NW-A806 Syncing

[Tooth]

Hey guys,

Firstly I'm a new Sony NW-A806 user after my iRiver H320 was stolen. The Sony player was my mum's, but she never used it so said that I could have it So I'm having some trouble getting to grips with the fundamentals of this player, and I thought I'd ask before I write it off completely. I've trolled hundreds of forum pages for a solution, but get none.

I despise Sonicstage and want no evidence of it on my computer. My mate has the higher version of this player and uses Windows Media Player to sync mp3s and straight CD rips on to their player, but I am having trouble syncing files through both WMP and Winamp. I have downloaded the latest Firmware available. Is there any way to sync through Windows Media Player? Am I doing it wrong? At the moment it just drops mp3s directly onto the player in a 'Music' folder at root, but I cannot navigate/recognise these through the player itself.

Also one thing I wanted to clear up; if I do manage to sync mp3s on to the device, do they get compressed down to ATRAC? If this is true, then why is Sony insisting on compressing already compressed audio down even further?

Any support really is gratefully received and I apologise for the noobish ambiguity of my problems.

[prankz]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news mate, but SonicStage is the only way to sync music to the player. It can only play ATRAC not MP3s. If you really dont want SonicStage then I suggest selling the A806 and get yourself the A816 or A818.

[Guest Stuge]

Welcome to AtracLife !Tooth

It can only play ATRAC not MP3s.

yes ,It requires Sonic Stage to transfer music ,but it supports ATRAC, MP3, AAC (non DRM) and WMA (non DRM) .

[prankz]

Ma bad. But in order to play MP3s you still need to transfer via SonicStage? Which Tooth doesnt want...

[Tooth]

If I transfer mp3s via Sonicstage, do they get compressed to ATRAC? Because I already dislike listening to mp3 quality, so if Sonicstage insists on reducing that quality of sound even further then...it sucks. If I knew anything about modding/hardware/scripting I'd get right on this, lol. But I don't.

[prankz]

No it wont compress to ATRAC. It will stay as MP3.

[fugusushi]

if possible, it's worth spending the time to re-rip the CD's via SS. Bring them in as WAV (as I do) if you've got the space - or ATRAC lossless if not.

then via SS you can transfer them to the player as ATRAC/lossless with the desired bit rate (up to 352)... frankly, believe it or not, i'm missing SS right now (hardly believe i'm saying that myself!) since the newer players don't support ATRAC...

and yes, SS seems to always put some kind of compression on the files - the 'exception' is using the ATRAC lossless... although re-coding from mp3 to ATRAC doesn't necessarily mean compression - someone else might correct me...

[Tooth]

Okay, I synced some mp3s on there last night and I don't think they have been compressed down any further; at least I couldn't hear a significant difference whilst listening to them through noise reduction headphones. If I go on to 'Detailed Information' via the options in the Now Playing screen, it confirms that the file is an mp3 and at the original bitrate.

The player is only 4gb, so I don't really want to load on lossless (wav/ATRAC lossless) files as they take up too much space. So I think I've come to a compromise; I select the tracks I want from my computer, copy them into a separate folder on my PC desktop, add that folder to My Library in Sonicstage, and sync with the player. Then I delete the files in the desktop folder/My Library and leave the music on the player (so long as the device isn't automatically synced with My Library). It's a long winded process, but I now have a player full of mp3s which is ideally all I need regardless of efficiency.

Just a note of comparison though... My iRiver player worked as a drag and drop method via Windows Explorer. All you had to do is drop mp3 files in to the root folder - or any combination of archiving folders for that matter - and then the player acts basically as a portable explorable hard drive when you're on the move. I never used any media player on my computer for syncing, I never had to compress/convert and audio as iRiver provide tonnes of codecs (especially with the ability of using opensource Firmware such as Rockbox). I had even replaced the battery with a much higher capacity battery allowing for about 24hours continuous playback on decent volume!

But alas, it was stolen. And I'm not one to rant, honest. I'll make do with my Sony for now.

[Guest Stuge]

@ Tooth :Your files won't be converted to Atrac,until or unless you have checked the option in the sonic stage .