SI: A Detailed Look At The Exotic Sony Walkman S750 Series

[Christopher]

Several months ago Sony announced its yearly refresh for the Walkman S-Series (JP portal), and we wanted to take an in-depth look at the player and see what’s new in this generation (S750). First things first, there are several model used for this product, with Europe having the NWZ-S755 (16GB) and NWZ-S754 (8GB) options. Japan will actually have access to three models: NW-S756 (32GB), NW-S755 (16GB), NW-S754 (8GB) plus a variant series with matching color speaker.

Here is the full array of colors for the Japanese S750 series, in Blue, Green, light pink, White, Vivid Pink, Violet, Gold, Black. Europe will have access to five of those colors, including Black, White, Blue, Light Pink, and Gold. We assume that the USA will have something similar to Europe, perhaps with an exotic color or not. I’m not sure when Sony USA will start selling this model, but it shouldn’t be too much longer from now.

So what about the features? Let’s talk about them real quick and we’ll get back to the pictures. This is your advanced Walkman. Not flagship, but all the bells and whistles have really trickled down this generation.

The S750 Series Walkman has Digital Noise Cancelling (and an included 13.5mm driver EX series earphone), which is a truly phoenominal way to listen to music. Or completely shut out the world around you. I checked out this technology in a crowded Sony booth at CES and could barely hear anyone around me. It was jaw dropping. In this model you have three modes to choose from (Train/Bus, Aircraft, and Interior), a silent mode that simply blocks out ambient sound without music, and

The S Series has a 2 inch LCD screen and actually has TruBlack technology built-in, a feature popularized in their digital photo frames. Audio on the S750 series can be colored with the Clear Bass, Clear Stereo, DSEE, dynamic noramlizer, VPT (surround), and a 6-band Equalizer. Battery life, usually a strength of Sony, is robust at 50 hours music playback and 10 hours of video playback. Of course, that is built on the industry standard 128kbps mp3 audio test, which is a far cry from my usual 320kbps collection. Thankfully the S750 can achieve a 80% recharge in 1.5 hours and a full recharge in 3 hours.

It can play the usual fare of audio codecs, including MP3/WMA (include DRM)/AAC-LC/ Linear PCM/AAC, and AVC(H.264/AVC) Baseline Profile/MPEG-4/WMV (including DRM) video codec support. There’s also a FM radio, voice recorder and alarm/timer to keep it fresh.

The S750 series can also connect to a TV and display video content on the big screen, all from the Walkman.

Sony Europe boasts the S750 series is also quite good at handling media and making it easy to transfer it to the Walkman, including AVCHD and Divx content.

Supplied Content Transfer software simplifies drag-and-drop transfers to WALKMAN

[LG1]

Here is another review

http://en.akihabaranews.com/71884/review/review-sony-walkman-s755

[Stuge]

wow more exotic stuff

looks cool as usual .

[sfbp]

Something very odd - the japanese websites (and also one or two english ones such as Tesco) indicate that ATRAC and AAL are supported. Yet nowhere in the specs posted at my local store (Future Shop) does it show this compatibility.

Two possibilities arise:

1. the support is there but not advertised

2. there are different versions of the firmware for Japan that support ATRAC whilst the non-Japan versions do not.

Does anyone know whether either of these suppositions is correct? This might just convince me to try it out.

Thanks

Stephen

[NickyJay]

Didn't Sonicstage V ditch Atrac support for the Hi-MD? Are the Japanese versions of Sonicstage still supporting all other Atrac devices?

[sfbp]

Well I got it (for 30 days or less, anyway). As predicted drag/dropping atrac on it doesn't work.

It's not clear to me if it's possible to change the firmware - so would the only option be to buy one from Japan instead?

There was software on the client end but it looks distinctly as if this is setting up Windows to talk to the machine, ie not firmware, as there were English texts and stuff before running the setup.exe program.

What about this X-Application suite? Is that something that makes it look like some sort of Atrac Device or NetMD device?

Added later: a ray of hope. The formats supported depend absolutely on WMP11 being installed. Which I do not!

What I don't yet know if is if I can make .oma files work with WMP11 just as they do with WMP9.

I'm hoping that perhaps the NWZ has the codes for Atrac but the silly content transfer application is preventing them from being recognized.

[sfbp]

Hmmm.... some progress. Managed to install X-Application 2.01, using the same tricks as outlined by the post here. Guess what - this is Sonic Stage V after all (well maybe it's VI or even VII but the install script says in English Sonic Stage V). It sure looks exactly like the previous install of SS V. Atrac files play nicely (on the PC). I haven't tried hooking up the RH1, as IIRC it didn't work with SS V anyway (aha - is that what the NetMD760 drivers were intended for... maybe this will work in due course).

Only problem, I can't get it (X-App) to talk to the NWZ-S754. I am thinking some drivers may be required. I de-installed Content Transfer which was fairly obviously taking over the device when you plug it in. Waiting for inspiration, or a kindly Japanese-speaking person to try and get to the bottom of this.

The noise cancellation setup is truly awesome. So far the walkman is otherwise useless to me. MP3 sounds like, well, er, MP3. I couldn't get an AVI file to register, and conversion to wmv (looks like that is the paradigm) takes forever and I gave up.

Help! I suspect that this will work for all NW models, so perhaps someone who has done this with earlier models can advise.

[sfbp]

No luck at all making the NWZ-754 work so far.

But the funniest part is that I now have Sonic Stage V (disguised as "X-Application 2.01") running with all MD's. Hi-MD, NetMD, RH1, N910, NH600, NH700 to name the ones I actually tried.

HILARIOUS! All this nonsense about SonicStage going away. It's alive and well. The only interesting question is can it be made into English? There are lots of indications this may even be possible (well, Avrin probably tried and gave up with previous version, the resource DLL with the character strings in it is missing and the old english one doesn't match, for a start).

So they never did get rid of it.

If someone can tell me the steps to get earlier Network Walkmen going with PC, maybe I can even make it work with real Sonic Stage. The USB ID is 04CC under the Sony (054C) subtree.

[tds101]

As always, no 32gb for North America,...***sigh***

[sfbp]

Bump... does anyone in UK have any idea what's different about the NWZ-S754 or 755 there, that allows Sonic Stage (aka X-application) to treat the walkman like an Atrac device? I for one would like to charge this beautiful thing with my nice library of ATRAC rather than converting to MP3.

Or perhaps confirm that the reports are inaccurate and that the S754 works the same way in all versions (perhaps except Japan)?

Stephen