[ElcomeSoft]

Apologies for the hijack but I have a comparison question.

I have a 1st gen Fiio X1 and tempted to grab a Sony A17 or A35.

For music I mix up some Amazon Tracks with FLAC ripped from CD.

I also use IEM's. RE-00, RE-400 and a pair of Monster Gratitude EW&F editions to keep my ears entertained.

Oddly enough the A15 is about £150 new, the A35 is about £180 new and I can't find the A17 new, it's about £180-200 2nd hand.

Out of the options, would you stick with an X1 or move onto one of the Sony's?

 

[Wiz33]

  Now that I think back (2 years ago) I did have several hundred tracks that were dumped into an Unknown Album folder in MediaGo when I first started using it.  It turned out to be a tagging issues with some of the tracks.  I was acquiring tracks from several different sources, some were improperly tagged (mostly spelling mistakes) or some were missing metadata.  I made all the corrections to the tag info inside MediaGo.  As I made the corrections MediaGo automatically sorted them back into the right location under Artist and then Album.  If you find you have issues in the future I would recommend correcting them using MediaGo.  That way if they are correct within MediaGo you should not have any problems when you add them to your A30.  
 
MediaGo is also great with batch editing tag info as you can select multiple tracks at the same time and change the common tag info all at once.  This was a godsend when I had to change the Genre for example for hundreds of tracks, I could do them all at once. 

 
Yep, MediaGo is nice, I can update the Album and artist info for the whole album in one go. Once I set the album name, MediaGo will start putting them together as a album Then just update the track info one at a time.

 

[Wiz33]

Don't know if anyone else tried. Had a 200GB MicroSD laying around so decided to give it a try. Did the format on the A35 and MediaGo is showing 183GB available. Going to transfer some files over and see. This is a nice surprise as I thought the upper limit was 128GB MicroSD unless they updated it with Firmware 1.10.

 

[fenrir35]

How it's sound comparing to f886? anyone knows?

 

[AUDIOBREEDER]

I have the f806 and compared to it, it is miles high.
Much better sound, longer battery, simple UI & expandable storage.

 

[gerelmx1986]

  Don't know if anyone else tried. Had a 200GB MicroSD laying around so decided to give it a try. Did the format on the A35 and MediaGo is showing 183GB available. Going to transfer some files over and see. This is a nice surprise as I thought the upper limit was 128GB MicroSD unless they updated it with Firmware 1.10.

my WM1A with FW 1.02 grabbed my 256GB sammy

 

[fenrir35]

but also f886 way better than f806 in sq wise. It's almost same zx1.

 

[strojo]

  Don't know if anyone else tried. Had a 200GB MicroSD laying around so decided to give it a try. Did the format on the A35 and MediaGo is showing 183GB available. Going to transfer some files over and see. This is a nice surprise as I thought the upper limit was 128GB MicroSD unless they updated it with Firmware 1.10.

 
I was running a 256gb Samsung Evo+ with firmware 1.0...still works with 1.1.

 

[fish1050]

  Don't know if anyone else tried. Had a 200GB MicroSD laying around so decided to give it a try. Did the format on the A35 and MediaGo is showing 183GB available. Going to transfer some files over and see. This is a nice surprise as I thought the upper limit was 128GB MicroSD unless they updated it with Firmware 1.10.

I think Sony was being cautious about official microsd card support.  That way if any issues occurred with 200 GB+ cards they could argue they were not officially supported.  Kind of like how Sony never officially supported LO through the WM port even though it has worked for years.  

 

[Wiz33]

Apologies for the hijack but I have a comparison question.

I have a 1st gen Fiio X1 and tempted to grab a Sony A17 or A35.

For music I mix up some Amazon Tracks with FLAC ripped from CD.

I also use IEM's. RE-00, RE-400 and a pair of Monster Gratitude EW&F editions to keep my ears entertained.

Oddly enough the A15 is about £150 new, the A35 is about £180 new and I can't find the A17 new, it's about £180-200 2nd hand.

Out of the options, would you stick with an X1 or move onto one of the Sony's?

 
I don't know if the A15 comes with earbuds but the A35 doesn't so that might account for the narrow price difference.
 
I don't have an X1, closest I got is a Q1 attached to my iPhone. I don't think there's that big a difference playing back itune files and 16 bit FLAC between the Q1 and the A35. Unless there are some reason you're not happy with your X1. I don't really see a point in upgrading. Getting a better pair of IEM like the XBA-N3 may give you more noticeable improvements. 

 

[Wiz33]

  I think Sony was being cautious about official microsd card support.  That way if any issues occurred with 200 GB+ cards they could argue they were not officially supported.  Kind of like how Sony never officially supported LO through the WM port even though it has worked for years.  

 
Yea, but it's still a pleasant surprise and so far tracks I put onto the MicroSD seems to work just fine. 

 

[Stereodude]

  Don't know if anyone else tried. Had a 200GB MicroSD laying around so decided to give it a try. Did the format on the A35 and MediaGo is showing 183GB available. Going to transfer some files over and see. This is a nice surprise as I thought the upper limit was 128GB MicroSD unless they updated it with Firmware 1.10.

 
The upper limit was not 128GB with the earlier firmware.  I posted about my experience using a "200GB" microsd with the 1.02 firmware earlier in the thread.
 
Edit: The V1.10 firmware seems to improve the responsiveness and sensitivity of the capacitive touch screen.  The GUI is also considerably smoother when scrolling through the album and artist lists now.

 

[WilcoRoger]

  Can I ask why you don't simply let MediaGo put the tracks on your A30 as Sony recommends?   I use MediaGo now for all my music transfers and I have no issues at all with playing any tracks, displaying album art or handling playlists.

 
I for one do not use it. On Mac it's like a piece of code someone's kid threw together in the mid-1990's.
 
More importantly it doesn't provide for me any tangible advantage over just copying in Finder my music to the "Music" library on the card/internal storage. My files are well tagged and when needed, I use well proven tagging software. This also has the advantage that the neither MediaGo nor iTunes mess up the files.
 
The A35 unit reads at least 3 layers of subfolders and displays them normally. E.g Artist -> Commercial release -> Album -> file and Artist -> Bootlegs -> Album -> file the Albums will show up under the Artist name, no matter if commercial or bootleg release.

 

[Wiz33]

   
I for one do not use it. On Mac it's like a piece of code someone's kid threw together in the mid-1990's.
 
More importantly it doesn't provide for me any tangible advantage over just copying in Finder my music to the "Music" library on the card/internal storage. My files are well tagged and when needed, I use well proven tagging software. This also has the advantage that the neither MediaGo nor iTunes mess up the files.
 
The A35 unit reads at least 3 layers of subfolders and displays them normally. E.g Artist -> Commercial release -> Album -> file and Artist -> Bootlegs -> Album -> file the Albums will show up under the Artist name, no matter if commercial or bootleg release.

 
Turns out my problem was corrupted meta data. Soon as I fixed those, they shows up fine in the A35. The MediaGo does have the advantage that allows you to change the same field on a bunch of tracks at the same time. Useful for updating the Album/artist info on all track at the same time.

 

[WilcoRoger]

Sorry, I confused MediaGo with Content Transfer. MediaGo is strictly Windows only, so it's really no use for me as I don't use Windows. The Sony sofware available for Mac is the ContentTransfer, that is really just a drag-and-drop interface. Nothing extra over drag and drop in Finder.