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It does in this case -unfortunately-. I have benched the nano2g against the 808 with the latest sandra iteration and the 808 is a tad bit quicker. Yet, the same album transfers 250% quicker with itunes/nano2g in comparison to ss/808. So yes, it´s another SS issue. As was to be expected hardware is not the problem. It is true however that flash memory used in daps is slower than almost any hdd drive. However, high speed usb sticks can get read rates >30mb sec along with >20 mb/s write speeds. As far as I know there is a difference in the nand manufacturing process that accounts for this discrepency. As Samsung is the uncrowned king of nand technology I expect a samsung flash dap by the end of the year that makes use of high speed flash mem. Of course, Sony´s new friends at San Disk may help the Japanese Giant, too...

dbpoweramp from illustrate.com one installed a windows explorer context menu link will pop up "batch convert folder". Perfect, eh?

Are the E4S Etymotics? If so that would explain the cold sound. I have never tried the E500s but UE Super Fi 5 Pro are a lot less expensive and cut it quite nicely for me. It will be hard to duplicate 706 sound signature because Sony implemented quite a bass spike beginning at around 30 hz and ranging to around 100hz.

Hi, sorry I got it wrong. It´s on page 11/16 of the quick start guide pdf or page 20/21 of the written qsg.

Hi, there is some reference to the video folder structure in the pdf manual that comes with the 808. You might want to take a look. Overall I feel the same in regards to the 808 and yes drag and drop should be made available for audio files. That would also dramatically inrease transfer speeds which are currently cut to 1/5th by SS.

That was a good one. The sound is much warmer now. I chose cb +1 ,however.

I suggest you uninstall all of ss, set up a new user account, reinstall ss and only then plug in the 808. do not plug in the 808 prior to installing software. i know, vista should at least treat it like ums but, let´s not forget....

To those of you that also own the s7: which eq settings -if you do- do you use on the a8 to dublicate s7 sound signature?

here you can checkout media manager for psp an maybe get a taste of the "future". http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/produc...uct.asp?pid=423

kinda feel the same. when there is no space in my pockets I use the 706 hanging around the neck. the same is the case in the gym. ya know, I hope there will be a new s series with 8-12 gig around Christmas with a larger, possibly covering the entire front, screen. The design is absolutely fantastic, gemlike and gorgeous. The ultimate blend of technology and design. That´s why I won´t be selling the unit bc otherwise the 808 is fantastic but simply to bland for me.

well. they are 4 yrs old which makes them relatively old in comparison to the mx 90 which sony claims are a totally new technical design and so forth. again, this is my personal opinion, soundwise they [ um2] are bested by the 2 yrs old UE sf 5 Pro which provide a unique soundstage that reminds me of my b&W, not iems . While the UM2 may appear to be bigger and clearer they are not worth the huge markup. Combine a 300 USD price tag with 1yr warranty and I don´t think you are getting appropriate value. That´s what I was arguing. They are better,sure. But not that good. The gap between any stockbuds and the mx90 is imo much, much larger than from mx 90 to any 200 USD IEM. Of course, personal opinions and taste vary greatly. I was just trying to make a point as most people are disappointed at what they get for 200-300 $ these days.

They UM2 may beat the Sonys, but only marginally imo, at no point justifying the huge price tag. I would argue that UM2 and other rather older technological designs fare comparably poor against the likes of sony mx 90, pana hje 70 and audio technica ck7. I´d dare compare the situation to the digital camera market. A Pro Camera from 2002 may still produce superior results to a 600 USD 2007 camera but the benefit is marginal and for most not worth the huge markup.

clearly hd5 imo, as a 1000/3000 (1200 may be different ,dunno.) had not so great baseline sq, useless screens in sunlight, and a price tag to high in comparison to the competition. hd5 had the exterior of a mini hd, sturdy, sexy shell and great, removable battery. Had Sony only improved evolutionary on this player, things would have been brighter. I still remember a lot of reviews in Germany audio magazines that lauded the lab results. I figured Sony´s path for the future was clear cut but they chose to go a different route...

Today, I would venture to say, it´s all about adjusted tonality or the option to do exactly that.Providing a clear signal is not that much of a problem these days. Even at high end audio trade fairs different set ups that all officially strive to reproduce the source 1:1 sound strikingly different from one another. As far as iPod SQ is concerned thd on the current nano is worse than on the latest sony offerings. That may not be an issue with ultra efficient iems but cranking up the volume past one third adds audible, not only measurable, thd to the signal. Also there are definite problems with the nano and 5g´s ability to maintain bass @ high loads. A problem that cannot be measured with the 1st shuffle that fields an entirely different, more battery draining, output stage. It´s strange apple never cared to implement shuffle sound hardware in the subsequent more expensive lines. Especially with the full size iPod the problems still start at around 10 khz with considerable roll of that has nothing to do with adjusted tonality. The S7 is adjusted in this department with a spike, not a roll off. Latest Samsung T9 and K3 are extremely flat with incredible noise floor and also great thd at very loud volumes and high load earphones. I would imagine the next gen. of apple hardware to sound even closer to these samsung players as samsung has been supplying more and more material to apple.

most execs, especially in western societies, do not entertain profound interest or even more for the company or product they are responsible for. to the contrary, they act like robber barons. once they have laid waste to their former field they make use of their cobwebs and move on to the next station of their cv. no problem.

I don´t know what this fellow is talking about as he hasn´t yet deemed times fit for a US Release of the A8. Sure, market situation is kinda desperate for all ipod competitors but at some time S has to step in with a convincing package. Although the A8 cannot change the bigger picture, it´s still better than most of the competing devices. Portable Audio is THE thing right now with massive usage in market relevant age cohorts. From what I have gathered S is selling quite decently these days and given the quality of their current output will definitely continue to do well in a certain market segment. It´s way too early or too late -depending on your perspective- for world dominance but the defeatism I deduce from the Sony US guy´s statements clearly doesn´t quite fit. A either Japan hasn´t told him better. B he knows better

No, definitely not. It looks good on a 24 in, though. You might spice up your chronic rig some more.

I have a x-fi xtreme music installed on my p5wdh deluxe. No problems with hda cohabitation or Chronic. Be aware of current driver issues with x-fi in games. As far as music playback is concerned there shouldn´t be a problem -at least not on 32bit os-.

I can´t imagine it will be WMP. Too many reasons against it. Atrac ain´t a problem. Sony just could offer to re-dl the connect files in aac or issue a converter. they sure won´t shed a tear as far as transcoding losses are concerned. if i was them i´d be cautious with empty marketing talk this time.

Looking at todays hard disk drive prices I would make the effort and opt for a second library as sorry as it sounds. a 250gb drive is around 50 euros these days. I am not counting on a Sonic Stage Update that will rectify the problem.

Personally, I think Nero AAC is a tad bit better than itunes as it uses a real vbr scheme opposed to apple abr but I rip my cds in m4a lossless via itunes and convert internally via itunes to m4a 192kbits "Vbr". When you go via itunes you als get great album art at 600*600 pixels. You can drag the album art onto the desktop and a bmp picture will appear. The I recommend converting this image into the jpg format. You can do this with a basic tool such as MS Paint. The result can be imported into SS and you should be ready to rock and roll. One more thing: As SS in its current version doesn´t really support apple mp4 tags you will have to "get cd info".

I reckon we will see a unified software environment for walkman, psp and p3 and community services. Of course this takes some time but ultimately it´s the way to go. Until this job is finished SS will see some improvements. I am sure of that. I listen to portable music 2-3 hrs per day and spend about 20 mins with music software. That kind of puts things into perspective. While I really think that SS isn´t a good piece of software my usage pattern puts it into perspective.

I´d say it depends on bitrate. At low bitrates Atrac shines as HE AAC consumes to much battery power. At 128 kbit´s Nero and Itunes AAC are clearly way better. At 192 atrac 3plus comes in but I haven´t seen listening tests at that bitrate. But as AAC is very proven at 192 kbits, as is mp3 lame, I´d go for AAC.

Well, I own both the ue 5pros and now the triple fi 10s and both are a waste on any ipod other than the 1st gen shuffle. there is enough technical analysis out there to show what the 5th gen full size ipod does to sound via the headphone jack. if you think that´s hi quality reproduction you are mistaken. In a sense the latest s7 suffers from a bloated response in the bass department but clarity, plasticity and sound stage are inspiring. The 808 is dead silent, no hiss whatsover, no dsp white noise which per se doesn´t mean so much but many people think it´s a hallmark of great sound. Sony has been slacking for a long long time since the hd5 which sported the most remarkable sound benchmarks. What came next was a great disappointment with the a 1000/1200/3000 and all flash players until the s7 being clearly inferior to thr hd 5 but yet on par with the ipods at that time as every lab result has shown. How come that the 50 usd 1st gen shuffle with its unique output stage still has an enormous edge over the current 250 usd 5.5 gen or 2nd gen nano? because it´s all about the music? 200-1000usd iems for the ipod headphone jack? software/interface. here itunes really shines. I don´t see anything major missing here. Itunes is getting better with every iteration. There are some stubborn design quirks from the mac world but other than that only geek features may be missing, Most people will never miss them. It´s incredibly easy as a beginner to pick up itunes and use it for ones personal needs. The program grows on you and there is a lot to discover even for the advanced user. Design and usability are excellent, the program is responsive and overall very stable even on vista these days. Sonic Stage on the other hand is still very bad for a host of reasons. It´s not as useless as it once was. However it till drags down the overall experience with my sony walkman quite a bit. SS is not per se badly designed as far as ui and presentation are concerned but a lot of functions are awkwardly dispersed over the entire program and the functions set per se is vastly inferior to itunes. Given that it´s hard to use for an advanced user that has seen many jukeboxes such as wmp, amarok, winamp etc. most noobs will not bother. In 2007 the lack of a real search engine is devastating. I don´t see why SS hardlocks when I transfer an album to my walkman. Connect Store is useless. No Podcast support to speak off. Stupid 3gp container for aac files. No proper mp4 tag support (neither itunes nor nero tags are supported!), crippled backup, crippled transfer speeds. Yes SS is to blame for that. I ran some benchmarks and the 808 is slightly faster than the 2g nano but transfer times are 100-200% faster on itunes/nano!, unintuitive playlisting, no option to keep folders organized, lies about attrac´s supposed quaility @ bitrates >64kbits, lame tagger, constant recacheing of album art. Painful cd database function -> don´t know if I should laugh or cry @ some of the results I am presented. There is a lot more that´s on my mind but I guess what one can clearly see is that a lot of people will not put up with SS just for the sake of hardware. I have to wonder. It´s such a joy to move around on my 808, snappy, smart interface, everything available with 2 or 3 button clicks, great search and so forth. Why spoil it all with SS?

Yes SS album information can be a real pain. That´s why I would rip in mp3 lame and use the great mp3tag program from www.mp3tag.de You can easily incorporate album art this way and everything is compatible with SS and all the other management programs out there. I recommend you use this option as it will minimize your SS exposure.