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IFA 2016 Preview

It is the end of August and IFA is just around the corner.  As with previous years it appears Sony will have some new Walkmans to unveil and hopefully this year will bring a more substantial updates to the A-Series.  Along with the new Walkmans, Sony will undoubtedly bring new headphones to IFA.  some of those headphones can be found in the posts from the past few days.  While I normally do not write about non-Walkman news, this year at IFA, Sony could be bringing something exciting to the Xperia line.  It it rumoured that Sony may be finally adding full manual controls to their camera app, with optical image stabilization finally arriving to a Sony phone near you.  For all the news related to the Xperia brand, head on over to the Xperia Blog for all the updates from IFA.

Unlike previous years, Sony will be holding their press conference much earlier, 3 hours to be exact.  I am wondering why the earlier time, maybe it was done to have the news out at an earlier time on the east coast in the US.  Anyways, the press conference will take place on September 1st at 13:00 CET.  There will be a link at the end of this post to the live stream along with various times for around the world.

Here are the times for various time zones.

New York, US: September 1st, 07:00
Los Angeles, US: September 1st, 04:00
Japan, Tokyo: September 1st, 20:00
Melbourne, Australia: September 1st, 21:00
Moscow, Russia: September 1st, 15:00
London, UK: September 1st, 20:00

I will try to update the various posts and articles with all the news from the show, it will not be right away like in previous years so please be patient.

Time for the Walkman IFA preview.  Up first is the new/updated A-Series, last year Sony added built in noise cancellation to the A20, but this feature was already available on the Japanese A10 the year prior, so not really an update since it was probably nothing more than a firmware change.  Perhaps this year Sony will have a new design finally but I doubt it  While a new design would help to differentiate it from the A20, I feel more features like being able to delete files from within the player itself, a bookmarking feature like previous Walkmans had, or even the re-introduction of OLED screens.  Whatever the case, hopefully the update will not just be new colour options.


Next up is the WM1-Series, which will ship as 2 different models, and will be a high end device similar to the ZX line and expected to be very expensive. Along with the WM1, a new high end DAC and high end pair of headphones will also debut.  This has been previewed by my Sony Signature post.  All 3 together will be an audiophile's dream but it is rumoured to be quite an expensive package, so prepare to lay down a lot of money for such quality.


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