widds2v
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2004
- Posts
- 225
- Likes
- 10
Picked one of these up last weekend & figure I'd share some of my opinions & information about the player since I havn't seen very many posts about hands on here. Forwarning now, no pictures, atm at least, camera isn't available.
Colors available were obviously black, red, & silver. I picked up the silver one (since the black was out of stock). Really don't care for the red color one since the navigation keys were silver & the combination of the two looked really ugly. First thing you should know is, this player looks a ton better in real life versus the pictures on the internet. I know a lot of people don't like the new look compared to the older HD1/3 players, but it really does look good. Player feels very well built with the magnesium (i assume? sony uses it for like everything) casing. Buttons don't shake around in their housings, they're very well set and respond to pressure very nice. The removeable battery compartment was a chore to figure out how to get open (had the player freeze on me once, & removing the battery worked to fix it). There's a small "reset button" like hole on the battery slide-cover that you have to depress before the battery cover comes off. Doing so exposes the 880mh battery (hopefully some start showing up on ebay or something so you can carry around more batteries). Really suprised about the battery life from a battery that small. Only gripe I have about build is the USB/power cover. Unlike the rest of the player it is chrome painted plastic, attatched to the player via a small strip of plastic that slides it in and out.... something that could possibly break if you're not careful with the player.
Onto the features of the player. Takes about 7-8 seconds to start up, slower than some players, faster than some... but it is quite a bit of time. The Menu screen offers 4 selections, Find, Options, Edit Bookmark, & Playback screen. Playback screen is pretty straight forward, takes you to the "now playing" screen which gives you a decent amount of information including Title, Artist, Album, encoding type, bitrate (is not realtime, so VBR tracks just give the average bitrate), track number (ie, 001/015), battery indicator, current playtime, & any sound EQ you have enabled. Backlight is very bright & lights up the screen very evenly. Havnt played with Edit Bookmark much, wasn't real easy to figure out, & manual is in japanese so that doesn't help. Options is obviously options, and they are quite a few. Options menu includes Repeat (on/off), Play Mode (normal, one song, shuffle tracks, shuffle items), Unit (on/off... no clue what this is), Sound (off, VPT Acoustic Engine (studio, live, club, arena), 6-Band Equalizer (heavy, pop, jazz, unique, & 2 customs to set your own EQ), Digital Sound Presets (custom 3/4... allow you to set the bass and treble on scales of upto +3 & -4), AVLS (on/off), Beep (on/off), Audio Output (headphone, line out), Backlight (10/30sec, always off), Contrast, Invert Screen (negative (black background), positive (white background)), Orient Screen (Vertical, Auto (isnt working for me, screen always stays vertical, supposed to change as you move player), Right, Left), Language (displays 6 different languages), & Initialize Player. As you can see, quite a few options. Notice the Audio Output option. Not sure if Line Out requires a remote (it has the port for it right next to the headphone), or if selecting Line Out just bypasses the internal headphone amp & gives you straight line-out from the headphone jack.
Next up you have the Find, which is the song menu, takes a good 5 seconds to load from the options screen or playback screen. In there you can browse by Artist, Album, Track, Genre, New Tracks, Initials Search, & Playlist. You simply use the right arrow key once you highlight whatever option to go onto the next screen (IE, right arrow on Artist gives you a list of artists, right arrow on artists gives you album names, then song names). Not as quick to browse songs as the iPod obviously with a click-wheel, but it is efficient enough especially if you're coming from anyother player.
Sound quality is pretty good. It isn't as powerful on low frequencies as the iRivers are, and doesn't have the highs that an iPod has, but it is pretty well rounded, kinda of a "flat" player, which is good if you're looking to use an amp with it. With my Shure E5s, bass is acceptable with no EQ, and messing around with the custom 6-band I can get it sounding pretty good. Not really a pro-audiophile so I won't even try pretending to tell you how it handles resolution & stuff like that.
Overall I like the player. I think it was a smart move on Sonys part to include native MP3 playback in all of their new players. Got my HD5 for about 32,000 yen (just at $300US). I've owned an iPod, and really the only advantage I see to it anymore is iTunes, which is a killer management tool. SonicStage is getting there, but still uses up too much resources (fancy navigation menus are cool & all until it starts affecting how long it takes to go from my library to transfer music... as well as selecting what song I want to play). SonicStage does auto update your player though with your song-list like iTunes does (maybe thats common knowledge, I didnt know that ><). That's about it, try to answer anyother questions but other than in-depth audio quality review (which I cant do) & pictures feel this is pretty thorough.
Colors available were obviously black, red, & silver. I picked up the silver one (since the black was out of stock). Really don't care for the red color one since the navigation keys were silver & the combination of the two looked really ugly. First thing you should know is, this player looks a ton better in real life versus the pictures on the internet. I know a lot of people don't like the new look compared to the older HD1/3 players, but it really does look good. Player feels very well built with the magnesium (i assume? sony uses it for like everything) casing. Buttons don't shake around in their housings, they're very well set and respond to pressure very nice. The removeable battery compartment was a chore to figure out how to get open (had the player freeze on me once, & removing the battery worked to fix it). There's a small "reset button" like hole on the battery slide-cover that you have to depress before the battery cover comes off. Doing so exposes the 880mh battery (hopefully some start showing up on ebay or something so you can carry around more batteries). Really suprised about the battery life from a battery that small. Only gripe I have about build is the USB/power cover. Unlike the rest of the player it is chrome painted plastic, attatched to the player via a small strip of plastic that slides it in and out.... something that could possibly break if you're not careful with the player.
Onto the features of the player. Takes about 7-8 seconds to start up, slower than some players, faster than some... but it is quite a bit of time. The Menu screen offers 4 selections, Find, Options, Edit Bookmark, & Playback screen. Playback screen is pretty straight forward, takes you to the "now playing" screen which gives you a decent amount of information including Title, Artist, Album, encoding type, bitrate (is not realtime, so VBR tracks just give the average bitrate), track number (ie, 001/015), battery indicator, current playtime, & any sound EQ you have enabled. Backlight is very bright & lights up the screen very evenly. Havnt played with Edit Bookmark much, wasn't real easy to figure out, & manual is in japanese so that doesn't help. Options is obviously options, and they are quite a few. Options menu includes Repeat (on/off), Play Mode (normal, one song, shuffle tracks, shuffle items), Unit (on/off... no clue what this is), Sound (off, VPT Acoustic Engine (studio, live, club, arena), 6-Band Equalizer (heavy, pop, jazz, unique, & 2 customs to set your own EQ), Digital Sound Presets (custom 3/4... allow you to set the bass and treble on scales of upto +3 & -4), AVLS (on/off), Beep (on/off), Audio Output (headphone, line out), Backlight (10/30sec, always off), Contrast, Invert Screen (negative (black background), positive (white background)), Orient Screen (Vertical, Auto (isnt working for me, screen always stays vertical, supposed to change as you move player), Right, Left), Language (displays 6 different languages), & Initialize Player. As you can see, quite a few options. Notice the Audio Output option. Not sure if Line Out requires a remote (it has the port for it right next to the headphone), or if selecting Line Out just bypasses the internal headphone amp & gives you straight line-out from the headphone jack.
Next up you have the Find, which is the song menu, takes a good 5 seconds to load from the options screen or playback screen. In there you can browse by Artist, Album, Track, Genre, New Tracks, Initials Search, & Playlist. You simply use the right arrow key once you highlight whatever option to go onto the next screen (IE, right arrow on Artist gives you a list of artists, right arrow on artists gives you album names, then song names). Not as quick to browse songs as the iPod obviously with a click-wheel, but it is efficient enough especially if you're coming from anyother player.
Sound quality is pretty good. It isn't as powerful on low frequencies as the iRivers are, and doesn't have the highs that an iPod has, but it is pretty well rounded, kinda of a "flat" player, which is good if you're looking to use an amp with it. With my Shure E5s, bass is acceptable with no EQ, and messing around with the custom 6-band I can get it sounding pretty good. Not really a pro-audiophile so I won't even try pretending to tell you how it handles resolution & stuff like that.
Overall I like the player. I think it was a smart move on Sonys part to include native MP3 playback in all of their new players. Got my HD5 for about 32,000 yen (just at $300US). I've owned an iPod, and really the only advantage I see to it anymore is iTunes, which is a killer management tool. SonicStage is getting there, but still uses up too much resources (fancy navigation menus are cool & all until it starts affecting how long it takes to go from my library to transfer music... as well as selecting what song I want to play). SonicStage does auto update your player though with your song-list like iTunes does (maybe thats common knowledge, I didnt know that ><). That's about it, try to answer anyother questions but other than in-depth audio quality review (which I cant do) & pictures feel this is pretty thorough.
