Bu most accounts Kazuo Hirai is no Neil Young, certainly, but his company would still love to be the ones to convince you that you've been missing out all of those years you spent listening to crummy MP3 files. Sony's new line of attack is, fittingly, called Hear, and the company had a couple of representative products on display on the IFA show floor post-press conference.

I've got to say, I'd have loved to have been able to walk off with a pair of the new over-ear Hear On cans. They're sort of gigantic, but man are they comfortable. They contort to all sorts of shapes and just plain feel nice over the ears.

And, of course, they sound great paired with the new Walkman – in fact, I was thankfully able to drown out the IFA din for one glorious moment. I almost didn't mind that they were playing Linkin Park – all right, well, that last part isn't exactly true. It wouldn't have been my first choice to check out some lossless sound processing, but bloggers can't be choosers.

The Walkman is small and solid and downright dwarfed by those big ole headphones. And the physical buttons made me more than a little nostalgic for the iPod Classic in my life that finally gave up the ghost earlier this year.