haroldpark

Apple's highest selling model was the mini and I imagine now it is the Nano or maybe even the shuffle. Most people do not have anything like 20GB of music and are happy enough to carry around 4 or 5 gigs even if they do. And for most people its not the capacity in terms of bytes but the "5 billion songs in your pocket" mentality that dominates. Have overheard conversations between sales assistants and ipod buyers doing arithmetic on the number of songs per model they can store vs the cost. At any rate this is why high capacity storage devices like the 60GB ipod are rare and there is a proliferation of flash devices but very few options in the 20GB and over end of the market. Sonys decision probably makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint if not from the minority consumer standpoint that we might represent. hh

That.....sucks. However you were able to do this with an HD5? Was it as tricky (ie resoldering etc). Sorry to not be of any real assistance.

Dont know if this would work on the A3000 but apparently works for the HD5. http://www.syndetics.net/sony-hacks/sonicstage.html

Whereabouts are you located? I am in Australia and so we missed out on the last limited edition 30GB model. Feel this might happen again if this is the next item in the Sony pipeline. hh

It being early Spring (in the Northern hemisphere at least) right now can you be any more specific about when we might hear something about a new player? Can you give any hints as to what to expect? Another iteration of a 20GB player like we have seen before or something a little different (larger capacity, video support etc)? I realise of course that if you could you probably already would have. Curious as my Karma has died and I'm really not sure about the A3000. Sony seems to be getting better in many respects with each model though the A sries did seem like somewhat of a step down from theHD5 in some ways. hh

Was curious about this one myself but I don't suppose so.As far as I know no other player with WMA support plays back WMA lossless.

Yeah actually it was CNET in particular that I was thinking of. They have ZERO consistency when it comes to reviews. iPods seem to have their own criteria for review as compared to any other dap. Yeah I have no doubt there will one day be more pmp-like pods. At the moment this new model serves to keep Apple up to date with rival players like the X5 in terms of flashy features and start another round of ipod buying frenzy. Which is not to say the players might not be pretty good. I am very curious as to these improved playback/sound quality issues that have been mentioned at iLounge but also trying not to get my hopes up given their previous track record. Me also. in fact this is kind of a dealbreaker for me. Which is a bitch considering how many players are capable of gapless these days. Well that article was bandied about and largely dismissed as not taking into account a huge number of other factors. A guy who worked for RIO said of the conclusions "I can confidently say that the total there looks veeeeeery suspicious, but I'd need to see the detail of the "electronics assembly" first. The display in the H320, especially at the time the H320 came out, was a $20-ballpark item. The HDD was in the region of $90 at that time. So, we appear to be at $110 without adding in ANY of the components in the player, and there are quite a few in there - CPU ($8?), RAM ($6?), two USB controllers ($8?), DAC/HP amp ($2?), bootflash ($1?), PCB/connectors/switches/flex cables/battery/ etc etc etc. Also, saying that there was a $190+ "profit" seems to totally ignore the margin given to the distributor, reseller, and costs involved in import (duty, shipping, etc). I'd have expected better from an EETimes article, to be honest..." and you can see other comments here: Based on the head of Rio saying that the dap market was one of shrinking profits where it was only really Apple who was enjoying huge financial success and the horrible financial losses of Creative since they launched their war on Apple I would say that it is a pretty cut-throat industry right now. Samsung may be hoping that Apple will help weed out some of their smaller korean rivals before they make their own big push in the industry (They declared they wold be the number 1 dap manufaccturer by 2007 or something equally implausible). Nevertheless many have predicted that in a few years the only companies seriously involved with daps may well be Apple, Sony and Samsung based on market share and deep pockets.

Yeah looks this way now as there doesn't seem to be a builtin mic. May be that you just need a mic now rather than the other external recording hardware. Apple was quoted by ilounge as saying this model iPod would feature advanced recording and playback capabilities as compared to older models whatever that may mean. I don't think the new iPod necessarily makes the A series obsolete before it arrives. It still has advantages in battery life and possibly sound quality that some are going to prefer. The iPods can only do 2/3 hours of video playback for the 30/60GB models anyway so the iPod is hardly a PMP on the same lines as something like the Archos AV500. However I don't think Sony are going to catch the iPod anytime soon. They are too far ahead and they are a moving target. Other manufacturers try to create products that better the last iPod in key areas and they frequently do but then Apple comes out with a new model that shifts the goalposts often in an unexpected fashion, such as the way that the Nano seemed to make all micro-hdd players seem obsolete. The PSP is another question entirely. The PSP is Sonys true Walkman/iPod of the 21st century in terms of market dominance/percieved superiority. It has enough of a different emphasis to not face damaging competition from the iPod but enough overlap that some will choose it instead. Its a much stronger suit for Sony than this quest to reclaim portable audio from Apple. In the world of portable audio: Apple are in the drivers seat. Most people don't really care about any other dap manufacturer. Sony got into the game years after Apple and were ridiculed for releasing a player without MP3 support. They finally MP3 change their mind and produce a decent player (HD3/5) that is crippled or at least tainted in the eyes of most by software deficiencies, DRM and the lack of coordination between different branches of the company. By the time Stringer took over it seems Sony had overcome these internal problems and were now focused on creating the kind of synergistic software/hardware package that Apple has had for a long while. And it seems in the A series they have produced something that would stand up very well against the 4th gen iPod and 2nd gen mini of last year. But as Apple said they spent a year working on the new video iPod. A year in which Sony was just getting themselves into gear to produce a decent total dap package was a year that Apple spent improving an already decent software/hardware bundle and tightening their grip on the market.

Actually the 5th gen iPod comes in 30GB and 60GB capacities - not 80GB. Seems to have internal voice recording though this is not entirely clear yet.

3 hours from now and Mr Apple is gonna announce the new large capacity iPods. How good these upcoming Sony players are gonna look to most people is gonna be very heavily influenced by what he has to show - smaller + more GB and/or video capabilities. We shall see.

Do you have any idea if the internal amp has been boosted relative to the 5mW per channel of the HD5. The iPod and most other daps have an output of 30mW per channel. I thought if this was the case it might account for some of the discrepancy in advertised battery life between the two models. If there is no technical cpecs perhaps a subjective evaluation of how they compare loudness wise.