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My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

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Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#131

Post by californical »

rtpg wrote: post #38
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 so…

> theoretical stuff about losing access to music

This has happened to me noticeably a bunch of times. It happened on Spotify, which I’ve since switched away from, but it happens on Tidal too (which I use now). I’m not sure if Spotify still has this feature, but Tidal will show me a song “grayed out” if it was on a playlist but it’s unavailable now. It isn’t often, but sometimes songs/albums that I really like just… go away. You wouldn’t always notice, but it is definitely a very real issue!

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#133

Post by fbnlsr »

jstummbillig wrote: post #114

I am mostly confused by what the author thinks the selling point is. > I can’t describe what a breath of fresh air this is compared to how bad modern smartphone music and streaming apps have become. Well, I was hoping they would try to describe it, because personally, I would have to wear my most deeply shaded nostalgia glasses to think that MP3 player UX has ever been comparable to what Spotify offers nowadays. And…

> And we can not even directly compare a MP3 player to Spotify, which is paid to do an entirely different and way more complicated job, considering that you are able to browse and organize a completely different and incomparably larger (and automatically growing) set of media.

Spotify has two drawbacks though: you need a constant Internet connection and it removes tracks at will. The constant internet connection can be solved by downloading media to the device, but the fact that some tracks (even whole albums) can become unavailable suddenly is utterly disappointing. This is the reason I keep buying CDs. Spotify is an amazing tool to listen on the go but whenever I feel a real connection (no pun intended) with an artist's music, I have to buy their art in a physical format.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#134

Post by theodric »

zasdffaa wrote: post #116

Regarding the interface: no. I bought one of these and regretted it ever since. It may well be better than the competition currently, but it is still got a shitty interface that demands your attention for anything. Small example: to switch off you have to press and hold the off button (edit: a few seconds), then it pops up a modal but asks you whether you really want to turn it off. Err, yes please? The 'off' button…

Beautiful hardware let down by its software? Sounds like every Sony product I've ever bought.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#135

Post by tsak »

I love my Sony NWZ-A15¹. My whole music collection fits on a 128 GB SD card. I always found streaming apps lacking. Spotify's UX is atrocious. I also don't think that their recommendation algorithms work well. There's also a huge gap in availability of non-mainstream recordings in most streaming services.

¹ https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/digital-music-pla...

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#136

Post by porcoda »

zasdffaa wrote: post #128
porcoda wrote: post #120

I got one of the NW-A45 Walkmans a few years ago - it's pretty nice and similar to the A55. Good audio quality, but most of all, it lets me focus on music without temptation to do things I would do on a phone. My biggest gripes are the interface. - It takes forever to rebuild its database when I add new music to the SD card. No matter how much I searched, I couldn't figure out how to build this myself on the computer…

Yep; see my other post. Let me add one to this, perhaps it affects you? I'm fussy about what I like, I buy a CD, rip, and listen. Usually I want to throw that track away after a few listens. You can't delete the track you are listening to (you can sort of, depending on how you found it via the UI, but usually you can't) so you must remember to delete it at home on your main computer. That's a major feature for me and…

I do the same - buy CDs, rip, archive CD away in a box as my backup. I don't delete though. I approach my huge collection as stuff I know I have, and who knows - sometimes I'll listen to something I haven't felt like hearing in a decade, so I like knowing it's there if I hunt for it.

I do agree with your post - the UI is bad. Even with the tiny buttons, a better UI would be nice. It seems to be designed for people with relatively small collections. I find this a lot - devices that market to audiophiles emphasize sound quality as all that matters, but often ignores that audiophiles may also have massive music collections. They usually suck on the "how does the audiophile organize and find the music they want to hear through that fancy expensive hardware" aspect.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#137

Post by makeitdouble »

tuxie_ wrote: post #119
makeitdouble wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really? I mean we are talking about the company that develops the Playstation. I have a very different opinion on Sony.

Yes..."Sony" is probably better seen as a group, with a lot of different entities doing their thing almost independently (not even talking about their entertainment and financing branch, really just the main bloc)

For instance Sony's audio branch is probably completely separate from the camera branch, which is separate from the TV branch, which doesn't talk to the EV car branch. I don't know if financially they are separate companies, but from what I got they are clearly cut divisions.

I imagine them as an archipelago of products and services, all under a common flag, but only talking to each others by delegations.

For instance Sony has a NFC venture that is really good with encryption and hardware data transfers, it's even integrated in their VAIO computer line. Yet their Network Walkman was an utter pile of poop when it came to move songs from the computer to the encrypted MD disc.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#138

Post by waiseristy »

gyulai wrote: post #126
waiseristy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what was an oligopoly? The original music services we used in the early aughts. The *vast majority* of music being bought and downloaded in the wild west days of PMP's was from iTunes. And I think you would be surprised to see that Amazon and iTunes account for a significant amount of music sales still to this day It's plain to see that the needs and preferences of minority users are being served too. This N…

We seem to be in perfect agreement then. It's a good thing that these devices are still getting made. Your initial comment made it sound like you took a different view, but maybe I misunderstood.

Oh yeah, just because I don't like certain tech doesn't mean other people do!

... but I still think all-in-one devices are better[1] :)

[1]if you consume music just like me, and don't really enjoy the deeper aspects of collecting and curating your own music library

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#140

Post by dmitriid »

fbnlsr wrote: post #133
jstummbillig wrote: post #114

I am mostly confused by what the author thinks the selling point is. > I can’t describe what a breath of fresh air this is compared to how bad modern smartphone music and streaming apps have become. Well, I was hoping they would try to describe it, because personally, I would have to wear my most deeply shaded nostalgia glasses to think that MP3 player UX has ever been comparable to what Spotify offers nowadays. And…

> And we can not even directly compare a MP3 player to Spotify, which is paid to do an entirely different and way more complicated job, considering that you are able to browse and organize a completely different and incomparably larger (and automatically growing) set of media. Spotify has two drawbacks though: you need a constant Internet connection and it removes tracks at will. The constant internet connection can…

> but the fact that some tracks (even whole albums) can become unavailable suddenly is utterly disappointing.

Blame the copyright holders aka the Big Four/Big Five: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry

Streaming services would gladly stream anything you want to you.

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