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NW-A1000 and NW-A3000: Initial Impressions

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Ascariss

By Ascariss,
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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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:ol_bah:

I couldn't resist it, sitting in class I snapped. I went and picked up a new A1000, the silver model. The MD has been officially retired. So long good friend.

First off, the box is small which it came in, so I wasn't expecting that. I got home opened the bad boy up and connected the trusty EX71s to test out the 2 samples on it. Dear lord was I in shock.

Here is a nice animation when it starts up, and when it turns off, it says see you again or later. lol

The sound settings were set to none, so I was shocked to hear how good the sound quality was with no EQ. :ol_shocked:

I popped in the Connect Player CD and it started up right away, it installed with no hitch, interestingly enough there are only 3 regions available when you install:

Japan

Europe

Canada

Oddly no Ausralia yet, and launch is what this friday?

Anyways, after it installed, it began updating right away by itself, took a good 5 min or so, after a reboot, and what not, I went to open CP. This was the moment of truth. What has sony created here?

It took a good 5 to 7 min before the player actually opened, but now I know why, the damn thing was scanning my PC for music files, since once it opened, at the bottom it said, 2026 tracks. :ol_biggrin::ol_biggrin:

I was rather thrilled when I saw that. The Connect Store doesn't work sadly in canada, and it says:

"The music download service is not available in your region"

Anyways, overall the CP runs a bit slow but no errors with it yet.

The A1000 is charging at the moment, so once that is done, music transfer time. :ol_biggrin::ol_biggrin::ol_biggrin::ol_biggrin:

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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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I deleted the songs once i listened to them so I forgot what they are. But I do believe some of the press shots have the 2 samples on their screens.

well after about 2 or so hours, I finally got my music on there, not all of it, 3 gigs left still of free space.

I set the EQ to my usual setup like i did on my MD, and the sound is amazing, no distortion what so ever. :ol_biggrin: Clear as crystal.

My remote, the MC33EL is useless per say, doesn't even show track name only track # and time elapsed. :ol_angry: but I actually don't care now. When music plays, a screensaver of sorts seems to turn on, at least it does on mine. They are small little specks of light that look like stars, exploding in random areas, looks quite nice.

Uhm, I will have to look into more of the animations but there are some I haven't seen yet, nor that I can describe. lol

Yes I am still picking up the 20 gig model, but I wanted the 6 gig, because I can't live without my music.

Also interesting situation, while transferring songs, my PC rebooted, so I replugged the A1000 back in and it continued transferring songs no problem. lol

If there are more questions please ask away.

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Beethovenian Newbie

Beethovenian

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Nice. I'm still debating if I'm going to get the A3000 when it comes out in the US. It seems nice (I like the way you can navigate to the track and from the track), but I definitely need more capacity. So far I have more than 40GB of music encoded in Atrac.

One question: can you navigate from bottom to top as in previous HDs? I mean, if you go to a list, can you still push up and start browsing with the last item, even if you're on one of those index lists (the ones that show under a letter)?

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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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I believe you can, there are many ways navigate, more so than the HD5 I would think.

You can browse by letter, ie in groups of 2, ie AB, CD, EF. etc and of course it goes by the song title, not tried anything with artists.

One side not, the stock buds have a nice sound suprsingly, but they are not comfortable when I use them, so I would recommend getting something better,

Also the player comes with an extension cord, much shorter than my EX71s came with, and I have to admit it comes in very handy.

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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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Well, after one day of use, I can say I am glad I bought it.

Only one complaint, the shuffle seems to play some songs more than others, kind of annoying but not a huge problem.

There is one thing I wish I had done before transferring the files over, adding genre info and album info for all my files. lol I am doing that as I write this. Reasons being, looking at the player with 2 unknowns on the screen becomes kind of annoying.

Let's see, the battery lasted me all day and only went to half way point, listening time was roughly 4-5 hours at 192 and various other VBRs and also some 256 and 320 as well.

I checked out the directory of the files on the player and all the files are encoded in oma, which I did not know. Anyone know the possibilites of somehow converting the MP3s into oma via windows and then just copy and paste into the diretory in the player?

There is some lag actually for accessing the drive when music plays, and perhaps 1.5 - going between the menus when the song plays as well.

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Guest Stuge

Guest Stuge

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Anyone know the possibilites of somehow converting the MP3s into oma via windows and then just copy and paste into the diretory in the player?

No,This will not work .If you try to do that Your player will show error (OPEN MG ERROR ).I have tried it on many atrac devices but it didn`t work`

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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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haven't used atrac files on it, don't really want to take the time to convert them, unless there is a program other than CP and SS that will convert mp3s into atrac files, I will gladly look into it.

All the play modes work with mp3s, as do the shuffles, eq as well, and everything else on it. I am in the process of deleting my CP library and only importing songs with rewritten genre and album info and then retransferring them to my A1000. Possibly this will solve the artist link problem

So far battery life is nowhere near 10 hours, well with the music selection I am listening to. I will do a battery test on saturday with a fully charged unit and let it keep playing and see how long it goes before it stops. After listening to it for 2 hours this morning, then another 1 hour between class, one full hour in class, at low volume mind you, the battery has dropped from half full to only 1/4. Leaves me kind of worried for my journey back home, will the player last. (do note, bulk of mp3s are 192, perhaps 4% are 160ish vbr, others are 200vbr and then the rest is around 256-320 mp3, although 70% is in 192mp3)

So if anyone knows of any other program that will convert mp3s to atrac other than CP or SS, please do let me know, since I am curious to how much longer the battery will last with atrac files vs mp3s.

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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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Here are some images and comparisons as promised.

http://premium1.uploadit.org/ascariss//A1000_1.jpg

http://premium1.uploadit.org/ascariss//A1000_2.jpg

http://premium1.uploadit.org/ascariss//A1000_3.jpg

http://premium1.uploadit.org/ascariss//A1000_4.jpg

Large files, 1600 in size. That's a canadian quarter for our non canadian members lol.

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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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Update, the battery is lasting a bit longer now, maybe and hour and a bit longer than before.

As well, I was able to initialize the HDD, erasing everything, and then importing with no problems 444 songs onto the player, roughly 5 gigs or so. Didn't take long, uhm around 20 min or so, while i was doing other things. I didn't select all the songs and transfer though, it would have been faster that way, but I have more than 6 gigs in my library in CP.

Note, I don't think the artist link works with mp3s, atrac is most likely needed. As well will test playlists tomorrow.

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Rumz Newbie

Rumz

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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 :D

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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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no duplicate files are needed for playlists you make them in CP and transfer them over I guess, haven't tried yet.

When you're playing a song and want to go to the main menu, takes about 1-2 seconds.

to acess the groups, genres, star rating, etc, there is a lag, about 1 or 2 seconds, but then navigating through the albums, artists, is with no lag.

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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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Here is the final battery test I did with my A1000, continuous playback:

Ok here is the low down on the battery test.

At first 13 hours may not sound much, but then again I am pleased with it.

Here is what was tested.

-volume at level 13, AVLS limits the player to this, so I decided to keep it at this level, but didn't turn on AVLS, I also listen to this volume on a regular basis

-majority of songs re 192 CBR mp3, with many higher as well, up to 320 CBR and various at 200-270 VBR.

-fully charged battery

-EQ on, settings are as follows (Bass to Treble): +3 +2 +1 +1 +2 +3

-shuffle all songs chosen, a total of 422 songs

-only pressed a button everytime I wanted to check the battery, so a grand total of 13 times.

Test start at 12:30 PST - full battery

@ 14:26 still full battery

@ 16:00 3/4 battery

@ 17:30 1/2 battery

@ 18:30 1/2 battery

@ 19:30 1/2-1/4 battery

@ 20:00 1/4 battery

@ 21:00 1/4 battery

@ 22:00 1/4 battery

@ 23:00 1/4 battery

@ 00:00 1/4 battery (flashing)

@ 01:00 1/4 battery (flashing)

@ 01:30 Low Bat displayed.

So with volume 13, shuffle all, and EQ on, 13 hours is quite good in my opinion for continuous play considering sony claims up to 17 hours for mp3 @ 128.

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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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I don't have the volume limiter on, since my unit is not EU. I don't have all CBR 192 on my player so I can't do that test really.

But I would guess that with 192 cbr, all +3 EQ, volume 35, you won't get a very good battery life. perhaps 6-8 hours at most.

who listens to their player at 35? I don't think you want EQ +3 for all, might make some songs sound bad.

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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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Ya, there is a volume limiter on european models, but there is a hack to get around it like with earlier HDD models.

I would suggest then to get a cradle for the unit if you are planning on hooking it up to a HIFI system, since it has lineout in that as well I believe. But if you don't want to get the cradle, you can just attach it to AC adapter and choose lineout with the player and hook it up, no worries with battery life then.

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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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Call came in today, picked up my A3000 silver model.

I was pleasently surprised about the weight, it isn't that heavy as I would have imagined it to be. Size wise, it is a bit bigger than I expected, but I think that is because I got the A1000 before hand.

The large OLED screen is massive when compared to the A1000, not sure why it's only .5 inches larger. The colour of the screen has a lightish green tinit to it, and so far it's looking good.

Connect player found the A3000 and now I have both the A1000 and A3000 in the program with no problems moving files to either unit. Will be doing a battery test over the weekend with it, so stay tuned.

Pics will be up friday due to exams over the next 2 days.

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Tetsugaku-San Newbie

Tetsugaku-San

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The large OLED screen is massive when compared to the A1000, not sure why it's only .5 inches larger.

Yay for the 3000 :) The difference is because 1.5 * 1.5 = 2.25 square inches where as 2 * 2 = 4 square inches (that being the difference between the displays)

I just listened to Ultraviolence on the way home on my NW-A3000, in the torrential rain, I am soaked, yet pumped :) (DL the Ultraviolence trackhere if you want it :) (192kbps MP3s I think they are, official website link) )

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willykyu Newbie

willykyu

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Atrac lossless is not supported by A series (as it is written somewhere in the Connect player manual...), but trying to do so just sends the attached bitrate created when ripping the CD (256, etc.).

Well, nothing's impossible, and one can hope a new firmware update can allow the players to directly play atrac lossless. But for the moment, even CONNECT Player isn't capable to rip a CD in ATRAC lossless...

These updates stories start to make me really nervous; while everybody's happily bying Ipods, and enjoy life with their almost problems free and full of options Itunes...

Edited by willykyu
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subLime Newbie

subLime

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Can someone give me some information about the file system?

Does the Connect player mess around with the mp3s on your pc? Like renaming them, moving etc.? Someone wrote it saves the files twice and takes a huge amount of disk space...

I also read on another forum that it saves the mp3s as *.omg files?

I don´t care how the files look on the player itself i.e. in what format they´re saved. But it would really suck if it changes the mp3s on your computer.

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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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Only thing that it changes in the files is the ID tags, activating IDtag version 1 as well with version 2, which is annoying.

Next, whoever told you what you wrote doesn't have the player. Since last I checked, all my mp3s which were imported are still in their respectful folders and areas, the files are still mp3s, none get renamed, not sure how you would do that via CP. sizes are still the same.

They are saved as OMG on the player when transferred, but it is still a MP3 files, since the OMG is just copyright that is wrapped around the mp3 file to prevent it being transferred back to another pc.

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