I'm thinking about purchasing a Sony NWZA818 player. I currently use Rhapsody To Go for music downloads. Just wondered if anyone has tried a Sony player with Rhapsody To Go. I didn't see Sony on the Rhapsody player list, but this player is advertised as "compatible with Windows Media Audio". Rhapsody states that devices labeled as "Windows Plays For Sure" devices will support the Rhapsody To Go music downloads. Are the new Sony MP3 players in this "Plays For Sure" category?? Any help would be appreciated.
I believe it's only compatible with Napster but not with Rhapsody. The Zune market place might be compatible though
I blew up hard drive of my computer and replaced it with new one. I am wondering if there is any way to transfer all my songs from sony mp3 player(Model: NW-E507) back to my new hard drive. I didnot have any backup files either. I cannot afford to lose all my songs.
(PS: I already spoke to sony technical ppl regarding this...they said its not possible)
I think there should be some crooked way to transfer. Pls help me.
These types of devices are not made to be able to transfer songs from the device to a computer as to reduce the likelihood of illegal copying of songs - It might be a case where you just need to put all the songs back onto you computer and in future make sure you backup all your data.
I would listen to the sony technician.
Specifically, I'm in the UK and my sister is going to NYC next week. I'd like her to pick me up a Sony MP3 player while she's over there, but she's likely to be in Manhattan the whole time. Where can I direct her to get it? (other than the Sony store itself)
I'm looking for the name of an actual store that charges decent prices that I can direct her to. I have a specific make and model of player in mind already.
J & R Music World is the headquarters for electronics in New York. It can be found at 23 Park Row in Lower Manhatta. It's very close to the Brooklyn Bridge, City Hall, World Trade Center Site- places she may be visiting anyway.
I want to but an MP3 player but am stuck between the Zune (by microsoft) or a Sony. I have all Sony electronics and am very happy with them, but have heard nothing about the Sony MP3 player. I have heard many good reviews on the Zune. Anyone have any info they can give me that would be great! Thanks!
Sony is definitely not know for their MP3 Players.
Zunes are awesome, I love them. I'd go for the Zune hands down.
I downloaded a few mp4 videos from youtube, and they work no ym computer, and i put them on my sony mp3 player, but it says "cannot play; file format is not supported" and its an mp4 format file. What video file format can I use so it works? please help! easy 10 points!
See the way an MP3 works is as far as I remember a triple layered sound file. MP4 is a 4 layered. so If you take something that is only programed to play a MP3, then a MP4 wont work cause it cant support the other layer of sound file.
because i tried getting videos from frostwire and my mp3 player says it only take mp4 files for videos and i converted them to mp4 and they still dont work. I dont know what else to do where can i get videos that will work on my Sony 4 GB NWZ-S616F???
the dragonballz episodes wouldn't go on it and i got the converted version too and it still dont work.
Read the My Sony Walkman blog to find out step by step how to get videos to work.
I have an iPod and it rocks, I love how easy it is to upload and sync music. But my mom has a Sony MP3 player and using Windows Media Player to sync music is a pain in my butt. What other programs can I use that will work and be equally as easy at iTunes? Thanks in advance!
rhapsody http://www.rhapsody.com/-software I use that.
My car has an ipod connecter in the glove box that allows me to play my ipod over my car stereo. My ipod gave up the ghost recently and so i decided to try a Sony Walkman Mp3 player. However, obviously the cable isnt compatible and so im stuck for ideas of how to play it in my car.. does anyone know of a converter that exists? Or am i going to have to change my whole system to accomodate for it? :( Thanks in advance!
I have a sony mp3 player and use sonic stage to upload my music. I never used itunes but coul only dfind this one song through them so I bought it and now dont know how to get it onto sonic stage
You cannot upload the song through Sonic Stage for the fact that the music you downloaded is DRM protected and hence can be transferred only to your Ipod.
What you can do is either search for the music elsewhere(www.esnips.com) or rip the protection which is potentially illegal and upload it to your other player.
If you do indeed want to break the protection try Breaking DRM on google.
So like maybe i'm dumb, but i lost the manual for my MP3 and i can't figure out how to put videos on it. It's a sony walkman MP3 player and it came with the trailer for 'surf's up' on it but i don't know what type of file the video has to be to be able to play on there, can anyone help me?
This is a video unboxing and 1st look at the Sony Walkman 4GB Video MP3 Player by www.mobilitysite.com. Jam out to your favorite music, watch ...
Slowly but surely, the company has been coming to its senses, releasing digital players under the venerable Walkman name with high-tech features (OLED screens) or prices that undercut Apple’s. The latter is the advantage of the E Series Walkman Video MP3 Player, which comes in about $70 cheaper than the latest iPod Nano. But you get similar features—a two-inch color screen, video playback and an FM tuner—and in lieu of the iTunes store, you can play videos downloaded from Amazon’s Video On Demand online service, which has a similar collection of TV episodes (new and vintage) and movies to rent or purchase. It’s missing the Nano’s 0.3-megapixel video camera, but if you can live without that questionably useful feature, you can’t beat the sub-$100 price.
• Storage : It wasn’t that long ago that MP3-player manufacturers were trying to put the 1.8-inch hard drive with the biggest capacity in their devices. (Remember when there was a 320-gigabyte iPod?) But those hard drives resulted in bulkier players that drew more power and were susceptible to skipping and damage from drops. At the same time, flash memory was increasing in storage size as well as becoming more affordable.
The result? Now most MP3 players are flash-memory devices, ranging from two gigabytes at the low end to 64 gigabytes for the priciest version of the iPod Touch. Obviously, you can take fewer songs along with you, but you’ll be taking a smaller device. If you still need to have thousands and thousands of songs on your person, Apple offers a “classic” iPod with a 160-gigabyte hard drive.
• Size : MP3 players come in three basic sizes: small, smaller and smallest. Those sizes happen to coincide with Apple’s iPod lineup (in descending order) of Touch, Nano and Shuffle. A player with a screen size of 3 inches or slightly larger, like an iPod Touch or Microsoft’s Zune HD, will still fit in your pocket while providing the biggest display on which to view video and digital images. If you’re looking for a slimmer fit, a Nano-size player will have a screen size of 2 to 2.2 inches—still big enough to watch clips, though with more squinting required—while shedding some ounces and inches. The tiniest players are generally the cheapest, with a minuscule display (except in the case of the Shuffle, which has no screen at all) to show basic track information. But they’re svelte enough to clip onto your belt.
Features to Look For• Audio file formats differ among players once you get beyond the ubiquitous MP3 format. As you can imagine, only iPods can play AAC files purchased from the iTunes Store that are protected by digital-rights management (DRM). Unprotected AACs—the default format for ripping tracks from your CDs to iTunes—are supported by many players, even Microsoft’s Zune HD.
On the other hand, Apple’s iPods do not support Windows Media Audio (WMA) tracks, either with DRM or without, but many other players do. If you use lossless audio formats, which compress files less to preserve more audio data, look for a player that is compatible with AAC Lossless (available through the iTunes Music Store), FLAC or WMA Lossless formats.
• Video file formats are a similar bag. Most players can handle MPEG-4, the most popular standard for compressing video. Based on MPEG-4, the H.264 codec is used for iTunes videos, which are layered with DRM, making them playable only by iPods. Microsoft pushes its Windows Media Video (WMV) format through the Zune Marketplace, although it isn’t supported by iPods. If you have a lot of DivX files—an alternative format based on MPEG-4—on your computer, there are a few players that will play them. Note that even if your video files are high-definition, the screens on MP3 players are too small to display all the pixels that the files contain.
• A radio tuner might seem old-school, but you may eventually tire of the music on your player or just want to dial in a little NPR. Some devices will even let you record the station to which you’re listening to the device’s storage for future playback. The Zune HD is the first player that comes with support for all-digital HD radio, which means it will only be a matter of time before other players come with this feature as well.
• Bluetooth helps you get rid of one of the most irritating side effects of the MP3-player revolution: tangled headphone cords. A player that provides Bluetooth stereo support (look for the A2DP profile) lets you listen with wireless headphones up to a range of approximately 30 feet. Better still, some players will also let you pair Bluetooth headphones to a cellphone so you can send and receive calls from your player without digging in your pocket for your phone.
What You Can Skip
For the time being, I think there is a reason iPods come out on top, despite their cost. Many years ago, when all the MP3 players were new, I had one or more from many companies, including Sony ("Music Clip"), Rio, Creative, and Microsoft (Zune).
They were all deficient in some way. The worst offender was Sony's units. They purposely did not allow you to transfer your own songs from CD's, or they only allowed it a limited number of times. I know Sony owns music studios and wants to protect their songs from being pirated, but for chrissakes, these were my own CDs!
I would like to know if the author found any problem with burning his own music to the Sony units. The iPod experience is intuitive, easy, and with literally no limitations when it comes to your own music.
From my viewpoint, there is a reason Apple comes out on top. I have 3 iPods and I have given out more than 10 as gifts. I wouldn't risk buying or giving a Sony unless I was sure they changed their copy protection schemes.
32GB X-Series Walkman gets $100 price cut
Purple and magenta Zune HDs coming soon
Zoom Q3 review
--------LISTENER EMAIL---------
I am considering purchasing an mp3 player for one of my kids for Christmas. In considering value, the life expectancy of the player becomes a critical factor in my purchasing decision. What is the reasonable life expectancy of an mp3 player? Do more expensive players have a greater life expectancy? What features of a player impact life expectancy? What uses impact life expectancy such a frequency of charging, exposure to temperature, etc.? Do particular manufacturers make better players than others with respect to players? -- Philip or Julie
---
Your commentary on the wooden ear buds brought back some interesting work and discussion I/we had decades ago. At the time I was living in Boston and a very active member of http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/
One study we did was to look into why something "Sound Better" but in reality is actually quite inaccurate. One is the ages old vacuum tube vs Solid State thing. Tube's "Sound Better" to just about everyone. Open, air, warm are all are pundits assigned to Tubes. Wooden things "Sound Better". That's why a violin sounds better as do all the other musical instruments.
It's long been known that if you construct a sound reproduction device, like a loudspeaker, out of solid wood 99% of the people you present that to will say that "Sounds Better". In reality the wood is imposing a few subtle, or a lot, of layers of 2nd order distortion that give the sound that "warm and open" experience.
Well designed sound reproduction instruments are never constructed from wood. Anything but. Re-enforced particle board, phenolic and the best thing to build a sound reproduction instrument from is re-enforced concrete. No resonances there.
Anyway love the show and I'm sure those wooden ear buds "Sound Better". Accurate? Not hardly. -- Bill
Gapless playback currently only works for some but not all files. Gapless should be implemented for all files, including Ogg Vorbis and MP3 files. MP3 is by default not gapless, but it's still possible to make it gapless.
More accurate volume controlThis was an issue with the first Clip that is back with the Clip+. The volume needs to have more levels to be able to adjust the volume more accurately. Also, the lowest level is still too loud for a lot of uses (like the radio), which needs to be fixed.
Remove the slotRadio menuOne of my complaints about the Philips Spark, and a massive complaint with the not-yet-reviewed Archos 5 Android, is the amount of what can only be called "spam" on the player. As Martin put it, we paid for this device- we don't want a menu item that does nothing but point to a URL for buying slotRadio cards. Include a pamphlet in the box, but don't hardcode ads into the firmware.
Pan/balanceSome people don't hear at equal levels on both ears. Some players allow you to compensate for this with a pan/balance setting. This should be a quick thing to implement and make the player more usable to a lot of people, so this one is a no-brainer. It should be standard for all players, really.
Audiobook/podcast track skip confirm and inter-chapter rewindingOn the Philips GoGear Spark, a menu will pop up asking you to confirm whenever you try to skip tracks forward or backwards for an audiobook. This adds a crucial safeguard against suddenly losing the position in a X hour file and having to spend 10 minutes trying to find it again. Make it an optional feature as some people might find it annoying, but it should definitely be an option to get the extra warning. This is my personal biggest gripe against the Clip+ and why I have switched to the Spark for audiobooks.
Another issue is to be able to rewind into the previous track, instead of being stopped at the beginning of the file. Single files don't often mean much for audiobooks - they're simply there to make skipping easier - so it doesn't make any sense to limit rewinding to the current file.
Folder advanceWhen the Clip+ reaches the end of a folder (when used in file/folder mode), it either loops the folder or stops. There should be an option to let it continue to the next folder.
Last.fm scrobblingLast.fm has become a giant service that let's you both track your music habits and find similar music. Unfortunately, close to no player supports this, and those that do have half-hearted methods of doing so (like the iPod), use their own "special" last.fm-ripoff (Zune) or just happen to work with the now-abandoned Zenses . It shouldn't be too hard to make the player keep track of what is played when, and make a small app that scrobbles this to last.fm. Rockbox already does this on the Clip v1, by writing the info to a text file you can manually upload- surely SanDisk can easily duplicate this even if they don't make it automatic. Last.fm support can also be marketed as a major feature of the player, as many mainstream consumers would never have heard of last.fm. The potential is huge.
Alphabetical scrollingThe Clip+ has a small screen, but with microSDHC support it can hold a lot of music. Scrolling through lists can take a long time, especially if you have a lot of single tracks (and therefore a lot of different artists/albums) or scroll through all tracks. There are several ways to do this. The Philips GoGear Spark pops up a small window on the screen when scrolling which shows what letter of the alphabet you're currently scrolling through. This is useful, but doesn't really speed up the scrolling much. Another way would be to use Sony's method of scrolling by alphabetical letters, either by setting the volume buttons to do this or toggle alphabet mode on/off with the middle button (since "right" can be used to select, you don't need to use the middle button for that as well).
Setting sound spectrum display and other things as screensaverThe sound spectrum display is nice, but it's not really used much. What would be nice would be to be able to set it as a screensaver, so that it could turn on automatically instead of having to trigger it. Other things should also be possible to use as a screensaver, such as a fullscreen clock, song info, upcoming tracks etc. This also means you have to have options for screensaver delay, and of course no screensaver at all.
Better equalizerThis has been an issue with the Clip since the beginning, and other SanDisk players as well. The equalizer is useless, which means that in a lot of cases the excellent sounding Clip+ won't get recommended to people because the lack of sound enhancement. If you really want to take this point seriously, look into licensing BBE sound effects that Cowon uses. This isn't proprietary Cowon technology and it's peculiar how no mainstream brand has adopted what is without a doubt the best sound enhancement technology on the MP3 player market.
More options for long pressCurrently, holding down the middle button let's you add a song to a on-the-go playlist or rate it. This could be allowed to do a variety of things, from directly accessing EQ or song info, forcing the graphic equalizer, delete song, go to album, go to artist etc etc.
More accurate scan speedsFast forwarding and rewinding accelerates gradually, which can be a good thing, but also a big annoyance because you overshoot. Allowing the user to "gear" the speed would be preferable, for example by double-clicking and then holding the button to force slow scan speeds while single click and hold is still accelerated.
Customizable playback screenThere's a lot than can be done with a playback screen. Allowing to select time remaining instead of elapsed time is one. Allowing to select what metadata is displayed (title, artist, album, track number, album artist etc) is another.
Marking listened podcasts/audiobooksOne of my all time favorite features with an iPod is its ability to mark files as listened to so that iTunes can remove them automatically on next sync. While I don't expect (nor want) SanDisk to make software that auto-removes anything, it shouldn't be too much work to add a option to enable renaming, deletion or moving of finished files. For example, once a podcast is listened to all the way through the player could rename it from podcast.mp3 to podcast-DONE.mp3. Another option would be auto-delete when finished, and a third option would be to move all finished files to a separate folder. I'm not saying pick one, I'm saying implement them all- people have different preferences. Either way, this would further help the Clip+ become the best non-ipod podcast and audiobook player out there.
Circumventing hold with a button comboOne of the things I like about the iPhone/iPod touch is that if you double-click the home button it brings up playback controls even though the hold is on. I constantly find myself needing to pause the Clip+ in my pocket but doing so requires fishing it up, turning off hold and pausing- takes too long when someone is talking to you. It would be nice to be able for pause the player by double-tapping the middle button. That button combo is hard to trigger accidentally (and it should be an optional feature anyways) and would make it a lot easier to quickly pause the player.
AAC supportiTunes is the biggest music store on the planet, and Apple has 70% of the MP3 player market. Yet the Clip+ don't allow for using iTunes, nor does it let Apple users easily convert to the CLip+ because it doesn't support the format needed- AAC. This is however not a free format so the reasons for not supporting it are probably cost related, bit it might be worth it all in all.
I WANT alphabetical scrolling, and I would posit a third option that might be the least clumsy to use:
Map the center button to next alphabetical letter.
Yeah, you can't go backward, but in exchange you have no confusing mode changes where the buttons change their action, and you don't have to reach to the side for the volume buttons.
It sounds bad that you can't go backward, but this will only increase your average button clicks by 5-6 (because some letters are unpopulated), and will save you the clumsiness of changing modes twice. As soon as you reach your letter, you can smoothly switch to the up/down buttons to scroll to your desired artist, instead of switching modes first.
I don't like the idea of mapping something to the volume buttons. I like the fact that the Clip+ lets you adjust the volume from anywhere in the player, because nothing else is mapped to the volume buttons. My e280 used to piss me off because I would have to make sure I was on the Now Playing screen before I could adjust the volume with the wheel. I don't want another soft volume button!
CNET NewsJukeboxes for Sansa and chargers for Walkman--Ask the Editors And do you really need a computer on hand every time you want to recharge your player? Find out below. Q: I bought myself a Sansa Fuze MP3 Player for under
CNET NewsRead all 'Apple Q1'09 earnings' posts in Digital Noise: Music and Tech If Apple can compete aggressively on price now, it could dominate the consumer smartphone market, just as it dominates the MP3 player market today.
MobileShop.comNokia 5800 success shows users ditching iPods for music phones? It's easily one of the most accomplished music players available today, even taking standalone mp3 players and iPods into account.
A photo of my Zune 120.
