stock Sovtech tubes, which I will continue to use for a while. Dan indicated that 6GC7s can also be used, and probably fall somewhere between the 6922s and 6SN7s in character. This could be just what I'm looking for. Recall that the stock HAPZ1 suffered by comparison with my ModWright sony 5400 with respect to upper harmonics. I have a matched pair of NOS RCA clear top 6GC7s on the way from Brent Jesse. I'm hoping these tubes will give me a bit of that tube sweetness and body laking in the stock unit.

During the 3 week absence of the HAPZ1 I had some time to reflect on all of the file transfer woes I had initially. (Nice having time to think while engaged in mindless wall paper stripping) I think I have developed a protocol that will permit me to do what I want to do with respect to use of aiff files and possibly wav files.

As a reminder, I had substantial problems with wav transfers being corrupted and aiff files not transferring. Specifically, failure to keep tracks together as a single album, poor artwork recognition, etc was a common occurrence. Further, I found the even those files that were successfully transferred were subject to subsequent corruption as new albums were imported.

I think I have developed a protocol that will, with a little effort, permit me to export whichever file type I prefer to use and maintain the integrity of those transfers once successfully completed. Keep in mind that the sonic advantage of wav over alac was subtle and sporadic. I am happy to transfer the bulk of my library in ALAC (which is flawless in terms of album integrity), reserving wav (or aiff) only for special favorites where the difference is perceptible. This is not some huge concession. The ALAC files in most cases, played back using the DSD conversion engine with the stock unit were arguably superior to my ModWright Sony 5400. One would certainly expect that performance gap to increase as the modded HAPZ1 breaks in.

With respect to AIFF, I found that one must select both AIFF and AIF file types in the HAPZ1 transfer software in order to reliably transfer albums as AIFF files to the HAPZ1. The HAPZ1 transfer software allows one to exclude transferring certain file types, eg,, MP3s, movies, etc to the HAPZ1. I had deselected all file types other than ALAC, wav, flac, and AIFF in order to avoid importation of this unwanted stuff. After restoring AIF as a type to be transferred, AIFF transfer has been pretty good, if not perfect.

My current protocol is as follows. After transferring a batch of files, regardless of file type, I ensure the transfer has been properly made. For those albums transferred successfully, I purge the album from iTunes by deletion or by moving to a folder outside iTunes. This prevents any after the fact corruption of the album by an attempted reimportation. Note that this should not happen, as the HAPZ1 transfer program keeps a list of files transferred, so that once a file is transferred, it is not transferred again. The fact that reimportation (and corruption) does occur suggests something is not quite right in the HAPZ1 music transfer program. However, purging transferred albums from iTunes and clearing the transferred files list in the HAPZ1 music transfer program, obviates any opportunity for after the fact album corruption. For those files (Aiff and wav) that do not transfer properly, I simply delete the corrupted transfers from the HAPZ1, clear the transferred files list, and repeat the transfer. So far, I have not had to transfer an album more than twice to get a good copy.

I think this protocol has gotten me past some of the frustrating quirks with respect to use of the HAPZ1 for importation of a large classical music library. By the time I have 400 hours of burn in on the mod, I should have a substantial portion of my favorite music transferred. Importation of album artwork remains an area where one would like to see substantial improvement, but I think this is an issue with gracenotes, not the Sony per se. One can edit the composition, composer, artist, and specific track information easily in iTunes, and these edits are preserved in the transfer (usually!).

Stay tuned. I will try to post some thoughts on a weekly basis as the modded unit breaks in.
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Brownsfan...good to know that your unit is back. I keep checking this forum for news of your player quite often like a kid waiting for Christmas. Thanks again for keeping us posted.
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Nsirkin, I'm interested in your thoughts on the noise level using the external HD. I have an unused 1.5 TB drive sitting around, which I thought I would utilize once the internal drive is full. That may be awhile, since it is now my intention to transfer the bulk of my library as ALAC files, but eventually I will get there. If noise is a problem, I will plan on using a solid state drive.

Your approach to file transfer may be a good one. I'm finding that there appear to be some flaws with the sony transfer program (at least that has been my experience), which your approach would completely obviate. This is exactly the kind of shared learning I hoped we would see in this thread. Thanks for the idea.
Mitch, no problem. As all of you who have followed this thread from the beginning are aware, I have been favorably impressed with the sonic attributes of the stock HAPZ1. I tend to fall pretty quickly into a super type A north coast laser focused impatience machine, so my perseverance through some issues with this piece is a testament to my perception of its potential. The stock unit is a gem in the rough. It will be very interesting to see what a little burn in and savvy tube selection will afford.
I've been importing music like crazy for the last couple of days (without issue), and have had the ModWright HAPZ1 playing for another 15 -20 hours. I have had some pleasant surprises on a few transfers that sound far superior to the CD. The wonderful Argerich/Kremer LvB violin sonatas, which always sounded like, well, like Deutche Grammophone always sounds, sounded very nice through the HAPZ1.

Also, I figured out how to edit album, track, and artist info, and even reassign the correct album art to the transferred album where the wrong artwork was assigned! This has been a constant nightmare for us classical guys. Basically, in the HAPZ1 remote program, you go to the album field, tap and hold the album you want to edit, and an edit menu comes up. You select edit music info, and you can type whatever you want into the title and artist fields. To change the artwork, tap and hold the artwork picture, and a google search of artwork for say, Ein Deutches Requium comes up. Just tap and hold the correct picture and it transfers to the HAPZ1.

I'm not nearly as stupid as I look. Cool!