Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

rubenerd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 272 posts

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#41

Post by visiblink »

mkoryak wrote: post #4

One thing no "new" mp3 player has done correctly is audio books. None of them do bookmarking as well as rockbox. Also, new mp3 players usually have terrible battery life. Because of these reasons, I bought myself about 7 sandisk sansa players on ebay and have gotten very good at fixing their shitty headphone jack problem. With a rockboxed sansa I get about 60 hours of battery life and bookmarking on stop with a list…

I have a Rockboxed Sansa Clip+. I like that I can set it to turn off automatically, so I can fall asleep listening and not have it play all night. I also like that it will pick up right where I left off the last time. That's nice for podcasts and books. I suppose that might be what you meant by bookmarking.

You can buy a one-foot 3.5 mm extension cord with a right angle plug for a few dollars to avoid repeatedly stressing the jack.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#42

Post by csdvrx »

gbraad wrote: post #31
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.

Are you sure it will help on a Sony? It seems to be for USB OTG DAC.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#43

Post by makeitdouble »

rtpg wrote: post #35
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”

Historically, Sony’s in-house developed software hasn’t been great, to say the least. Getting android could be a blessing in this specific case.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#44

Post by SECProto »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #32
dangus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Yup. I am definitely wouldnt call myself an audiophile, but I like my over ear headphones. I switch them easily between my desktop, my laptop, and my cell phone. They never die. Then I take my phone to my ten year old car and plug an aux cable in (it has Bluetooth but it is garbage - slow to connect, bad quality for music (regular skipping etc). Then when I travel to family's houses and want to play something over their stereo with an aux input, I can easily.

I like aux because it's easy. It just works.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#45

Post by UkrainianJew »

Curiosity question: has anyone done any work on reverse-engineering the Sony Mega Bass feature they used to have on old analog players (and ported to some early MP3 ones)? It sounded so much deeper than any phone/sound card would give. I'm wondering if it's some purely analog schenanigans (some tricky extra capacitors?) or if it can be replicated in pure software.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#46

Post by Markoff »

> The NW-A55 is part of Sony’s budget digital audio player lineup. ... It worked out about AU $300 including shipping, not bad considering how expensive iPods and cassette Walkmans used to be.

We must have very different definitions of "budget" because 200 EUR for MP3 player is nowhere close to budget line in times when you can buy decent budget phones for that money or how much I spent for great cassette Panasonic walkman. He is also comparing prices of technology at peak with price of technology pretty much nobody buys anymore and they should be giving pretty much for free.

Btw 16GB model having 12.26GB available capacity I'd expect from some Android phone and not dumb MP3 player.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#47

Post by andai »

don-code wrote: post #14
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)

While I can't speak to either the iPhone or the Walkman, the quality of the digital-to-analog converter is significantly more important than raw horsepower or other capabilities. Where they're analog devices, there's much less to be said about the "it's just zeroes and ones" argument. Some older devices I've owned had good-quality DACs - a Palm Treo being the best. My current ThinkPad has a downright awful DAC, to th…

One of my high school teachers soldered some kind of extension cord onto the pins at the bottom of his iPod because that signal bypasses the crappy amp on the device.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#48

Post by csdvrx »

MarkG509 wrote: post #6
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…

I'd love to A-B these to my trusty old FiiO X5 with Sennheiser HD-650's (at home) or IE8i's (when exercising). Hearing the sound-stage and subtle do-dads buried by lesser set-ups is a pet-peeve of mine. A very important, perhaps dominant, factor in all of this is how the music was ripped/encoded. Except in my car, for which I did separate rips, I don't bother with MP3-320. For the X5, having 200 CDs ripped via WMA9 l…

> Sennheiser HD-650's (at home) or IE8i's (when exercising).

I prefer the 900N outside, and the 1000XM inside.

To exercise with some music, I'm waiting for good neckband headphones with active audio cancellation: ideally something like the Anker Soundcore Life U2 - same form factor and USB-C plug, but with LDAC, AptX HD and a quality at least on par with the Shure AONIC.

Yes I'm super picky :)

> Hearing the sound-stage and subtle do-dads buried by lesser set-ups is a pet-peeve of mine.

Oh so much this!! I'm hearing instruments that I hadn't noticed before! The first week, I thought it was in my head, because some of the tracks I've been listening to for years started sounding different!!

But no, the Sony is that good. Again, it's worth every dollar.

> I'm spoiled

Now I'm spoiled too :) I just can't forget how much better it made my favorite tracks!

TBH, the Sony has been my best purchase of these last few years: it has even rekindled my interest in music.

Right now I'm exploring "pop urbaine", a very interesting genre that I didn't even know existed.

My favorite tracks are inbetween EDM and Raeggeton, the best example being "On fleek" by Eva - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_eEW2Ioe-o (starts at 0:30)

I would never have expected I'd take a liking to french music, but here I'm! Thank you Sony!!

> A very important, perhaps dominant, factor in all of this is how the music was ripped/encoded.

This too!

I only use FLAC ripped from known-good sources like DDD audio CDs, but after reading a few things like https://sound.stackexchange.com/questions/51326/spotting-a-f... and https://musicfans.stackexchange.com/questions/12545/original... I've been thinking about developing a "scoring" app that would basically do a spectrogram and look for suspicious banding to rate my CDs on a 0-10 scale.

> For the X5, having 200 CDs ripped via WMA9 locks me in, until I can find a week or two to re-rip to a more modern lossless format.

I recently re-ripped using a slot-in Apple Superdrive with Windows Media Player Classic running on Windows 11 set to auto-rip into FLAC.

I just worked as usual and every now and then swapped the CDs from 2 huge piles on the side of my desk.

> I'm spoiled, and feel sorry for the people today that think MP3-120 is "good enough".

Same lol

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#49

Post by leeoniya »

visiblink wrote: post #41
mkoryak wrote: post #4

One thing no "new" mp3 player has done correctly is audio books. None of them do bookmarking as well as rockbox. Also, new mp3 players usually have terrible battery life. Because of these reasons, I bought myself about 7 sandisk sansa players on ebay and have gotten very good at fixing their shitty headphone jack problem. With a rockboxed sansa I get about 60 hours of battery life and bookmarking on stop with a list…

I have a Rockboxed Sansa Clip+. I like that I can set it to turn off automatically, so I can fall asleep listening and not have it play all night. I also like that it will pick up right where I left off the last time. That's nice for podcasts and books. I suppose that might be what you meant by bookmarking. You can buy a one-foot 3.5 mm extension cord with a right angle plug for a few dollars to avoid repeatedly stre…

> I have a Rockboxed Sansa Clip+

+1, it's a great audiophile quality tiny little player.

i recently got a HiBy R3 Pro Saber, but still frequently come back to my Rockbox'ed Clip+ for its much smaller size.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#50

Post by BirAdam »

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…

I use a Shanling. Awesome device, audiophile sound, lower price.
Post reply on HN