On Wednesday at CE Week 2015 in New York City, Sony showcased a small sampling of its high-resolution products.
The products included the company's portable Walkmans, headphones, and latest Sound Bar.
Sony's A17 and X2 were the two Walkman portable music players highlighted. The A17 64 GB hi-res digital music player supports hi-res audio of WAV, AIFF, ALAC, FLAC, with up to 50 hours of MP3 playback and 30 hours of high-resolution playback. It has a slim design that can easily fit in a pocket or bag.
The player is equipped with a microSD slot for up to 192 GB of memory. Consumers can stream music wireless via Bluetooth, but Sony showcased the Walkman along with its premium hi-res stereo 1A headphones, which have the ability to reproduce sound up to 100 kHZ, have a 4-conductor cable for signal separation that enhances sound quality, and ergonomic ear pads for comfort. The 1A headphones retail for $300.
Sony also had on display its 128 GB Hi-Res Walkman ZX2, which supports DSD, WAV, FLAC, AFIF, ALAC, MP3 and WMA files. With up to 60 hours of MP3 play and 33 hours of hi-res playback, the device gets about 8 hours of battery life. Powered by Android, the digital music player is equipped with Wi-Fi. The ZX2 retails for $1,200.
The Android-based Walkman was paired with Sony's Z7 hi-res stereo headphones that have wide soundstage reproduction up to 100 kHz for hi-res audio. It has a 4-conductor cable for signal separation for its powerful bass and 3D sewing ergonomic ear pads. The Z7 retails for $700.
"The Walkman never went away. As the market has transformed, a lot of people are listening to music on their phones, but they are listening to low-quality streaming music or music that's stored on their phones with low bit rates," says Aaron Levine, senior product marketing manager at Sony. "With these Walkman products, what we wanted to do was to be able to give consumers a cost-effective and unique way to listen to high-quality sound."
Sony also showcased its latest HT-ST9 Sound Bar that is equipped with a wireless subwoofer to not only bring sound for home theater support, but the company added speaker designs to support hi-res file formats for music. It's a 7.1 channel Sound Bar that turns into a 2.1 channel in music mode that gives it an authentic music experience.
The Sound Bar retails for $1,500, and will be available in July.
CE Week 2015's consumer electronics and and technology exhibits run through Thursday. More than 175 participating companies showed what's new, along with a program of over 35 conference sessions, keynotes and workshops, at the Metropolitan Pavilion/Altman Building.
