NW-A808 and SS questions

[clockwork]

First hello to you all.

I finally succumbed to temptation and bought the aforementioned player. My Sony CD Player died and, with a brief and unhappy flirtation with an iPod, I gave my hard earned coins to Sony.

So what am I struggling with?

1) It seems to take an age to transfer songs to the player.

I thought it was the encoding to begin with, so I transferred it in the format it was encoded within SS. It took about an hour. Why? If usb Hard-drives took this long we wouldn't use them. Yes I do have a usb 2 hub :-)

2) I'm getting a gap between tracks.

After realising I could only get 8 albums at lossless quality I decided to try a transfer at Atrac 256kbps. This reduced the amount of space required tremendously, but unfortunately has put a gap between tracks. The majority of my music is live sets, so gapless is of the utmost importance.

3) Transfer settings are odd (maybe related to 2?)

Under the specified bit rate transfer mode, "Convert to ATRAC format, the specified bit rate and transfer" the drop down list gives the following options:

352 kbps, 320 kbps, 192 kbps, 160 kbps, 132 kbps (ATRAC3), 128 kbps, 105 kbps (ATRAC3), 96 kbps, 66 kbps, 64 kbps, 48 kbps.

Now what is the difference between ATRAC3 and just ATRAC, or (now I've typed all this) has it transferred them as mp3s? That would explain the Gap.

4) Atrac Lossless files are HUGE.

I notice some tracks are no different in size to the WAV they replace. I appreciate there is some encoding to save battery, but is there "A better way "

5) Why did my CD player sound better, even at lossless

Okay, maybe the last one is a bit of a moan, but to be honest I was surprised based on my previous experiences with Sony kit.

If you could give me some advice or comments that would be ace. Cheers

Anyway, some positives, this time in bullet format :-)

• It does sound better than an iPod, perhaps in part due to the custom EQ settings.

• It is the perfect form factor for me.

• SonicStage is no-where near as bad as I was led to believe.

• The screen is very clear, not that I intended to use it for movies.

• I was led to believe that it used a different size headphone jack. Nonsense.

Cheers

Edited December 2, 2007 by clockwork

[Ascariss]

I am guessing you have the NW-A808 not 818? since no such model exists.

next, the 808 player plays mp3s and wav files natively, meaing you DO NOT need to encode them to atrac unless you want gapless or longer battery life.

1. Do NOT use a hub to transfer your files to the device, connect the mp3 player DIRECTLY to the PC.

2. gaps appear only if the source material is not gapless in the first place, encoding from flac or ogg or individual wav files to atrac will not yield gapless. In order to achieve true gapless you must rip the cd to atrac directly using sonicstage. You need the original cd to get gapless playback.

3. ATRAC3+ is a newer version of ATRAC3, it has a bit more bitrate options and thus allowing you to get different quality of sound depending on how low you want to go. DO NOT use atrac if you are re-encoding mp3s to atrac, only encode wav files to atrac.

Go the options in sonicstage and set the transfer to NOT convert any mp3 files to atrac unless they are not suppoted.

4. I've not used atrac lossless, but as you mentioned they are large since they are lossless, there is nothing you can do about that. No need to use lossless, in the end you won't be able to tell the difference between atrac 352 and atrac lossless.

5. check what bitrate the files got encoded to when they got transfered over, if you transfered over mp3s which got converted to atrac, 192 or lower, then you would be re-encoding the files to a lower quality thus reducing their sound and making them sound a bit watery.

So here is what you do

-connect the device DIRECTLY to the pc NOT the hub

-check encoding settings in sonicstage and see that it is NOT re-encoding the mp3s to atrac

-re rip cds directly to atrac using sonicstage to achieve true gapless

-files that sound gapless on your pc ie wma or mp3(lame format) when transfered to the device will NOT be gapless

-if you want optimal sound encode your songs to atrac 352 directly from the CD or wav files

-if you only have mp3s transfer them AS IS, do not re encode them to atrac.

[Guest Stuge]

I will answer Question 1:

Yes ,Sony devices are USB 2 and I completely agree with you that they are still slower ,but If you had use older Sony network walkman like NW-E505(which only supported USB 1.1 ),then you would have noticed the transfer rate difference(only for Sony walkmans .I'm not comparing any other devices).

Also make sure that you have plugged your walkman to USB 2 slot .like in my Pc the front ones are USB1.1 and the ones which were supplied(at the back) with motherboard are USB 2.0.

[clockwork]

Quite right, a808. Title amended. Fat fingers indeed.

Even though I transfer the files through a usb 2.0 hub normally, even if I use a port the transfer speed does not differ. Good thought though. P.S. It is definitely usb 2 :-)

All my previous files were FLAC, so I'm working through my collection to re-encode them from the original CD. It's a bit of a pain, but not the reason for the gap.

Almost all my music is mix cd's so the gap is very noticeable. I will attempt to re-encode this evening to one of the ATRAC3 bitrates, not ATRAC3+ to see if it makes any difference.

Thank you both for your comments. I'll keep checking the post to let you know how I get on. If I can't get gapless through a lossy codec I shall have to put up with less albums.

As an aside I've also noticed the clock doesn't appear to keep time, are there any sync settings? (Yes my system clock is okay)

Edited December 2, 2007 by clockwork

[Ascariss]

clockwork you can't convert flac to atrac3/atrac3+ and retain gapless. It needs to be encoded directly from the cd source to atrac to remain gapless. and yes this is the reason for the gap.

[juli_]

ascariss is right - gapless only works from the original source. Converting to atrac from another format will NOT work. I found this out to my cost

[pomj]

1. > It seems to take an age to transfer songs to the player

Well SS does a lot of work in the background. Rating's, info and such... You may like it or not by I've come to like SS alot. That said I would encourage you to turn off everything that's automatic. Fx turn off all "get track info automatic..." Then you can selectively turn on and try different options until you are (hopefully) satisfied.

4. > Atrac Lossless files are HUGE.

I think ATRAC advanced Lossless is a great idea. I rip my cd's in ATRAC Advanced lossless/256kb. That way I have a lossless source on my computer and I can choose whether I want to transfer the lossless or the lossy file to my player.

Well this is just my two cent...

I hope you will be as satisfied with your player as I am with mine.

cheers

[pomj]

All my previous files were FLAC, so I'm working through my collection to re-encode them from the original CD. It's a bit of a pain, but not the reason for the gap.

I use this: http://members.home.nl/w.speek/flac.htm , flac frontend to convert my flac files to wav for later importing to SS. It's a nice tool that can convert batches.

Don't know if it will be to any help but for me it's been a great.

[clockwork]

I've just re-read my post, I don't think I explained my problem very well

ME

All my previous files were FLAC, so I'm working through my collection to re-encode them from the original CD.

I.e. I'm encoding FROM the CD to ATRAC Lossless. Ignore the FLAC element, I'm no longer using that.

Anyway I tried some different bitrates but it's not helping.

pomj

I think ATRAC advanced Lossless is a great idea. I rip my cd's in ATRAC Advanced lossless/256kb. That way I have a lossless source on my computer and I can choose whether I want to transfer the lossless or the lossy file to my player.

That is exactly what I'm doing.

To be honest I am not too bothered about the speed of ripping the original CD. It's more the time it takes to transfer to the player. If I get the gapless problem sorted I probably won't spend that much time doing data transfer anyway. I do wonder if part of the problem with speed is that there is no way not to charge the player while syncing. I've just had a play with my external hdd that has uses two usb cables. Stick just the one cable in and it works, just very slowly indeed.

Anyway don't get me wrong. I like my sony very much indeed :-)

Now let's try to get this doing PROPER gapless.

Edited December 2, 2007 by clockwork

[clockwork]

Update:

Got it playing Proper gapless. However, I'm a bit annoyed.

If I rip the CD in SonicStage to ATRAC Lossless, then transfer it my media player using the Transfer mode settings to a more reasonable ATRAC3, IT INSERTS A GAP!!

If I rip the CD directly to ATRAC3 and transfer that across, there is no gap.

Now I'm sorry, but that is just stupid (insert 4 letter word here).

Now if I want to store my music I must store it in two formats, and rip it twice FROM THE CD.

I've tried this 4 times now thinking it was just me, but it's not.

I am actually VERY ANNOYED. It is no wonder that people buy iPods, they are a damn site more user friendly.

Rant over. Now what shall I do this evening, oh yes, lets re-encode my music AGAIN AGAIN (yup, twice). Grrrrrrr.