[suba3333]

I read a lot about how nice the sony A8XX series players are and am considering one of those as my next purchase. I know that they use the drag and drop file system....not quite sure how that would work with my iTunes library which is rather big and which I like to rotate on my mp3 player.

-I currently have an iPod nano 2G. Although it has only 8GB I use smart playlists in order to automatically update its contents from my 30GB iTunes library (on Apple Mac).

-I also use the Sleep (countdown timer) function almost every night to fall asleep to some chilled music.

So, perhaps someone can confirm if a Sony player can accommodate me on these two requirements?

Thanks.

 

[synaesthetic]

1) You can sync the A810/720/820 players with Windows Media Player 11 and programs like MediaMonkey.

2) My A728 doesn't have a sleep timer.

 

[suba3333]

I just checked and MediaMonkey is not Apple Mac compatible and my guess is that WMP isn't either.

 

[pata2001]

Quote:

Originally Posted by suba3333 /img/forum/go_quote.gif -I currently have an iPod nano 2G. Although it has only 8GB I use smart playlists in order to automatically update its contents from my 30GB iTunes library (on Apple Mac). -I also use the Sleep (countdown timer) function almost every night to fall asleep to some chilled music. So, perhaps someone can confirm if a Sony player can accommodate me on these two requirements? Thanks.

Short answer, no.

Long answer: you can copy songs/playlist from iTunes to the Sony by simply drag-n-dropping from iTunes to Finder, but no syncing support. If you have an auto-rotating smart playlist, you have to rotate it manually by using some scripts since the Sony doesn't support syncing with iTunes. I'm sure there's an iTunes plugin that allow iTunes to transfer songs to mass storage devices directly instead of manually doing it via Finder, but the last played and play count tags are not supported by non-iPods DAPs. In short, not as plug-n-play solution as iPods.

If you're interested, check my blog post: http://pika2000sblog.blogspot.com/20...es-in-mac.html

 

[suba3333]

pata2001, thanks for the info and the link.
I guess for now I stay with the iPod/iTunes combo as automatic syncing/updating is soooo convenient. The Sony doesn't have a sleep timer either.