Sony announce new DSD compatible music players

September 4, Sony announced at a press conference in Manhattan's Jazz at Lincoln Center that the company saw high-resolution audio as the future of recorded music playback.

"Young people used to MP3s have never experienced the full quality that the musicians, producers, and engineers worked to create," said Molyneux, and quoted the results of a survey that revealed that 60% of consumers said they would pay more for better sound quality as long as they didn't have to sacrifice convenience. However, that same survey indicated considerable confusion among consumers. There are too many codecs, too many file formats associated with downloads, making the subject of hi-rez audio too complicated, too off-putting for all but audiophiles.

Herbie Hancock talked about his experience of hi-rez audio, comparing the original file of "Don't Give Up" from his Imagine Project album in his studio with the CD. "The CD sounded closed-in, smaller, thinner," he said, "with the hi-rez file, it was if John Legend and Pink were back in my studio."

Acoustic Sounds were the latest online retailer to offer DSD downloads on their new Hi-Rez download site last week.

Neal Manowitz Director, Product Marketing at Sony Electronics, announced Sony's strategy. Sony will be launching a range of audio products this coming fall, which will play any type of music file, from lo-rez MP3s to double-DSD (DSD-128) files.

Starting with the top of the line HAP-Z1ES hi-rez media player pictured above. This features a 1TB internal drive, Ethernet and WiFi connectivity, and can be controlled by an app running on a tablet or phone. It will upsample any format to double-DSD as well as handling native single-DSD and double-DSD files. Designed by the same engineer as Sony's well-respected SCD-1ES SACD player from 1999 and coming preloaded with 20 hi-rez albums from Sony, Warner, and Universal, the HAP-Z1ES will be priced at a very competitive $1999US when it becomes available in the fall.