[bcarr112281]

I don't know about others here, but a third-party app would be crucial for me, as the Sony app doesn't offer gapless playback, nor does it appear to recognize CUE files.*

*Perhaps some kind soul here would be good enough to test CUE functionality with formats like WAV and MP3? (Reportedly, it's hopeless with FLAC.)

 

[abitdeef]

I've got EQ engaged on all of them when I compare. I just get a more artificial/boosted sound with my other 2 players. I'll try poweramp though. I love the fact that you can just tap the song tidal on Walkman app and find all the albums for the artist. Plus I like the gesture actions.

Haven't enabled gesture control for Android yet.

 

[burialcloud]

I've got EQ engaged on all of them when I compare. I just get a more artificial/boosted sound with my other 2 players. I'll try poweramp though. I love the fact that you can just tap the song tidal on Walkman app and find all the albums for the artist. Plus I like the gesture actions.

Haven't enabled gesture control for Android yet.

You may like poweramp then. Gestures work great on it.
I love the eq too. I use both the peq and the standard “tone” to do a little bass bump.

 

[abitdeef]

You may like poweramp then. Gestures work great on it.
I love the eq too. I use both the peq and the standard “tone” to do a little bass bump.

Hiby is OK, but it's not as intuitive to me, good with a dongle though. Neutron is almost too much at times. I'm assuming poweramp has a trial. Nice to have have choices.

 

[Jrod33084]

Yea I meant to respond to him.
I tried neutron and uapp and hated the user interface and overall look.

I couldn’t hear any distinguishable difference between poweramp and Fiio and Ibasso native players. And I tried. Used unique melody mest mkii and my Yanyin moonlights which are both pretty revealing.

Haven’t direct compared poweramp to Sony.

Battery life for me was pretty much the same with poweramp on the Fiio and Ibasso. It might use a tiny more. But it seemed negligible enough not to matter.

The user interface is so much better im willing to sacrifice a tiny bit of battery life. Especially since I took so many other steps to reduce any extra battery drain elsewhere.

Excellent! Thanks for that explanation. I also tried all 3.. Poweramp, neutron, and UAPP and completely agree with you. I enjoy the user interface much more with Poweramp. It’s smooth and fairly quick. Neutron gave me some lag here n there and the UI is a bit congested and confusing. UAPP was decent but gave me trouble with sorting all my files easily enough to find what I wanted. The UI was ok. Poweramp seems like the go to for now along with the Walkman player. I enjoy Poweramps UI, it looks awesome with the Album art and colors and it sorts files easily. I myself cannot tell a difference between the Poweramp and walkman player but also curious if others have better ears than me.

 

[berzerk428]

The unit I ordered from Japan showed up yesterday. Spent quite a bit of time getting it setup and overall I'm very happy with the device. Having said that, I am running into a couple issues, maybe others can help me out.

First, the Walkman app is not displaying my cover.jpg files. I'm assuming the album art needs to be embedded into the audio files for the Walkman app to display it? Just want to be sure before I go through the effort of embedding the covers in all my files.

Second, does anyone use BlackPlayer and have you had issues with it taking considerably longer to load the SD card folder view than other apps? The Walkman app shows the folder structure instantly where BlackPlayer will take 30+ seconds. Otherwise I've really liked BlackPlayer.

Lastly, if anyone has any recommendations for Android music apps to try out that would be great. This is the first Android device I've had where I want to listen to local files so I have no experience with music apps other than Youtube Music.

may I ask what makes you wana switch from BlackPlayer to a different Android Music App on the A306, is it just the long loading time or are there other factors?
Reason I'm asking is that I have been a long time fan of BlackPlayer on my Z Fold 3 -> Qudelix -> 64Audio Nio.

I am very interested in the NW-A306 because of the small size, weight and expansion card slot, but music player interfaces and customizability play a huge role for me, so being able to use BlackPlayer on the A306 without loosing too much of the audio quality/intended sound signature (the Sony stock app is obviously tuned for the DAP, makes total sense) would actually make it a must buy. But if I would end up having to use the Sony stock app because it just sounds that much better, I might not be willing to spend that kind of money, seeing how I am already very pleased with how the Qudelix drives my Nio..

 

[abitdeef]

I just looked at black player but it says I can't use it on my version of android. Was just curious, I've never heard of it.

 

[Benesyed]

I love the Hiby music app never thought about getting it on my Sony...

 

[burialcloud]

@abitdeef yep they have a trial. I definitely recommend spending a little customizing the ui. You can really get what you want out of it.
I paid like .99 for the “luminous black” skin and I love it. Bit sleeker than the stock skin. Especially the transparent background option. Can’t use that on the Sony though as it freaks out. Hopefully a future update will fix it and I can use the transparent skin mode with the a306. For now on the Sony I use the album art blur. Here’s my Lg v60 with transparent and the Sony with album art blur.

For eq I turn dvc off then just set the overall preamp gain at -6db to make sure my peq adjustments don’t cause any issues. Works great.

Make sure you go in and setup the high res audio output. Let me know what ya think.

 

[perky2]

I don't know about others here, but a third-party app would be crucial for me, as the Sony app doesn't offer gapless playback, nor does it appear to recognize CUE files.*

*Perhaps some kind soul here would be good enough to test CUE functionality with formats like WAV and MP3? (Reportedly, it's hopeless with FLAC.)

Is it true the Sony app isn't gapless?

 

[andrewski]

Is it true the Sony app isn't gapless?

No, thank goodness

 

[FreeTime]

Just realise I can charge A306 battery in power off mode. Couldn't be done in M2 walkman, it will auto power/start up when charged.

 

[Benesyed]

b

Just realise I can charge A306 battery in power off mode. Couldn't be done in M2 walkman, it will auto power/start up when charged.

I think that depends on if battery saver is on.

 

[crvyxn]

may I ask what makes you wana switch from BlackPlayer to a different Android Music App on the A306, is it just the long loading time or are there other factors?
Reason I'm asking is that I have been a long time fan of BlackPlayer on my Z Fold 3 -> Qudelix -> 64Audio Nio.

Yeah it's mainly that the folder browser part of the interface just isn't great for me. It takes a long time to load, and to navigate up a directory I have to tap on tiny little text containing the folder address (navigating "back" in this screen closes the app). I'm also in the honeymoon phase with my device so I'm tweaking my library a lot and BlackPlayer takes a lot longer than other apps to scan. If you're already familiar with the app I think you will enjoy using it on the A306.

--

BTW, thanks for all the app recommendations! I downloaded a couple to try and immediately connected with Poweramp. It has an intuitive UI and scanned my library extremely fast. Only thing I needed to change was making it use system fonts because I really didn't care for its default font. I do want to test some of the others mentioned but I've been trying to actually listen to music rather than constantly tinkering lol.

My biggest bit of advice for making all apps easier to use is to set 'Display Size' in the Android settings to 'Small,' because otherwise you can't even read the full track/artist information in most music apps. I also think enabling gesture navigation is essential, it has made navigating the device more modern and also frees up more display space.

 

[bcarr112281]

No, thank goodness

Eh?? Really??? I'd love it if it were so! Recent Sony offerings (e.g. the A105) couldn't manage gapless via Sony's default app.

True gapless playback has become rare in recent years. Even some new CD players no longer recognize gapless playback, despite the fact that such functionality has long been part of the CD's specifications.