Not totally satisfied with the sound quality of your top-of-the-line digital music player and not sure what part could the culprit be? Sony thinks it could be your humble microSD card. And they have just the solution.
The company has just taken the wraps off the SR-64HXA, a “Premium Sound” memory card that costs a staggering (in perspective, mind you) $155. According to Sony, this card “produces less electrical noise when reading data.” Or, in other words, the card delivers premium sound by being less noisy than other memory cards.
And they think it is worth more than five times what you’d pay for a normal Sony Micro SD card.
This brings to mind expensive HDMI cables from AudioQuest and Monster Cable, and the whole Neil Young/Pono Player debacle.
As science has proven, overpriced hardware enhancements do not necessarily lead to improved media quality. Even Sony admits that it doesn’t even know whether people will buy the damn thing. “We aren’t that sure about the product’s potential demand, but we thought some among people who are committed to great sound quality would want it,” a spokeswoman told the press.
While it’s true that any high-end audio system is only as good as its worst component, the actual benefit of marginally quieter data transfers would seem to rank alongside homeopathic medicine: more placebo than cure. Media players only read the memory card sporadically, storing songs in their buffer and minimizing the cause for any related electrical noise.
Sony has been doing this audiophile-targeting thing a bit too much lately, like with the introduction of the $1,200 Walkman at CES last month.
This ridiculous SD card should fit right into that machine. Or the Pono.
