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My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

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Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#31

Post by gbraad »

csdvrx wrote: post #2

As the happy owner of a NW-Z507 (and matching Sony 1000XM4 earbuds and a more traditional WH-XB900N over-the-ear headset), the Sony Walkman lineup is worth every single dollar! It's helped me rediscover some of my classics! The 507 is Android, which was both a pro (more apps) and con (battery life) especially since the Sony default player is a bit special. I didn't need Android as I don't use streaming, but I wanted…

On an Android device use USB Audio Player Pro. Supports most DAC and allows for good EQ.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#32

Post by NikolaNovak »

dangus wrote: post #24
bpye wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised there hasn't been a successful open hardware project for a portable music player. Rockbox, a low power SoC, some decent DAC, a basic display - epaper would be kind of neat - and preferably a standard battery - something like the Nokia BL-5C.

I don’t find it surprising. It’s a solved problem. Every phone has a music player built-in, you can even choose which one to use from hundreds of options. Offline, streaming, self-hosted cloud, the options are nearly infinite. Even if you don’t love the lack of headphone jack in the typical phone [1], the solution is an adapter that costs less than $10. What open hardware project can compete with that? [1] Non-audiop…

I mean, I don't disagree with your main point, but I hundred percent disagree with the notion audiophiles are the ones missing the 3.5mm jack. I miss it awfully and it's due to sheer convenience. Every one of my headphones used to work seemlessly with every one of my devices. I had cheap headphones (and later headsets) in each car, at the office, in the backpack, at home, and nice headphones at home, and they each and all worked with every phone and device immediatelly and without hassle or issues. They never ran out of battery, never disconnected, never had any lag, never garbled music, and were never obsoleted due to new codec or BT version or incompatibility or the eventual death of lithium ion. And they never wanted me to pull my little remaining hair if I dared to switch headphone or device.

Labeling those who vehemently miss 3.5mm as audiophiles is a straw man or phenomenal proportions.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#33

Post by berkut »

dangus wrote: post #27
stonith wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar device and use it daily. I don't have to worry about my music being removed because the licensing changed at the streaming provider. I tried various streaming services and all of them removed music from me at some point. This isn't something that's particularly negotiable for me. I can trivially add songs that aren't on a streaming service using youtube-dl or similar. I can change songs by pressing a…

You can do all of this with a smartphone, though. There are plenty of offline music apps for smartphones. There are plenty of phones (and headphones) with physical buttons to control music. My main criticism is that this is all redundant hardware with basically no unique capabilities. Even if the DAC is extra special, that’s something you can get on a phone via USB.

In my opinion, the iOS experience for playing offline music is going downhill, and has been since the iPhone 3GS era.

It gets more and more difficult to have a UI dedicated to offline music - you can disable streaming, but you can't disable the 'Radio' section of the Music app for example.

Similarly, the user experience has got quite a bit worse for navigating your catalogue: 10 years or so ago, you used to be able to click the Name of the Artist or Album that was playing, and it would jump to either the artist or the album respectively: these days, on iOS 15, doing that does nothing other than jump back to the currently playing song list (so current album normally), neither does hold-and-press. I have to navigate with the back button, or go back through library, and find the artist each time, or use search.

There are third part dedicated apps and I've tried some of them (and bought Ecoute and VOX), but they're not perfect either.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#34

Post by wombat-man »

stonith wrote: post #21
pcmoney wrote: post #7

Somebody help me understand this? If the audio quality isn’t better why is it so much better than the “bad” subscription services? I understand critiques of how little they pay artists but I mean from a customer perspective, why is spotify et al bad? I assume you have to buy download organize and sync the music for this system? Is it just nostalgia? Just a single purpose device that cant text you etc?

I have a similar device and use it daily. I don't have to worry about my music being removed because the licensing changed at the streaming provider. I tried various streaming services and all of them removed music from me at some point. This isn't something that's particularly negotiable for me. I can trivially add songs that aren't on a streaming service using youtube-dl or similar. I can change songs by pressing a…

you can still load songs directly. I use the controls on my earbuds to switch songs. Not as fine a degree of control but most of the time I just need to skip anyway.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#35

Post by rtpg »

aquova wrote: post #20

I too assumed that dedicated MP3 players were relegated to very low-budget devices, and I didn't realize that Sony was still producing the Walkman line. I decided to take a look at their line up to what was happening in the space - https://electronics.sony.com/audio/walkman-digital-recorders... Boy... what a massive range of prices. There's a touchscreen-less device for $75, one resembling the one described by the au…

The unfortunate thing is at least for me I’ve found the … basically glorified locked down android interface on the expensive walkmans to be insulting.

Give me a dedicated interface if you’re gonna charge me that much for a dedicated device! At least comparable to an iPod nano in “time to play mp3”

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#36

Post by nl »

dangus wrote: post #28
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why is spotify et al bad Because Spotify et al doesn't give you a big directory full of MP3s. On top of that, the physical interface and features of a small dedicated player is a better user experience.

What’s better about a small dedicated player compared to using an offline media jukebox app? Smartphones can play offline media. They can play media hosted on a private server. Nobody’s forcing any smartphone user to use Spotify in particular. There’s always alternatives like VLC and countless others that offer that same functionality. To me, a dedicated player is redundant hardware with less processing power and ref…

To add to this, you can use Spotify to sync your MP3 from a computer to your phone and play them via the Spotify interface. It works very well!

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#37

Post by marlor »

pcmoney wrote: post #7

Somebody help me understand this? If the audio quality isn’t better why is it so much better than the “bad” subscription services? I understand critiques of how little they pay artists but I mean from a customer perspective, why is spotify et al bad? I assume you have to buy download organize and sync the music for this system? Is it just nostalgia? Just a single purpose device that cant text you etc?

I have both a Walkman (for music) and an upgraded/rebuilt iPod (for audiobooks) and prefer them for a few reasons:

- They don’t use any mobile data, and work when in a mobile-phone black spot (e.g. the national parks I go to most weekends). This is the main one.

- I can store all my music on there, without needing to use any storage space on my phone.

- They last forever with some basic maintenance. My iPod was made in 2006. I’ve upgraded the battery and replaced the HDD with an SD-card, but otherwise it just keeps on going.

- I can switch EQ profiles on my Walkman super-easily to suit different music or headphones. No navigating menus, it’s done in under a second.

- Tactile controls and voiced menus on my Rockboxed iPod. I can use the device entirely without looking at the screen. Handy when driving, but also useful when jogging or cycling, any other time you’d rather not stare at a screen instead of being aware of your environment.

- I can load them up with the exact pressing of music I want to listen to. For many old albums, which have gone though a dozen re-releases and remasters, this makes a difference. In fact, for some albums I have several different releases on my player, all with their distinct character, pros and cons.

- Brilliant bookmarking in Rockbox for audiobooks. Super customisable. And dedicated players never do a software update and lose your state. It’s always ready to go, precisely where I left it.

- Car mode. Brilliant for cars like my weekender that predate proper phone connectivity. Rockbox will automatically pause your audiobook when you turn off the ignition and start again when you’re back.

- Ability to enable dynamic range compression to combat road noise. All in a few button presses, without looking at the screen.

Are they for everyone? Of course not. But all of the above things matter to me personally.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#38

Post by rtpg »

pcmoney wrote: post #7

Somebody help me understand this? If the audio quality isn’t better why is it so much better than the “bad” subscription services? I understand critiques of how little they pay artists but I mean from a customer perspective, why is spotify et al bad? I assume you have to buy download organize and sync the music for this system? Is it just nostalgia? Just a single purpose device that cant text you etc?

From a usability perspective Spotify is doing stuff like pushing podcasts all over its interface, and sometimes the UI just completely freezes up.

There’s theoretical stuff about losing access to music but there’s the entirely practical issues that come from playing music off of a remote server that has to track plays etc vs stuff on disk and a software stack that doesn’t have to be concerned about new features or some upselling to meet KPIs.

And of course a dedicated player is just a player, so you’re gonna be able to quickly open and do stuff. The problem with Omnidevices is you gotta first navigate to the single purpose thing

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#39

Post by inferiorhuman »

hug wrote: post #19
erwincoumans wrote: post #8

>> But the audio quality is a noticeable upgrade from my iPhone 8 Is this still true with latest iPhone? I would expect that iPhone hardware is not a limiting factor for audio quality (assuming a wired adaptor for HiFi headphones)

> Is this still true with latest iPhone? The latest iPhone doesn't have a DAC in it for headphones. The little 3.5mm-to-lightning dongle is active -- it contains a tiny DAC/amp powered by the lightning port. Is the tiny lightning dongle a good DAC? The answer is largely "it's fine". Anyone who isn't on the cork-sniffing side of audiophile trends will find it acceptable, assuming the amp is capable of driving the load…

My experience was (and one of the reasons I miss the headphone jack is) that the dongle quality + Apple ear buds wasn't as good as the DAC the older iPhones had.
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