WM-PORT ON NW-A45

[vertenna]

Purchased this recently to specifically utilise the hi res facility with my Chord Mojo HeadphoneAmp/DAC and a pair of Audeze ELS 8 Headphones.

Unfortunately have spent upwards of £50 on various cables/adapters just trying to make a connection via the WM-PORT and the micro usb socket on the chord mojo with no success.Have contacted Chord and they say I need an “on the go “ connector for it to work with the mojo, but it seems this is not feasible from Sony itself,(have managed to source a Fiio equivalent with a Sony wm-port to micro usb and am awaiting delivery)

Is there anyone who has this sort of dilemma when faced with the exclusive connectivity of the Sony WM-PORT.

I am in two minds to return to where it was purchased from as it is redundant due to the fact that it cannot drive the headphones by itself.

[Sonyvores]

 to use the digital audio out from WM-port with other brand you need the special cable WMC-NWH10 but it's sold only in asia....so you need to import it...but it also add some extra lenght cable if you carry the combo on the go

[vertenna]

Thank you for your reply but I was so disappointed with the player due to its exclusive connection and operability I returned it for a full refund from Amazon.

Sent from my iPad

[Palle_S]

Thanks a lot! I will order this cable - and hopefully I can then send digital music to a high-end DAC via USB

[Palle_S]

I contacted SONY support and they informed me by email that the NW-A45 does NOT support digital output via the WMC-NWH10 cable to an USB DAC input, as shown here: https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00053785 . Very disappointing 😞
@Sonyvores: did you test the NW-A45 + WMC-NWH10 cable  + USB DAC yourself? And thus can you tell us if Sony Support are wrong?

[Sonyvores]

Yes they are wrong. All hi res audio walkman support digital audio out via WM-port. 

But compatibility with all USB-DAC available on market is not garantied due to different conceptions.

[Palle_S]

Thanks a lot! If you weren't here to give this answer, I would have trusted Sony Support: really BAD support from their side. Again thanks a lot.

[girasouls]

No, definitely not. I have waited several months to finally get this great cable from Japan. No success, no signal to the correctly connected output device: DAC function of NW-A45 is just for receiving music from a PC, not for output to a HiFi-Device like e.g. Chord Mojo. As stated by Sony (above), this cable should work for the High-Resolution Audios of Sony listed.

[Palle_S]

@girasouls For some reason you cannot make it work. So YOU have a problem. Don't try to generalize though: just because you cannot make it work doesn't mean that this is the case for everyone else. It's not.
It is working perfectly fine for me.
Before buying a high-end DAC and a Roon system I wanted to test if it would work ok. I bought the cable from Japan, went to a hi-fi shop with my NW-A45 + the cable. I got it connected to a Bluesound Node 2I and it worked fine.
Then I bought a RME ADI-2 DAC and my NW-A45 continued to play fine (still does). Now I knew the signal path was OK, so I finally bought a Roon ROCK and this is my stationary hi-fi core. I now only use my NW-A45 for portable audio.

[Sonyvores]

@Palle_S Thanks for coming back and giving us some feedbacks of your experience! And glad it worked it out for you 😃

@girasouls you obviously don't know how to use the walkman as a transport. If you use the DAC function, it's normal that it won't output any sound... it's for "Digital to Analog Convertion" so walkman only receive digital signal in. You ar only supposed to press play while walkman is connected to the DAC. If detected walkman will automatically switch to transport mode. But as I stated it before, compatibility is not 100% garantied