metal

Does the player support gapless ATRAC playback?

The 2GB NW-E005F model sold in HK does not FM radio though not sure if it is compatible with UK frequency. http://www.sonystyle.com.hk/ss/product/wal.../nw_e005f_e.jsp

You need to do a bit more. Select 'Play Unit' mode. press mode repeatedly to display the album list press up/down keys to select the album you want press right key to display the track list of that album press play to start track 1 or press up/down keys to select the track you want to play Select repeat on to play the whole album repeatedly non-stop. Select repeat off to play ALL tracks in the album ONCE. Now the weird part (and to me this is most annoying) is that if you start play say at track 4, the player will rewind to track 1 at the end and stops at end of track 3. [This behaviour is the same as A1000.]

Does it support gapless playback or like A6xx series it produece gaps for ATRAC files?

The format option should be found in your player, and yes it will erase all tracks in it.

Me too! I've just purchased the last unit (silver) in a departmental store at a clearance sale. And the unit is Made in Japan really is a nice surprise. I personally like this one more than the A1000 due to the latter's weird playback behaviour. Generally agree with your remarks. I'm currently checking the battery life and do hope it is much much better than A1000.

Actually, Sony allowed AAC format in their Walkman phone products, which do NOT support ATRAC format.

THanks. Looks like it's worth getting afterall.

Currently HD3 is on sale in HK and I'm thinking if I should get one. But before that I would like to know two things: (a) How's the battery life as I'm rather disappointed with the battery life of A1000. ( The playback behaviour -- under normal playback after it play the last track of an album, will it start playing the first track of next album. Selecting album mode (normal play), will it stop at the end or rewind the first like A1000? Any advice, thks.

If I rip CD to MP3 by SS (or CP), will they contain DRM ie. if I can transfer those MP3 files ripped by SS (or CP) to other MP3 devices by simply drag and drop (suppose that MP3 device can support that). Thx for advice.

I recall this has been discussed before and the answer is no. In fact, under normal play mode, the player doesn't even stop at the end of the album but will rewind to track 1 and stops at the track preceding the track you started playing (in other words, if you started at track 3, it will rewind to track 1 and stops at track 2). Why Sony made it that way? Who knows?

If you really worry about CP, you could always use SS 3.4 to transfer your songs, though minus some functions like Artist Link.

In my case, CONNECT insist to assign the first available logical drive letter to my A1000. Eg, I have installed 2 internal DVD writers and 2 internal HDD (C, D, E, F), then CONNECT will only assign logical drive G to the A1000. Therefore if you have a USB device using letter G, then your PC and CONNECT will not recognize your device. You didn't mention if you have connected other USB device into your PC. If you do, then try re-assign your usb devices to other drive letters to allow your PC to recognize A1000. That's what I did to resolve.

Does your PC connects to any other USB devices like HDD? If yes, your PC may not recognize your A1000.

But if you do that, you could end up SS cannot transfer any more songs onto the device unless you initialise it, at least that's what I experienced.

I would guess the likely outcome is the next version of MD Simple Burner (if it ever get updated) will be unable to handle most of copy controlled discs as is now.

You may also use MD Simple Burner to transfer the protected CDs to MDs direct.

I'll do that when a full installer is available, but I tend to feel that it probably won't help. It seems that CP has changed some settings in A1000 making it now unrecognised by SS. Luckily I have enough songs transferred in my device and in the end I can still use CP to transfer files, though I prefer not to use that horrible software (reeeal slooooow - it takes about 5 minutes to delete 15 tracks from A1000).

I have installed SS3.3 to transfer tracks to HiMD. I then purchased A1000 and installed CP 1.0.02.xxx (included in the package) and after a few hours of using CP, I decided to use SS3.3 to transfer tracks to A1000 and no problems for a month or so since then. Recently, I have enabled the autoupdate of CP and as expected CP updates to 1.0.03.xxxx. Then I connect A1000 to CP (to see if CP displays mix artists properly). After then, I connect A1000 via SS3.3 and the message saying that 'This version of SonicStage cannot use the ATRAC device and require to delete all tracks or initialize the device' (or something like that as I can't recall the exact wording). I've read other threads and note some members encountered this message when upgrading to SS3.4. As I'm still using SS3.3, any advice on what had happened? Is this I'm now stuck and cannot transfer tracks to A1000 using SS3.3 anymore?

No, CP only works for A-series Sony player. For HiMD, you have to use Sonic Stage.

I use SS3.3 and can access the Test Mode so I don't think using SS instead of CP is the reason.

Don't know what's going on with your player, but after the above steps you're supposed to see the word 'POWER' on the display and using the Up/Down keys you should be able to access the 'OTHERS' menu. It seems that your player cannot enter in the test mode at all. Weird.

Yes, you can as the player can be used as a usb removable storage device.

In that case, does the player stop at track 2 then. Now you mentioned, I now recall I didn't play the album continuously from track 1 but rather play the album somewhere in the middle and it certainly starts to play track 1. But anyway this is no big deal to me and I just want to see if anyone encounter the same thing.

It seems weird to me that playback don't stop when it reaches the end of album but instead repeats playing at the first track despite normal playback is selected. And, this is for ATRAC files only. For MP3 files, it stops. Is this supposed to that way or is this a bug? The firmware version is 2.01 which I believe is the latest version.