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
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Brownsfan, any news to report on the further break-in?

Have you moved yet?
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Mitch, my updates on burn in were "complicated" by purchase of new amplifiers. This rendered any continuation of the burn in progress impossible, since there was a quantum jump in performance of the system with the new amps. The amps are new so they are also burning in. I wanted to trade in my old equipment on the new amps, so I had to do this before moving out of the Coincident dealers sales territory. I do wish I could have gotten another 100 hours on the HAPZ1 to complete the comparison before buying the new amps, but because of the impending move I needed to act.

What I will be able to do, as soon as time permits, is do another careful A/b of the HAPZ1 vs the Modwright Sony 5400 player. Since that was the time zero reference point, this will provide a very good end point analysis of the fully burned in Modwright HAPZ1.

I am in the midst of purchase of the new house and won't close until late October. Our house is not yet on the market, and essentially all of my time is consumed with keeping things moving with the 2 houses. I will certainly be glad when this move is over. It is never painless to move, but this is more than I anticipated.

I can say this on the HAPZ1. I hardly ever listen to the MW 5400 anymore. It is a very good source.
While I like the unit overall, I am concerned with Sony and Vtuner. Vtuner happens to be one of the main reasons I bought the unit as I get tired of my collection and love the variety of music I can explore.

Since Sept. 06, all you get on the unit is "cannot connect". I have called Sony numerous times about the problem and was first told it was a Vtuner problem. When I informed him it works fine on my Marantz he admitted that their server was having issues with Vtuners server and should be up an running any minute.

That was September 6th and as I write this it is end of day September 15th

Every time I call to get an update I get the run around. Shame as it could be a really good unit if only Sony would get their act together on this vital function.

I realize for some of you the Vtuner may not matter but it does to me
Jcaudio, I don't use the Vtuner often, but I did notice the same thing the last time I tried to connect. I can certainly understand why you are upset. Seems like sony is making that fatal audio mistake here, the mistake of assuming its customers are all stupid.

Get your act together Sony.