dura_

I don't know. My theory is that the thin wire and the lenghtdifference because of the J-cord creates a disbalance between left and right, that is corrected witry clean stereo, but I could be totally wrong here, there is a first time for everything ;-).

Yes. There are more threads about this a8xx problem here. Read them. The firmware upgrade to 1.02 solves it.

It depends on the headphones. I use DSEE that gives a slight but welcom smoothing of treble grain even at ATRAC 256kbs. For my Shure E4s I use CB+1, +1,+1,0,-1,-1. Strange, the shures sounded perfectly balnced out of my old A3000, but with the A808 the ssounds gets too analitical for my taste. The A808 btw seems more powerful and is able to drive larger headphones then the A3000 and NW-HD1 (both uncapped). My Px100s sounds fine uneq-ed, so does the provided buds, and most other headphones that hangs around here. According to the manual clearstereo is only advised when using the provided buds. I leave it off usually. I avoid normalisation as this seems to have a slight but noticable detrimental effect.

My A808 is really very slow compared to my former HD1 & A3000.

We know, the announcement was on this site a week ago : http://www.atraclife.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3575

Someone else has to produce the problemtracks; me, I hear unwanted sharpness in general when customising the sound too much.

Onm my ATRAC 256 kbs and Shure E4 headphone I get the impression that the more effects are on (clearstereo, EQ, VPT, normalisation) and/ or the more extreme the EQ settings are, the higher the distortion. Using only the EQ with mild adjustments gives a very acceptable result, but of course, YMMV.

Me too. My real problem is that the player sounds a little bit too bright without EQ. With my former HD1 and A3000 I felt the tonality was perfect without any EQ. But I'm getting used to the sound signature of the 8xx, so can live with it.

The file>import music file in SS doesn't work either?

You're not the only one who feels some eq functions on the 8xx give unwanted artifacts. A reviewer here (can't remember who right now0 claimed he sometimes heart a sort of echo. I find that using EQ-functions (and DSEE and clearstereo) add a little bit of unwanted sharpness so I prefer to listen to me 808 flat, despite that I find the sound slightly to bright without eq (even on my Shure e4s), but I get used to that rather fast. The nature of the audible artefacts probably depends on the codec, bitrate and phnoes used too.

Basically all it does and setting the mean volume the same for all tracks on your player. Now if your music was recorded on rather low volume (happens with classical music because extra headroom is needed for finales and climaxes) you would have to raise the volume and eventually run out of headroom, as you encountered. The normaliser would raise the volume digitally before sending it to the built in amplifier, giving a louder basic signal then before.

All ipods I heart (except the 1g shuffle) have a severe bassroloff into low impedances (according to graphs I found on the internet starting at 200 hz and not letting anything through at 50 hz). They do sound okay through the lineout into an headphoneamp, but through the headphone-out the sound is, to my ears, flat and sharp. Sony players sound much better, especially the 8xx, which has a very detailed dynamic sound. It also has better buildquality and longer batterylife then the 2G nano. The nano in return has a pleasant GUI (I love those wheels) and Itunes is easier then SS. Both play about the same different codes etc. So take your pick. For me that was easy, I use my player for listening to music, so I value SQ first, durability, reliability and batterylife after that, and for those few minutes I spent behind the PC getting music on the player SS is more then good enough, so I got an A808.

HD3 looks very good, but the HD1 has a better made, magnesium alloy case. Harder, more compact, looking better in its natural skin. HD3-case is still very good, one piece too (except for the bottom) aluminium.

It's a sign of a healthy economy; stupid people work in shops, bright people leave their shopjobs for something with more career-opportunities. Of course there are a lot of very competent employees too, but I do not expect to meet them at large shopchains.

the NW-HD1 doesn't support 352 kbs, so another conversion has taken place during transferring. This might well lead to gaps and reduced sound quality. It is completely useless to apply atrac lossless if you do not have devices that support lossless playback (which takes a large amount of space, say 0.5 gb per album) and it is advisable to use kbs-rates that are supported by your device. Personally, I encode everything in ATRAC 3= 256 kbs; widely supported by sony devices and gving excellent sound quality.

Of course it's your money and your decision, but I went from A3000 to A808 and it was a relief; good batterylife, superfast operation and a screen that is readable outside, not to mention the weightloss. The sound is different; the A3000 is smoother, the A808 more crispier and detailed. Personally I wouldn't go back, only thing I miss is the 12 Gb less...

I got the black 8Gb. Ok, looking good, better then the white one, but if I could get it I would prefer the purple too; I had a purple A3000 and it looked really cool. Not so important that it justifies the extra costs (customs can get really expensive here lately), trouble, and waiting to have it shipped from Japan though.

I picked the NW-HD1 Had it for years, most beautiful HD-DAP ever made IMO. Compact, stylish magnesium house. Soundwise, later palyers are porably slightly better, though I found the HD1 quite enjoyable. Latter i had the A3000. Sexy thing, very good sound, better then the HD1, but sloooow, unreadable screen in daylight, ridiculously short batterylife.

I love the way clearbass adds weight, but I think using the EQ in qhatever way adds a tiny bit of unwelcome sharpness, so at the moment I got all options off. BTW DSP, did you notice in the manual it says clearstereo is only advised with the supllied headphones? Gives the impression clearstereo seems to try to correct anomalies attached to this phone, perhaps because of its asymetrical design=

My question to you guys, looking to the interests in My previous comparisons, is if you would like a comparison between lets say NW-A805 and Cowon F2? Certainly DSP! Me for one, I'm wondering how the Cowon sound compares to the Sony sound. Speaking of which, as SQ is a matter of taste, I find the A8xx to sound clearer and brighter then the A3000. In fact I prefered the smoothness of the A3000, because I listen to smooth quiet music to relax (in all other aspects I prefer the A8xx). But of course this is a matter of taste; if you like treble sparkle and/or more upbeat music, you'll prefer the A8xx. In more 'absolute' terms, SQ on the Axx is very good, detailed, extended and dynamic without tonal deviances.

I got rid of my A3000 exactly because of the ridiculous short batterylife, right from the start is was less then 10 hours, while my NW-HD1 lasted for ~25 hours (ATRAC 3+ 256kbs, shuffle). I might be wrong but my theory is that the electronic memory is too small, making the thing slow because it has to access the HD far more often then f.i. the NW1. And this also leads to excessive batterydrain. So I doubt chancing the battery for one with the same capacity will help a lot, it is not battery-aging but a designerror. But again, I might be wrong. Anyway, I'm very happy with my A808, that gives very long batterylife in a very compact package, but at the price of less memory (got the 8Gb version).

Yes, it is a cutie, isn't it? I'm starting to love it more and more. I even use the supplied headphones often, even though I own Shure E4s. SS doesn't create duplicates in my case, and does tick the boxes for new CDs if I choose "automatic update". However, delete a track from the DAP, and SS seens to offer to re-sync the whole album. In practice however, it will only re-sync the deleted track. Untich the box and SS will remember nect time not to sync the album again.

yes, no problem, it has a standard 3.5mm plug that fits all digital audio players.

My A3000 was filled up to the brim with 2200 tracks (mostly standard songs avg 4 minutes or so) at 256 kbs (ATRAC 3+). Which i found very acceptable, 200 albums in very high quality.

It should be possible somehow. I got sonicstage since the horrible 2.3 and it was all DRM then (even though it were my CDs, like eaglehound). Somehow now in 4.3 DRM is gone. I can copy files to different DAPs, and import them from those DAPs on other computers. Of ocurse you unchecked add copyprotection in SS tool>options>CDimporting>select format> Did you try Kerfuffle's solution?