dura_

This is interesting. I only tried 256kb ATRAC for ages, but MP3 has a more pleasant sound? What do you think, Juli?

I think shrillness is a misplaced term. It does not having piercing, distorted treble. It is not unbalanced tonally either, so that there is no bass. Rather, compared to smoother sounding Sony players, the A80x misses the midbassbloom, slightly reduced dynamics and very slightly rolled off treble that gives other Sony players their attractive, 'analogue' sound. But the A80x gives good bass and sounds dynamic and uncolored, true to the source, and is musical and undistorted enough to truly enjoy it's sound, not at all like the sharp basslacking sound of other, uh, popular DAPs. Because of it's highresolution sound the quality of the headphone is important, even the -good- supplied phones don't do the A80x justice IMO.

I don't know the 7xx, but I too prefer the smooth sound of the NW-HD1 and A3000 I used to own. But I did get used to the sound of my A808, it's still musical and, using atrac256 kbs, not really sharp, it misses the small but welcome midbassbloom of other Sonys. But in return you get more spatiality and more details, and not the fatigue that f.i. my friends 2G Ipod nano gives. I can still listen to it for hours, and there are not many DAPs that od that for me. I use Shure E4, settings now: no normaliser, no DSEE, no clearstereo, no CB either, +1,+1,0,-1,-2-,-1 . In short, more bass, less midhighs. I changed my mind about DSEE, it seems to smoothen the treble, but at the cost of reducing 'spark', it seems to take swomething away from the music, so I now switch it off. I'm also not very happy with Clear Bass (on the Shures), that gives more punch in the bass, which I do not like.

I agree with the OP, NW-HD1, I had an intense love affair with it for almost 2 years.

A shocking statement, but if you feel that way, then so is it for you. Personally I do not like the sound signature of ipods att all, but if I would I would buy an ipod too; the nice interface, itunes and very broad support like 3th party accesoires would win me over despite Sony's better build quality.

Flash memory simply is much slower to fill then HD-memory, nothing to do with SS or USB.

As Shinji Ikeda indicated, language will ont be a problem. I think the nano is a beautiful piece of hardware, but the A8xx looks and feels even better. Sound quality wise the Sony sounds so much better the nano having that typical unpleasant flat and sharp sound out of its headphone-out that keeps me from buying ipods. But not everyone is interested in good SQ of course, otherwise ipods wouldn't be this increbly popular.

funny thing is, I know a shop here that still sells it, for the original price of €450,- my idea is that they simply forgot to get it out of the vitrin for all those years. Beautiful and well made player, but of course time hasn't been kind on it...

I come at Schiphol often, living in Leiden and working in Amsterdam. Duid you see it at the Capi Lux or the duty free (where I can't buy if i'm not flying I think)?

Thank you for this extended review. You will probably love the A8xx sound. Stupid coincidence; I have the A808 but seeing how you and others here describe the S7xx sound I'd probably prefer that, not liking the 8xx clean dynamic sound. But I still find it musical and enjoyable, and a little EQ-ing goes a long way, and for the rest I love the 8xx, form, screem and 8Gb memory. Especially the latter makes it hard for me to go the S7xx route now I already own the A808, but who knows I can convince myself I really really need some of the S7xx special properties, like NC or the radio. Because I think it's a beautiful player too.

I hope I'm wrong, but it sounds like a defective HD.

That was me. Strangely, I either got used to it or the firmware 1.02 update chanced something, or the unit got burned in or whatever, for I'm quite happy with the sound now and don't feel the need to Eq anymore on this combination (but I use DSEE, that makes the treble smoother, even at my ATRAC 256 kbs tracks). BTW, a very pleasant and affordable portable open phone that goes well with the 8xx is the Sennheiser px100, I often use it at home for listeing in bed with the A808.

Well, without the extension cord the total length of the right cord is more then twice as long as that of the left cord, including the common part. Since the cable is very thin it probably has a high resistance too so this difference might lead to slight but audible volume differences. The relative difference between the channels gets less if the extension cord is used of course. I indeed seem to get a better stereobalance with clearstereo, but perhaps my expanation is wrong...anyway, the way sony advises to switch it off with other phones gives me the idea that clear stereo compensate for some inbalance or other shortcoming in the supplied phones.

Well, there's the backup utility, or am I missing something?

Clear stereo is ment for the supplied headphones only. Clearly stated in the manual, which advises to switch it off with other headphones. Which leads me to believe it basically adresses a slight volume balance due to different cables length left and right. (which also explains why there is the option with or without extension cord).

Damn, I'm dutch too, like DSP I hoped you got it somewhere locally.

I do not hear hiss (probably age-related) but it seems the sharpness that I found annoying is gone since 1.02. Still not sure if I simply got used to it or that SQ has improved by the upgrade....

I tried 128 vs 256 on my HD1 two years ago; the 128 had some small but annoying distortion in the treble. BTW, the hit on batterylife by larger bitrates is serious with HD-players, where the HD has to be accessed more often for a given playtime if the btrate rises. The difference in flashplayers is much smaller, irrelevant IMO.

I got the 8GB. About 70-80 albums at 256 kbs (ATRAC).

Hi Stuge, that links gives my the general forum page, doesn't seem correct?

IMO the most beautiful HDD-player Sony ever made; solid, compact, stylish and long batterylife. I too liked the smooth SQ. It's different from my A808, which is more detailed and dynamic, but I'm not so sure what I prefer; for me a DAP is about musical pleasure and the HD1 delivers, so I can agree with the 5/5.

Did you try the file>import function in SS 4.3?

Coincidence, I juast read a speedtest comparing a HDD with a (very expensive) flash-HDD, containing new Samsung single layer flash memory that supposedly is faster then the multilayer flash that is in our DAPs. Accestime was 10 times as fast, powerdrain much much lesser, but transfertimes were 5 times as slow for the flash. This explains the slowness of transfer to the A8xx IMO.

I don't think it's sonic stage this time; I could completely fill my HD1 & A3000 with 20 Gb of 256 kbs (about 200 albums) in under 25 minutes! SS transferred an album in 10-20 seconds to those players, a contrast with the up to about 5 minutes the A808 seems to need. It seems flashmemory is slower to write. This will probably hold true for different brands too, after all, the memory itself is mostly the same.

Why? Filling the player is something that happens occasionally. It still does a full album (at 356 kbsd in my case) in about 3 minutes. It's a minor annoyance at most , something to keep in mind, like, "okay, I need to vacuumclean, let me first start up the transfer, then I do the housekeeping, then I pick up the filled DAP".