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Old skool D

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Posts posted by Old skool D

  1. Are you happy buying from eBay? I bought my second Zune from there, of course there's no warranty since it's not officially for sale outside the US yet. But eBay is a good way to buy stuff that's not available in your country.

    If you don't mind an 829 that's 2 months old, and quite literally like new, not a single mark on it, I'm putting mine in the FS forum over the weekend. I got it from Amazon.co.uk and there's no volume limiter on it!

    Juli

    What!!! Your selling your baby. Why??

  2. fugusushi- I personally rip everything in AAC 192, having compared MP3 128 to this and found AAC 'cleaner'. However it's whatever you find best. I'll hve a lok at this links, cheers.

    I did a lot of research about the A829 (including reading old skool d's initial comments), I looked at the ipod touch and classic and considered a 8GB A81x series.

    I took the plunge and must say I'm really pleased with it, ok no fancy UI or controls however I knew the battery life of an ipod would drive me mad. I am frustrated by playlists and video but I think I just need to invest the time in finding out how.

    As for voicing concerns/issues, surely that's what a place like this is for to talk about things and get answer to problems?

    Exactly. I'm glad you like your new Toy. With a little bit of reading( and some help from fellow owners!) I think you'll not regret your purchase.

  3. Sony wasting money?! yes - what you say is 100% correct - or at least i agree with you. But given that Sony had their lunch eaten by Apple - gave the world SS in the first place (don't mention Connect!) - then didn't bother to develop it properly - then dumped their proprietory music codec - how much money did they loose??!! they 'invented' the Walkman - lest we forget...

    Whilst Sony's move has some eventuality about it, believe me, i'm sure when you yourself pick up one of these 'new' Walkmans you're gonna be cursing Sony too. WMP is a piece of trash and the least Sony could have done is supply M$ some Sony Walkman specific plugins, or something.

    WMP is offering 192kbps - on the highest 'quality' setting vs. 352kbps i've got on my 818 (Media Manager for Walkman - Sony's new piece of god awful trash is offering 256, but it's unusable!!) - this is not a step forward for Sony, this is v.deffinately a step back and i would not have bought it had i known this beforehand...

    seriously, anyone considering one of these has to really think hard - aside from bluetooth, extra space, bigger screen - well, that's all the pros - the cons are far more!!! unless you consider iPod level music quality a pro!!!!

    I'm sure this forum is gonna fill up with folks and their 829 'gripes' once they start pickin' 'em up...

    /quote]

    I had the A829 for a while. Whilst I found WMP ok, I must admit that I prefer SS. This could be down to being more familar with SS. I too found that WMP highest setting was 192 KBP. Is there no way of increasing this?

  4. Mongrel

    Firstly Welcome to ATRAClife. Glad to have you aboard. Secondly I'm sorry to hear about your recent misfortune. I Live in London, so I know it ain't all good or bad in this great town ( as proved by the action on the WVM)

    As for your question. I would go for MP3 as opposed to Atrac. What bit rate do you plan to rip at??

  5. I forgor to mention. With the CD rom that came with the A829, there was a MP3 converter that converted (or was supposed to) all my ATRAC songs to MP3. I haven't got many to convert, (about 9) but it only managed 2! Bring back SS :lol:

  6. Hi all,

    A battery problem with my A805 prompted me to consider more memory for my 'mobile audio' needs. I will be submitting my A805 for repair but I went ahead and ordered an NWZ-A818 from my local Sony Centre . Well, I got a phonecall as I was leaving work yesterday and I collected it on the way home.

    Okay, I eventually got it out of the packaging after much struggling. I mean this was wedged into the box and I couldn't unpack it without tearing the packaging a little.

    Comments;

    1/ Does not receive album art from WMP 11. Every other device in my house ( kids Creative Zen etc) successfully receives album art from WMP, no problem. On the 818 only the album icon is represented by album art, the individual tracks are not. This cannot be a tagging problem as other devices don't have this issue. Anyhow, when I look at 'MY MUSIC' within VISTA with Windows Explorer each track is listed by it's cover art icon.

    I tried using ''drag and drop''; same issue.

    2/ I Installed Media Manager 1.1 for Walkman to see if this would help.....NO, in fact it will only import 7.1 GB of my 15 GB MP3 collection. WMP, REALPLAYER and QUICKTIME all correctly import my entire MP3 collection so I have no idea what this is all about.

    3/ My A805 came complete with 'Image Converter 3.0'. This excellent software allows me to literally 'cram a sofa down the toilet'. No matter what I throw at it gets converted and transferred to my A805, automatically. This software doesn't even see my NWZ-A818......so your on your with video with this device.

    4/ This may only be a minor issue but the 'Home Page ( icons menu)' on the A818 is not as graphically sleek as on the A808.

    Does album art really matter? ........Probably not in the grand scheme of things. Do I really need it? Probably not either. Will I try and fix it..............I don't have the appetite to be honest...........but why be so difficult Sony?

    As for the video issues.I have other conversion software that works just fine, but again why did Sony take this away?

    Bottom line.....The older NW-A80* series is a much better device by a long shot........

    I really can't make up my mind about keeping the NWZ-A818. I have always liked Sony SQ and I don't NEED to fix the album art issue. After all,the player will spend most of it's time in a leather case.

    More importantly, despite these issues this is the way SONY is going and we may have to go with it IMHO. I still can't see a better device out there ( and I have looked).

    Cheers.

    Anthony

    Anthony

    Thanks for your review. I had a similar thing with the A829. I didn't find WMP11 all that easy to use, in comparision to SS, and the Sony Media Manager for WALKMAN 1.1 wasn't better. Looks as if Sony have a bit more to do to assemble a better DAP, software.

  7. Actually, you're right. They 'pretend' to be available and then you see they're out of stock.

    I found a refurbished Grade A for £79.95 complete with a 12-month warranty. But that's all I could find.

    I could have sworn I saw some the other day retailing for £129 (rip off) but I can't find them now.

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B...347&sr=1-31

    Comments: Grade A units. Direct from Sony. Complete with 12 month Warranty.

    Juli & aob9:Thanks for the advice. I think I may have to go the A818 route. What are you both going to do? also here's the first review ref the A829:

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-NWZA829K-16GB...347&sr=1-31

  8. Right, that's it then. Thanks Old skool for saving me loads of money! I'm not going to get one now. I really like the features on the 808, and it seems more user friendly than the new model. Looks like the only advantage of the 829 is a slightly bigger screen, slightly better sq, but with less features than our beloved 808's! Seems like a sideways step to me.

    I'll stick with the 808 and Zune for now and wait till Sony bring out something with the 808 features plus extras, not minus extras! I can go buy some Denon AH-C551s now with the cash.

    P.S So you're going to get the 818 to supplement the 808 and get 16GB that way? You still can't make on-the-fly playlists with it. You know that don't you?

    Juli

    Your welcome. Like I mentioned I'm glad I got it:If only to see for myself what the advantages/disadvantages to the player were.

    ref the A818:Yes I am aware of the lack of on the fly playlists. I still may get it. I'll seek advice from Markey ref the features on it.

  9. Well,Well........a thumbs down from OLD SKOOL D. I had a hunch that this unit wasn't up to our very high standards on Atraclife. I lost interest in it when I realised that my brand new Sony cradle was too small for it. I would need to upgrade to the new cradle. That coupled with the fact that it just doesn't look as good as the previous models.

    Indeed. Any news ref your A806?

  10. really?

    I thought the 808 was made from the same material as the 81x series? Last time I checked my 818 was all metal, except the buttons.

    It could be me & my eye sight :) Anyway, I've decided to return the unit. Whilst I like the bigger screen, and the SQ is as good, if not better than my A808, I don't like the fact that they have done away with some great features from the A800/A8100 series( rating of tracks on unit, being able to delete songs from the unit, having to get bluetooth headphones) I'll get a A818. Still glad I got it, if only so i could see for myself. I do hope my review has been useful for anyone thinking of getting said player (Juli????)

  11. OK, I have finished synching music onto the unit. Thoughts and impressions:

    As most people will know(if you've read the posts around here) their no on-the fly playlists, but were you aware not( unlike my A808) there's no deleting tracks from the unit itself(like an iPod you have to do that via your computer) no star rating system( now this might me due to using WMP11, or that I haven't figured that out yet!) These put features are a BIG miss for me, and were a bonus points in having a A800, or A100 series.

    Plus point however is the SQ. To my 40 yeard old ears it is even better than my A808( to the point that I can listen to my music at volume level 12 & below, as opossed to 15 on the A808).

    Windows medis Player 111 is OK, but coming from SS, it takes a bit of getting used to. For example, It started to sync all the photos on my computer onto the player.( I had to delete these from the computer itself) I'll have to read my instruction booklet. Also ref video: I fancy putting some onto the unit, but guess what? it's not straight forward.

    In conclusion apart from the issues I mentioned above, the great SQ makes up for all the things Sony, to my mind have left off this DAP, which made my A808 a great player. 16 GB is enough for me, and I'm content. i hope someone else gets one, so we all can compare opinions.

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