Dinko

I assume they mostly covered iPods. The thing with iPods, is that the vast majority of people have them on too loud, not because they necessarily like it loud, but because with iPods, in order to get a good sound when you use the crappy white earbuds, you need to push it pretty high. If these iPod users were using normal earbuds, their sound would be much lower. It's pretty common around here to see iPod users who have their music so loud, that: - I'm in the subway (with all the ambient noise that involves) - between one and two meters away from the iPod users - have my own noise-isolating earbuds with music playing and I can still hear the iPod users's music pretty well. But this only happens with people using the white earbuds. People who either use other earbuds, either with iPods or other devices, rarely if ever play their music that loud. I think this study needs to be broken up in subsets: - people with iPods using crappy white earbuds - people with iPods using other earbuds/headphones - people with non-iPod devices I'd be curious as to the differences. As for twits suing a company because of some imbecility they did to themselves via irresponsible use of a product, the less said, the better.

The French are at it again, meddling in economic markets again. This time, they're out to break proprietary formats like Apple's iTunes Music Store which won't allow you to play tracks on other players than the company's own iPod line. You can bet that it also applies to Sony's CONNECT store. Possibly the only formats that could escape this law (if passed) are the WMA DRM files which you can play on a large variety of players, and get from a large variety of stores. http://news.ft.com/cms/s/eb226ae6-b90b-11d...00779e2340.html Next step: attack proprietary cables. Every single DAP in the world should have standard mini-B USB jacks, or come packaged with a free adaptor.

Make sure it's not static. If you have the player in your pants or a shirt which creates static electricity (even if you can't notice it). it is perfectly possible for the player to do that. I was wondering what was wrong with my E99 until I figured out that it only did what you describe when my (polyester) jogging pants were charged with static electricity (from either running or the dryer). It seemed especially bad when the player was in the black carrying pouch that came with it. If the player was not in the pouch, the problem was not as severe. In any case. the solution was to not carry the player in the pants but elsewhere - some part of the clothing which was not as exposed to static charges.

Doubtful. More likely: - iPoo will continue to destroy earphones - Apple will release Apple-branded earphones which can resist destruction - Any earphone other than the Apple-branded iPoo earphone will be annihilated by iPoo So iPod used will be stuck using Apple earphones forever. iPod fans will call it "The best invention in the history of the world" and argue that anyone pointing out the flaws of such a magnificent system is just jealous because Sony didn't invent it first.

The flaw is much bigger but it's not as noticeable in the sense that it's harder to identify the player as the culprit. Earphones are notorious for breaking fast (probably due to the conditions they are exposed to). By the time you realize it's your player breaking them, you've already changed a number of pairs, and much time has elapsed. The defect which burns only one side of the headphones is too bizarre to be associated with the player. There are no moving mechanical parts, no big electric current passing through... Simply put, the chances that the player broke the headphone is lower than the chance that the earphone was exposed to external conditions which broke it, or was simply defective. The broken headphone problem takes time to develop. When you get a badly working Connect player, it slaps you in the face, and takes control of your computer almost immediately. When it works, it's great. But when it doesn't, it's an immediate, and significantly painful experience. It's frustrating on its own, but add to that the fact that you bought a new guizmo and you can't even use it. Well, there's that and the fact that Apple fanpersons are simply overzealous about their iPoos.

Unfortunately, no. The new A1000/A3000 players do not automatically play the next album. Your best solution is to create a playlist with all the albums you want to play in back-to-back order.

I think that when this was discussed before, Ascariss (?) mentioned that to turn Hold on when player is off, you have to press Stop/Pause on the player. Turn on Hold, and let the player power off.

From this article: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/conte...9;s+top+stories Note the mistake: Article claims Sony has only offered flash-based Walkmans to the US market, which is simply not true. Who knows if the rest is accurate.

Problem #1: Exclusives stink. Our society has a low tolerance for monopolies, we sue Microsoft and break up AT&T (only to see the Baby Bells reform and reaglomerate two decades later), but we not only tolerate exclusives, we rush onto them instead of ignoring them and letting those responsible for the exclusives that their actions will not be tolerated and the exclusive product will not be purchased until it is mainstreamed. Problem #2: The tracks are not available outside the US for the moment. They needn't be. Sony has been campaining for Williams to get the Oscar for Memoirs of A Geisha. Ma & Williams appeared on talk shows, and what not. Just the typical pre-Oscar hype. You can see how much Sony BMG Masterworks cares about its product line when you walk around their website. Until this evening, the latest "upcoming releases" were from mid-December 2005. Quite a while ago. Then you take a look at the old BMG Classics website, and even though it's pretty much shut down, they're still keeping it up, just as they are other out-of-date pages. Kind of shows how much there is to do with this Sony/BMG integration thing. Having said that, since they're aiming to create hype about the soundtrack and the Oscars, the only real place to put the exclusives and have them generate as much buzz as possible right before the Oscars is iTunes. Who downloads from Connect anyway, other than hardcore Sony freaks like ourselves who have invested in ATRAC devices? Connect is far from 1 billion song downloads. From the record label's marketing perspective, it makes perfect sense. Now... is it going to please the ATRAC-division? Probably not. But we've been asking that the Sony music and electronics divisions be separated because of the negative influence from the music side on the electronics. So this is one good step in that direction. Besides, keep in mind how many people would be interested in this. It's not like Audioslave and Michael Jackson recorded a new duets album. This is a niche, within a niche, within another niche. Niche 1: First, it's a film score. The market for those is next to none. Or at least, it's miniscule when compared to pop, rock or latin. Niche 2: Then, it's a film score to a dramatic movie. Geisha is no Superman, no Titanic, and no Independence Day. If it ain't a blockbuster, it don't sell. Niche 3: The only thing going for Geisha is that it has the current grand daddy of film music (John Williams), with solos by arguably the most popular classical star (Yo-Yo Ma) and one of the premier violinists of our era (Itzhak Perlman). Sure, all three are big stars. Now go to the busiest intersection of the city you live in, and start asking people: Do you know Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma? and contrast that with the responses you get for: Do you know Mariah Carey and Ricky Martin? Classical superstars are not very popular. And I'm not talking about crossover acts and fake classical acts (Vanessa Mae, Andrew Bocelli, Il Divo, etc). I guess it's just iTMS because if you restrict the 3 niches to a fourth one (Connect), then you're not creating as much buzz and hype as you could with making the three niches available on the #1 download service in the world. Concentrate your efforts = more bang for your bucks.

Actually, just copying the OMG files from the device back to the PC helped me save my OMG files after SonicStage 3.3 told me initialize my HD1 a few months ago. I just transferred the files through Windows Explorer in a new folder I created on my PC hard drive. I initialized the HD1, then transferred the tracks back onto it. I've also transferred the tracks to other ATRAC devices and so far have encountered no problem with playback. The files had originally been deleted from the PC, but I suspect SonicStage remembered something of them so they had no playback problems. I have not however tried importing the tracks to another PC. I don't know if that would work.

About the buttons/click wheel: I haven't had much trouble operating basic functions (track skip, volume, album skip) with an iPoo in my pocket. Although I did have some difficulty doing that with an A1000. As for gapless, there's a hack apparently from Rockbox which I have not tried. It loads some new software on the iPoo and allows you to play gapless. That said, I would not switch from Sony to Apple. I tried both, and I think both Sony and Apple produce critically flawed digital music players. If you need to switch from Sony to something else, then go for Toshiba, RCA, Cowon or Samsung. If you don't mind chubbiness, the new Creative Zen Vision:M is apparently very good.

SonicStage. You rip the tapes to HiMD and then transfer to PC. That's what I used for most. When I got tired of editing MDs, then transfering to the PC then burning to CDR, then back again to the PC in WMA, or when I got tired of editing MDs, then transfering to the PC and using WAV Converter to convert to WAV then to WMA, I switched to Windows Media Plus. It does a decent job. You can reduce tape hiss with it, but it only uses WMA files. If you want mp3 you have to use something else to convert the files later. The program is extremely easy to use, though. Very clear interface. Allows you to save files in quality up to 320kbps WMA. You can split or join tracks. It does have a few bugs, the biggest of which is that you can't join two tracks recorded at different intervals. The tracks you join must be adjacent to one another. When you name the tracks you can only name Artist, Album, Genre and Track Title. For other tag lines (track number, year, etc) you have to use another program. I paid 20$ for it, and I've been pretty happy with it. Or you can get AudioGrabber. I think it's still freeware. Real easy to use. Has a bunch of options. In the Help menu, there's even something about using ATRAC to record, but I was never able to figure out how to install the ATRAC codec. Otherwise, you can record in mp3, WMA, WAV or other formats. You can choose VBR or CBR. You can split and join tracks. It's pretty complete and does the job very well.

Can't remember if its FutureShop or Best Buy.ca but last week they had it for 269.99$

Sadly it's the most annoying of Sony's software bugs. SonicStage, for some reason, loses track of your player(s) and demands this authentification. It's probably all part of Sony's digital rights management going seriously wrong. If you have all the tracks on the computer, then just do what it asks and retransfer your tracks and playlists later. For best results, I think you have to initialize on the device itself but I'm not 100% sure about this. If you don't have the tracks on your computer, then: - Create a folder on your computer hard drive (or choose an existing folder) - Connect device to computer - Close CONNECT and/or SonicStage - Via Windows Explorer, locate device drive - Browse the device via Windows Explorer to find all *.oma and *.omg files - Copy all the *.oma and *.omg files from the device to the folder you created (or selected) on your computer - Do what SonicStage asks you about deleting tracks from device - Open SonicStage - Through the import tracks menu in SonicStage, scan computer drive for *.oma and *.omg files It's a pain in the back, and as with other Sony software, it's not guaranteed to work, but it's the only way I found to save the tracks off my NW-HD1 after SonicStage decided to give me that stupid error. I just can't remember if I initialized the HD1 on the player, or if I used SonicStage. [EDIT]: I assumed above that your tracks in ATRAC (*.oma and *.omg) format. I have not tried this with mp3s or wma files so I don't know if transfering tracks from the device through Windows Explorer, then reimporting with SonicStage will work with mp3 or wma.

According to this DJ Newswire, Sony and Samsung could not quite agree on flash memory prices, and Sony will use mini-hard drives for its upcoming portable media player. http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/060215/15/3ypiy.html

It depends I think. Some Sony copy-protected disks allow you to rip 128 kbps files. While not CD quality, they at least sound acceptable. The only low-quality (48kbps WMA) copy-protected CD that I encountered was a disc made by EMI.

Actually it does get around 14 hours. That's something we'll just have to give Apple: when they state the battery life, they do it rather accurately. At least they do now, following the iPod battery controversy. When Sony advertises 50 hours of battery life, it's about ATRAC3Plus at 45kbps. Files at that quality are unlistenable. When Apple states battery life, it's about 128 kbps files. In both cases they're talking about mid-volume. But from experience, mid-volume on an iPod Nano is louder than mid volume on just about any North American Sony player I've come accross. So the Nano does get battery life which is relatively close to its advertised life. Which does not mean that Sony players don't outlast the Nano at a 3-1 ratio. Even with their misadvertised battery lives, Sony players still outlast the vast majority of the competition, and even with accurately advertised battery lives, iPods still stink relative to Sony (and to some extent Samsung & others).

Flash media in general it seems to me, not only the players. Just a month ago, 1GB Sandisk Memory Stick Pro Duo cards were retailing for 115$ in Canada. I just saw the same Sandisk Memory Sticks at Costco for 68$.

The NW-E507 should use a standard USB cable which most electronics shops offer, sometimes in the digital camera department. Department stores often have the same cables. This should be the cable: http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat%5Fid=208&sku=27329 You can probably get it cheaper at places like Wal-Mart.

Capacity doesn't matter. You can produce a 32MB(!) regular-sized iPod with 2 hours of battery life and some people(sic) will still buy it for 250$ to wear as a fashion accessory. When the E407 was selling for slightly more than the shuffle, people were proudly displaying their shuffles, and barely anyone bought E407s. In terms of product quality and features, there is absolutely no contest. The Sony perfume/Core Walkman was ten times more advanced than the shuffle. Yet people still bought Shuffles over Walkmans. Newspapers ran stories about how Sony was introducing an mp3 player to compete with the Shuffle as if this was the very first time Sony issued a flash DAP with direct mp3 playback (despite the flash-based E9x series being perfectly capable of handling mp3s and being available months before the Shuffle). It was never about capacity or features, it was about being hip and cool. It won't please all the Nobel prize winners in Economics, but people are *not* rational consumers, and perfect competition theory is a waste of everyone's time. Even when the information is available, the logical superiority of the Sony flash players over the iPod Shuffle was completely overlooked because they weren't "in". If you have a Walkman, it's because the store you went to ran out of Shuffles - so goes the theory. The 1GB Nano might be to target the segment of consumers who want a Nano, but simply don't need that much space. It might also have something to do with 4GB Nanos being constantly out of stock and 4GB flash memory becoming rare, particularly now that Sandisk and Samsung are launching their own 4GB flash players. Since you can't listen to more than 1 GB on the Nano on a single battery charge, it makes some sense to only carry 1GB of music. It might also be a tactic to attempt to maintain market share before people go for the 1GB Nano clones from Taiwan and China.

Which is just as good as it is bad. If you like a bloated bass line (or have an iPod which is by definition bass-deficient, hence the headphones can compensate for what the iPod lacks) these Sony phones are great. If you, however, prefer a more balanced, natural and transparent sound, and/or own a player other than an iPod, the Sony 71/51 in-ear phones are probably to be avoided.

I know it's a little extreme, but maybe someone should instigate a worldwide punishment for human parasites who have too much free time on their hands and write computer viruses. It should be painful. Like dragging a 200kg rock chained to their neck in each country of the world in which a computer was infected by a virus. Then we can have a cable or Web channel on which we can follow their progress. Appropriate rehabilitation will follow punishment. Or maybe something even more painful for them: lock them in a room without computers.

I doubt that. I had an A1000 for a week and it had no visible scratches (to the naked eye that is). I got a Nano, and a few hours later it already had visible scratches. The E407 I've had for a year has a few microscratches, but nothing easily visible contrary to the Nano after two months.

I don't know if you can drop it but apparently hungry dogs can eat it and it still works: http://www.dapreview.net/comment.php?comment.news.2743 And while we're asking questions about the X5, Joe, I tried finding information about how the X5 records from radio, but I couldn't. Some specs mention that there is a radio timer but Cowon's the user manual is rather useless. Can you really set it up to record FM radio at a specified time? Can the timer be used to record from line-in?

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=...37001682781B235