The Mule

I noticed this when checking the capacity on Connect. Why is this mp3 player being marketed as 20Gb if it only 18? 2Gb is a lot of music, in my opinion

Nah, no success with that, GYM doesnt seem to be any use atall. I'm just gonna have to re-download the albums I guess.

I voted for the NW-A3000 simply because I think its the sleekest looking mp3 player on the market and it's easy to use. I think sony are struggling to find a way of improving on the look of this player and thats why they havent as yet released a successor as yet. The only drawback of this player is that the volume is quite low on some albums (even with the volume unlocked) and it scratches very easily. Even repeatedly putting it in (and taking it out) of the soft case can produce very thin scratches which you can see under a bright light.

Hi, Just before I sold my NW-A3000 last year I copied 2gb of Atrac music from the player onto a folder on my hard drive hoping to copy that onto another player at a later date. Having recently purchased a new NW-A3000 I'm finding that OMA files in the folder wont go onto this player. A transcode error message appears after dragging the files into the Connect Library. I'm assuming that these files are encoded to prevent them from being copied from player to player, but is there any way of getting round this? I've read something on this forum about using GYM to extract the OMA files back into MP3 format, but was wondering if that would be of any use in this case. Im a bit concerned I wont be able to use these files as I dont have back ups.

Brilliant album, downloaded it a few month ago but been listenin to it a lot more recently. Theres a lot of great tracks on there and nice bass.

Cheers, I was hoping that was the answer 'cause I got a remote for Xmas and the cord on that is about 1 metre.

Hi, i just bought a set of Sony MDR-EX51SP's on Ebay for £12. Is there any difference between these and the EX51LP's?

Im looking for a player that supports DivX and there only appears to be only a couple Sony DVD Player on the market that supports this format. I like the idea of having 4 movies on 1 DVD. Rather than fork out for a new player, I was wondering if any tech-heads knew if it was possible to get a normal DVD player chipped to support DivX? I guess if players can be sent off to get multi-region chips installed its a possibility... Is there any such procedure available for DivX upgrades on normal DVD players?

Lots of electronic music including about 2 Gb of Autechre. Most of its at Atrac+ 192Kbps except for their album Draft 7.30, track 9 (V-Proc) is destroyed by anything below 192 so i've ripped it to 320. The intro especially has a fierce sounding range of sharp electronics that test Atrac to the limit.

As far as I can hear there is no noticeable degradation in sound quality converting mp3 to Atrac3+ at 192Kbps and above. I converted all my mp3's to atrac (keeping the bitrate the same) and havent noticed a difference atall. In some cases the Atrac file ends up sounding marginally clearer.

i really dont like the little scratches on it...they ruin a really good lookin machine. i think i`ll drop it repeatedly off the carpet.

Hahaha, yeah...it did cross my mind. Need to make it look subtle though

Sony should have released the case at the same time as the player....infact it should really have been included with the player along with the cradle. The fact that its taken so long to be released is a real joke. And the price of the bundle is a joke too. Poor show.

I want to claim a new one under warranty as mine has got a scratch on it from being in my pocket with my keys. Thinking about just putting it in the sink and taking it back to the shop to get a new one under accidental damage. Whats the best way to stop the machine from working properly?

Thanks Stuge, good guide - but the problem im having is with File Manager and it not detecting the MP3 player. Do i have to initialize the mp3 player to get File Manager to notice it?

Good point about that MP3 conversion tool...it asks you to install Sonic Stage, and once you do...it still doesnt work....it keeps asking u to install SS 2.1 or higher, even though you`d just installed 3.4. Very, very annoying.

Having a bit of bother with getting the files off my device and onto the computer. Iv downloaded GYM 1.12 but it then asked me to install MP3 file manager 2.0 which i did...but this software doesnt seem to detect my nwa 3000. Does this software support a 3000? Im at a loss to get Gym to work for the simple reason that File Manager doesnt detect my device. I knew this wouldnt be straightforward.

I`m in the process of taking all my mp3`s off my mp3 player so that i can convert them to atrac at like for like bit rates. This is a pain in the ass because of the extraction required after taking the files from the device and putting them on my computer. I was wondering what the quickest way to convert bulk mp3`s (theres a Sony MP3 Conversion Tool which i d/l`ed off the net but it doesnt work with the latest version of Sonic Stage). I realise this probably isnt even worth the hassle, but my mp3 player was becoming too unorganized and needed refreshed...plus i find Atrac3 to be "cooler".

i had heard this case was being released this month but cant find any info about it. Anyone any ideas if this being released or not? I need one desperately. The player is a beauty but its prone to fingerprint smudges and is just waiting to get scratched.

Hi, when I got my new mp3 player I wanted all the music that i loaded on to it to be in Atrac3+ format until I read this forum and realized that you should only really convert it to A3+ if you are taking it from the original source CD audio which is a bit disappointing. Im about to delete all the atrac files of the player (as they dont sound too clear) and load it with the mp3`s from my PC`s hard drive. I was just wondering if there was any way of uncompressing mp3 files into their original CD source audio? Im guessing there isn`t, but im just checking to make sure. I know its possible to convert mp3 to CD Audio but is this process the same as uncompressing the data?

Having just got the nwa3000 as a gift i began converting all my mp3 files to A3+ 48kbps, but noticed this is very lossy at high volumes. I am conscious of trying to squeeze as many albums as possible onto the machine, but sound quality is most important to me. Considering the majority of my music collection is in mp3 format at various bit rates I was wondering whether there is any point in converting to ATRAC atall? Or should I convert from mp3 to A3+ but keep the bit rates the same(ie.192kB to 192kB)? Is there any benifit in doing this?