The Mule

Once the volume is unlocked its impossible to increase it anymore. But I know what you mean, when you change the EQ to any of the settings the volumes drops.

I used to convert all my downloaded mp3's to atrac but its not worth it. I just stick to mp3 from now on

Do sony mp3 players really sound better than iPod's? How come?

Not too fussed about touchscreen or watching videos or photos on a walkman. I use it primarily for music. I would like to see a smaller, lighter, higher capacity version of the a3000.

You can pick up a new nw-a3000 for under £100 on ebay these days.

Yeah, it seems to be misleading. Looks like the reviewer made the mistake of thinking there was some form of transcoding going on during playback when in actual fact its simply a case of DRM/MP3's in an omg container.

Strange that a reviewer would come out with information that wasn't true.

I don't think Sony should have given up on atrac because it certainly had its merits but it didn't really catch on. I download all my music off the net in MP3 format. I used to convert them to Atrac because I wanted gapless. Then when I started storing MP3's I realised they were being played back in gapless aswell. As far as sound quality is concerned, that was one of the main things Sony believed was superior with Atrac compared to its rival formats. Eventually they gave up because other formats had cornered the market and after years of development they gave up (which seems a waste of all the years they spent developing atrac).

Was reading a review of the MW-A3000 and found this bit of technical info Never knew that when playing a track the machine converts the MP3 signal to ATRAC before amplifying it. Don't really see the point in doing that. It just means more work for the processor to do and that is why the battery runs out faster with MP3's. So no matter whether you listen to MP3's or Atrac3, it will be an Atrac signal you hear in your headphones. I'm sure the newer models won't do this, since it seems to be a measure taken by Sony when they still had ambitions for Atrac.

EX-71's all the way!

Probably about 40 tracks or so - I'm using Mp3's, i think the main problem will be trying to find all the tracks with no year because their scattered out over various albums....and then restore the files from the recycle bin because i deleted them after transfer :-)

Yeah, i noticed that it doesnt give you the option to edit the release year, only the other information. Even Connect player let you edit the year. I had a bad feeling i would have to re-transfer the music over with the info updated.

My Walkman has a lot of tracks which have no information in the year field and this causes problems with searches and the artist link function. With v4.3 is there anyway of editing the Release Date/Year once the track is on the player?