[stymie miasma]

Hi all,

My little Sony NW-S706F is just a little too small capacity-wise, so I'm looking to upgrade. 8Gb plus would be nice.

Being an aging curmudgeon, most of my music is purchased on CD and encoded to ATRAC in Sonicstage. What can I say, I like gapless, and in the majority of instances, Sony engineers a damn fine product (with the notable exception being sonicstage).

Anyways, I realise that Sony still supports ATRAC in Japan, but what I am not sure of is whether any of these Japanese units can be set up to display English?

Has anyone purchased one of the newer Sony DAPs from Japan and found that it supports English characters? If so, please do share your experiences.

TIA

 

[i_don't_know]

English is a pretty widely used language, not to mention Sony operates in the US as well as Japan, so I would be extremely surprised if it didn't recognize and display English characters. The problem is navigating to the option to make it do that.

 

[stymie miasma]

Haha - good point! I should have been more specific. English menus. Thanks for clarifying that for me

 

[vedye]

Sony players from Japan does have english menu AFA i can remember.

EDIT: sorry, just googled: no the japanese version only has japanese menu.

 

[Punslayer]

I'm stopping by an electronics store a bit later this evening, so I'll check one of the floor models. I've played around with some of the newer models before, but don't recall anything about the menu language. It's worth mentioning that I have a Japanese S706 and it only has english menus. Unfortunately the Japanese models are a lot more expensive.

 

[shigzeo]

they are anywhere from 2/3 to 1/2 again the price. my 828 does not have english menu at all

 

[dura]

See if you can find a A808, the A818-variety that needs Sonic Stage but can play ATRAC, 8GB.
It suits your needs it seems.

I use that DAP on a daily base for almost 2 years now and like it; long batterylife, compact, stylish and good sound. But having said that, 8 GB is not enough for me (~80 albums at 256 kbs) and I'll probably bite the bullit sometimes next year and go for a 32G+ player, and rerip my music, preferably in FLAC, or else in 320 Kbs MP3 or so.

 

[stymie miasma]

Thanks guys! I appreciate your thoughts.

Dura: I have seen the A808 on a few ebay sites, and it is the model that is consistently advertised as having English menus. Looks like it will be the one for me. Good to know you have had good success with it.

Any idea why ATRAC is still supported in Japan, but not elsewhere? I assume the only difference between Japanese (ATRAC+) and non-Japanese (ATRAC-) DAPS is the software/firmware.

 

[synaesthetic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stymie miasma /img/forum/go_quote.gif Any idea why ATRAC is still supported in Japan, but not elsewhere? I assume the only difference between Japanese (ATRAC+) and non-Japanese (ATRAC-) DAPS is the software/firmware.

There's a decoder chip in the JPN-market ATRAC hardware that's not present in the NA and EU market variants. It's more than just a firmware issue.

The reason ATRAC went out of vogue everywhere is pretty simple. MP3 was chosen as the industry standard; bucking the standard is a pretty quick way to wind up marginalized. ATRAC is just another MiniDisc, another BetaMax, another HD-DVD or SACD, a format doomed to never reach the mass market and benefit niche users only.

 

[penartur]

Quote:

ATRAC is just another MiniDisc, another BetaMax, another HD-DVD or SACD, a format doomed to never reach the mass market and benefit niche users only.

HD-DVD compared with Blu-ray does not have a single benefit to a end-user, as opposed to MiniDisc (no alternatives until ~2006), SACD or Atrac3+.

 

[shigzeo]

i was as stalwart an md supporter till 2005 and 06 when i finally gave up and bought a meizu m6 and later a cowon d2. we md users have been lied to for so long by sony that it is hard to go to another format. we believe everything so inferior when in fact, we have been listening to a format that has virtually had no upgrades in years unlike mp3, aac, ogg and other high quality encoders.

that said, when i moved to meizu and cowon, i was shocked by one thing: lack of gapless. i immediately thought that the population here at headfi that would sometimes violently support a player with no gapless and such poor stage and bass performance must be mad. i think that still true

so i bought an ipod touch and for the most part, my problems have been aleviated.

 

[synaesthetic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by penartur /img/forum/go_quote.gif HD-DVD compared with Blu-ray does not have a single benefit to a end-user, as opposed to MiniDisc (no alternatives until ~2006), SACD or Atrac3+.

Benefit doesn't matter. BetaMax was and still is superior in just about every way to VHS (broadcast news used them for years), but VHS still won the format wars in the 80s. Even though it's a worse format.

Blu-ray won a rigged format war, and for most people, it is losing the real format war against DVD. There's just nowhere near enough benefit for the average person who doesn't have a multi-thousand dollar HT setup.

Sony created the MD to replace the compact cassette, but failed to market them aggressively in that direction; so they were rolled over by first CD burners becoming affordable, and secondly fixed-storage MP3 players.

MD would have done a hell of a lot better had Sony aggressively marketed it to tapers and amateur recording enthusiasts as opposed to trying to make them compete in the consumer portable-audio arena.

Furthermore, ATRAC's draconian, ham-fisted DRM scheme seriously hampered the use of MD by tapers, so they generally went with DAT and more recently with solid-state or HDD recorders. Some folks liked MD enough to cope with the inane restrictions, but not many.

ATRAC's death knell was sung by its own copy protection scheme.

 

[stymie miasma]

Quote:

Originally Posted by synaesthetic /img/forum/go_quote.gif There's a decoder chip in the JPN-market ATRAC hardware that's not present in the NA and EU market variants. It's more than just a firmware issue. The reason ATRAC went out of vogue everywhere is pretty simple. MP3 was chosen as the industry standard; bucking the standard is a pretty quick way to wind up marginalized. ATRAC is just another MiniDisc, another BetaMax, another HD-DVD or SACD, a format doomed to never reach the mass market and benefit niche users only.

Good to know synaesthetic, many thanks! If only it was as simple as a firmware issue.

 

[stymie miasma]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shigzeo /img/forum/go_quote.gif i was as stalwart an md supporter till 2005 and 06 when i finally gave up and bought a meizu m6 and later a cowon d2. we md users have been lied to for so long by sony that it is hard to go to another format. we believe everything so inferior when in fact, we have been listening to a format that has virtually had no upgrades in years unlike mp3, aac, ogg and other high quality encoders. that said, when i moved to meizu and cowon, i was shocked by one thing: lack of gapless. i immediately thought that the population here at headfi that would sometimes violently support a player with no gapless and such poor stage and bass performance must be mad. i think that still true so i bought an ipod touch and for the most part, my problems have been aleviated.

Yep, gapless is pretty important to me, and with ATRAC, it is so easy. Aside from a marketing and legal stand point, I think Sony got it right from the get-go. Too bad really....

Anyways, how does gapless compare on the iTouch - how are you encoding etc? I actually quite like iTunes (esp compared with Sonic Stage).

 

[walkingman]

MDs were pretty huge in Asia and Europe. Dead now obviously, but I wouldn't describe them as a complete failure. For a 5-6 years everyone I knew wanted a portable MD player.

Even today I can still find blank MDs in my local Tesco and Sainsbury's. I recently gave away about 200 blank MDs and there weren't any shortages in people wanting them.