Hi, recently I bought a Sony a816 (4gb) and although it's a really nice sounding player I made a big mistake only buying it in 4gb size I think - at the price of almost £45 too
After going back and looking around I found out that I could instead buy either the a729 (16gb without bluetooth) or s639 (16gb) both brand new for between £60-70.
So seeing as it made sense to upgrade (and not being able to afford the x series model) that's what I will be doing. I've spend about 5 days or so now finding as much info out as possible between the 2 but still never really gained a real answer as to how they both compare in terms of sound.
What I did find out was -
the a816 has the most hiss there is
the a729 has less hiss than the a816 but still hiss
the s639 has the least hiss (very minimal but still there)
the a729 has the exact same features as the a816 (very minimal) but now has a 2.4 inch screen instead of 2 inch
the s639 has a 2 inch screen but is (besides the x series) the most feature rich walkman yet - with customizeable themes, senseme feature, radio etc
In terms of sound quality people seem to generally be saying the a729 sounds warm with a large soundstage and full sounding bass
And the s639 sounds not as warm, with less soundstage and a heavy powerful bass - not as full in sound but just louder/stronger. It also has clearer high end sound, which some people said can be too loud and somewhat harsh.
Is that above ^ at all accurate?
I'm using sennheiser cx500 IEM's (not great but not terrible) and will in the future be buying something better - but not be spending over £100 for IEM's (probably be buying something like sennheiser ie6 or ie7. Which would be the better player to pick for these sort of earphones? they provide quite a lot of bass I think.
Having a radio doesn't mean much to me as I wont really use it ever anyway, but with a 2.4 inch screen the bigger and easier it is to see the better I guess.
One feature that makes the a729 seem more appealing to me is that you can access the "secret" service menu to further alter the treble and bass gain, this could make it sound better than the s639 maybe (which doesn't have the service menu)
When these 2 players were released the A series was like sony's high end range, S was medium and E was low - which is why I would have thought the A would sound the best (until the X series came along and replaced A as the new best sounding player) which is why It's confusing some people say the s639 sounds so much better than the a729.
So yeah, any help would be great thanks -
Current earphones I will be using with the player I buy for quite a while are sennheiser cx500's and the main genres of music are rock, pop, metal and dance.
SQ matters more than the features the player offers
Thanks
After going back and looking around I found out that I could instead buy either the a729 (16gb without bluetooth) or s639 (16gb) both brand new for between £60-70.
So seeing as it made sense to upgrade (and not being able to afford the x series model) that's what I will be doing. I've spend about 5 days or so now finding as much info out as possible between the 2 but still never really gained a real answer as to how they both compare in terms of sound.
What I did find out was -
the a816 has the most hiss there is
the a729 has less hiss than the a816 but still hiss
the s639 has the least hiss (very minimal but still there)
the a729 has the exact same features as the a816 (very minimal) but now has a 2.4 inch screen instead of 2 inch
the s639 has a 2 inch screen but is (besides the x series) the most feature rich walkman yet - with customizeable themes, senseme feature, radio etc
In terms of sound quality people seem to generally be saying the a729 sounds warm with a large soundstage and full sounding bass
And the s639 sounds not as warm, with less soundstage and a heavy powerful bass - not as full in sound but just louder/stronger. It also has clearer high end sound, which some people said can be too loud and somewhat harsh.
Is that above ^ at all accurate?
I'm using sennheiser cx500 IEM's (not great but not terrible) and will in the future be buying something better - but not be spending over £100 for IEM's (probably be buying something like sennheiser ie6 or ie7. Which would be the better player to pick for these sort of earphones? they provide quite a lot of bass I think.
Having a radio doesn't mean much to me as I wont really use it ever anyway, but with a 2.4 inch screen the bigger and easier it is to see the better I guess.
One feature that makes the a729 seem more appealing to me is that you can access the "secret" service menu to further alter the treble and bass gain, this could make it sound better than the s639 maybe (which doesn't have the service menu)
When these 2 players were released the A series was like sony's high end range, S was medium and E was low - which is why I would have thought the A would sound the best (until the X series came along and replaced A as the new best sounding player) which is why It's confusing some people say the s639 sounds so much better than the a729.
So yeah, any help would be great thanks -
Current earphones I will be using with the player I buy for quite a while are sennheiser cx500's and the main genres of music are rock, pop, metal and dance.
SQ matters more than the features the player offers
Thanks
