First mp3 player upgrade since the clip plus (which will then live as backup player in my work bag in case I forget to charge or whatever). I had looked at the likes of Ibasso and so on but something just held me back.
I wish I had been as wise as you were. I bought the X3 the DX50 and the F886. spent like 1month with the X3, 40mn+charging time with the DX50, and 3 weeks with the F886. they all have great stuff, but they are not what I was looking for. the A10 clearly is. the clips are already back ups of my A865/7 (cool to use) and E585(J3 like battery life), so I know I will feel just at home with the A10.
This A series looks good, and I have a bit of buyer's remorse about buying a Fiio X3. This has a better interface, and you can "one hand" the controls. CNET reviewer wanted a touch screen. Are you kidding? Anyway, with 64 mb included, this looks like a good deal.
the X3 can be one handed too, I found it to be better to use with my left hand. what you should ask yourself is if you need driving power or external DAC? because the X3 is pretty much a DAP + a portable DAC/AMP in one box(can't say for the sound I only had it at the beguinning and the firmware was less than optimal at the time). it has both, lot of options(analog out, balance, gain, analog in), and power/low impedance. I don't think they are competing with each other as sony daps usually have only the very minimum driving power available for portable headphones, and are small well organised and easy to use DAPs. they're walkmans after all. when you buy one you don't have to expect to play the beta tester for the first 3months like with ibasso.
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True just nice to have the extra bit of memory in case and I tend to have less problems when music is stored on most devices internally but saying that technology has improved since I had my old Clip and Sony usually have a great U.I with little or no problems with good software. Still cant find much on the sound. I know they have been leaning toward a clearer more digital sound in recent years i'm just hoping they keep a touch of that lovely warm Sony sound to accompany it.
My rockboxed clip plus and 128 gig microsdxc play very nicely together, so I'm sure that sony will have it licked. My 2 main concerns are a)Volume limit and b)gapless playback.
as said above, even without volume limit, they kept the "somethingmaster" system so it would be surprising if it was much louder than a clip.
gapless, I wouldn't dream about it. it's probably gonna be the same "gapless with wave", or maybe with some japanese versions as it happened sometimes with atrack and stuff. I've given up long ago and use a 1file album rip for live and classical albums. for real perfect gapless a rockboxed clip is still really cool.
my own concern is with the screen, on the E585 it's just a plastic screen very fragile, really nothing to brag about compared to any touchscreen even without gorilla glass. so I hope they went with glass on the A1X.
