Dinko

Woohoo! (Sort of...) Good to know they're coming up north since neither of the HD2/3/5 made it and the Vaio pocket disappeared faster than an eye blink. I'm still not too thrilled with the brick, but the A1000 will look really good in my hands.

If the new Walkmans do scratch, they better not scratch as easily as the Nano. Frivolous lawsuits might follow: http://www.dapreview.net/comment.php?comment.news.2432 I don't see these Sonys scratching that easily if they are made of the same materials as the Stick Walkman and are handled properly. Now, of course if you drop it on concrete twice a day without a protective carrying pouch...

Wonder if the pink A1000 will be available by St. Valentine's day. The A1000's are 250$ at that shop.

Take a look at this: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26962 If that turns out to be true, then Sony may be onto something more interesting than (I) intially thought. Sony Walkman: music, and music only. Intuitive music players that don't do anything other than music. Sony Ericsson Walkman: all that other stuff. You want features, get a phone: video, photos (take them and look at them), expandable storage (Memory Stick Pro II Duo Micro High Speed or whatever), games, internet, etc. Now that doesn't negate what we've been saying so far. If it only plays music it should at least be smaller. And if it's big in size, then it should have a big capacity. But if true, and so far I'd consider that as little more than a rumour, it might be an interesting brand differentiation strategy.

The large capacity RCA Lyra players have that. I'm not sure if it's 5 or 6 band, but there is a pretty decent custom EQ.

Short term: Walkman Mid term (1-2 years): a switch to non-Sony player Long term (2 years from now): back to Sony because they'll have the ultimate DAP.

In brief: I'm disappointed with Sony, and considered moving away, but decided to stay. Long battery life. Good looking players. Quality of ATRAC. Good quality gadgets. The long rant: I'd have to say I share many of your concerns. And I'm really torn about the new Walkmans. So much potential. These things could have been "it". They're fantastic (looking that is)... except they have what I would consider crippling flaws: size, weight & no features other playing music. I want one. But I hate buying stuff just because is looks good. The listed features on the new iPod are very appealing. I don't care about video that much (the PSP is about as small as I'll go in terms of video although it could come in handy occasionally - record a show overnight, watch it next day on the bus, continue listening to music for however long your battery lasts after that. Of course you need the appropriate tools to record & transcode, but that's a separate issue. The iPods are also priced very competitively. In Canada, the 60GB version for example, with its 20hr battery life, video, simple games, calendar sync... is priced below the Toshiba Gigabeat 60GB which has inferior features. Still, seems like a clock wouldn't be that hard to implement. Who cares about clocks? For two years now, since my last wrist watch died, I have relied on my cell phone or music player to tell me the time of day. (Then again, I once left a NW-E407 on a shelf, without using it and in two weeks the battery was discharged completely - not even enough juice to say "Low Batt" - so internal clocks might not be that good). I just faxed a 4-page (single spaced, Times New Roman, 12pt) to Sony of Canada telling them why I loved minidisc, and why the new Sony HDD players were unappealing. I'm totally disappointed with this company. For a while I thought about dropping them altogether and moving to non-Sony hardware. But then... RCA Lyra I have an RCA Lyra 40GB which I use for radio recordings. As much as possible I'm phasing it out and backing up the important files on minidisc. The drive in that thing looks like its dying. The buttons are non responsive. The software is buggy. WMA compatibility is a joke: most WMA files lost their ID3 tags, DRM WMA files are often recognized but unplayable. After about 50 charge cycles, the lithium-polymer battery is showing signs of losing capacity. Down from 11 hours to 9 on a full charge. Problems I've never had with Sony devices. Gigabeat A friend bought a Gigabeat 60GB monster. It's a pretty good player. Probably the closest I've seen to an "iPod killer". But... the menu is absolutely idiotic. There are dozens of options, which is very nice for customizing it. Except browsing through the menus is unintuitive and requires pushing two different buttons and using the PlusTouch pad depending on which functions you want. Full use requires at least two software applications (Gigabeat Room can do the job, but its library display is pretty lame), it loads a Gigabeat Watcher application in your taskbar whether you want it or not. Major problem: occasionally data seems to get corrupted during transfer leading to a total freeze on the player later on when trying to play a playlist. Red error message. HDD starts clicking, and the whole thing blocks. Only way out: hit the "battery off" button. Restarting afterwards means you've lost your customized settings, though the music and playlists are still there. Past experience with Sony HDD player: the NW-HD1 uses simple four way buttons in an intuitive, easy to follow process, plus the Menu and Mode buttons. No problems with the HDD at all. Long battery life and the superior sound of ATRAC (nevermind that stupid comparative study, I'll trust what my own ears tell me, thank you very much). I'm not great fan of the iPod. Most iPodders don't need the 20GB version. Remember this study?: http://www.srgnet.com/pdf/375%20Tunes%20in...ep605-US-f).pdf The average iPod user has 504 songs on it. But it makes for a fashion statement holding an iPod in your hand (even if it's not playing anything because it's battery is discharged!), or having a shuffle around your neck. I don't find iTunes particularly intuitive for what I need. But there's no denying that the features of the new one are attractive. I don't need to hold my player in my hand. It's fine in its pocket. The NWHD1 fit in much better than other 20GB players. Didn't need to take it out either. Pushing buttons was easy to do with the player in the pocket. Then even easier with a minidisc remote. I think Sony is still the only company that can come up with the ultimate player, if only they'd seriously work on developing their lab gadgets just as much as studying the market, as opposed to just developing their lab gadgets (or just studying the market).

I think it is inevitable. I personally have no problem with that. The attempt failed in Canada though (at least the first time): http://news.com.com/No+iPod+tax+for+Canada..._3-5809117.html

New new 60GB iPod has a claimed battery life of 20 hours per charge. I'd consider that pretty decent in the market, even if below Sony levels.

Thinner with a larger colour screen and large HDD capacity in a relatively decent price range. The NW-A3000 is not an iPod killer. But the iPod is a NW-3000 killer. Sorry Sony! Get a clue already! Best thing Sony can do now is cancel the NW-A3000 and find some way of sticking a 40GB drive in the A1000.

Oh, OLEDs are impressive. The MZRH10 and the Stick Walkmans are fantastic. Especially in the bus at night. I have no doubt these new things look fantastic in real life. I can already imagine them placed on the rack in the store, in-between all the other DAPs that all look alike. They'll just grab everyone's attention. (And then people will read the specs... or lack of)

So does it support real playlists, or does it transfer the file multiple times, once in every group/playlist?

But that's not what SimplerBurner does. MP3 file manager, at least the one that came with the player, simply transfers files from the PC to the device. Doesn't seem like the new version does anything different. SimplerBurner takes files off a CD, does not permanently store them on the PC, and transfers them directly to the minidisc device. In other words, SimpleBurner bypasses your hard drive.

Not that I expect Sony to act up on what I wrote to them, but when I registered my flash player on SonyStyle, I got an open-ended text box for suggestions. I suggested that they develop a Simple Burner type of application for flash & HDD players. It will never happen, but next time you register a product, drop them a line with a request like that. At worst, you wasted 2 minutes of your time.

I just bought Chayanne's latest album, Cautivo. The bright minds at SonyBMG have figured that they were going to add copy protection to their CDs, but that they would allow users to make copies... 1) You're allowed to make 3 copies of the disc. The three copies are almost exact replicas of the original, including the crappy software that comes on the master CD. 2) You're allowed to make WMA copies of the music. 128 kbps. 3 CD burns. Unlimited portable device transfers. 3) You're allowed to make ATRAC copies of the music. Bit rate unknown. Restrictions unknown. Option 1 works fine. Option 2 works fine. Option 3 fails every time. Option 3 installs a thing called "Music Player". It's installed in the Sony folder of your hard drive. It's a pretty primitive thing. OpenMG startup logo similar to SimpleBurner or SonicStage. I don't know what ATRAC flavour the files would have been copied to my library to since the damn thing failed every time, throwing an 8-9 digit error code at me. It's like a mini SonicStage, only buggier, uglier and just plain annoying. Once again the Sony ironies are worthy of a theatre play. Sony CD. Can't be copied using Sony's SonicStage. Sony's Music Player fails miserably. So can't be transfered to Sony device. Windows Media files copy correctly to the PC. But SonicStage won't accept WMA DRM files, so again, the Sony CD is untransferrable to Sony devices. A number of options: 1) line in to HiMD then transfer to SonicStage then WAV Converter do what you want. 2) burn crappy 128kbps WMA files to CD using WMP 10, then rip CD using SonicStage 3) analog line in to PC and others. All because of Sony Music's paranoid loons...

You might also go for atrac because of battery life. Sony likes atrac because its energy efficient, and from personal experience, I've found that to be true. ATRAC3 or ATRAC3plus typically allows me to play music on a Sony device for a lot longer than using mp3 files.

Or maybe just the long rumoured Video iPod... then everyone's going to go gaga over it as if it's the very first video playing device in the world... don't tell them Samsung and others have been doing it for years.

Especially given the size of the thing. I can understand why the NWHD1 or NWHD5 were limited to 20GB. Those things are tiny. But for the NW A3000 to be limited to 20GB... kinda lame. Especially that it has no other features except playing music and looking pretty.

Well, let's take track info. In SonicStage, Windows Media Player and others, when I want to manually edit track information, I just use the arrow keys and the tab key. I could never get that done in iTunes. The pop-up information cards in iTunes confused me. Hitting the tab key did not act the same way as hitting the tab key in SonicStage or Windows Media Player. The tab key on iTunes cards took me to the control buttons at the bottom of the card (cancel, next, etc). This operation didn't make sense to me. The tab key in SonicStage or WMP took me to the next text field. Now this made sense to me. Then the menus. I could never find what I was looking for in the iTunes menus, because different options were placed where I didn't expect them to be. With SonicStage, I just followed basic Windows experience and clicked on the menu category I was interested in, and I found my target. Then, take the track bitrate settings. In SonicStage, you could easily rip a few tracks from a CD in ATRAC3, then turn around and rip the others in ATRAC3Plus, by simply clicking on the Settings button. With iTunes, I got tired of going through 3 or 4 menus to change the specified bitrates. Then there's the library. The iTunes library just felt weird. And "right click" didn't work. In WMP, you right click and choose new playlist, then F2 and you rename the play list. That never worked in iTunes. In SonicStage, you right-click a track and edit properties, or get menu options. That never worked for me in iTunes. Everything that I could do to a track by right-clicking on it in SonicStage, I could do in iTunes, but I had to go through the different menu options. Selecting tracks was a pain. The "Select/Deselect All" thing never worked in iTunes, so I had to manually deselect dozens of tracks in a playlist that I didn't want burned on the CDR. Then the whole SonicStage left to right Source / Library / Destination somehow seemed logical. You import your CD from left to right. The right hand side then becomes your library, and moves to the center. And if you want to move tracks from the library to a device, then the library goes left and the device screen goes right. So you move tracks from the library to the device by going left to right. The same screens applied to burning tracks to a CD. Pick the tracks you want, hit the orange-red right arrow button on the screen, and off the tracks go from left to right. It just seemed like a much clearer indication of what the software was doing, and which tracks it was doing it too. My biggest problem was really the nonresponsive F2 commands and right click menus that I could never get to work in iTunes, as well as the track import settings which were easy and direct in SonicStage, but a painful walk through a bunch of menus in iTunes. There were other things that bugged me with iTunes. AAC at 128kbps didn't sound as good to me as ATRAC3 at 132. Burning the same track at those bitrates, first of all took longer in iTunes. Second, the sound quality of the AAC file was pretty bad. I played with some orchestral film scores and some classical music. In ATRAC, the violins retained a shining tone and the trumpets a raspy, velvety and blooming sound. In AAC, the violins gained an annoying frosty glaze similar to mp3 files, and the trumpets turned from raspy and velvety to distorted and muted apparently lacking higher frequencies. iTunes would only work with iPod (regular and mini) devices. By the time Apple introduced the Shuffle, Sony had an HDD player, flash players and minidisc players, all of which worked with SonicStage, and all of which had their own advantages. So, unbelievable as it may sound, Sony had a lot more devices working with its software, than Apple did with iTunes, and the Sony devices worked pretty well. I don't know about iTunes and the iPod, because I've never had an iPod since iTunes was bothering me and I perceived AAC as inferior to ATRAC. Finally, the initial lack of WMA support in iTunes was a pain in the a**. Sony devices didn't play WMA files, but at least SonicStage did (unprotected WMA that is). Much easier to convert directly through SonicStage before transferring to a device than to convert to AAC or mp3 using some other software before playing the tracks or transferring them using iTunes. That was then. This has changed with iTunes now supporting wma, but it took a while before WMA appeard in iTunes (compared to SonicStage which had it for years and at one time was able to rip CDs in WMA - or at least OpenMG Jukebox was capable).

True enough. But having tried Sony gadgets like the NWHD1, the MZRH10, the NW-E99 and the NW-E407 I think they do pretty well in terms of developing new Walkmans without market research. At least on the hardware side. No one comes close to Sony battery life. The NWHD1 feels pretty solid (can't remember if its aluminium or magnesium). The NW-E407 which looks to be of similar build quality as the new A-series Walkmans was also pretty solid in my hands. Didn't seem to get any scratches or other physical damage. Also, blindly operating the NW-E99 when it's in a pocket is a breeze. I don't know about that. I still can't use iTunes (in fact it's now deleted from my harddrive including Apple's parasitic hidden applications that load up during startup even when the program is gone). Tracks purchased from iTunes Music Store are playable in RealPlayer so no problem there. But I still find SonicStage more intuitive than iTunes. Yup. After 1 upload, the recording stays on the minidisc, it is not erased. Once on the PC, the recording is (or can be) saved as a wave file with no restrictions at all so it can be easily manipulated. I don't know about multiple uploads because I've never needed to do that.

I'd wait. I'm currently in the process of transferring to PC all the audio tapes and records that I have not yet transferred to a digital format. My original intent was to digitize everything into WMA format, and then get a Samsung YH-J70. The Samsung is due out in Canada around October, so I figured I had just enough time to transfer everything to the PC and wait for the Samsung. It would free up a whole bunch of minidiscs which are lying around with songs on them, and the minidiscs could be used for more productive purposes (like recording). Now, I'll wait. I'll still transfer the tapes and records to the PC, but I'll probably wait for the A3000. If it looks as good in person, and if it's priced in a decent range, I'll probably get that. If not, the Samsung, the Toshiba Gigabeat and others will still be there.

It does. On the other hand, one-colour OLED makes these new players look archaic compared with the Toshiba Gigabeat's LCD screen. Not that the new Sonys look bad. Hell, I want one right this moment. But as always with Sony products, there's some incredible stuff (long battery life, cool design) combined with some major disadvantages. I kind of wonder if Sony missed the boat - again. Everyone else is producing colour-screen players. The industry trend. Suddenly Sony announces these non-photo things - behind the trend, again. On the other hand... who cares about colour screens. This might just be *the* music player for anyone who wants something good looking, without any useless add-ons (photo, video, etc).

Too bad. Oh well. Still cool.

NW-A3000 = on wish list. Native WMA support = good. I use ATRAC & WMA for my digital files, so native Sony support for mp3 meant very little. I find WMA a more attractive option. But... - is the battery removable? (question was asked before, but I didn't see any answers to that - it was the ultimate advantage of the NWHD5 over just about any other DAP out there except one or two others with removable batteries). - given how Sony music management software doesn't like interacting with other Sony music management software, I wonder what the consequences would be of having both SonicStage and Connect on the same machine.