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My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

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Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#191

Post by alpaca128 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #181
cush wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of UX, it's really hard to beat high fidelity audio and hardware buttons. Spotify is just an app. The real experience is the playback.

Hardware buttons I agree with. But the Sony NW-A55 Walkman we are comparing against requires constant touchscreen interaction too so it's not really any better than a smart phone. Plus most phones have hardware buttons for volume anyway. As for high fidelity audio, I doubt there is much between devices these days. I remember back when I was buying portable cassette and, later, CD players there did used to be a real n…

I like to keep music playback separate from my phone because I hate having it interrupted by some random app notification. And on my smartphone I have to push the volume to the max to barely reach the level I consider normal with my headphones. On the Walkman that's not an issue and the difference in sound is immediately noticeable. Of course that doesn't matter if you use Bluetooth, but as there isn't a single decent pair of BT headphones with replaceable batteries on the market I'll keep using cables in the foreseeable future (and headphones have a minimum size, so the manufacturers can't even use their typical excuses for using glue).

Of course some phones are quite solid in terms of sound, with some music there's no difference either way, but without comparison you can't really know what's missing unfortunately.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#192

Post by jstummbillig »

bartread wrote: post #161
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…

> MP3 player UX has ever been comparable to what Spotify offers nowadays. You might have different experiences to me. My iPod was never a distraction whilst driving in the way that Spotify, with it's manifold failure modes and inconsistent/unresponsive UX, can be. With depressing regularity I drive without either music or podcasts because that's preferable to dying (or killing someone else) in a car crash because I'm…

> You might have different experiences to me.

Definitely.

Your experience does sound demoralizing. I am not sure I have had Spotify crash on me thus far and certainly not with any regularity. I think it's safe to assume that you have an untypically bad experience, because if what you described was true for most people, Spotify would have no users.

Which begs the question, why do you stick to it? There are competing services. How could they possibly do a worse job, in light of what you are describing?

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#193

Post by wvh »

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…

It would be worthwhile if some companies would just be willing to minimally invest into an open-source version of their interface and a safe way for developers and hardcore users to update their devices without bricking them.

It might go nowhere, but if they're lucky, some really good interface ideas might pop up that could then be incorporated into the official product. This Walkman line and its embedded software has a relatively long lifespan, so a lot of people might benefit from improvements.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#196

Post by wvh »

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…

I've been looking with some interest at the NW Walkmans for several years, and as far as I know, the whole range still missing queue functionality. It's strange to me whoever is in charge for the product line at Sony doesn't seem to be interested in adding or improving pretty basic player functionality like playlists and play queues. It's almost as if they invested into the hardware platform, then called it quits instead of naturally evolving the software side.

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#197

Post by hilbert42 »

Does anyone know if this device reads NTFS-formatted MicroSD cards?

(I've had too many failures with ExFAT where I've lost everything - the last crash having wiped out about 200GB files - so I've switched to NTFS. ExFAT is just too fragile to be used regularly as an interchange medium.)

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#198

Post by ploika »

Stormwalker wrote: post #194

This is cool, but how do you obtain music as files legally? The only platform that allows that is Bandcamp, but if artist is not presented here, torrents is your only option I can think of.

You can (almost) always buy CDs and rip them. I'd be mildly surprised if an artist was selling music without either a presence on Bandcamp or a store on their own website that you could download from.

I'm certain I've bought a handful of albums from Amazon and Google over the years that I've put onto various phones and MP3 players. Is that not possible anymore?

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#199

Post by lm28469 »

csdvrx wrote: post #60
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 was vaguely interested in such a product but even $350 seemed too much, let alone the other ranges of products with, for the general audience, not much in the way of obvious differing benefits. I was also skeptical, but after hearing the difference, I'm not coming back. I'm rediscovering my favorite tracks! I'm hearing instruments in the background that I couldn't hear before!! > even $3600 (!!!) which is apparen…

Crazy to think that even the shitiest mp3 player would easily get 30-40 hours on a single AA battery back in the days

Re: My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman

#200

Post by gbraad »

csdvrx wrote: post #42
gbraad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No... Not just externally USB attached. You can try about a trial version from the author.

I use it on my fiio, phone, tablet, usb dac, etc.

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