A tale of 2 DAPs, A828 (sound city) and S544 (lemon town) Sony Walkmans
Aug 26, 2010 at 12:55 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 1

paulypaul

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I recently bought an S544 and boy was i disappointed (as you can tell from the title).
Now i have been using my A828 for a year now and i really like the matchup with this DAP and my Hifiman IEMs.
So i decided to get an S544 as it was on special.
First thing i notice on switch on the screen starts flickering for about 10 seconds and then fine.
Almost everytime it came out of sleep, a little flicker, but when left overnight i would get the pleasure of a 20 sec flicker on switch on next morning.
Being patient i put some songs on and started listening.
SQ is reasonably good, but not as big a soundstage as my A828 and not as full in the mids as my A828 (one of the good things about the A828 is the ability to access the DAC settings in the service menu, so my adjustments may have contributed to fuller mids).
Back to the S544. Now i am listening to songs and every now and then i would here a quick short noise as if it was was a corrupted mp3.
No problems with these songs on the A828.
I am thinking did i get a lemon or what, but i have read that other people have had problems with the flickering screen.
So bye bye to the S544.
The other thing with the S544 is the controls are all flush to the body, unlike the A828 which has the controls pertruding up from the body.
The big advantage of this is you can  feel the controls when the DAP is in your shirt pocket, but with the S544 you have to look at the DAP everytime you want to change something.
One more thing the A828 is smaller, thinner and more solid than the S544.
I hope Sony pickup their act on the next model.
 
This is purely my experience. Maybe i got a lemon, so no hard feelings to those who are enjoying their S54- series.
 

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