
Rumz
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Everything posted by Rumz
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My initial experience with Connect has not been bad at all. Doesn't take significantly longer to load than iTunes (that I can tell-- both take a number of seconds to load). I do wish I could select a number of tracks and edit the info on those tracks simultaneously (ie assign them all to the same album or genre). I'd also like to see a category in the Connect Player library for "date added to library" so I know what's been put in there recently (helps in sending stuff over manually to the player). This is a handy way for me to sort music in iTunes.
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One thought to keep in mind is that sound quality will also vary depending on how good your headphones are and the quality of the music files you listen to. True there's no 6 band EQ but I find it sounds good enough I don't really need that-- the bass and treble adjustments are plenty for me. That said, I'm listening to an A608 as we speak w/ some Koss KSC-75s and some LAME abs mp3s and I absolutely love it. I've not listened to any of Sony's HDD players outside the Vaio Pocket, so I can't compare to the others in the A series, but I'd imagine they're similar. I found myself listening to the E107 a couple weeks ago with 352kbps atrac3plus files w/ my Sony D66 eggo headphones and again-- just excellent sound quality. Full and detailed... I've not yet tried any such sound tests with the A608 but perhaps I can do that tonight to see if the 2 sound the same. You're right though-- best idea might be to test it out, but unless you're insanely picky about audio quality, I think you'll be happy with the A608. I'm fairly picky on sound (don't much care for the sound of my NH1) and I love these flash players.
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Fantastic. Looks like an aggressive move by Sony. Perhaps they've learned that they can't expect to release a 4gb flash player next fall and have it be a hit-- Apple will no doubt have 6gb-8gb flash players by then.
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Interesting. I usually use the pocket for stuff that's gapless, this is the first time I've tried on flash. Typically I just use lame mp3s anyways unless it's a film score or something that benefits from gapless. I suppose with only 1-2GB chances are not as high for needing gapless, huh?
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Not sure what the culprit is on this issue. I recieved the other day the complete recordings of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (180 minutes of score from the first movie alone, YES.) Anyhow, after hearing kurisu and Ishi mention how great Atrac3plus @ 352kbps was, I thought this new soundtrack not a bad option for giving that bit rate a whirl. Downloaded SS 3.3 and ripped all 3 discs to WAV, then converted them to 352kbps, transferred them to my NW-E107 flash player. There's gaps between tracks. Is the issue the flash player not being gapless? Is it the way I ripped to wav and then 352kbps? Are the new A600 flash players gapless, anyone know? Side note-- 352kbps does sound amazing. Reminds me of the old days listening to Atrac Type R (SP) on regular MiniDisc, only better. I wish I liked the amps in my MD units better, perhaps I should give the NH1 another try since it'll play this bit rate.
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The PLAYER is crashing, not anything on his computer, it sounds like. He's wondering if the MP3 file manager could be causing the crashes. Try deleting it and see if your player becomes stable again. How often does it crash?
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What about the mp3 file manager that you can install on the unit to just drag and drop mp3s onto it? Does that not work with Win98? If they use mp3s instead of atrac that might be ideal. Just a thought. Anyone know if this works on the 608? http://www.atraclife.com/index.php?showtopic=22&hl=manager
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Only if your OS is something besides Windows, I'd imagine. Besides radio frequency the only issue I can see is installing Connect on your machine since it would come with the Japanese version. As long as you can get Sonic Stage or Connect in English you should be fine. Where are you thinking of ordering from?
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I only need someone in Canada to pick one up for me
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But Sony hasn't even announced it in the U.S., I think that pre-order price is fairly iffy if you ask me. I could be wrong, though... I just think it'd be ridiculous. The NW-E507 (1gb) is going for $150, I have a hard time believing they'd bring out an A607 @ $200 and an A608 @ $250. Granted $250 may be on par with the announcement made in Japan, but even Sony Japan released the units at a lower retail price than announced in September.
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Very cool. I wonder what the limited edition colors look like IRL. Part of me has the itch to try and get one now, and the other part of me says "hey wait a month or 2 and it'll be a lot cheaper to get it locally"... but crap, who knows when Sony plans on rolling these out in the U.S... could be a spring release :s
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I wouldn't pre-order from J&R. And I'd be very surprised if the A608 went for $250 when Sony does roll it out in the U.S.-- I'd expect it closer to $200 - $215 (competing with the Nano, this would also just be consistent with prices in Canada / Japan). As for using Sonic Stage vs. Connect: Can you put playlists on the A608 with Sonic Stage? My main interest in Connect is for playlist functionality, though I'm not up to date with what the most recent players and Sonic Stage can do. My 2 cents on availabilty-- perhaps Sony is wanting to hype the new mp3 players at CES before rolling them out in the U.S... also, limited availability in Canada suggests to me that perhaps production isn't mature enough to supply the U.S. with these yet. Also getting Connect a bit more mature is probably on that list of reasons it's not in the U.S. as well, as others have mentioned. I secretly wish they'd bag the A3000 and instead announce at CES an A3200 with a 30 or 40 gig hard drive =P One can dream, eh? (Like that A1200 8GB version). So... anyone in Canada want to get me a violet A608? =P I could just order a cool color from Japan but I'm interested in having an English version of the Connect CD (updatable)-- unless the disc image for the english version became available.
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Hmmm... what's interesting to me is that those are 256kbps. What does the Connect Music Store currently offer? I assume those tracks are promotional such as to stimulate interest in buying music online?
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Are these available now in Canada or how did you see them IRL?
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Honestly how badly do you treat them? I don't take much care of my ex71 at all (just throw them in my backpack all the time where they get tossed around with lots of other stuff) and I've yet to have a problem with him.
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How big do you think this would be in your pocket? I like the idea of throwing it on my keychain with a protector, but would that be a lot to have in your pocket? I guess it depends on how many keys one has...
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So the battery life is what won you over vs. the Nano-- (because the Nano should be able to display those characters fine). One comment on the radio-- do you get talk radio on FM frequencies where you are? The radio doesn't mean much to me as FM where I live is 99% music and pop-- stuff I don't care much for. It's just an FM radio on the 507 / 608, is it not? Talk radio is on AM stations for the most part where I live... too bad Sony doesn't add an AM radio. My main hesitation on importing is primarily price... it'd be close to $300 to import from Japan and I bet when this comes out in the U.S. it's much closer to $200 (to compete with the 2gb nano).
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I need to get my hands on a Connect CD and give it a whirl to see how it is. I actually have grown to like iTunes to an extent (it's convenient anyways) so dragging and dropping files into the player seems like one of the most convenient ways to add songs to the library. I never much liked the import commands in Sonic Stage by comparison to dragging and dropping in iTunes.
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I'm curious about the colors for the NW-A600 series. Sites list that they are silver, pink, violet, and blue-- but then the photo shown seems to indicate silver, pink, kind of a deep blue, and then a teal/ slightly greenish blue. I'm assuming the deeper blue one is actually violet? Some other sites show the Violet as looking very purple. Which is it? More of a purple or more of a blue? Also, has anyone seen the special edition Emerald Blue in person? It looks intriguing but I'm not sold on it yet.
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No joke. 700MB CD vs. 1 GB flash? Only advantage is that one would never skip. Hardly worth it... now, design an interface for your HDD players (standardize the data port or something) or throw an actual HDD in the stereo... then it becomore more interesting.
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NW-A1000 and NW-A3000: Initial Impressions
Rumz replied to Ascariss's topic in Product Reviews/Pictorials
Damn. Playlists is one of the things I want to know about (hate duplicating files on the pocket). Other question is speed of navigation. If you pull up the menu and select a group or playlist, does it just instantly appear on screen or is it thinking for a second before it shows? I'm impatient -
Thanks for the feedback. I'm wondering if it's worth having Sony look at it...
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Yeah I'm looking to sell this and thought I'd see if any Atrac lovers were interested before I head over to ebay. It's lightly used, I can post pics if you like. I'm throwing in the Sony brand armband that I bought for it as well. I love it but I'm leaning towards something with higher capacity. Killer battery life though if you through a lithium AAA in there. If anyone's interested, let me know. I'm looking to sell it for around $85 shipped in the US (if outside, I'll look at shipping rates). I'll include the USB cable, install CD, the armband, and I can probably dig up some stock headphones if you want them.
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How do you like the HD5? The 20 gig ones can be had for around $250 these days in the states, the thought had crossed my mind as a short term solution is it becomes too cumbersome to use the Pocket for music.
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That's logical. But it would be the same product with larger capacity, ala the A1200 (8 gig version of the A1000), no?