aznbro85

looks like somebody didn't do their homework before buying an item... As for sonicstage crashing, which version are you using? Version 4.3 is the newest one and is pretty stable. and it's better to transfer music to your player in small batches, or if you plan to do a big batch, do it overnight, as it looks like it froze up but it's actually running. as for the screen being hard to see, *all* OLED screens are hard to see in natural light. They look awesome indoors though. as for the menu system, i didn't think it was that hard to use. Granted, there's no 'click wheel' or 'spin wheel' (or sony's jog dial ) but i found the menu system to be not too hard to figure out. I have 2 A3000s and a A1200, and the newest players NWZ-A818 is based off of that same menu system, and i have no problems with it. it's not like the older walkmans used it either so it wasn't like i didnt have a learning curve to it... As for it not working in linux, it doesn't work with MacOS either. If you researched you'd find that sonicstage was a windows only app. Only the new drag-and-drop compatible players are able to be used in any OS. and unfortunately, i have no comments about how to make the experience more enjoyable, since you seem quite infuriated with it and based on your problems i dont really think it's 'fixable', heh..

Hey Shinji Ikeda, Thanks for the compliment, I really appreciate it Sony already has software to help convert (unprotected/non-Connect store bought) ATRAC files to MP3. It's included in the package, but can also be found on their esupport site. http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list....amp;SelectOS=27

Thanks for the response tonyjaa, I really appreciate it I figured out my problem. I put in on the wrong way. When I put it on it slid off pretty easily, hence the post. After I got back from school I was messing around with it again, and thought to flip it over and try it out again. VIOLA! It worked this time. See, it's true. It's not always manufacture defects. It's sometimes user error

After getting my NWZ-A818, I felt it was time to protect it. So i hopped onto ebay and bought one of the official sony screen protectors for the NW-A8xx series. It is the PRF-NWA800 Well, long story short, I looked at the pictures and I *think* i did it correctly, but i'm a little confused as to whether I did it correctly or not. There didnt seem to be any 'adhesive' to it, and seemd to be stuck in place via 'static'. Can somebody summarize the installation instructions to make sure i didn't overlook anything? Thanks in advance!

Hey doclloyd, The transfer speed of this player is much faster than when using sonicstage, i think. Since you're able to just drag and drop items into the player, the speed is comparable to transfering onto a USB flash drive, and the player doesn't rebuild the library until you unplug it from the computer. I just tried and sent a ~495MB movie file over to the player, and it took about 2min, 50seconds. Not as fast as a SATA harddrive, but i have a few usb sticks and they seem to transfer around the same speed. By the way, I'm using windows vista, which might still ahve that slow transfer prob going on, so it might be even faster on non-vista, i'm not exactly sure, heh.. As far as video codecs go, here's some info from the manual: File format: MP4 file format, "Memory Stick" video format File extension: .mp4, .m4v Video: ~ AVC (H.264/AVC) Profile: Baseline Profile, Level: Max 1.3 Bit rate: Max 786kbps ~ MPEG-4 Profile: Simple Profile Bit rate: Max. 2,500kbps Frame rate: Max 30fps Resolution: Max QVGA (320 x 240) AUDIO: ~ AAC-LC Channel Number: Max. 2 channels / Sampling frequency: 24. 32. 441/. 48kHz / Bit rate: MAx. 288kbps per 1 channel File Size: Max. 2GB The number of files: Max 1,000 To me, the sound quality is awesome, and asthetically it looks better than the new iPod nano. But i guess i'm a tad biased, me and my sony love (check out my stats) ~_~ And I too, just read on engadget about the price drop on the player. I don't mind much though, since I was thinking about importing the NW-A808 from japan a while back, and that would have costed a LOT more than the original price i paid for the NWZ-A818, so it's all good for me. Hopefully the price drop will make the walkman somewhat competitive in the markets. Here's to hoping, haha

It seems the player is pretty finkle about the video formats. I tried out PSP Video 9 and it didn't seem to work. Another member had suggested a program called WinMenc (http://winmenc.blogspot.com/ ) I tried the one for iPod MP4-AVC, and it seemed to be within specs in the manual, but I got a file that was unplayable also. The only thing that I've tried that's worked so far was AVS Media's VideoTools (http://www.avsmedia.com/VideoTools/index.aspx). That exported a .M4V file, but it worked. The only downside to this program is that it isn't free, and the demo has a big watermark in the middle of the screen that comes in and out of playback every few seconds. For the fullware it is $40, but I read reviews and they said that the licensing is kind of quirky, which has made of stand-offish about buying this software. Does anybody else have any software of choice that they use to convert videos/DVDs to a playable file for the NW-A8xx/NWZ-A8xx series? Can you also put the output profile for us too so we know which to use for the encoding? Thanks a million!

Yep DSP, it does work on Linux, so I'm sure it should work on a Mac as well. Check page 5 of this thread for some pics and screenshots I took of the player in UMS mode and in Ubuntu

Hey everybody, I know there's been talk about ATRAC being a dead format, but I was wondering about your thoughts about whether the atrac format and sonicstage really is indeed dead. I was rereading that e-mail that the connect music service had sent out... -------------------------------------------------- August 30, 2007 Subject: Future of CONNECT Music Service To Our Valued Sony CONNECT Music Customers: Today Sony announced its intent to move to a Windows Media Technology platform for Walkman® products in the United States, Canada and Europe. We strongly believe that the decision to embrace a more open platform for these devices will enable us to provide you with a better overall experience. As a result of this change, we will be phasing out the CONNECT™ Music Service based on Sony's ATRAC audio format in North America and Europe. Specific timing will vary by region depending on market demand, but will not be before March 2008. We are fully committed to helping you through this important transition away from the CONNECT Music Service and providing you with the best possible guidance on how to successfully transfer your music library to an MP3 or Windows Media-compatible format, should you wish to do so. We recommend that you use any outstanding promotional codes, account credits or gift certificates available in your music account prior to March 2008, but even after the store closes you will continue to be able to play, manage, and transfer the music in your SonicStage library and on your existing ATRAC devices. If you obtain a new device, all of Sony’s new Walkman music and video players will support MP3 or Windows Media Audio format http://direct.connect.com/P/v3/r.asp?r=T1_...3B02&a=1007. In the coming months we will keep you informed of the status of the CONNECT Music Service phase out in your region. Periodic updates will be posted on the CONNECT music store and on the Sony Electronics customer service site, http://esupport.sony.com/EN/news/article215. Please note that the CONNECT e-book service for the Reader in the U.S. will not be affected. Thank you for your business and for your continued support as we work to complete this transition with as little disruption to you as possible. Sincerely, Sony CONNECT Music Team -------------------------------------------------- Notice how it says that they were phasing out the CONNECT Music Service in North America and UK. Sony Japan's website mentions NOTHING about the NWZ-A818 or any of the ATRAC-less players. It's newest players consist of the NW-A808 and that fake diamond encrusted one, [as well as Hi-MD players] The PS3 still allows for ripping into ATRAC, even with the newest firmware update that came out yesterday (1.92) Sony Japan doesn't use Connect. Instead, they use a music service called Mora.jp, which I heard was doing well, and I couldn't find any information about Mora being closed down either. Their site's offerings come in ATRAC as well.. And all other regions of the world don't have a music store connected to the player. I remember in my review a member had said something about Sony Singapore is still advertising the NW-A808 as well.. So for all of you who are up in arms about the non-atrac support in the new network walkman, or for those of you still clinging onto the ATRAC format, do you think that based on these assumptions, Sony might not *really* be killing off ATRAC, at least 'fully' ?

Yes, indeed it does show japanese kanji I tested out korean text during my initial post and it shows up without any problem as well. @ pata2001: Thanks for the compliment, I really appreciate it. I noticed nobody else here wanted to be the 'guinea pig' of sorts, so I thought I'd try it out and inform the rest of the users at AtracLife about this new player with it's 'new' format

I figure for this one, a video will be in order, haha.. Just to forwarn you, I don't have the steadiest of hands, and the auto-focus is a little whack, as I am using a digicam, and not a dedicated cam-corder to do it. Also, the button clicks aren't that loud, just that camera's mic was very close to the buttons and it is pretty sensative as well. I scrolled through year 2005 tracks that I had, which I had like 4 or 5 albums of at the time, lol... After filtering through year, I tried out genre, and got back into the home menu before I turned the player off.. anyway, here's the link to check it out:

Even with the summation of 1.75 forward, it's still change in the positive direction, LOL I myself don't have that many gapless albums either, so it's not that big of a deal to me either. I know i could have booted off from the live cd, but I needed to get Ubuntu on my machine for school anyway, so I thought it was the best chance to try it out. I currently am using a 'modified' version of Ubuntu, called "Wubi Ubuntu" It can be found at http://wubi-installer.org/ I like Wubi because it installs in windows and uses a "emulated" partition and it allows you to dual-boot. And, when you're tired of it, you can easily uninstall it by going to Add/Remove programs in Windows. And it's compatible with windows vista It took me a little while to find and figure out how to rip into MP3 in Ubuntu, but I currently have KAudioConverter running and I should have updated news for you within the next half hour Cheers EDIT: 3:36PM PST Ok, so I got KAudioConverter and I ripped one of my cds... Worked like a charm So to sum it up, drag and drop DOES work outside the realm of Windows-land And I apologize for my extraorbitant amount of pictures, I guess i just want to cover all my bases to prove that I did try out suggestions and show the outcome to you guys, instead of just telling you. Cheers =)

Hey stuartmees, I don't know if this will help at all or not, but I uploaded my omgjbox.exe file, and here's the link to it: http://www.mediamax.com/aznbro85/Hosted/Omgjbox.exe save it, and as kerfuffle said, put it into C:\Program Files\Sony\SonicStage If it doesn't work, you can try a system restore of before you tried to uninstall-reinstall sonicstage, or to a point before it stopped working. Hope this helps

@ pata2001: I wouldn't say 1 step forward, 5 steps backwards... I'd say 1 step forward, 1 step back, i guess Before MP3, WMAs and AACs were wrapped in ATRAC DRM Now it gets supported via drag & drop, as well as software other than SonicStage (I personally had no problem with sonicstage, and i think a lot of you guys here are too, but for the average consumer when they saw "SonicStage", they immediately changed their mind about the item.) At least now, these new walkmans should be much more competitive. Now it's time for sony to actually PROMOTE these players! And i don't know, but other than in DAP forums, most people don't seem to mind whether something is gapless or gapped. With the age of iPods, most people seem to be more "song" oriented, and less "album-oriented". I think us album people are more of the minority. Rarely do people sit though a whole album. I'm kind of surprised/saddened that Sony didn't try to update their framework so that all other formats other than ATRAC were gapless. ------------------------------------- Oh, and here's some new information that you guys might be interested in. I finally got a quick install of ubuntu up, to see if this player plays nicely with linux (at least the ubuntu distro of linux) Goes into "Connecting" mode, instead of "Connecting USB MTP" mode. indeed it does.

@ ceres, Thanks for the question. It was my first time using iTunes in a few years, and at first I didn't choose the gapless setting in the file properties. I did find it and I selected it, and I retransfered those tracks onto the player, but the playback is STILL gapped -------------------- i DID figure out yet another thing that might help other users (an answer to matty84 question a few posts up) I added artwork to all the tracks of one cd within iTunes, and I dragged and dropped those files into the MUSIC directory of the player. The AAC files worked, AND the album art was retained. So I guess in iTunes they do embed the album art into each track? But yeah, when I imported the whole album folder and played it on the player, the album art did show up when i loaded it into iTunes. Oh, and before anybody asks, the player does NOT show up in iTunes

SonyStyle USA Looks like there's only three models that were released here in the US... a black 2GB ($79.95 USD), a white 2GB($79.95 USD) , and a black 1GB ($59.95), all three with FM Tuners. If I were in the market for one (maybe later, heh), I'd pony up the extra $20 to double the memory on this thing

So as I posted last night, I tried out AAC ripped via Sonicstage (.3gp) - Did not play gapless I installed iTunes onto my computer and ripped a CD via iTunes AAC @ 128kbps (.m4a) - Did not play gapless And I also think i figured out *THAT LINE* on the sonystyle spec sheet.. MP3/WMA/AAC Audio Codec Support3 Supports playback of MP3 and WMA DRM and non-DRM audio files downloaded from multiple sources. Also supports non-DRM AAC content, giving you multiple options for downloading music the way you want. The NWZ-A818 plays back MP3 and WMA, and PlayForSure WMAs. It ALSO plays back non-DRMed AAC files. HOWEVER, WMP11 DOES NOT 'support' then natively, as if you try to drag and drop it into WMP, it won't register, and if you go file => open an .m4a file, it will give you the file format error and asks you if you want to continue, and when you hit yes, it actually plays. I haven't tested it out on other "PlayForSure" capable programs yet, (nor do I want to add more useless clutter to this computer, heh..) as long as you DRAG AND DROP AAC files onto the player, the player plays them natively, no need to convert into WMA or MP3.

So, I had sonicstage open and a few minutes to spare, so I was like oh, what the heck, I'll go try out "AAC Ripped via Sonicstage (.3gp)" before heading to bed.. Unfortunately, no dice. The CD I ripped did not play gapless on the player (within Sonicstage is it gapless? When I played it within sonicstage it was gapped too) I ripped AAC @ 192kbps, if that makes a difference.

@ pata2001 LOL you and your theories of sony USA hating on japanese/kanji, haha... yeah, i saw that in the quick start guide and i was like wtfux? lol and I'll take your suggested codecs and add it to the list to try out tomorrow @ matty84 What do you mean by when the album art is encoded in the file? When I ripped it in WMP11 does it encode into the file? I don't see an actual .jpg file in the folder

@ Ascariss, ok, i followed your instructions, and it looks like the player does not support winamp playlists. I dropped the playlist file into the 'Playlists' folder in the directories, and dropped the music into the "Music" folder, and I got a message that said: The file 'testo.m3u' may be copied to the device for storage or transport use only. It is not supported for use on the device itself. If possible, use a media program that can convert the file before copying it. If you copy the file now, it will be stored on the device, but may not be presented in the device user interface. Do you wish to copy the file to the device anyway? Yes | Yes to All | No | No to All | Cancel I tried with both 'M3U playlist' and 'PLS playlist' and got that pop-up. When I selected 'M3U8 (Unicode) Playlist', the file transfered without that warning pop-up, but when i went to the playlist part of the player, the playlist did not show up. as for trying out the other formats that you suggested, I will try that out tomorrow. I do not have iTunes installed on this computer, and it's 1:07AM local time, and i'm beat, lol...

Hey Ascariss, I never tried doing something like that. Mind giving us a crash-course on how that works? I would love to try it out for you to see if it works. Yeah, I ripped it into MP3 192kbps via WMP 11.

Hey Akai Kenshi, I don't know if that's the only way, as I only tried drag & drop into the "MUSIC" folder and using WMP11 to sync it automatically. I don't know if there is a way to get album art in other manual ways, sorry If that's the case, I too, hope Sony Media Manager takes care of it... I heard something that it should work with the PSP as well. But time will tell, so I guess for now we just have to wait...

Thanks alpex for all the wealth on the info about BT and encoding of videos, i really appreciate it! I guess to me the DR-BT50s sounds awesome because the only other things i have to compare it with are MDR-EX71SLs and the stock headphones for the NW-S705F, which are the two other ones that are my 'regulars' Yeah, I called them on wednesday morning right before they opened at 10am, and I went and got one the next day on thursday. All the sales representatives there don't know %^*&, but I must say there was one that was there that looked new and knew what he was doing. I asked him some stuff about this player and he knew his stuff... lol

Correct, the 4GB version was never released here in the US However, companies can always buy off the 'old stock' of another company at a reduced price and re-sell them in another market that never had them. I remember last year, before the US got hold of the NW-A1200, geeks.com had the European/Hong Kong version of the NW-A1000 (6GB) on their site for sale. So it wouldnt be that far of a stretch that JR.com got them not from sony, but from another distributor, and are reselling them

@ Rob A oh! my bad, I can't believe i left that big important thing out of the review!! No, sonicstage does NOT see this player when connected. It appears in WMP11, and inside the windows explorer, but it doesn't show up as a device inside of sonicstage. @ AntiPod Sorry, I don't have a A800 nor do I have access to one. I can say that the sound quality *didn't* get worse though (compared to all my other sony walkmans), haha @ alpex Thanks for the heads up... i'll go try out nero re-code then. I was trying out Slysoft's CloneDVD Mobile, and i was trying out different device profiles with no success, but i will go ahead and try out nero recode... Thanks for the input! And which BT headphones do you use? I have sony's DR-BT50 and I find that the sound quality is great

Hey sdfzz, thanks for the compliment, i really appreciate it here's your answer: @ metal: I tried another CD that is continuous with mixed results. When I played it back on the player, there was an obvious gap in between the tracks. This gap showed up when I tried playing the files in Winamp as well. However, when I played it using WMP 11, the gap wasn't there.. so can somebody school me on this... is it the file or some sort of header that tells the program/hardware to play it continuously or what?