[DigDub]

I have been using this unit for the past 2 weeks plus and after exploring it enough, I feel it is time to do an extensive and hopefully more factual review of the Sony HD3 Network Walkman.

Packaging
The HD3 come in a plain looking box. The color of the unit printed on the box (silver model) does not indicate the color of the unit inside. To be sure, make sure you check the color of the actual unit when you get it.

The unit and the accesories are packed inside a black cardboard box. The HD 3 itself is packed inside a blister pack in the middle of the black box.

The accessories include a power adapter (not shown here), usb/power dock, usb cable, pouch, SonicStage 2.3 CD, quick start guide and a pair of earbuds (model unknown). The manual is stored on the SonicStage CD.

The Unit
The unit is solid and the casing is made out of aluminium, with hard plastic at the top and bottom. The HD3 is smaller than a pack of poker cards. There is a switch to turn off the built-in battery, presumably to turn off the 'sleep mode' other players uses (ipod, creative) that drains battery life.

It compares favorably with the 5GB Muvo2 FM and the Sharp DR7 MiniDisc recorder.

The small size of the HD3 makes the the Porta Pro look big.

The HD3 with the dock on (Do not lose it!). The dock has a USB jack and a socket for the power adapter. The unit is able to charge from the power adapter (3 hours for full charge) and USB (5 hours for full charge). There is a quick charge function that will charge the unit to 80% after 1 hour of charging using the power adapter.

At the top of the unit, there is the headphone jack, the Menu button, the Mode button and the volume control. If you are using a headphone with straight plugs, it might be worthwhile to get a right-angle adapter as a straight plug will stick out like a sore thumb if you put the HD3 in your pocket.

The battery life is very good. I have not run it down yet, but I'd reckon it can last anywhere between 18-20 hours with normal usage.


Formats Supported
The Sony HD3 Network Walkman is the first hard disk player by Sony to support MP3 natively. The HD3 also supports Sony's proprietary ATRAC3plus format. Other formats such as WAV and WMA will be converted to ATRAC3plus by SonicStage when transferring them to the player.


Display
The HD3 has a monochrome display window. The contrast can be adjusted if you find the wordings too light. The font of the wordings are somewhat quite thin and might be hard to read at times. It can be reversed for easier reading. The information that is shown on the Now Playing screen are the song title, album name, artist, genre, format, track number, bitrate information (vbr mp3 bitrate is displayed correctly), progress bar of track, play time of track, play modes and battery life.

There is a blue backlight on the HD3. The backlight timing can be adjusted to stay on for Auto, 10 secs or 30 secs. It can also be turned off.

Interface
1) The player start up time is very fast (approx. 3 secs) and skipping of tracks is also fast. After transferring of songs, the player is also very fast in rebuilding the database (approx. 5 secs). It is in everyway faster than the Iriver-IHP100 (slow startup) and the Creative Muvo2 FM (long time to rebuild database) that I have. Holding down the Menu button will turn the HD3 off.

2) Navigation of the HD3 is done through the 4 way direction pad and the Play button in the center of the pad. The Play button also acts as a select button when in the Menu or Mode screens.

The Menu button will bring you to the options that can be set. The options that can be set include Repeat, Play Mode (Normal, 1 Track, Play Unit, Track Shuffle and Unit Shuffle). Read the meaning of a Play Unit in the manual to understand how it works. Its quite abstract, but once you understand how it works, the concept of Play Unit is actually quite good and powerful.

The Mode button will cycle you through the list of listening modes available. They are Artist, Album, Genre, Group and Others. Holding down the Mode button will bring you back to the Now Playing screen.

3) On-the-fly playlisting is 'kinda' possible. But you can create only one 'playlist' and it is kinda tedious to create it. Creating a 'playlist' is done through Bookmarks. To create a list of songs to be played, play the song you want to add into the playlist and hold onto the up or down direction on the direction pad and it will be bookmarked. After you are done with all the bookmarkings, press the Mode button repeatedly till you come to the Others screen. Scroll to Bookmark and your 'playlist' is inside it. Press play and your OTF playlist will play (which is actually a list of bookmarked songs). A maximum of 100 songs can be bookmarked. To remove the song from the list, play the song and hold the up or down button until the bookmark is removed. The song is now removed from the 'playlist'.

4) If you are in the Now Playing screen, and you press the Mode button, it will start from the top of the list of the type of Play Unit that was last selected. For example, if you were in Album mode, it will start from the top of the albums list. HOWEVER, if you press the up or down button in the Now Playing screen, you will be brought to the current song that is playing in the Play Unit. If you press the Rewind button, you will be brought back to the upper level of the Play Unit. For example, if you are playing a song and you press the up or down button, it will bring you to the song that is currently playing. By pressing the Rewind button, you will be brought to the album (or whatever Play Unit was chosen) and you can scroll from there.

5) If you have a large library, scrolling with the direction pad will be tedious and time consuming. The wheel of the Ipod will fare better. If Sony had built a small scroll wheel into the HD3 like they have for some of their MD units, up/down navigaton would have been faster.


SonicStage 3
The copy of SonicStage 2.3 that came with the CD could not be installed on my computer. I had to download version 3.0 (http://www.connect.com/SonicStageDownload). It is not a full installer. The installer will download the files from Sony's website and set up SoniceStage online. This process can be quite lengthy. I took about 20-30 minutes for an ADSL connection.

SonicStage handles the conversion of non-MP3 and non-ATRAC3plus song formats (WMA and WAV) to the HD3 by converting them to ATRAC3plus. For MP3 songs, it is DRMed. if you go to Windows Explorer, you won't find any files with mp3 extensions. All song files are contained in the OMGAUDIO folder. Only songs transferred by SonicStage will play on the HD3. I have heard the VIAO Music Transfer software will work too, but I've not tried it yet.

The HD3 also acts as a portable hard disk. It is plug and play in Windows XP. Do note that mp3 that are directly copied into the player without going through SonicStage will only be recognised as data files and are not playable on the HD3. Transfer of songs to the player using SS is lightning fast. Copying of files via Windows Explorer is also very fast.

SonicStage will playback ATRAC3plus files directly from the player, but will not playback mp3 files. Sony up to their small tricks again.

If you have transferred music on your PC and wants to transfer them out to another PC, or use another PC to transfer songs into the player, it is not possible unless you register your player with the Connect.com website. The only thing you can do is delete songs from the player if your player is not registered.

I mainly use SonicStage 3.0 to transfer music, and not manage them. SonicStage 3 is quite stable and has not crashed on me so far. It has so far satisfied my needs. But I think Itunes will be a better music management software if you want to micro-manage your music.


Sound Quality
As noticed by some people, there is a faint background noise if the player is playing. It is only noticeable with some very sensitive/efficient headphones. I hear the noise on my Shure E2C and Panasonic HJE50. On the Sharp MD33, Porta Pro, Sony EX51/81 and Ety ER6i, I did not hear the noise.

Sony also had some little tricks with their equaliser to favor their ATRAC3plus format (edit: someone pointed out that the other 2 EQ settings, VR-SUR and 6 Band EQ, had problems with MP3 and Sony did not have enough time to iron out those problems as they rushed to push the HD3 out onto the market.). For MP3 tracks, only the Digital Sound Preset settings will have an effect on the sound. It basically allows for the adjustment of bass and treble only. With ATRAC3plus tracks, the other 2 options, V-SUR and Sound EQ, will also have an effect on the sound. VR-SUR is some sort of virtual arena sound emulation. It destroys the stereo imaging, so it is best to leave them alone. The Sound EQ option has some equalizer presets like other mp3 players have and also has a 6 band equalizers. 2 custom settings can be stored for the 6 band EQ.

The HD3 is not neutral sounding. It has a fun and 'consumer' sound to it. If you like the sound from the Sony/Aiwa MiniDisc units, you will like the sound of the HD3. I'm using Porta Pro/ER6i to listen to the HD3. When the EQ is off, the sound is still bassy. However, it is not as dark sounding as the Iriver-IHP100. The 5mw amp of the HD3 also does not sound as powerful as the Creative Muvo2 FM, which has a higher power headphone output. However, it is interesting to note that the HD3 can go quite deep in bass without distorting or crackling, which is a problem that some people have with the Creatives and Ipods.

True gapless playback is possible only with the ATRAC3plus format. On MP3 files, the gap is very small and is about the same as the Creative Muvo2 FM. For some MP3 songs, I didn't even notice the gap while playing them on the HD3.


Conclusion
The HD3 is quite a decent effort from Sony. SonicStage needs to be improved for those who want to have more control over their music. The unit is not as intuitive as other hard disk based players, but it is not rocket science to operate it either. Basic functions are easy to grasp, but if you want to go deeper into the playback options, it requires some understanding of how Play Units work. The HD3 offers a lot of playback options and you will certainly find a playback method that suits you. However, I do hope that Sony allows more compatability with the MP3 format, such as letting SonicStage playback MP3 files direct from the player, and letting the other equalisers other than the Digital Sound Preset have an effect on the sound.

 

[Zanth]

Excellent review! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Sphinx89]

I have a HD3 and agree with a lot in that review

Thanks for sharing it with us

 

[DigDub]

thanks. thought i'd make a more accurate review.

PS. i will amend any errors that are pointed out.

 

[SDLeMire]

Quote:

Sony also had some little tricks with their equaliser to favor their ATRAC3plus format.

That would be a limitation of the player and decoder. Their normal EQ doesn't affect the mp3 playback sound the same as ATRAC so it was disabled and a half-ass implementation was put it (digital sound). If they had spent more time on it, they could have come up with a new EQ system that worked for both formats. Sony just rushed this firmware a bit.

 

[austonia]

reviews like this deserve attention.

http://www.dapreview.net/comment.php?comment.news.1379

good work.

 

[mushu]

Yeah, great review, I think it's safe to say this is the best review of the HD3 on the net atm

 

[Cyclone]

If this isnt in the "Featured Full Portable Audio Reviews" board, then it needs to be. Great job Dig.

 

[jant71]

The Digital Sound aren't exactly a half-ass late minute implementation. They existed before the 6-band EQ on sony portables. Both are over 4 years old and seriously need to be updated. They need more steps for more minute adjustments. For example, the EQ sould be -10 to +10 in steps of 1 not just 0 to 3 then to 6 then to 10(with no 4,5 or 8 etc. possible).

Anyway, it maybe because I don't have too many MP3's on my HD3 but the 6-band works for both Atrac and MP3. I have tested this with dual copies of the same song on a few different occasions. Doesn't matter though, I have been using the bass and treble over the six-band anyway because it has a little more punch. Still needs more adjustability though.

Great review DigDub! Since we use the same phones, what settings do you use with the HD3 EQ's?

 

[DigDub]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jant71 Anyway, it maybe because I don't have too many MP3's on my HD3 but the 6-band works for both Atrac and MP3. I have tested this with dual copies of the same song on a few different occasions. Doesn't matter though, I have been using the bass and treble over the six-band anyway because it has a little more punch. Still needs more adjustability though. Great review DigDub! Since we use the same phones, what settings do you use with the HD3 EQ's?

the 6 band EQ works on MP3? i tried the 6 band EQ on MP3 and they sounded the same as with EQ off. only the Digital Sound Preset had an effect on MP3.

i use +1 bass on the porta pro to compensate for the loss of bass in noisy environments. at home, i off the eq as the HD3 and the porta pro are both bassy in nature, so with the eq off, the bass is still abundant.

 

[jant71]

Same here, +1 for the bass and leave the treble flat. I leave it that way all the time though. What I did was snapped the portapro drivers onto an old school walkman style skinny headphone band thus they don't fit as tight. They had too much bass for my liking but now they are less bassy and lighter on my head.

I can clearly hear the difference between the settings I have. I even tried to purposely differentiate them so I would be able to tell that MP3's change back to the DSP settings. I never use flat or off so if switched to that I would have heard a change also. I can never hear a change.

Like I said, it doesn't matter to me now since I use the bass/treble anyhow. I used to like it on my old minidisc player and I still like it better now. I think the EQ needs finer adjustment because I like to bring up the lower bands and they get slightly muddy(enough that I notice). The bass/treble brings the punch I want yet doesn't start to muddy like the 6-band EQ. I think the first two bands(100 and 250HZ) are too close together. Should be 64HZ and then 250HZ.

Maybe since I put my MP3's on with the Vaio music transfer software instead of importing through SS they are treated different somehow. It isn't a hardware incompatibility because I can cycle through all the different sound options while playing an MP3 and hear the change through all of them. If only DSP worked then I would hear OFF and no change through VPT, EQ, and DSP. It seems to be a firmware issue only. Maybe some kind of tags are applied to the files in SS that aren't through the Vaio program. Who knows? It is Sony we are talking about!

 

[Sphinx89]

As far as i can tell...6 band equalizer only works for ATRAC...digital preset for MP3

With my EX71's i have +3 bass, and flat treble, but i listen to a lot of dance type music, and like my bass

 

[PrototypeX2]

Nice review DigDub.
How about adding a pic with ex81?

I picked up mine yesterday

 

[DigDub]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PrototypeX2 Nice review DigDub. How about adding a pic with ex81? I picked up mine yesterday

 

[DigDub]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jant71 Same here, +1 for the bass and leave the treble flat. I leave it that way all the time though. What I did was snapped the portapro drivers onto an old school walkman style skinny headphone band thus they don't fit as tight. They had too much bass for my liking but now they are less bassy and lighter on my head. I can clearly hear the difference between the settings I have. I even tried to purposely differentiate them so I would be able to tell that MP3's change back to the DSP settings. I never use flat or off so if switched to that I would have heard a change also. I can never hear a change. Like I said, it doesn't matter to me now since I use the bass/treble anyhow. I used to like it on my old minidisc player and I still like it better now. I think the EQ needs finer adjustment because I like to bring up the lower bands and they get slightly muddy(enough that I notice). The bass/treble brings the punch I want yet doesn't start to muddy like the 6-band EQ. I think the first two bands(100 and 250HZ) are too close together. Should be 64HZ and then 250HZ. Maybe since I put my MP3's on with the Vaio music transfer software instead of importing through SS they are treated different somehow. It isn't a hardware incompatibility because I can cycle through all the different sound options while playing an MP3 and hear the change through all of them. If only DSP worked then I would hear OFF and no change through VPT, EQ, and DSP. It seems to be a firmware issue only. Maybe some kind of tags are applied to the files in SS that aren't through the Vaio program. Who knows? It is Sony we are talking about!

i will try to transfer the mp3s via the Vaio and see if it works. this is interesting.