[astranovus]

i love my sony nw-a3000 and the sound quality is really good.

why do i rarely read about sony players on this forum?

i got rid of my ipod nano yesterday, as i got sick of 8 hrs battery life, my new sony gives me abut 25-30hrs one one charge and the battery is user-replacable.

i get gapless with atrac!!!
atrac3plus 353kb/s provides excellent quality, i can't and doubt anybody can tell the difference between this codec and cd quality

(bangraman, feel free to comment!)


in addition to this you get a real line-out in the player. no need for an adapter, good for my pa2v2!

the deal for me was the price, only 160 pounds(230 u.s. dollars)!!!! and that's new

 

[doomlordis]

Sony daps are excellent , i have had a few (hd5, a1000, a608), i just bought the new walkman flash 2gb and it is fantastic, tiny , cheap and great sound quality quick review here http://www.atraclife.com/forums/inde...opic=1593&st=0 .
I think they have a bad name due to older versions of sonicstage, the new 3.4 release hasnt crashed on me once.
This forum has a wide range of users but Ipod is the most popular (not surprising) and they are generally blinded to other daps or just feel threatened by them - sad.

 

[astranovus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by doomlordis Sony daps are excellent , i have had a few (hd5, a1000, a608), i just bought the new walkman flash 2gb and it is fantastic, tiny , cheap and great sound quality quick review here http://www.atraclife.com/forums/inde...opic=1593&st=0 . I think they have a bad name due to older versions of sonicstage, the new 3.4 release hasnt crashed on me once. This forum has a wide range of users but Ipod is the most popular (not surprising) and they are generally blinded to other daps or just feel threatened by them - sad.

i can mirror that, sonic-stage 3.4 has also never crashed on me, it works more efficiently than itunes, as i have used both

 

[Duncan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by doomlordis This forum has a wide range of users but Ipod is the most popular (not surprising) and they are generally blinded to other daps or just feel threatened by them - sad.

I'm not a sheep... I just really like the sound out of my portable setup...

Doesn't make me wrong

But... lets leave the flame baiting for another thread - This isn't the time or the place...

In my experience, it is generally SonicStage and also user restrictions that have put me (and presumably others) off of Sony gear (especially with Net MD and that whole in-out process... pah!!)

 

[astranovus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duncan I'm not a sheep... I just really like the sound out of my portable setup... Doesn't make me wrong But... lets leave the flame baiting for another thread - This isn't the time or the place... In my experience, it is generally SonicStage and also user restrictions that have put me

sonic stage has been fixed in the 3.4 version, it is as good as itunes

 

[doomlordis]

Im not flame baiting, i am just stating a fact - most ipod users i know bought Ipods because they are "cool". The amount of people i see with cheap imatation chinese/korean ipods is a testament to this.
I have owned a Shuffle , Nano and 4g 20gb Ipod, i am not anti Ipod or Apple but i can step back and view them as audio players, as such the shuffle is the best because it sounds great, the Nano sounds plain bad (poorly defined bass and splashy treble that invades the mids )and the 4g was great through its line out but disappointing through headphone out.
If the shuffle has a screen i would still own it, i was so annoyed that Apple stopped using sigmatel with the Nano!.

 

[bangraman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by astranovus sonic stage has been fixed in the 3.4 version, it is as good as itunes

I suppose it depends on how much of iTunes you were using. Still slower (seems that as iTunes gets more bloated, so does Sonicstage), less versatile for loading DAPs (particularly in the playlisting department, one of the key features of a high-capacity DAP), inferior workflow once you're past the handholding stage (Sonicstage is better for the clueless at first).


ATRAC3+ may be a nominally 'open' format as of late but at this time it doesn't have the transcoding and compatibility aspects that AAC, MP3 & Ogg have. It's an excellent ~ perhaps the best ~ codec at very low bitrates (<128K) but once you get to bitrates that the Head-Fi enthusiast would use, it's advantage is annulled.


The NW-A3000 has perhaps one of the initially coolest looking, but crappiest to use displays in real life out of all the current mainstream DAPs. It made my eyes water due to the ghosting on the back of the screen and the flickering, not to mention it's invisibility in daylight. The usability is not particuarly superior, although the physical controls are as well implemented as this type of system can be. The EQ despite it's coarse setting capability is probably the most musical, and least apparent SQ-degrading out of the current crop of DAPs IMO, so it's very suitable if you're after EQ'ing away the undesirable aspects of inferior phones. It's a tad too large for what it is these days, especially given Sony's record for compacting stuff.


With SS3.4 it's an OK player. It does fairly well in terms of everything it offers but failed to impress me.

 

[Febs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by doomlordis Im not flame baiting, i am just stating a fact - most ipod users i know bought Ipods because they are "cool". The amount of people i see with cheap imatation chinese/korean ipods is a testament to this. I have owned a Shuffle , Nano and 4g 20gb Ipod, i am not anti Ipod or Apple but i can step back and view them as audio players, as such the shuffle is the best because it sounds great, the Nano sounds plain bad (poorly defined bass and splashy treble that invades the mids )and the 4g was great through its line out but disappointing through headphone out. If the shuffle has a screen i would still own it, i was so annoyed that Apple stopped using sigmatel with the Nano!.

Regardless, this thread isn't about iPod, so why crap on it? Leave the iPod user bashing to one of the thousands of other threads on that topic.

On topic, regardless of how good ATRAC may be, many people (I, for one) do not want to get tied to a proprietary format. Couple that with the fact that (1) SonicStage has a well-deserved reputation for being a terrible, buggy piece of software, and (2) internal conflicts at Sony between its media and consumer products divisions have led to fiascos like Net-MD, and it's understandable why Sony isn't presently one of the most-often mentioned DAPS here.

 

[astranovus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bangraman Still slower (seems that as iTunes gets more bloated, so does Sonicstage), less versatile for loading DAPs (particularly in the playlisting department, one of the key features of a high-capacity DAP), inferior workflow once you're past the handholding stage (Sonicstage is better for the clueless at first).

i have great respect for you bangrman, but i totally disagree with you on sonicstage 3.4

on my laptop 1,6ghz pentium 512mb ram, sonic stage runs very smoothly,

you just open sonicstage drag and drop a file from your original folder into the nw-a3000 and sonic stage transfers at full usb 2.0 speed, roughly 10mb/s,

no glitches or anything

it really don't get all of this i hate sonic stage business, it's like UMS drag and drop just with the additional step of opening sonic stage,

for my needs it works really well,

i do have to admit older SS version were rubbish though

 

[astranovus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Febs Regardless, this thread isn't about iPod, so why crap on it? Leave the iPod user bashing to one of the thousands of other threads on that topic. On topic, regardless of how good ATRAC may be, many people (I, for one) do not want to get tied to a proprietary format. Couple that with the fact that (1) SonicStage has a well-deserved reputation for being a terrible, buggy piece of software, and (2) internal conflicts at Sony between its media and consumer products divisions have led to fiascos like Net-MD, and it's understandable why Sony isn't presently one of the most-often mentioned DAPS here.

solution use atrac-lossless

same quality as flac and instant transfer of lower-bitrate atrac files to the player of desire,

this is a really clever feature,

you can always convert back to wav from atracloss-less

if sony implemented atrac-lossless in their playback then it would be superb, unfortunately they don't but atrac 352kb/s atrac3plus offers quality not distinguisable from cd redbook, even with really good kit,


people keep nagging atrac, what people don't get is that it uses hardware-embedded circuitry to decode, thus saving processor power and enabling much greater battery life, which is why MD players have always been longlife battery beasts.

sound-quality-wise AAC, MP3 and ATRAC are all great at very high bit rates, but battery-wise its ATRAC and nothing else.

 

[Febs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by astranovus solution use atrac-lossless same quality as flac and instant transfer of lower-bitrate atrac files to the player of desire,

No, instant transfer of lower-bitrate atrac files to your Sony player and no other. Not compatible with my car stereo, which can play .mp3 CDs. Not compatible with my TiVo, which can be used as a wireless media server to allow my to access my entire music library. Not compatible with my iriver, or my iPod, or my wife's iriver.

Battery life could be two years and that wouldn't outweigh the inconvenience of using a proprietary format. You'd have thought that Sony would have learned this lesson from the BetaMax.

 

[astranovus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Febs No, instant transfer of lower-bitrate atrac files to your Sony player and no other.

???

if you already have an mp3 file, you just enable "keep file as original" and transcoding to atrac will be bypassed enabling instant transfer,

i do that all the time, as most of my music is in mp3,

plus you can burn cds directly in sonic stage for your car stereo, which i use on a daily basis as well

no disrespect, but you either haven't used sonic stage or don't know how to use it

 

[astranovus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bangraman ATRAC3+ may be a nominally 'open' format as of late but at this time it doesn't have the transcoding and compatibility aspects that AAC, MP3 & Ogg have. It's an excellent ~ perhaps the best ~ codec at very low bitrates (<128K) but once you get to bitrates that the Head-Fi enthusiast would use, it's advantage is annulled.

i never said sonic stage had an advantage, just that it's not as crap everybody says it is,

and you should know better, transcoding is a big no no for head-fiers

Quote:

Originally Posted by bangraman The NW-A3000 has perhaps one of the initially coolest looking, but crappiest to use displays in real life out of all the current mainstream DAPs.

point taken, but at the end of the day, i put tunes on the player, check that the transfer has worked alright. switch the music on and never look at the screen again, once i've put the player in my pocket. i know what music i'm listening too. so why would i constantly look at the screen?

 

[mnhnhyouh]

I had a Sony portable cassette player, a Sony portable CD player, and a Sony MZ-7000R MD player.

They missed the boat on HD players, arrived on the scene late, and offered only ATRAC, silly people. Only now are they trying to catch up, and given the positive feedback that exists in a marketplace, they may never do so.

But the Sony story gives hope to those who dont like iPods domination of the market. If iPod miss the next trend, they too will fall by the wayside.

Thus go all empires, no matter how immortal their citizens believe them to be.....

h

 

[bangraman]

astranovus, I'm not saying the Sony is unusable. All I'm saying, having purchased the other mainstream options, is that as a whole less compromised solutions are available.