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My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

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Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#141

Post by astrange »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #67
astrange wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had nice headphones they probably didn’t work perfectly with everything, since most nice ones need a headphone amp to sound like they’re supposed to. The analog interface also means inconsistent volume, and using them on a walk means cable microphonics.

There are plenty of nice headphones with low impedance among grado, sennheiser, beyerdynamic etc, you kinda have to go out of your way to choose a high impedance “home stereo” style ‘phone

That’s funny since when I ordered a Beyerdynamic headphone on Amazon they sent me the high impedance model I hadn’t asked for.

Although the best one I own is a Stax which needs an entire speaker amp.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#142

Post by mosselman »

dmitriid wrote: post #140
fbnlsr wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That is still a downside of the system. Even when there is some external force at play. The BigFour/Big Five don't come into your house to take away your CDs.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#143

Post by voxadam »

theodric wrote: post #134
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.

In defense of Sony's software/firmware team I'd argue that we've also been repeatedly burned by Sony's flawed hardware full of their endless NIH proprietary BS (e.g. Memory Stick, UMD, Minidisc, ATRAC, Betamax, to name just a few).

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#145

Post by gspr »

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…

+1

Sansa Clip+s with Rockbox is the perfect solution. I went through three before being unable to pick up any more without paying triple price.

Why do great products disappear?!

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#146

Post by jensgk »

erwincoumans wrote: post #64
inferiorhuman wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but I was comparing Apple ear buds with the 3.5mm jack vs lightning ones. Presumably the drivers and whatnot would be similar. In general I don't think audio quality has ever been particularly important to Apple. The iPhone (and all smartphones really) is a jack of all trades gizmo not a device for high quality audio playback. I remember when I had a first gen iPhone and the call quality was atrocious with A…

If you have an iPhone and you care about its audio quality there are some DAC dongles, see also https://www.whathifi.com/advice/how-to-play-hi-res-music-you... Quoting the article: "Next, you need a decent DAC such as the Audioquest DragonFly Cobalt, Cyrus soundKey or Chord Mojo 2 and a good pair of headphones, such as the Grado SR325x, Shure Aonic 3 or Austrian Audio Hi-X55. This is just a starting point, of course.…

The Audioquest DragonFly Cobalt is not very good: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/a... The Apple USB-C dongle is better: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r...

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#147

Post by aembleton »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #71
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…

One thing to factor in is the longevity of these devices, they aren’t an 18month affair like the typical smartphone. Battery aside, I have an original Zune that boots right up, and an unmodified iPod Mini with 4GB of spinning metal that doesn’t skip a beat, that’s about 17 or 18 years gone by, people also offer them on eBay spec’d out with upgraded battery, memory, and DACs

That's impressive. My Rio Karma mp3 player HDD died after ~10 years of use. By then, I had a smartphone and haven't gone back to a dedicated player.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#148

Post by stevepdp »

> I can’t describe what a breath of fresh air this is compared to how bad modern smartphone music and streaming apps have become. It’s also nice having a dedicated player that isn’t inundated with notifications and other modern distractions. Separating out ebooks to a dedicated tablet worked the same wonders for my anxiety.

A place for everything, and everything in it's place.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#149

Post by trollied »

theodric wrote: post #134
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.

SonicStage was a perfect example of this. Amazing (small!) MiniDisc hardware, let down by one of the worst pieces of software I've ever had the misfortune to use.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#150

Post by johnchristopher »

> You don’t need to use any special desktop software; you mount the Walkman as a USB storage device and transfer files. Wait… that’s it? Yes!

Ooof, yes ! I remember my minidisc fondly but I somehow erased from my memories the atrocious file management thing.

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