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My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

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Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#171

Post by NikolaNovak »

astrange wrote: post #52
NikolaNovak wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

"Nice headphones" is of course relative. I have two sets of Sennheiaer hd380. They plugged into anything and everything and sounded nice to my ears. They are super comfy. They still plug into my computer, synthesizer, and most of my stuff - but not of course my wife's iPhone.

(My old galaxy s2 had microsd, replaceable battery, grippy exterior,and of course 3.5 mm jack while being smaller in every dimension so I am skeptical as to some of the arguments other than "apple did it so entire industry will copy it")

As indicated above - I'm not am audiophile but I enjoy listening to music, and miss the easy convenience of 3.5mm jack on my phone along with everything else. A headphone amp would completely counter act the convenience and practicality.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#172

Post by applefangirl »

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…

The worst part about listening to music on the phone is nervously waiting for the next spam call to interrupt it.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#173

Post by dsr_ »

gspr wrote: post #145
visiblink wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?!

Why are yours dying so fast? (Alternatively, why do mine hold up so well?)

I have had two Clip+ in the last 15 years. I retired the first one because I broke the clip off; it still works otherwise. I was using them about 2 hours a day until the pandemic.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#174

Post by noxvilleza »

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…

Was looking at DAPS in this price range towards the end of 2019 - ended up going with a Fiio X5 III. Many of your Sony concerns are present in it: really poor menu/nav design, slow startup - but excellent sound quality.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#175

Post by Reason077 »

It’s not a real “Walkman” unless it can play cassette tapes. I’m sure anyone who grew up in the 1980s/90s would agree.

How else am I going to listen to my Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys collection?

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#176

Post by roboyoshi »

INTPenis wrote: post #107
leeoniya wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Can you tell me if the Hiby has a sleep feature? I'm looking at the store[1] but can't see it listed as a feature. 1. https://store.hiby.com/products/hiby-r3-pro-saber

I had one for a week and returned it. IIRC there was no sleep/standby feature. You either lock it like an iphone screen or turn it off. But it starts pretty quickly when you turn it off, so that's not the problem. For me it was just too slow and instable. There is a github repo with all the issues (https://github.com/vext01/hiby-issues) - check that before you buy one.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#177

Post by hnlmorg »

atoav wrote: post #130
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…

> but probably not applicable in general and likely worse than the market solution. Worse, for which usecase? I as a musician like to listen to full albums (as opposed to single songs) I like to manually read up on music and then listen to that specific music from that specific world region and era. Spotify can be neat to discover some starting points for that search, but it is arguably shit at the listening experien…

Having grown up in an era when cassette walkmans were new, then salivating over CD walkmans before building my own MP3 player in the mid-00's, I think smart phones are the best thing to happen to portable music.

Like yourself, I do also listen to full albums. You can do that on Spotify very easily. You can listen to recommendations (either via Spotify's own suggestion engine or curated playlists) of music from genre's, region, era, etc too. Sure you cannot add your own mixes to Spotify but the beauty of smart phones is that I can use a different app for that (and as an ex-DJ I really am into listing to DJ sets so I very much to use my phone in that capacity).

And this is really the point of the GPs comment. It wasn't that Spotify (specifically) replaces the need for a walkman but rather that smart phones support an array of more convenient ways to consume music with Spotify as one example. If you don't like Spotify then that's fine because we all have our own personal preferences. But you're not just limited to Spotify on a smart phone.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#178

Post by prmoustache »

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.

Who is to blame is irrelevant.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#179

Post by hnlmorg »

izacus wrote: post #155
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…

I don't remember any of the MP3 players desperately trying to shove podcast down my throat instead of showing my music. They also never lost all my downloaded music in the first 30 minutes of an 11 hour flight due to a crash bug. So just in those simple ways Spotify is worse.

I've encountered plenty of bugs with portable music players. I've had CD walkman scratch disks, cassette players eat tapes and I've had SD and compact flash storage fail on me too. No technology is beyond failure.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#180

Post by layer8 »

Volume buttons not being granular enough is what I despise about iPhones/iPads (and also the one Samsung tablet I own). It’s something that would be so easy to make configurable. (Jailbreaks enabled that.)
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