sxc_

I bought a 5G 30GB ipod, and after 2 mths of listening I started comparisons with my HD5 again. It was like listening to a room full of music, compared to a radio. The Sony just seemed to have that much more separation, spaciousness and detail in the parts of the music that mattered. And I could place each instrument and voice in my mind. This was comparing the same mp3 file, not atrac vs mp3. I must really say the sound quality of the ipod is bad IMHO. But the usability of it p...es all over Sony, which is why I still use my ipod. One thing that become much more noticeable on the Sony though was the background hiss. But even with this, listening to the Sony was much more enjoyable. I wish Apple and Sony would make up and get some Sony sound processor chips into the ipod. Then you'd really have a ipod killer.

Sony has had at least 4 years to get back into the game and sort out their software issues. Unfortunately in the commercial world pleading "Give us more time, our products are too complex" doesn't cut it. I was patient and have decided that I've had enough of Sony and defected to the dark side and bought an ipod, with all if its flaws. The software just works and is a joy to use. No more workarounds, no more forgiveness. Yes the sound quality isn't great, but now I've been willing to sacrifice that after seeing the mess that Connect Player has become and losing hope that Sony would really release something great.

Sony should just let others develop the software for them and make their devices compatible with Windows Media Player. They want a differentiated experience for their users, but they have had more than 5 years trying to do this and they still can't get it right. Save the money and let software experts make software and plough the money into better hardware.

In theory Connect player would be better, but only if it allowed my HD5 to be connected. However, if SonicStage sprouted a "Now Playing" area where you could quickly queue up some songs to play, like Win Media Player, then it would have almost everything I want. On the other hand, why doesn't Sony just make their players compatible with Win Media Player? I think the ease of use of WMP and the name of Sony might just give it some momentum against Apple. And it would save Sony a heap of money in software development costs.

Any idea if the major update will include backwards compatibility?

Has anyone tried installing the Connect Player and then installed SS 3.3 AFTER? My theory is that the connect player we are dowloading doesn't include the personal audio driver, since it is only an upgrade patch. Maybe by installing SS after Connect Player, then the CP will recognise the Personal Audio Driver and recognise the old devices. Or maybe a registry setting needs to be changed to recognise the old devices. I think we would have a more definitive answer if someone who has bought the retail version of the walkman can test whether their retail version recognises the old devices.

So has anyone worked out how to make the Connect player work with the HD5?

If someone gets it, can they share the Connect software with us?

Ishiyoshi: It seems that you have one of these new walkmans already? Is that true? If so, do you have the Connect Player software as well?

Well dynamic playlisting is what I've been waiting for ages for. finally we have it. But Sony's implementation as usual is lacking....you can only have a limited number of search characteristics in each playlist, and you can't do playlists such as "not played in the last month". Unfortunately it's a very rudimentary implementation of something that Apple and Microsoft have had right for years already.

I wonder if they are having problems getting the new Connect Player finished and they are going to ship the new walkmans with SS 3.3?

I agree this is one of Sony's big problems. it announces products and gets all the media attention from that, but then doesn't get the products out into the channel until months later. The people who loved it at first sight will have forgotten about it, or something new will have come along and Sony's new product looks old and tired by the time it hits the shelves.

The existence of star-ratings on the Connect screenshot would imply to me that the Connect player is going to be very Windows Media Player-like and will have auto playlists. I think this is the way that the new devices will be able to have their "smart shuffles".

So with SS 3.2, there are now options to encode to Atrac3plus with a multitude of bitrates. But when you connect your various Atrac equipment to SS, you can only transfer some bitrates without conversion. My theory is that there must be some config file that tells SS which bitrates are valid with the device that's attached. If we are able to find this file and edit it so that SS thinks all bitrates are transferrable to say a HD5, then that bitrate might be playable once it's on the device. It's only a theory and I have no idea if it would work. It also assumes that the HD5 is actually capable of playing all bitrates that are thrown at it. What do you think?

Sorry - I'm not really sure what this means. Do you mean there will be a new version of SS that will come out at the same time as Connect Player? And then Connect player will become the only player sometime after that? Any idea if there will be firmware updates to allow HD5 to play the new Atrac bitrates?