sonyslave

Thanks guys, just got home and the box is here! I will have a little play around with it after I've had a bite to eat. David

Sadly, that is Sony's way! In the end it is probably not worth repairing your Pocket Vaio unless it is something you can do easily yourself - like replacing the hard drive. In the end though it probably best to get a new player, although none of the present Sony players can hold a candle to the Vaio. (With the exception of the new A808 perhaps - but of course you will lose considerable storage space - only 8gb compared to 20/40gb!) Then again if you can wait, Sony might release a high capacity player later this year. Sorry this does not really help you, David

Forgive this thread, but I can't contain my excitement! Got home this evening and checked my email - there was one from UPS saying they had picked up my A808 and and expected delivery is the 12th - tomorrow. I'm SO excited. Better get my camera battery charged up so I can take some pictures of my new baby. Oddly enough about hour later my credit card company rang up to confirm that the transaction was genuine! David

Alright, Sony have given us all these intelligent shuffle options, Time Machine, Artist etc. from the Ax000 series. My question do you use them though? Myself I have tried some of them, but never used them again. In fact I don't even use the standard shuffle and repeat options that often. I guess I'm just 'old school' when it comes to using DAPs - I just like listening to complete albums as I did when I first started using Cassette Walkmans. So how about the rest of you? David

Just checked the English Connect online music store, and found lossless downloads available. The bad news though - only 20 albums, classical & jazz genres available! According to store this is to celebrate the S706 series of players. Maybe we'll get more if it proves popular. David

Well I was a bit critical of this new player in another thread, but I'm not considering it - no I've pre-ordered it from Sony! Hopefully it will be here at the begining of next month.

Well I hope it is a start, but to be honest I don't think Sony can afford a start, they must beat Apple to increase their market share. What use would it be to release a 16gb model in December, if Apple have released a 16gb Nano in October. I don't really see the inclusion of video as a major challenge to Apple, other companies have tried that route before, such as Sandisk without much success. I think size in terms of gigabites is more important in these small players. Personally I wish Sony's new player all the best, I was just saying its not for me.

With the announcement of a new Sony player now would seem to be a good time to say what are your plans this year, will you be buying a new DAP and if so what? Naturally, this topic requires a certain amount of second guessing about what the manufacturers are going to do, but it could be fun anway! So here are my plans... Last December I said to myself no new DAPs in 2007. In January, I brought a Sony MZ-RH1 HiMD player and a Sony NW-S706F DAP (luckily it wasn't a New Year's resolution!) January also saw the death of my 3G iPod 20gb, which I got out of frustration at the delay of Sony's first generation HiMD players. No tears were shed, it was one of my few mistakes in the DAP market, you all know poor sound quality, poor battery life etc. Mine spent most of its life either sitting on the shelf doing nothing or playing audiobooks. It had the last laugh though, I had just spent £20 replacing the battery! So why no new DAPs this year. Well I have got to many of the things, in fact it may be more profitable for me to spend 2007 getting rid of some of them! But I am sure that I will get maybe 1 or 2 more before the end of this year. So far though I am sad to say that they probably won't be Sony in origin, even if the first one was, and may I say here what a fantastic player the S706F is, so good I even rebuilt my ATRAC library at 64kbps (good enough for portable and casual listening, IMHO.) The announcement of the new Nanoish video player has not raised interest much, I don't need video (that's for a PMP or the PSP) I only want the best possible music player! No I think the S706F will meet my needs for this year... but then again I didn't really need the S706! Now where my real interest lies this year is in compressed lossless music! Over the Christmas/New Year feativities I re-evaluated my listening habits and discovered that I only listen to a small percentage of my music - I certainly don't need it all on one device. The second revelation I had was that I can really tell the difference between compressed music and a CD! So I re-encoded all my favourite albums/music in a lossless format, Apple Lossless I'm afraid, to go on my iPod 5G, 60gb, now permanantly connected to my home rig. Now given my experience with my iPod 3G, and the fact the hard drive will be in use more because of the larger file size per song of Apple Lossless, I think I may be in the market for a large capacity DAP that will play lossless files by the end of the year. It doesn't have to be 60gb, I am prepared to change albums if needed, but not on a weekly basis, so 16gb would probably do, and flash memory rather than a hard disc would be great. You can probably see where I'm going with this, and yes I'm afraid its Apple again, especially if they double the Nano's capacity to 16gb. Imagine 40 odd albums at CD quality in something as small, if boring as the Nano! I'm sorry if my plans for 2007 seem pro-Apple and anti-Sony, but at the moment that's the way it stands, perhaps Sony's announcement later in the year will cause them to change. David

Well, I think Sony may have missed the boat yet again with this product! Certainly from my point of view it isn't going to make me give up on the iPod line yet. 8gb of flash memory, nice but I think the iPod will get 12 maybe even 16gbs of memory later this year, so Sony has missed the chance to steal a lead on Apple here. Personally I will hold out for higher memory on the Nano, as I have just got into lossless files for home listening. Video playback. Not a major concern for me. Perhaps the odd music video, but really the screen is to small even for this. (Are Sony, Apple and mobile phone producers in league with Opticians. All these small screens cannot be good for the future generation's eyesight!) I would have rather seen playback of a lossless format (see above) and support for Audible files (Audiobooks). So there is nothing to make me want to rush out and buy one of these. I shall keep my iPod Nano for audiobooks, my S706F for portable use, my iPod 5G (60gb) for home listening, with lossless files paired with my ZS-M50 Sony CD/MD/Radio Boombox! Just my 2 pence worth, but Sony another opportunity missed.

There is a reset button on the bottom of the player, try using that first. You will probably need to reconnect the player to SS to rebuild the library. David

Hi Arvin, when I said 'streamline SS' I did not mean the program its self, rather the 'user interface'. Cutting out un-needed (?) bit rates, makes it easier for new/inexperienced users. It should also be noted that the current ATRAC+ bitrates conform to those of the other main rival encoders, mp3, WMA ect. On your second point I didn't realise you were talking about the source material of the music rather than musical types! My apologies. David

Hi Avrin, you have discovered bitrates that were intended for the NetMD. 66kbps equates to LP4 in the old NetMD terminology, and 105kbps was an alternative to LP2 or 132kbps. Although I never understood why it was included in the OpenMG software (the precuser to SonicStage), it did save some space when storing songs on your hard drive, perhaps nessessary in the days before we had multi-gigabite affordable hard drives. Anyway, with the demise of the NetMD and the new ATRAC+ bitrates, Sony obviously considered these bitrates obsolete and have dropped them. It also streamlines SonicStage and I have no doubt makes it easier for new users. Disabling them was no doubt easier than rewritting the whole progam! As an aside, I am surprised you find 66kbps acceptable for some kinds of music and better than the newer 64kbps of ATRAC+. From my own experience and that of many others the only use for this bitrate was for recording interviews or listening to audiobooks. Anway congratulations for finding a way of re-enabling these bitrates, but I think I will stay with ATRAC+ for my DAPs and HiMDs! Yours David

Just tried it with my NW-A3000... ...and it works a treat!!! Now why couldn't Sony do that? Congratulations!!!

Well, I think now it seems that MD/HiMD will get the chop. PCDP will probably continue with a much reduced range, probably dropping the ATRAC and Mp3 compatability, and I don't think there will be any high end models. ATRAC format will continue, it is used in Sony's DAPs and I don't think that will change, yes they are opening up with using mp3 and WMA formats, but these will run alongside ATRAC. Look at Apple with the iPod/iTunes this uses mp3 alongside ACC, the only reason they won't support directly WMA is that it is a Microsoft format... but that's another story. So I can see Sony concentrating on its range of Digital Audio Players, as it tries to regain the ground lost to Apple in the portable music player market. Let's face it, the DAP is the 21st Century's Walkman or should that be iPod!

Interestingly I had the same sort of problem with Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells 2003, which had copy protection on it. Insert it into the computer's CD drive and up popped a music player so you could play it on the computer, mp3 format, 128kbps, not good. iTunes and WMP did not even recognise it as a CD, but when I opened SonicStage, guess what, it recognised the CD and even let me copy it in to ATRAC. Still trying to puzzle this one out. I know it doesn't solve your problem though!

I've had a NW-407 flash player since they came out here in June, which looks as if it has the same or similar finish. Yes its a finger print magnet, I'm forever cleaning it with various cloths t-shirts etc. with no sign of scratching at all. It also lives round my neck when in use, and has survived numerous knocks including getting wrapped around a pole on a bus, and no scraches. The finish is much tougher than it looks. Let's hope they use the same finish with A3000/1000/600!

I can only suggest trying the method Sony suggests by copying a track over to your computer and then trying to import it in to your current version of SonicStage. If this works then go ahead and copy everything across. Another possibility would be to use the Vaio music transfer program to add more music to your Pocket Vaio as I don't think you need to initialise it as you are not directly using SonicStage. Sorry I can't be of more help, I don't use mp3s, hopefully someone else on the forum can be of more help. David

I take it you do not have the mp3s on your computer now?

Ok, sorry I don't know about the Iaudio X5L from personal experience, although I have seen some good reviews. On the first point you raised in your last post, I would not recomend using a HD player for listening to and archiving music. HD players are subject to hard-drive failures, especially if dropped! Once that happens you have lost your music at worst and at best you will have to rerip your CDs. I keep 3 copies of my compressed music, one on my players, one on my computer and a back up on a removable drive, just in case! Cheers Dave

Congratulations, I have a Sony HD5H (30gb) model, and in answer to your first question, the fast forward/rewind works just like a the minidisc. You can hear the music as you do it. Not sure about using it on long tracks though as I haven't got any loaded on the player. As to question two - well I suppose the answer has to be no. With the following qualification: I was seduced by iTunes and the third generation ipod while waiting for the first generation HiMd players to be released. I tried iTunes on my laptop and was blown away by the sound quality vs. the file size. Unfortunately the player did not have the same sound quality! (There's plenty about this on the net) But I will say I still use the ipod for listening to audio books. Any other things you should be looking at well what format is your music in mp3 or atrac or something else. Bear in mind that Sony hard disc players are best using the atrac format. This of course will lock you into using Sony players in the future. I have nearly 400 albums in atrac format hence my user name! Sony players can utilise mp3 now, but there have been questions raised about sound quality and other problems! Sorry for being such along post! I hope it helps! Dave

I pinched the lanyard off my Creative MuVo DAP for my NW 407 Then I found a cheap lanyard in a mobile phone store, and used that for my MuVo (not as good quality, and I don't use it that often!) I certainly wouldn't trust the plastic belt clip that Sony provide with their flash players.