[audionewbi]

How did you get it working with the Hugo?

using the digital out Sony cable that is available as an optimal accessory.

 

[Mickice]

So the Hugo is only using the Walkman as a storage device with file selector?

 

[audionewbi]

So the Hugo is only using the Walkman as a storage device with file selector?

yes, I will post a picture tomorrow.

 

[PetZoundz]

I've read through the entire thread, but just want to be clear on something - MP3 playback is not gapless, FLAC is; what about AAC and ALAC? Thanks in advance to anyone with the answer.

 

[pinkbecca]

has anyone ever ordered from yesasia.com?, could you tell me your experience with them?

 

[castleofargh]

Anyone compare this to clip+?
Is difference huge?

if I tell you it depends on what headphone I use, will you get mad? ^_^
 
so I did some switching with the same sescom crap that lachlan uses. I say crap but it's still better than my last one with one side bleeding into the other one

.
so objectively yes I can hear differences, they are certainly not night and day and a guitar doesn't turn into a violin. I'm sorry but from an ok sound to another ok sound they're bound to actually sound very much the same, despite whatever crap you can often read all over headfi with one new stuff always making the last best thing look like a honking tool. (in photo we tend to respect old quality stuff, we don't crap on something we were pretending to adore the month before because the next new thing is out, I find that to be really a nasty side of amateur audio).
anyway the most obvious would be that sandisk can use replay gain ^_^, so I had to redo the volume matching and upload the tracks again after removing gain data. I hate you a little for that. luckily I now have a fast way to match volume so I survived.
overall they both sound about the same with easy to drive IEMs(hf5 and IE80 for the test). and in a different way they both make my jh13 sound pretty poor unless I add an amp in-between. I think I prefer the hd650 on the sony, but in both case it's a joke to pretend like it sounds well driven.
so back to easy to drive stuff, the most noticeable difference is that with the clip+ there is something like a very light crossfeed feeling to it(I checked all settings one by one to turn anything off before) it sounds like the headstage is slightly smaller on the clip+, and some instruments on the side will seem to move maybe 5degrees toward the front and at the same time closer to me. I'm guessing that's a crosstalk problem, but in all honesty, I use crossfeed on all my stuff (or sometimes the studio surround setting of the A15 that has also some matter of crossfeed effect). I find the left/right panning of headphones totally unnatural so the best the source, the more I need crossfeed in the end ^_^. with the clip+ that little something with left and right mixing a bit too much makes for something a little more intimate/3D and while I'm very sure that it is a technical inferiority, I can't say I hate the result.
again I can't insist enough on the fact that what I'm talking about is exaggerated because I'm focused on differences, when listening to both DAPs apart from placebo in your head, most wouldn't hear much difference if any.
plugged into the amp, the sansa at max volume is very close to the A15 line out loudness, but here I feel like the sony might have a very subtle edge, but the feeling of crosstalk is less present(the clip probably has increased crosstalk with low impedance loads so the several Kohm of the amp's input must help somehow???). but is it worth the money difference, hell no!
 
I'll repeat what I usually find out about ABing (not blind) DAPs, the only way to get concrete differences is to use a headphone that shows the source's limit and then you see how different they both misbehave. or when one has too much impedance. but with the right IEM, not too sensitive, not too hard to drive, with a stable impedance over frequencies, they all sound more alike than different. of course if I don't use a switch, then I can talk to you about clear differences for hours. but once I actually do some rapid switching "poof" most differences disappear(stupid brain of mine).
here the differences are that the clip+ makes the stupid buffering noise when it's loading a part of the song(that happens every 30 or 40s I guess, I never timed it), and the A15 has this slight hissing that might be noticeable with really sensitive IEMs, so I wouldn't use those DAPs alone if I still had the togo 334 for example. because they would both bother me in a different way.
with my jh13 it's less of a problem, but still enough to justify an amp for me.
max loudness is close, the clip at -2 is the same loudness as the sony maxed out. so again not a game changer or a real reason to buy one over the other.
 
so here you go, with the proper IEMs both sound very close(I would say that for most of my DAPs, only my cowon has a real distinctive sound to it, and I wouldn't say it's a superior one. without EQ and DSP a cowon isn't that good to me, but it doesn't hiss^_^). 
to give a measure of what I'm talking about, it's usually impossible to get 2 DAPs with exactly the same loudness. you always have one slightly louder and lowering by 1unit of volume will make the other DAP to be slightly louder. well that difference of 1 unit of volume is enough to make the loudest to sound the best to me. always!!!!! unless there is some messed up roll off, really high impedance, some loud hiss, or some DSP, the best sound is just the one that is one louder. that's the sad truth and why I find is strange to linger on who's sounding the best when it's more of a contest for who can drive more demanding stuff in the end.

 
conclusion:
the sansa has replay gain, gapless, and parametric EQ once rockboxed and if you get a clip zip instead of the + you'll have the now everywhere micro usb instead of the mini.
the sony has 4times the battery, can get a max onboard memory of 64giga with the A17, the very friendly UI, a "real" line out, gapless on flac only, no replay gain but dynamic normalizer doing about the same thing, and a more simple EQ that will pain the real EQ users, but please the ones overwhelmed by the sansa's advanced settings. the sony needs a proprietary usb cable. oh and for whoever wants that on portable, the sony does real hires and probably benefits from it on some measurements making a lot of inaudible stuff to be twice as inaudible(it's still factually better though).
here you have the real reasons to get one or the other for me, + the price(oops).
 
now keep in mind that I'm comparing 2 of my favorite portable DAPs and own a portable amp for whatever headphone or IEM that needs more than they can offer. people who won't invest in an external amp will and have any demanding headphone would be better with a X3 X5 or DXsomething. those with easy to drive IEMs and headphones would be silly not to get a clip or a sony instead. that's what I truly believe.

 

[Mickice]

Everyone should go flac, no need to have a separate file just for precious apple.

 

[sardar17]

Everyone should go flac, no need to have a separate file just for precious apple.

Agreed..........but prepare for attacks from fruit company loyalists

 

[sardar17]

 
if I tell you it depends on what headphone I use, will you get mad? ^_^
 
so I did some switching with the same sescom crap that lachlan uses. I say crap but it's still better than my last one with one side bleeding into the other one

.
so objectively yes I can hear differences, they are certainly not night and day and a guitar doesn't turn into a violin. I'm sorry but from an ok sound to another ok sound they're bound to actually sound very much the same, despite whatever crap you can often read all over headfi with one new stuff always making the last best thing look like a honking tool. (in photo we tend to respect old quality stuff, we don't crap on something we were pretending to adore the month before because the next new thing is out, I find that to be really a nasty side of amateur audio).
anyway the most obvious would be that sandisk can use replay gain ^_^, so I had to redo the volume matching and upload the tracks again after removing gain data. I hate you a little for that. luckily I now have a fast way to match volume so I survived.
overall they both sound about the same with easy to drive IEMs(hf5 and IE80 for the test). and in a different way they both make my jh13 sound pretty poor unless I add an amp in-between. I think I prefer the hd650 on the sony, but in both case it's a joke to pretend like it sounds well driven.
so back to easy to drive stuff, the most noticeable difference is that with the clip+ there is something like a very light crossfeed feeling to it(I checked all settings one by one to turn anything off before) it sounds like the headstage is slightly smaller on the clip+, and some instruments on the side will seem to move maybe 5degrees toward the front and at the same time closer to me. I'm guessing that's a crosstalk problem, but in all honesty, I use crossfeed on all my stuff (or sometimes the studio surround setting of the A15 that has also some matter of crossfeed effect). I find the left/right panning of headphones totally unnatural so the best the source, the more I need crossfeed in the end ^_^. with the clip+ that little something with left and right mixing a bit too much makes for something a little more intimate/3D and while I'm very sure that it is a technical inferiority, I can't say I hate the result.
again I can't insist enough on the fact that what I'm talking about is exaggerated because I'm focused on differences, when listening to both DAPs apart from placebo in your head, most wouldn't hear much difference if any.
plugged into the amp, the sansa at max volume is very close to the A15 line out loudness, but here I feel like the sony might have a very subtle edge, but the feeling of crosstalk is less present(the clip probably has increased crosstalk with low impedance loads so the several Kohm of the amp's input must help somehow???). but is it worth the money difference, hell no!
 
I'll repeat what I usually find out about ABing (not blind) DAPs, the only way to get concrete differences is to use a headphone that shows the source's limit and then you see how different they both misbehave. or when one has too much impedance. but with the right IEM, not too sensitive, not too hard to drive, with a stable impedance over frequencies, they all sound more alike than different. of course if I don't use a switch, then I can talk to you about clear differences for hours. but once I actually do some rapid switching "poof" most differences disappear(stupid brain of mine).
here the differences are that the clip+ makes the stupid buffering noise when it's loading a part of the song(that happens every 30 or 40s I guess, I never timed it), and the A15 has this slight hissing that might be noticeable with really sensitive IEMs, so I wouldn't use those DAPs alone if I still had the togo 334 for example. because they would both bother me in a different way.
with my jh13 it's less of a problem, but still enough to justify an amp for me.
max loudness is close, the clip at -2 is the same loudness as the sony maxed out. so again not a game changer or a real reason to buy one over the other.
 
so here you go, with the proper IEMs both sound very close(I would say that for most of my DAPs, only my cowon has a real distinctive sound to it, and I wouldn't say it's a superior one. without EQ and DSP a cowon isn't that good to me, but it doesn't hiss^_^). 
to give a measure of what I'm talking about, it's usually impossible to get 2 DAPs with exactly the same loudness. you always have one slightly louder and lowering by 1unit of volume will make the other DAP to be slightly louder. well that difference of 1 unit of volume is enough to make the loudest to sound the best to me. always!!!!! unless there is some messed up roll off, really high impedance, some loud hiss, or some DSP, the best sound is just the one that is one louder. that's the sad truth and why I find is strange to linger on who's sounding the best when it's more of a contest for who can drive more demanding stuff in the end.

 
conclusion:
the sansa has replay gain, gapless, and parametric EQ once rockboxed and if you get a clip zip instead of the + you'll have the now everywhere micro usb instead of the mini.
the sony has 4times the battery, can get a max onboard memory of 64giga with the A17, the very friendly UI, a "real" line out, gapless on flac only, no replay gain but dynamic normalizer doing about the same thing, and a more simple EQ that will pain the real EQ users, but please the ones overwhelmed by the sansa's advanced settings. the sony needs a proprietary usb cable. oh and for whoever wants that on portable, the sony does real hires and probably benefits from it on some measurements making a lot of inaudible stuff to be twice as inaudible(it's still factually better though).
here you have the real reasons to get one or the other for me, + the price(oops).
 
now keep in mind that I'm comparing 2 of my favorite portable DAPs and own a portable amp for whatever headphone or IEM that needs more than they can offer. people who won't invest in an external amp will and have any demanding headphone would be better with a X3 X5 or DXsomething. those with easy to drive IEMs and headphones would be silly not to get a clip or a sony instead. that's what I truly believe.

 
Then i am fine with clip+,,,instead i will invest in a better pair of iem's.

 

[mukumi]

Ouch, no gapless mp3. That's a no go for me :'(
 
I guess i'll have to check the cowon m2 :/

 

[zilch0md]

 
if I tell you it depends on what headphone I use, will you get mad? ^_^
 
 

Spoiler: Golden nuggets

so I did some switching with the same sescom crap that lachlan uses. I say crap but it's still better than my last one with one side bleeding into the other one

.
so objectively yes I can hear differences, they are certainly not night and day and a guitar doesn't turn into a violin. I'm sorry but from an ok sound to another ok sound they're bound to actually sound very much the same, despite whatever crap you can often read all over headfi with one new stuff always making the last best thing look like a honking tool. (in photo we tend to respect old quality stuff, we don't crap on something we were pretending to adore the month before because the next new thing is out, I find that to be really a nasty side of amateur audio).
anyway the most obvious would be that sandisk can use replay gain ^_^, so I had to redo the volume matching and upload the tracks again after removing gain data. I hate you a little for that. luckily I now have a fast way to match volume so I survived.
overall they both sound about the same with easy to drive IEMs(hf5 and IE80 for the test). and in a different way they both make my jh13 sound pretty poor unless I add an amp in-between. I think I prefer the hd650 on the sony, but in both case it's a joke to pretend like it sounds well driven.
so back to easy to drive stuff, the most noticeable difference is that with the clip+ there is something like a very light crossfeed feeling to it(I checked all settings one by one to turn anything off before) it sounds like the headstage is slightly smaller on the clip+, and some instruments on the side will seem to move maybe 5degrees toward the front and at the same time closer to me. I'm guessing that's a crosstalk problem, but in all honesty, I use crossfeed on all my stuff (or sometimes the studio surround setting of the A15 that has also some matter of crossfeed effect). I find the left/right panning of headphones totally unnatural so the best the source, the more I need crossfeed in the end ^_^. with the clip+ that little something with left and right mixing a bit too much makes for something a little more intimate/3D and while I'm very sure that it is a technical inferiority, I can't say I hate the result.
again I can't insist enough on the fact that what I'm talking about is exaggerated because I'm focused on differences, when listening to both DAPs apart from placebo in your head, most wouldn't hear much difference if any.
plugged into the amp, the sansa at max volume is very close to the A15 line out loudness, but here I feel like the sony might have a very subtle edge, but the feeling of crosstalk is less present(the clip probably has increased crosstalk with low impedance loads so the several Kohm of the amp's input must help somehow???). but is it worth the money difference, hell no!
 
I'll repeat what I usually find out about ABing (not blind) DAPs, the only way to get concrete differences is to use a headphone that shows the source's limit and then you see how different they both misbehave. or when one has too much impedance. but with the right IEM, not too sensitive, not too hard to drive, with a stable impedance over frequencies, they all sound more alike than different. of course if I don't use a switch, then I can talk to you about clear differences for hours. but once I actually do some rapid switching "poof" most differences disappear(stupid brain of mine).
here the differences are that the clip+ makes the stupid buffering noise when it's loading a part of the song(that happens every 30 or 40s I guess, I never timed it), and the A15 has this slight hissing that might be noticeable with really sensitive IEMs, so I wouldn't use those DAPs alone if I still had the togo 334 for example. because they would both bother me in a different way.
with my jh13 it's less of a problem, but still enough to justify an amp for me.
max loudness is close, the clip at -2 is the same loudness as the sony maxed out. so again not a game changer or a real reason to buy one over the other.
 
so here you go, with the proper IEMs both sound very close(I would say that for most of my DAPs, only my cowon has a real distinctive sound to it, and I wouldn't say it's a superior one. without EQ and DSP a cowon isn't that good to me, but it doesn't hiss^_^). 
to give a measure of what I'm talking about, it's usually impossible to get 2 DAPs with exactly the same loudness. you always have one slightly louder and lowering by 1unit of volume will make the other DAP to be slightly louder. well that difference of 1 unit of volume is enough to make the loudest to sound the best to me. always!!!!! unless there is some messed up roll off, really high impedance, some loud hiss, or some DSP, the best sound is just the one that is one louder. that's the sad truth and why I find is strange to linger on who's sounding the best when it's more of a contest for who can drive more demanding stuff in the end.

 
conclusion:
the sansa has replay gain, gapless, and parametric EQ once rockboxed and if you get a clip zip instead of the + you'll have the now everywhere micro usb instead of the mini.
the sony has 4times the battery, can get a max onboard memory of 64giga with the A17, the very friendly UI, a "real" line out, gapless on flac only, no replay gain but dynamic normalizer doing about the same thing, and a more simple EQ that will pain the real EQ users, but please the ones overwhelmed by the sansa's advanced settings. the sony needs a proprietary usb cable. oh and for whoever wants that on portable, the sony does real hires and probably benefits from it on some measurements making a lot of inaudible stuff to be twice as inaudible(it's still factually better though).
here you have the real reasons to get one or the other for me, + the price(oops).
 
now keep in mind that I'm comparing 2 of my favorite portable DAPs and own a portable amp for whatever headphone or IEM that needs more than they can offer. people who won't invest in an external amp will and have any demanding headphone would be better with a X3 X5 or DXsomething. those with easy to drive IEMs and headphones would be silly not to get a clip or a sony instead. that's what I truly believe.

 

 
This made me laugh!  I often find myself replying to mini-reviews with the question, "With which headphones?"   And that's always important with under-amped DAPs.  

 

[Wertzius]

I've read through the entire thread, but just want to be clear on something - MP3 playback is not gapless, FLAC is; what about AAC and ALAC? Thanks in advance to anyone with the answer.

Only WAV, Flac and ALAC are gapless.

 

[PetZoundz]

Quote: Only WAV, Flac and ALAC are gapless.

Thanks much!

 

[castleofargh]

I've read through the entire thread, but just want to be clear on something - MP3 playback is not gapless, FLAC is; what about AAC and ALAC? Thanks in advance to anyone with the answer.

I'm a little fed up with doing tests right now ^_^, but if nobody has the answer for you, I'll try encoding something tonight or tomorrow.
edit : here you go ^_^ thanks a bunch Wertzius

 

[zilch0md]

So the Hugo is only using the Walkman as a storage device with file selector?

 
Yes!  That's exactly how I use my FiiO X5 currently (Coaxial Out), as my favorite desktop source (when not using its awesome PCM1792A DAC's Line Out to a better portable amp):
 

 
As pictured:  FiiO X5 Coaxial Out > OPPO HA-1 > HD800
 
 

Spoiler: Using a DAP only as a transport for my "recliner" rig

Since taking that photo, above, my recliner rig has evolved into this, with a Metrum Octave Octave MkII and NuForce HA-200 stacked atop the rear half of the OPPO HA-1 on wooden sewing thread spools - all of it still fitting within that side table.  

 
FiiO X5 Coaxial Out > Metrum Octave MkII > OPPO HA-1 balanced out > Toxic Cables Silver Poison > LCD-2 Rev.1
 
-or-
 
FiiO X5 Coaxial Out > Metrum Octave MkII > NuForce HA-200 > Sennheiser unbalanced cable > modded HD800
 

 
The LCD-2 rev.1 is plugged into the 4-Pin XLR jack of the OPPO HA-1 (delivering 1817 mW rms per channel into 50 Ohms - 182% more power than the minimum 1000mW rms per channel recommended by Audeze).
 
The HD800 is now plugged into the unbalanced TRS jack of the NuForce HA-200 amp, which is fed via the OPPO HA-1's Pre-Out RCA jacks - with the HA-1 just acting as a passive pre to connect the Metrum Octave MkII to the NuForce HA-200.  
 
When using the HD800, I prefer the smoother, more transparent NuForce HA-200 over the HA-1's amp section, where the HD800 reveals a more fatiguing treble.  But the HA-1's amp is awesome for the less-resolving LCD-2 rev.1, especially with its shelved highs.
 
My primary interest in getting a Sony NWZ-A17 is to use it as a handheld digital source (via the WMC-NWH10 adapter cable) for my recliner rig - not for the A17's Headphone Out and not as an analog Line Out source).  The A17 will bring a much friendlier UI, a longer playing battery, and a much smaller and lighter form factor than I have with the FiiO X5.
 
I detest using laptops as a source because they distract me from actually listening to my music and frankly, a laptop sitting in my lap is a pain in the rear compared to pulling digital output from a small, cabled DAP.
 
When not playing 44/16 and 96/24 FLAC or DSD files from the FiiO X5's two card readers via Coaxial Out, I can select the Bluetooth input on the OPPO HA-1 to play "low-res" streaming content from my iPad Mini (Spotify, Amazon Cloud, Netflix, YouTube, etc.)
 
To increase the X5's interval between charge cycles, I use a FiiO HS6 banding frame to sandwich the X5 with an Anker Astro Pro 10,000 mAH 5V battery pack. (I'll be able to get rid of this extra weight-in-hand if I get a Walkman A17 instead.):
 

 
 
Here's my "more is less" HD800 mod - a thin, self-adhesive felt ring that covers the reflective metal surrounding the driver, taming the highs a bit:
 

 
 

 
Mike