spex

It's a label that advertises "3 minutes charge = 3 hours play".

Sony UK has officially announced the new Walkman MP3 player series that was leaked on this site and others last week. Official Press release Also, there are some exclusive pictures of the new Sony MP3 players on the Silva Bokis blog. Pictures taken by me this morning.

Take it back to Comet - given the acknowledged problems with the player you might get a result.

It has nothing to do with root virus.

This news was passed on to me by a contact at Sony. Sony UK has set up a dedicated support line for Connect Player related problems. The number is 0800 169 5263 and is currently manned from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. All Sony dealers are being informed of this helpline by letter (in the post tonight) and the Sony UK website will be updated to include the hotline number. A further update on the timeline for software updates and a clarification of the development tracks for both SonicStage and Sony Connect Player will be available soon.

A Hot News story on Sony Digital Link website finally acknowledges the much documented problems with Sony Connect Player software. It seems that as well as fixing problems in Sony Connect player there is a further release of SonicStage on the cards. See: Commentary on SilvaBokisOriginal story on Sony Digital Link

I did a battery test on my NW-A3000 yesterday. I used it for 3 hours during the day and then set it playing 'All tracks' at 10pm - at 8am it still had 1 bar showing on battery life. So I'm getting a minimum of 13 hours. Most of the songs on my NW-A3000 are encoded as ATRAC 160kbps.

After speaking to some of my contacts at Sony I can confirm that another update for Sony Connect Player is scheduled for the end of January. I don't have a full list of changes for the update but one of the features that looks likely to make the release is more informative status messages to let the user know that Connect is actually doing stuff rather than hanging. I think this will be useful as I'm sure many people are terminating the program while it's still working and so corrupting their song database. Other software updates are scheduled after the January update but I have no information as to the content or the expected release dates. As soon as I get information it will be posted here.

Perhaps the startup routine checks your library for changes on startup. If so, recursing a large file directory over WiFi would definitely cause a slowdown.

I've got a box of tricks that lets me do that. It's a connection box that attaches to the Autochanger input of a Sony head unit. It was designed to work with the NW-HD3 where you have full control and see track names, etc on head unit display. It partially works on NW-A series - you can go back and forward between tracks on the currently playing section (album, genre, playlist) but you can't easily swap albums and track info doesn't appear on screen. There's a page of them here http://www.ukaudioshop.com/categories.asp?cID=147 - not cheap but I blagged mine

Already got one ;-) I'm travelling for work a lot at the moment. Minimum 1 night in hotels per week, sometimes 3 or 4 nights away. So I decided to treat myself to a really good pair of headphones so I can enjoy my music wherever I am. It's a decision I don't regret.

Razorback - I bought from the US. Cost was $299USD so about £150UK. Expensive, but I think worth it. Col

I got a pair of Westone UM2 in-ear phones delivered last Friday to use with my NW-A3000. They are an absolute revelation - superb bass response, high volume, incredibly detailed sound. The external sound isolation is great - I wore them on a flight yesterday evening and all I could hear was high quality music with no engine noise interfering. And I only had the volume on 16. They're not cheap though.

Or hold down Option for a few seconds.

Only yesterday I showed the NW-A3000 to my brother & he said 'it's really nice but it isn' very loud'. It is now. :-)

I now have 3419 songs on my NW-A3000 (mostly MP3) and I'm going to start ripping some CDs this evening. All the new modes (Top 100, Shuffles, Artist link, etc) are working and I can see that data and bookmark lists have been passed back to Connect when docked. The footprint of this software is huge though - tinyhttp needs to live up to its name.

I think the video is a feature that differentiates the product at point of sale & will be relatively unused. It probably still needs to be there though - imagine all the Dixons staff saying "and this one does video, answers your email, makes coffee..."

The latest Connect update is available now. The update *should* be downloaded by the AutoUpdate function (or by going Help/Check For Updates). However, this didn't work for me so I uninstalled Connect and deleted the entire C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Sony Corporation\CONNECT Player directory. Then I rebooted and reloaded Connect from the original 1.0 CD. Part way through loading it tells you there's an update available and starts to download it. After the update is installed reboot your machine again and you're ready to rock. Instead of importing files I created a Watch Folder via Tools/Preferences and then hit 'Scan Now'. In just over an hour I have imported 3300 tracks and I can see them being copied to my NW-A3000. Tinyhttp seems to waver between 100Mb and 130Mb - not tiny, but certainly not out of control as it was on the previous release. This is looking very promising.

I just found this Walkman Gallery site that's for a Sony sponsored rock photo exhibition in London. The site has a link to a big Flash presentation on the new Sony Walkman at Sony UK.

You can bookmark tracks as you're browsing through them. They then go into a bookmark list - there are 5 bookmark lists on the machine. These are 'on-the-go' playlists by a different name.

INSTALLATION Ok, here's how I got it to work. Before that though, BACKUP THE SS LIBRARY just in case! 1. download and run from Automatic software update I got Sonicstage ???????????????????????????? when I did. 2. the easy way: if you have WinRAR/Winzip installed right click on the file and select to extract somewhere. Then skip to step 4. If not, here's the hard way: go to C:\Documents and Settings\%PROFILE NAME%\Local Settings\Temp and search for the folder that contains the files extracted from the archive. This is a hidden folder so you have to enable the option from Tools->Folder Options->View->Show Hidden... Copy this folder (%FOLDER NAME%) anywhere else. 3. go to %FOLDER NAME%\files. 4. Run ConfigSet.exe 5. Right Click on CONNECT Player Language Pack.msi and select install 6. Right Click on CONNECT Player.msi and follow the installation instructions. That's it!

It looked and felt the same to me.

I got my hands on a pre-production model of the new WALKMAN player yesterday - it looks fantastic. Attached are a few pictures I took. They're a bit rough & ready as I only had 10 mins with the player - on a table in the Sony canteen(!) More information at Sony Product News.