All Sony engineers enjoy music.
I like both playing and listening to music.
I believe that music has contributed to enriching our lives.
All Sony engineers have a mutual feeling that
they want to reproduce the best sound with their technologies and enjoy the audio experience.
At the same time, they always wish to share the moving emotions of music through their handmade products.
Signature series were born based on those engineer's desires.
Don't you think it is the ultimate comfort for everyone to listen to their favorite music with the best sound?
Nowadays, everyone can listen to music anytime, anywhere without any constraints.
This 'Personal Audio culture' has been cultivated by the first WalkmanⓇ introduced in 1979.
Since then, Sony has been leading the innovation of personal audio for over 40 years.
More compact player,
new audio format,
new recording media,
portable active speaker,
headphones' new wearing style, and noise-canceling function.
Sony has proposed a new lifestyle with a variety of new audio devices.
Hi-Res audio is an example of delivering the ultimate audio experience to customers.
Sony has defined Hi-Res audio in 2013 and has been promoting the development and expansion of Hi-Res contents and Hi-Res players together in the audio industry.
In the development cycle of Hi-Res products, engineers challenged themselves in a lot of categories and achieved evolution in audio.
When engineers brought their prototype audio products, gathered and listened together, they felt ultimate pleasure in combining and listening to those devices together and strongly thought that they wanted to deliver this audio experience to customers.
These engineers' desire has yielded products based on personal audio culture and became the Signature series introduced in 2016. From then, many Signature series products were born.
Walkman,
digital music player,
headphone amplifier,
stereo headphones,
in-ear headphones,
and near field powered speaker system.
In all development cycles, engineers were confronted with unprecedented difficult technologies。
As a result, they have achieved the reproduction of an authentic atmosphere and realistic feeling of sound as if you were in a concert hall and therefore could finally share this feeling and experience with many customers.
Today, a new Walkman will join this Signature series family.
I don't think anything is impossible.
To make things sound a little better,
it's all trial and error.
I love it when it all comes together.
A creator has to have fun building something enjoyable.
That's why we've been able to keep advancing our work so drastically.
It's been about five years or so since the WM1Z was released in 2016.
We've put all this time into development,
which would be pointless if it was almost the same.
Many small innovations have resulted in tremendous sound.
We focus on the height and breadth of sound.
which is expressed magnificently.
An oxygen-free copper chassis with everything integrated
even increases purity from 99.96% to 99.99%.
This slight change is tremendously effective.
It enhanced acoustic clarity.
Lower ground resistance also enhances the sound.
The digital block has a stronger power supply
This heightened the acoustic expressiveness,
which greatly impacts the sound.
We used KIMBER KABLEⓇ before too.
I'd always wanted something thicker.
The new model has succeeded in a truly soft and delicate sound.
We continuously innovate the solder to get the desired results.
Our addition of gold made it happen this time.
Between the circuit board and every single component,
it's all soldered together.
It's heightened overall acoustic performance.
The machined copper block covers the digital block.
A stronger ground stops adverse digital effects.
We've found the ideal separation between digital and analog blocks.
In terms of portable audio,
the best is S-master HX™.
As peripheral components get better,
the same IC provides better sound.
Streaming is one critical sound medium today even for the Walkman
Everything sounds better now, even streaming
I want great sound regardless of the source.
Better acoustic performance is about a lot of detailed changes.
Innovation never ceases.
Anything is possible thanks to our many technological pursuits.
Engineers' interview will be held on March 17 at 10:00AM. Please send questions to engineers. See more details in caption below.