I haven't spent much time reading or posting to this forum in the past few years, so I can see it with fresh eyes and yikes! It looks to me like audiophiles make up less than half of the people now posting here. The focus on sound quality issues has been lost. I find that kind of sad. It used to...

I just picked up one of the $50 8GB Sansa Clips from Walmart to replace a recently lost A818 (along with my priceless KSC-35s). Cute little thing. It has been hooked up to my USB port for more than 4 hours but the battery just won't charge. And now I am getting a low battery warning and an auto...

This is an outrage. What is our major malfunction? How could this have happened. Only $150 for one of the best music reproduction devices that has ever been created by the likes of man or mouse. And who is candy_store anyway?

A guy at ipodlounge.com took apart (and broke) his ipod mini. This was posted as news on slashdot, but not all of you probably read it, so here's the link.. Yes, he took photos.

My several year (or more) old ety ER-4S's just returned to me with all new components for free. These guys are really great! While it would be nice if they could figure out a way to make those plastic stems less delicate, replacing the drivers for free when they eventually do break is hard to...

Maybe this is old news, but I just discovered it today. I had been waiting for a Nero APE plugin for a long time. This makes my life a lot easier. FLAC and MPC folks are not left out either . Now you can just drag and drop these files directly into Nero. Just copy the DLLs to the audio plugin...

OK. Who got that silver D-303? Another off-ebay deal. These days it's not enough to just bid on an item. I guess you have to make the obligatory off-ebay offer as well. I hope that guy got at least 95 pounds for it because it probably would have sold for more than 100 pounds if he had waited.

How prone to skipping is the D-303 when walking around with it? I have found that the D-311 is very good in this respect, but I am wondering how sensitive the D-303 is to shocks.

After Duncan's recent post on ebay usernames for head-fiers, apparently as a result of our recent "bidding war", I thought it might be useful if we had some discussion about the ethics of bidding against other head-fiers. These are some of my thoughts on the subject. Who else are we going to...

I was listening to my TCD-D100 today with the intention of comparing it with my D-515. My D-515 was not being very cooperative though. So I swapped it out for my D-211 and tested that. Please note that these are merely initial impressions and that I do intend to do more comparisons between...

Does anyone have any interest in starting a lossless file trading group? Kazaa and Soulseek are ok for MP3s up to 320kbps, but not so good for FLAC or APE files. Maybe we could even get together a group from audio asylum as well. Since only audiophiles are likely to bother with lossless...

Is anyone interested in seeing some of the famous '92 players undressed?. I have been practicing taking apart my D-515 and putting it back together again just to kind of get used to it. It's all surface mount parts--even the ICs, one from Ricoh and one from Sony that I noticed. I think of it...

Does anyone know anything about the history here. It seems kind of unusual for Sony to release both a silver and a black version of the same player. The D-25 is the only other one that I know of. I was recently drooling over this http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...ry=19609&rd=1. I was going...

On the flap it says: "SONY" and then underneath "DiscmanESP" in letters about twice the size. On the other side it has a pocket that goes about halfway up and no lettering. Is this the original pleather case for the D-777? Can anyone identify this for me? Is there a picture of it anywhere?

I just paid $40 for a D-515 service manual. Things are changing at Sony. It used to be easier and less expensive to get manuals like this. The delivery time is 6-8 weeks. And it's not even guaranteed that I will get one. I saw one on the German or French (can't remember which) Ebay a while back...

Soon I am going to start getting my PCDPs repaired by an authorized Sony repair center. All of them are too old to qualify for the flat rate from Sony service centers. I have a D-311, D-211, and two D-321s in need of repair. Anyone else have experience with this? Any words of wisdom? My...

Looks like the stock cable on my 600s just died. The sound out of one side is much lower in volume than the other. Are the Cardas or Equinox really worth all that money? Do they come with 1/8 plugs? I listen almost exclusively with portables (D-311, D-515, D-211, D-777 etc) while walking around...

Did anyone else here have one of those Proton 100 FM stereo walkmen? IIRC, it had great sound. I used to listen to it all the time back around '83 or so. It's too bad I always break/lose my stuff. I just remembered it. Such nostalgia... I blame the person who posted that picture of the Solar...

I have been thinking about the idea of trying to replace the "3 second" ESP memory chip in my D-515 with the "10 second" one from my D-777, or maybe from one of the newer G-shock or ESP2 PCDPs. Does anyone have any idea of the feasibility of this idea? Is it possible? I don't yet even have a...

For Discmen, I now have a D-515 and a D-321 with 3 second uncompressed ESP as well as a D-311 and D-211 without ESP. I have a D-777 with 10 second ESP and a D-E905 with ESP2. Of these discmen, the only truly portable ones, at least for walking around, are the D-777 and D-E905 I also have the...

The spindle on the "NIB" D-311 I recently purchased slides on and off the little brass rotor pretty easily. Amazingly enough it still seems to play CDs without a problem, at least so far. I have never seen this before on a PCDP. I have to always remember to press on the spindle with my finger...

I have listened to this player for a few hours with both my Ety ER4S and my Senn HD600 directly from the headphone jack. The sound from the headphone jack of this player far exceeds any portable music player that I have ever heard. It beats my D-321, my D-777, and my TCD-D100 DAT walkman (at...

I am getting extremely annoyed with my Sony D-CJ01 MP3/CD player and its inability to fast forward while playing MP3 files. Will the Ipod and NJB3/Zen both allow me to do this? To anyone who owns both, is there any difference in how fast they fast forward? Sorry for the simple question...

Will this be a very big, very noticeable, improvement in sound quality?

I haven't seen many comparisons between these two. Anyone want to comment? It seems that the D-311 costs about twice as much as the D-303. Does it sound any better?