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S700 - Pictures and mini-review

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One negative is the same as for NW-A3000 that I have - the OLED display is not bright enough in sunshine.

I knew it, I had a feeling sony would not be able to fix that no matter how hard they tried. shame. good to hear you can use it longer. If possible I was wondering if you could find out some few things.

-the recording ability, what can be done, and what can't

-playlists and can one be made on the unit (this wasn't mentioned sadly though I am not expecting much)

-ease of use of the menus, speed of the menus etc.

thanks.

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Is the surround real metal or just paint?

How does the sound compare to other Sony MP3 player you have used?

The surround is real metal. Sound quality is good - similar to my NW-A3000. Thing is, I don't usually mess about with EQ settings so I couldn't really comment on its ability to present overly strong bass/whatever.

I haven't had a chance to play with it since Friday - maybe tonight.

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so soundquality is equal to nw-a series?

what about the noise cancelling? or 'clear bass' and that otter sound enhacement function it has (don't remember it's name)

soundquality is the most important issue to me, so I really would like to know how it sounds. especially since sony claims it to be the best sounding walkman so far.

greetz

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DSP -

I just did a direct compare of the S700 with my NW-A3000 (with noise restrictions disabled). I used the noise cancelling headphones on the S700 and a pair of Westone UM2 high sensitivity headphones with the NW-A3000.

Bearing in mind the Westone headphones cost about $200 the S700 performs very well in comparison. Bass response is good and percussion sounded very lifelike. The sound is detailed but not as loud as the NW-A3000 + Westones - given the sensitivity of the Westones that's hardly surprising.

As I was testing in a quiet living room it was difficult for me to discern the effect of the noise cancelling features - I'll test again on a plane journey this Wednesday.

The only real test of any MP3 player is whether you enjoy the music. I have had players in the past that I couldn't listen to for long periods because the sound somehow irritated me. This is not the case with the S700 - it's easy to listen to.

2 of the tracks I chose to test with are quite challenging - 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and 'Orgasmatron' from Albert Kuvezin's Re-Covers album (Check out http://www.yat-kha.com/html/what/yat_kha_cd_recovers.php to download the tracks yourself). The S700 performed very well - the soundstage was very lifelike with individual instruments easy to place in the mix. The only downside was that I had to drive the volume on maximum to get a volume even approaching the NW-A3000/Westone combination.

My final test was to play the S700 through the Westones. The unit automatically detected that the noise cancelling headphones weren't present and I was able to run the volume at 22 to 24 out of 30 to get an excellent soundstage.

Overall conclusion - excellent sound quality but needs more volume. I really need to test in a location with ambient noise to evaluate the noise cancelling feature.

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Thanks for the review.

Interesting to hear about the volume differences. I wonder how well the noise-cancelling earphones perform on a crowded train full of zealous iPod users.

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Me interests this player, it seems be not bad, the 50hrs playback time, the sound quality, clear stereo, noise cancelling are very useful features. (also its a plus advantage, that the basic headphones are very good) Also I have a big question: To this player is as the transfer, as the previous models? (I mean to the binding SonicStage using) Will there any programs (like mp3 manager) to transfer simply musics with drag and drop? And another question: the 50hrs playback time is without noise cancelling, with noise cancelling how many is the playback time? And this player has a microphone, right? Because for the Noise Cancelling it is indispensable. With it can I also record voices? (through it). Sorry for the many questions, I know, that it's still not available in Japan, but here said people, that here, in Europe it will be available still in this year. And it's possible, that I will going to buy this player... So please answer these question as soon, as it's possible.

And 1 more: it can't play video files, right? Here (In Hungary) said it someone, but to my mind it's a crap, it has color display, but its not so big, that video can be cumestible on it. It only can view pictures of the music albums, or not?

Edited by asadasad22
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I think 50hours of battery life can be possible if you record the songs at what they recommend you to do to achieve 50hours of battery life=p

Even without 50hours it will probably be around 4x hours

Of course it is lol :lol: , but it will sound like crap. I get approx. 15-20 hours from NW-E407 and that's using good quality bit rates in both atrac and mp3 codecs.

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I own a NW-E005 Walkman and am quite happy with it

but listening to the same track using the same headphones on my

Sonyericsson K800i.The K800i sounded better in the sense that

it had better stereo and could hear some quieter sounds I could not

hear on the NW-E005.

I was quite diappointed that the phone sounded better than the

dedicated player which is why I am interested if this one is any better.

Edited by F355
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Battery life according to SonyStyle.ca is based on ATRAC3 at 132 kbps:

"50 hours playback with built-in lithium-ion rechargeable battery in ATRAC 132kbps at power save mode “Super”, Noise Cancelling/Clear Stereo/Equalizer/VPT/are not in use"

Edited by Dinko
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The E00x series might have an excellent battery runtime during playback, but leave it unused for a day or two, and you'll see great reduction in the remaining battery charge. Eg. charge the battery full, leave it off for a day or two, and you'll only have half of the charge remaining. The upside is the instant-on playback. In contrast, iPods and other DAPs have a deep sleep mode, meaning when left unused for a day or two, you don't loose much battery life. Downside is the prolonged boot-up time from the deep-sleep mode.

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I had a good opportunity to test the Noise Cancelling feature of the S700 yesterday. I listened to various tracks on a flight from London to Brussels.

Initially I thought the feature didn't work - when you navigate through the menu to the Noise Cancelling option it displays the option 'ON' which I assumed was a button to turn the feature on. In fact it was showing me that the feature was already on and so I turned it off by mistake.

Once I had rewired my brain to cope with the strange usability error I found that the noise cancelling worked very well.

By turning down the volume on to 1 or 2 and then switching Noise Cancelling on and off I could hear a huge difference in the characteristic of the background noise. I also found that I could listen comfortably with very little outside disturbance at volume settings of 23 to 25.

It's worth mentioning that Noise Cancelling doesn't remove all ambient noises. Instead it filters out high frequency noise leaving lower frequency noises in place. When you turn on your music the lower frequency noise gets lost in the mix.

One strange feature - if you switch tracks with Noise Cancelling enabled there is a short (<1 second) burst of non-cancelled noise before the Noise Cancelling kicks in again. I guess this is becase the noise cancelling circuitry builds up a buffer of ambient noise before it starts cancelling.

Another interesting feature I tested is the Dynamic Normalizer. This is intended to balance out the volume levels between tracks. In practice it seemed to give a considerable volume boost to most tracks that I played. Maybe I recorded them all too quietly in the first place ;-)

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So Noise Cancelling was already turned on? It's funny. :)

Also i read about Noise Cancelling, that it doesn't removes all the ambient noises, just the 75 percent of noises (25 percent remains), but I think, it's not a bad ratio... Also You have a pre-product, I think, it's possible that Sony fixes 1-2 troubles, that you have reported...

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Thanks for the update on the noise-cancelling feature.

It will be very helpful on public transport.

Does it only work with the supplied earphones?

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Thanks for the detailed report spex :)

I noticed that Sony now uses ATRAC 132kbs as their measure for battery life - given that they used to use 48kbs as their standard while they continue to claim 50hrs, doesn't this represent quite a significant jump in battery longevity?

This dynamic normalizer sounds really useful too. I like to use AVLS to protect my hearing, but I have a number of tracks that are just too quiet for the subway or bus w/out turning AVLS off. This would totally solve that.

Sony, with people actually starting to say good things about the PS3, you might be on a roll. Now bring on the video walkman!

-Nav

Edited by navsimpson
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Thanks for the update on the noise-cancelling feature.

It will be very helpful on public transport.

Does it only work with the supplied earphones?

Noise cancelling will only work with the supplied headphones (unless Sony release more compatible phones.

The noise cancelling circuitry is inside the S700 and the earphones have an extra long jack with a raised section of metal near the base of the jack plug. This extra piece in the jack plug carries the signal from the microphones in each earpiece through to the Walkman. Normal headphones won't have the mic-in jack (or inbuilt microphones for that matter) and so they will not be able to support noise cancelling.

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I too have had a few days with the S700-and am excited.

I deal with getting my hands on pre-launch sony stuff through my job-and this is the first time in months that I have instantly said 'christmas present to self.."

The new icons used in the GUI are very nice.They kinda glow in different colours and animate beautifully.Very similar to the XMB found on the PSP and PS3.

wait for this one.

The purple(for the first time)looks better than the black!

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Does the S700 features support the intelligent features (artist link, etc...) like the A series? What's the point of Sony adding those featuers into SonicStage 4 and up if no future players will support it?

Yes, it does support the intelligent features (i.e. intelligent suffle).

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Take a look at some of the comments to that engadget article the first comment is from someone who actually has the device and says that the proprietary headphone jack statement is wrong - source was a french review - maybe stuff got lost in translation - as for the 1.1 USB...surely not - again maybe lost in translation?

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well we someone who reads fluet french and can read the review and translate. they mention though rate of transfer in the cons part and also give figures for transfer times

4Mo in 19s, is 0,2Mo/s

62Mo in 55s is 1,13Mo/s

166Mo in 175s is 0,9Mo/s

unless the person was using usb 1.1 and didn't know it.

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Me interests this player, it seems be not bad, the 50hrs playback time, the sound quality, clear stereo, noise cancelling are very useful features. (also its a plus advantage, that the basic headphones are very good) Also I have a big question: To this player is as the transfer, as the previous models? (I mean to the binding SonicStage using) Will there any programs (like mp3 manager) to transfer simply musics with drag and drop? And another question: the 50hrs playback time is without noise cancelling, with noise cancelling how many is the playback time? And this player has a microphone, right? Because for the Noise Cancelling it is indispensable. With it can I also record voices? (through it). Sorry for the many questions, I know, that it's still not available in Japan, but here said people, that here, in Europe it will be available still in this year. And it's possible, that I will going to buy this player... So please answer these question as soon, as it's possible.

And 1 more: it can't play video files, right? Here (In Hungary) said it someone, but to my mind it's a crap, it has color display, but its not so big, that video can be cumestible on it. It only can view pictures of the music albums, or not?

i don't understand why people want drag and drop function, the SonicStage 4.1 that comes with my S700 series transfer song in original format like flash, few second for 1 song (including album art) i wonder how can drag and drop do that?

second, this is mp3 player, it's not meant to play video and it's 3 lines OLED display. The album art is clear and very nice with amazing album search function that play most favourite track from the particular album while you scrolling through.

i've been using both on and off noice cancelling function for 2 days now and the baterry indicate half, so i don't know the accurate number but it just so more than enough for me, go sony!

Does the S700 features support the intelligent features (artist link, etc...) like the A series? What's the point of Sony adding those featuers into SonicStage 4 and up if no future players will support it?

yes the S700 series support all those inteligent feature and it comes with sonic stage 4.1 which improve transfer speed

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