My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman • Hacker News Board

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#251

Post by csdvrx » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

kwatsonafter wrote: post #248

csdvrx wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really hope you never, ever have to live around working class people. They'll literally tear you apart. ? > Thank god for inequality keeping these little anime dorks safe. God bless America. ?? Can you explain the point you are trying to make? Is the problem the price of the unit? Or is it your opinion that "working class people" would tear apart the argument that the NW-A55 is a nice device? If so, why do you th…

It's a rhetorical point about the degradation of our social economy. I shouldn't have to explain poetry.

> It's a rhetorical point about the degradation of our social economy.

I'm sorry, I still don't get it - neither from a rhetorical angle, nor from a poetry standpoint.

I like poetry though, and after checking your profile I like your take on things (ex: the new programming paradigms) even if I couldn't understand your reply here or to the person who suggested putting side by side Rousseau, Montessori and Steiner.

Anyway, if you've got 5 minutes, please explain!

You said you are an academic pedagogist in training, and I'm always eager to learn more about things that interest me.

Music, sociology, and the sociology of music are SUPER interesting to me!

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#252

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 9:21 PM UTC

csdvrx wrote: post #241

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…

> Well, I was hoping they would try to describe it, because personally, I would have to wear my most deeply shaded nostalgia glasses to Leaving aside the UI issues (most of which can be alleviated with hardware buttons having tactile indicators like bumps / different sizes etc), my core concern is you are leaving not just the preservation job (prey none of the albums/songs gets deleted after an IP right renegotiation…

[deleted]

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#253

Post by csdvrx » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #59

If sound quality + local music + non-android is the goal there are plenty of lossless audiophile dedicated devices with DACs and amps built in on Amazon, with some nice designs: https://www.amazon.com/FiiO-M11Plus-Resolution-Portable-Blue... https://www.amazon.com/Surfans-F35-Resolution-Music-Player/d... https://www.amazon.com/iRULU-F20-Bluetooth-Lossless-Resoluti...

Do you like the M11 plus?

Music is very important to me. I'm considering the WM1ZM2, but I've seen a lot of great reviews about the FiiO and Surfans - but the F20 doesn't have Bluetooth (ok if LDAC and AptXhd are supported) and the F35 doesn't have USB-C.

The M11 plus has both BT+ USB-C, along with hardware buttons. If it can give me better audio and battery life than the WM1ZM2, I'm interested!

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#254

Post by IgniteTheSun » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

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 am mostly confused by what the author thinks the selling point is.

-------------------

From the article:

> 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!

>The player indexes any music you add, but keeps the files in place. This lets me use rsync to regularly diff and copy new ripped CDs or downloaded tracks across, even on FreeBSD. It also decouples syncing from music organising, so no more finagling iTunes in Wine, or using the garbage new macOS Music.app. As a (diagnosed) OCD suffer, this literally makes me happier than it should.

----------

These are features I had in my MP3 player about the time the first iPod came out (looked like a thumbdrive with a couple of buttons and a 2-line LCD screen on its side). Features I highly prefer, along with the fact that no internet connection is required at any time. I'm not looking for a device to be the front end for Spotify, Apple, or any other service - just an MP3 player that lets me play podcasts, music, lectures, etc. - e.g., any audio file that I want to, ideally in most of the common audio formats (including ogg).

[Edited for format.]

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#255

Post by olyjohn » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 10:54 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #210

kinleyd wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rockbox was very cool. I used it for many years.

is, not was.

How would he know if it still is if he hasn't used it in a long time? To him, it was cool and that is proper for him to say.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#256

Post by nicoburns » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 11:24 PM UTC

csdvrx wrote: post #237

nicoburns wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 40h battery life You’ll be happy to hear that you also get that on the cheap low-end devices!

> You’ll be happy to hear that you also get that on the cheap low-end devices! It won't matter much if their quality is so poor I don't want to bother listening, or if the interface doesn't provide hardware buttons meaning I won't be able to skip tracks in my car.

Something like a Sansa Clip ticks all those boxes and costs ~$40 (or cost, I believe that particular model may have been discontinued).

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#257

Post by astrange » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 11:42 PM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #171

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.

"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 sk…

Are you still using your Galaxy S2 or is it possible it wasn’t perfect despite managing to list all those things on a spec sheet at the same time?

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#258

Post by dangus » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 12:18 AM UTC

berkut wrote: post #33

dangus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

If the Sony Walkman’s player isn’t perfect, you can’t replace it, because it’s not a general purpose computing device like a smartphone.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#259

Post by 0xbadcafebee » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 12:41 AM UTC

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…

Well first of all I hate touchscreens and wish they would die in a fire. Every smartphone I've had has been too big for me to comfortably use with one hand, compared to older dumbphones which were very easy to use. Even if you find a small smartphone, the touchscreen then gets cramped. A small digital screen and thoughtfully placed physical buttons creates an interface that I can navigate without ever taking it out of my pocket. It also takes up less space, which opens up new possibilities for places to put it or when/where to take it. When you have a small device with physical buttons, you can just do more with it, easier, faster, more reliably.

The other thing is, most smartphones today are insanely over-complicated and not reliable at all. They consume an insane amount of system resources, their battery life is piss-poor, they're constantly being updated which leads to more instability. And new devices aren't necessarily backwards compatible with old apps, meaning you might end up with a phone just for music anyway, or end up losing a useful app. A dedicated device with a simpler RTOS can actually function faster, better, more reliably, for longer.

And to top it all off, the software of a Sony Walkman is usually top-notch. Good EQ presets, an interface designed to make it easy to navigate, with all the player options you want, with UX front and center. Quality control is high because you have to assume the user will never update the firmware.

And having a bunch of MP3s by default is just the simplest thing you can do. Usually the software auto-indexes and sorts and creates playlists etc by the ID3 tags, but if not, you can organize them manually into folders and manual playlists. You have pretty much total control over the music selection, experience, quality.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#260

Post by BirAdam » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 12:48 AM UTC

toastal wrote: post #188

BirAdam wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a Shanling. Awesome device, audiophile sound, lower price.

They have several devices, old and new, some with an in-house UI on Linux and others atop Android, at vastly different prices. So this comment isn't very clear or helpful.

Sorry, m3.

https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/shanling-m3-portable-digita...