ceres

itunes aac vbr mode is more of an abr mode yet very good. tick vbr. good luck with the tags in sonic stage.

THAT´S MS Propaganda. Heed the independent listening tests at hydrogen audio. MS sure didn´t test against lame mp3 but some now defunct coder. mp3 isn´t a good choice for really small files but very competitive @ >128kbit/s

where is the proof? If I might ask

Go with aac as your files will be compatible with more than just sony players. [insert pause here] Sonic Stage AAC encoder is of unproven quality and wraps a 3gp container around the raw aac sound files ----> useless with other players and software. Sonic Stage SOMETIMES reads itunes tags and never nero aac tags so you will have to 1) encode the files and 2) tag them with sonic stage. Tagging with Sonic Stage is a real pain as the search cd info feature produces incoherent results. Let´s say you have 10 tracks, all belonging to an album. chances are you will have to pick and tag each and every singe song as sonic stage usually doesn´t recognise the tracks to belonging to one album. One of the reasons I dislike Sonic Stage,

One more thing you should consider is the fact that the d2 is extremely volume limited if you buy the eu version. The 808 is very powerful on the other hand. 50 % of max. volume will definitely suffice with efficient phones. Keep that in mind. Overall the dix has the better feature set and considering still crappy sonic stage it´s a consideration. Try to get your hands on both units and try them in person.

Just get one from Canada. Even if you imported from Japan, as I did with the 706, the Software can be installed in English and even the pdfs are in English.

I ran the removable storage test that comes with sisoft sandra´s latest iteration. As you can see the 808 is a little faster than the nano 2g 4gb I pitted it against. so once more sonic stage seems to be the problem not the hardware. should sony make the change to ums or at leats give us that option you´d be handed a player with decent transfer speeds.

1080p rendering uses much more video ram than 720p and some argue that both 360 and ps3 don´t even have enough frame buffer to support it. in games I guess you could tell a difference on screens 42 in and up but from 3-4m the benefit gets marginal. Yesterday Sony came out with new firmware supporting 1080p/24 and dvd upscaling up to 1080p. According to the guys at the avs forums it works admirably fine. I reckon Sony will be able to harness the full potential of the cell for blue ray oriented applications which will keep the ps3 among the top blue ray players for quite some time.

even mooore

more...

some more pics as work has been too much the last few days...

Realistic review from cnet this time around. sound quality is in deed stellar and design top-notch, best of the industry. unfortunately with the latest gen. of flash players transfer rates are effectively halved and along with badly designed SS a mark of 7.7 is appropriate. of course, ipod nano at 8.3 is ridiculous.

Actually a smart move by Sony. Mp4 suggests an improvement over mp3 per se. Apart from the technological foundation, it´s good marketing. stressing that this is a china/japan collaboration will satisfy patriot feelings in asia, also emphasizing cultural dominance in apple´s ipod product. make no mistake about it. if sony really dropped sonic stage I would be really amazed at this intelligent move. I don´t think it will hold true for audio. Why should it be the case for the new video players but not the 800 which is also listed on the quoted page?I figure Sony is fighting a lost battle in Europe and North America right now even with superior hardware. The most they will be able to claim there is 10% market share. The situation in these market places is bad to dismal with dynamics clearly in favor of apple. Again, make no mistake about it itunes is a huge part of that situation. it´s the best audo management tool and people know this. From itunes to ipod ain´t that far. Personally. the new players don´t mean anything to me. They don´t strike me as anything special. I don´t care about video. If I did I´d get a psp. To be fair The 808 is a great piece of hardware, though only an evolutionary step over the nano.

of course, that may be an effect of too high processor load. I would also argue that some of the sound modifications counteract each other and thus create "distortion". For testing purposes, I´d ask you to email me a few tracks that exhibit this sort of behavior so that I can try to reproduce the results on my 808. Coming from the punchy 706 I also found the 808 bass response to be too realistic. I have had good results with clear bass set to the first enhancement setting. Looking at the 706 response curve one can see a clear bass spike from 20-100hz. Most people prefer this setup, some disagree. I haven´t seen the results on the a8 yet but would expect a flat response line.

little update: I have a bunch of photos I need to downsize which will be done tomorrow. @aob9 yes it does fit perfectly with the polycarbonate shell. Just don´t insert the dock adapter that comes with the s7. see you guys soon!

I cannot concur. Tonality in AW 3000/1000 was rather dampened, sound far from clean. Back then the HD5 ruled supreme and the successor devices of the aw series clearly fielded inferior sq through the board with a petty snr of 84 db on the aw3000 and even worse signature on early oled flash devices. Let´s not forget that sony only returned back to the (shared) top of sq with the s7. As far as the equalizer is concerned on the a800, I have set some weird custom settings and apart from altered sound couldn´t find any hardware related distortion. Same holds true for the presets. I mainly use nero and itunes aac encoded files at around 200kbits. The new sony sound processor really shines with aac files and claimed battery life is also the longest with aac files. Back to the equalizer issue: which codec was used and what did the equalizer setting look like?

Good Evening! I am in the process of writing a review on the sony gear I currently own. I have only recently delved into the sony walkman wolrd. I had previously owned a few irivers and a whole bunch of ipods that have been passed on to family. I still have a 2nd gen Nano and 1st gen shuffle at my place. To kick things off I have made some pictures, more with better "production values", especially lighting will follow tomorrow. I will focus both on hardware -dap and phones- as well as software. See you tomorrow !

I am also an owner of both the 808 and the MX 90s. The MX 90s are clearly superior. At Volume 15 there is almost ZERO Hiss / DSP Noise. This is absolutely amazing. If you want utmost fidelity and amazing sound go for UE SuperFi 5 Pro in conjunction with the 808. PERFECT! Also try the Panasonic in Ear Monitors HJE 70 that can be bought for cheap in HK and Japan. Also an amazing piece of technology vastly superior to the cx 300 and the likes. ceres

Apple has dichted Sigmatel some time ago and is using a samsung chipset as audio processor in Nano 2G.

Try some different USB settings in your bios. For instance disable legacy support for usb and see what it does.

Not quite, as lame mp3 has proven to be the superior alternative in countless listening tests. As mentioned above check out hydrogenaudio for in depth info.

I think both use the Frauenhofer Professional codec which is nothing to write home about. I´d highly recommend lame 3.97 with a graphical frontend of your choice such as db poweramp or cdex. regards, ceres

Thanks for posting this. The cx 300 are a tremendous value and thusly in high demand. I would reckon that 80% on ebay are fakes, close to 100% from china. I recommend buying the cx 300 at amazon or reputable online sellers such as b&h etc. ceres

So how do you like the player? On a side note, how much customs did you have to pay? Thanks, ceres

Recent listening tests conducted by sound coders @192 kbit/s have shown mp3lame 3.97@vbr2 setting to be very good, but not as good as good aac codecs. I would not make the mistake and compare mp3s from the days of old encoded with defunct crap encoders to current atrac3+ If you compare lame mp3 to atrac3+ you will be hard pressed to identify any difference at all. DSP´s comments on once subpar mp3 implementation are right on but fortunately thing have changed at S. However, I believe the future will belong to aac. Compatibility is already there with Apple, Sony, Zune, Cowon, Archos and virtually all cell phones out there. Embracing AAC was actually a pretty smart move by Sony.