cauldron

I think Sony has gotten a lot of criticism in the past (and still do now - see the PS3 debacle), simply because they choose to do things their own way, and not listen to the critics (who may or may not be right). So even if this doesn't make a lot of sense, they're just giving the public what the public thinks it "wants".

I found a second-hand HD1 in Tokyo for about $85, so I bought one. The store had oodles of them too, because these are not upgraded and thus ATRAC-only. Used HD1s really don't hold much value compared to iPods. Lovely! For me though, the best looking NW is probably the MS70D/90D/77DR. It's Sony's mechanical kind of aesthetics at its best (for lack of a better phrase), and it pioneered wearing the player from the neck. They'd really be extremely collectable if MG MSDuo's weren't capped to 128MB. Which brings me to the A1000. If it wasn't for the "user experience" (that's even more disappointing than Connect Player), Sony would be dangerously close to selling itself based on brand perception alone, like a designer label.

Those boxy E75/90/99 players. Ugh! And also the very first memory stick Walkman.

I would certainly hope so, SE phones and PSP are both capable of drag & drop already. Just a thought (on my part too).

What the Sony staff said in the ITmedia interview, is that right now DSEE consumes a huge amount of computing power. The A800 has it, becasue its DSP has to be capable of decoding video. So when playing audio, that excessive capability gets channeled into processing DSEE. It's actually automatically disabled at very high bitrates (no need), and very low bitrates (too much lost data to do a reconstruction). So yes, the easiest way is to buy the A800 or a future Sony player that features DSEE.

Personally if I don't like a player, I would usually sell it and get something else, because that's how I am -- if I don't like something, I usually don't learn to like it. There are a few options, but I don't know what would help, because it seems that you're disappointed by the sonic differences between MD and HDD walkmans. In that case I think you should just switch to something else. You might want to try either an iAudio player, or the Sony S700. That'll be short on storage, but it's probably as close to the "MD sound" as a Sony MP3 player will come. If you've got the budget to spare, there's always the dreamy RH1.

Hello, If I'm not mistaken, I think iTunes does this too. (someone correct me if I'm wrong) When you search by artist, the software will assume you just want a specific "featuring" and not all Faithless material. Even if you've labelled them as part of a compilation. And, if you want to access the whole compilation, you have to look up by album title. This is just how these "jukebox softwares" work. For renaming, I would try selecting every track, then rename both the artist AND album fields. Sometimes I've tried clearing the album field, click OK, then re-entering it, so I get a uniform album title. I don't know if that'll help, but SonicStage can be very sensitive to different spellings, spaces and stuff. Make sure it's all one "Faithless", not "Faithless" "faithless" and " faithless" and "faithless ".

wberriel1, It's very strange that Sony doesn't have the part available stateside (since they're selling the 703/705). If you can wait, perhaps you can try one of the sites (or an web auction seller?) who sell stuff from Japan. Ask if they can order the NC022 phones for you as a part from Japan. The quick way (at an increased cost) is of course, as you said, to order an S703F, perhaps even find an used one off eBay.

I actually had to send my S203F in for repair because of this exact problem. It went down on the 8th day after purchase, just after the 7-day return period that's typical for my part of the world. It's been over a week, and I haven't heard anything since, so... I feel for you

pata, what I was talking about IS the "state-of-charge estimation" reflected by the battery meter and/or the management chip inside every Li-ion battery, not the battery itself. Please read carefully before you do the WRONG! thing

First of all, if your HD5 is new, the battery meter will not be accurate. This is true for most devices that use Li-ion/Li-Polymer batteries. You may need to fully discharge, then fully recharge for 2-3 cycles, before you can "see" the real capacity. Sony players use the hard drive for everything. I remember even releasing "HOLD" on the HD5 sets the drive spinning! That's going to be a real drain on the battery. Also, HDD players work by reading a set amount of files into a memory buffer. When the HD1 came out, Sony was buffering up to 25 minutes (source: SonyStyle JP interview). That's more than double the iPod's buffer at that time, and I suspect this is the same with later models. If you're skipping tracks all the time, this will not be beneficial to you - it'll be a negative instead, and you lose more by always skipping tracks on a Sony HDD player. But the HD5's battery life is still phenomenal. You can keep skipping around, play with the settings, and easily have double the battery life of other players, and I think that's the whole point of having that kind of battery capacity.

The definitive ATRAC bitrate is the 132kbps ATRAC3 (not plus). This may or may not be the "higher" quality you're looking for, but it's guaranteed to work. In the early days, when ATRAC3plus for consumers only came in 48, 64 and 256, I saw a lot of people go for ATRAC3 at 132, because 256 seemed too big and they didn't trust the 64. On flash-based players, it also extend battery life a little bit over ATRAC3plus (on HDD players the extra spin-ups more than cancel this out). The dilemma continues to this day when I use ATRAC3plus, because with the "new" bitrates like 96, 128, 160, and 192, my ears can't always tell what extras I'm getting with the extra bitrate. ATRAC3 @ 132 and ATRAC3plus @ 64 were destined for music store use, I wouldn't be surprised if more work had gone into optimizing them.

The problem with SonicStage is in fact no longer the bloat - but the logic of the user interface. One example: iTunes would "seem" a lot easier, because you can directly create playlists on an iPod (nano/video), and this can be edited just like the playlists on the computer. You can't do that on SonicStage -- every song you have on the walkman, you must have a copy mirrored on your PC, you must first edit the PC copy, and then ask SonicStage to reflect these changes on the Walkman. You can sort of "drag and drop" songs from a folder into the iPod window on iTunes, and iTunes will copy those songs into the iPod. SonicStage doesn't let you do that, despite Sony having removed all OpenMG restrictions. You must drag songs into the library first, THEN find those songs, and make a playlist you want, THEN transfer to the Walkman. But you know, last time Sony created a new software from scratch, look what they did. It's not even Sony's own work, it's from that Kinoma dude... but SSCP is finally acceptable, I suspect we should just leave well enough alone, because the other side of well enough is apparently hell

Doesn't that have more to do with Sony's inability/reluctance to properly market MP3 players in North America? It's like they think even if they win this battle, they're losing the war on a whole anyway. They probably think they don't have the right products for a Bravia-esque "product blitz".

You can plug anything with an 1/8" plug into the S706, you just can't plug the bundled phones into any other player. Catch the drift?

The noise-cancelling phones use a special plug. I don't think you can actually plug it into anything other than the S70x, nevermind using the NC feature

Isn't this more about what Sony is willing to offer to earlier customers, and not what the chipset is capable of? I recall reading somewhere that the VME chip is identical from the MS70D through to the E4/500, engineers just loaded different software onto it for different model. The E00x effectively replaces the E10x and E30x as the lower-end Walkman, that's probably why it doesn't have those intelligent features. The A60x replaced the E50x (i.e. E50x was discontinued when A60x launched), and the S70x concept-wise can be seen as an A60x replacement.

The Mylo supports the new memory sticks, plus Japanese media have reported that it supports Windows Media 10 DRM, meaning it will work with Napster To Go.

Remember that "crossfade" can be set to zero seconds

A lot of software can play gapless, but their matching portable player can't. iTunes can be gapless if you tell it to I think a lot of people focus too much on shallow comparisons, but if they never read other people's opinions or words from "experts", they might be perfectly happy with what they've got. Personally, I don't agree the iPods are better devices

Even though it may seem colored, the EQ-off sound is the standard, default sound for an A1000. The apparently "neutral" sound of setting all EQ bands to zero is not the original sound on this player. Now that you mention this, I think these days Sony products are rarely mentioned as having a neutral sound. In media reviews and blogs and forums, Sony players are often described as sounding energetic, lively, fun, but usually not neutral. If not always, then over the last few years.

Quick answer: No you can't. Chinese artist/album/song titles will be found under the "other" category. ConnectPlayer/SonicStage can sort Japanese Kanji by the way they're pronounced. Whereas an iPod will arrange Japanese artists by the Unicode order of the first character, a Japanese A-series will sort them by the way they're read in Japanese, by A-I-U-E-O order. This is enabled by software (Sony bought this from JustSystem), so I don't know if it works on A-series when you use it on non-Japanese Windows. And I don't think there is a way to do the same for Chinese.

In theory, every time you drain an Lithium-ion/lithium-polymer battery, you use up 1 of those 500 cycles. So that's probably one step closer to using up its longevity. The apparent decrease in battery life can be chalked down to the calibration issue. "No memory effect" means when you don't complete charge/discharge, that has no effect on the battery's capacity (it will affect Ni-Cd batteries, for instance).

What I do personally: Fully charging/discharging a few times is NOT for the battery, but to calibrate the microchip that controls the battery (every Li-ion battery has one). If the microchip isn't calibrated, it'll mistakenly tell you there's less power. Maybe uka100 can try doing this 2-3 times, then if there's no improvement, he can ask for a replacement unit. This is also what Apple tells people to do before sending in their ipods. Other tips: Outside of the calibration, Don't charge to 100% full. Panasonic laptops have the ability to stop charging at 80% full, that extends battery longevity by a year. With a long battery life like the A3000's you can afford to do that. Don't "top up" when the battery's already 80, 90% full. Only start charging around the halfway point.

This is just amazing - Sony actually came up with something the way I say it should be made! I've been waiting for this forever. If you ignore what Sony calls it, this device is literally a PSP without gaming provisions. It's also a spiritual successor to the CLIE brand. I bet a lot of PSP hardware went into this device, because that'd help with cost and development time. If you don't normally visit Gizmodo, they have a video of the Mylo in action.