[NLNH]

  So yours doesn't do that?

lol you shouldn't even try.... most machine soldered joints are rather easily broken that way... if you got the screw drivers you can resolder the patch nicely or hook it to another spot but don't really do it with any electronic devices, or you may potentially break something. Audio jacks are ''movable'' (not mounted onto the boardd sometimes) and it may do harm to the soldering joints

 

[just-a-test]

3. I don't know if anyone wants to experiment with this but I think it's relatively safe as long as you aren't too aggressive...  
One the male end of your cable is inserted into the jack of the Alien, hold the hand of the male end and tip the section of it that is closest to the female end towards the "back" of the DAC. You will notice that you lose signal to your left earphone. I almost ended up returning my cables because I thought it was the reason for this, but it's actually the Alien. I came across this issue when simply placing the DAC on a table while it is turned on and listening to music. A slight nuisance, especially for those using a straight end instead of a right angled end

As NLNH already said, don't do that too often,the same also applies for the microUSB port. On my Galaxy Nexus I had the same issue, first the soldering joint of the usb connect got loose and afterwards also the headphone out. Props to Samsungs engineering department, all connections broke loose within 2 weeks after the warranty ended.

 

[NLNH]

  As NLNH already said, don't do that too often,the same also applies for the microUSB port. On my Galaxy Nexus I had the same issue, first the soldering joint of the usb connect got loose and afterwards also the headphone out. Props to Samsungs engineering department, all connections broke loose within 2 weeks after the warranty ended.

THAT'S EXACTLY WHY THEY HAVE GOOD SELLING FIGURES HAHA
 
but seriously don't do it... it is just like bending the very end of your cables lol

 

[H20Fidelity]

(This isn't inside the Shozy Alien.)

Basically, what you're doing is bending the soldering joints which contact to the board, many people just assume you stick your jack into a player and its held there like reinforced magic, but inside its actually a light part with tabs directly soldered onto the board that can easily snap off. If that happens you're in for a return or soldering job.

Knowing what's inside I treat all my jacks very gently, I especially hate seeing 6.3 to 3.5 jack adapters hanging out of players because they put so much stress and leverage on female jack and solder tabs.



There's also a slight chance you're simply moving the terminals that touch the male end (inside the female jack), either way like everyone said you're playing with fire for sure.

 

[NLNH]

 
It is actually quite rigid inside... and all other sockets are of great quality,
just make sure you don't bend it intendly lol

 

[H20Fidelity]

Oh oh! Show us more, move the camera up a little bit.

 Btw, the screws on the back of Alien to gain access are absolutely tiny!

Shozy must of acquired them from an old miniature watch maker. 

 

[NLNH]

  Oh oh! Show us more, move the camera up a little bit.

 Btw, the screws on the back of Alien to gain access are absolutely tiny!

Shozy must of acquired them from an old miniature watch maker. 

You said that after I closed the lid and screwed-on that bunch of screws

 
open it yourself haha, that is indeed some high quality screws alike iphone screws.
You will discover something fun if you open it up lol

 

[H20Fidelity]

 
You said that after I closed the lid and screwed-on that bunch of screws

 
open it yourself haha, that is indeed some high quality screws alike iphone screws.
You will discover something fun if you open it up lol

No thanks, I'm not opening it, I've basically destroyed another DAP only an hour or two ago this evening from 'opening it'

Lets not even go there....
 

 

[goodvibes]

  So yours doesn't do that?

If it's an iffy solder joint, it will only oxidize and get worse over time. Try a different phone/cable to make sure and obviously don't use excessive pressure. If no better, get it exchanged. These seem really well made but I haven't yet found a device with a perfect build record.

 

[drkp80]

 
 
Have you ever wanted your Shozy to be able to act as a 'shuffle all' type player? Well now you can and here's how;
 
1) Using your favorite desktop pc music playing program (foobar, winamp etc) create a playlist with all the songs you'd like on your Alien Shozy (be sure that these are of course FLAC or WAV only). Now save that playlist somewhere easy (like desktop)
 
2) Download and install Amok Playlist Copy
 
3) Drag n drop the m3u playlist file into Amok Playlist Copy
 
4) Click Copy/Save and select 'Advanced Copy'
 
5) Select the Mircosd card (that is intended for the Shozy) as your Target Folder
 
6) Click Ok
 
7) Once completed, you should now have all the tracks on yer microsdcard that existed on the playlist, be sure to delete the 'playlist.m3u' file left behind as we won't be needing that.
 
8) Now download and install Python
 
9) Go here and grab my randomiser.py file that my tech savy friend created, it's going to do the shuffling
 
10) Now... drag and drop the folder that you want shuffled onto the 'randomiser.py' file, you will notice it shuffles all the files randomly and has now added 0001 0002 0003 etc etc to the beginning of each file
 
11) Even better is you can keep dragging and dropping the file multiple times and it will continue to randomize each time!
 
That's it basically.

I don't own a Alien Shozy, but I'm very close to pulling the trigger and grabbing one, but I'm very forward thinking about how I might adapt a screenless non shuffling non resume type player to my needs.
Yes it's nice to be 'forced' to listen to albums all the way through etc, but to be honest how I use my DAPs most of the time is to make a playlist (sometimes OTG if the DAP supports it, otherwise on PC) and shuffle it. I do this from day to day depending upon what mood I'm in each day etc.
This process outlined above basically should do what I want. One folder, all the files in it, shuffled randomly and then hit play. Once finished with the DAP I'm aware you can't resume where you left off (or can you?), so that's where the drag and drop the folder a second time onto the randomiser.py file comes in, you can keep shuffling to yer hearts content.

I can't see how any of this won't work, I tested Amok with FLAC and it worked, I just haven't tested with WAV files yet, but the script is set to do it with WAVs too (it just might be Amok that can't copy the WAV files... I dunno).

I'm thinking about placing my hands on a really fast microsd card as well and see just how fast Amok can copy files onto the card (the randomiser should be fairly quick).

Lemme know if anyone has a go and what yer results are.

Cheers,
 
Bruce

 
It works great! Thank you for this!

 

[BruceBanner]

   
It works great! Thank you for this!

 
You're welcome. In theory you can now have a 128gb card inside a Shozy with 1 folder and all your songs, shuffled anytime you like. Pretty cool as I kinda do this with my i9+ that's capped at 32gb (but I imagine a similar volume of actual songs seeing as FLAC and WAV are a lot larger file sizes than MP3's).
 
So now perhaps someone else can help me out. I don't really have any FLAC or Wav albums, but I do of course have lots of 320kbps MP3's, and whilst I intend to get albums lossy in future I'm wondering what the best conversion tool I can use to convert my 320kbps MP3 albums to FLAC (with least degradation).

I have foobar, and I think it can do this..

But if there are clear instructions as to how to do it, or another third party program I'd like to know about it.

Cheers,

Bruce

 

[H20Fidelity]

Couple of shots I grabbed of Alien today.
.

 

[BruceBanner]

I might have to put little rubber feet on mine hehehe

 

[H20Fidelity]

I might have to put little rubber feet on mine hehehe

Not a bad idea, I think office works sell them. Did you end up deciding on a colour?

 

[BruceBanner]

Nah not yet... gonna have to do some kind of flip the coin!