very cool music player

raggie33

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i love gadgets and i been reading about this 30 hour battery life smaller then ipod the new sony
 

jook

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Very cool indeed. I still have my ancient 5 year old Creative Nomad which is 5 times the size and can only last 12 hours with 2 batteries.

I haven't been keeping up too much - this "Network Walkman" [very imaginative name, NOT] uses Sony's proprietary format, ATRAC. Although the website sez it can play back other formats such as MP3, I wonder if there won't be compatibility problems.

EDIT: I just noticed this on their website...

"Store up to 13,000 Tracks at 48kbps when using Sony's ATRAC3plus™ audio format."

That's a very low bit rate and a very deceiving statement.
 

raggie33

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im not realy sure if it plays mp3. but i trully prefare atrac s plus.id say a 48 k atrac 3 plus rivals a mp3 at 96k.but im sure it matter how ya encode it.i always liked sony.i have a sony mp3/atrac/cd player and im always amazed at its quilty ya cant make it skip. and battery life is trully amazeing.i like the ipod to though but prefare this sony
 

jook

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I held off on buying the iPod because it was proprietary. But I guess that's a fact of life, at least for now. I also got turned off by Apple/Ipod when someone was forced to sue Apple because the iPod did not have an option to replace the original battery. The iPod was rendered useless once the battery couldn't take any more charges or went bad for whatever reason. So yeah, I'd much rather go with Sony. Raggie, you need to check it out and report back. tia.
 

Saaby

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The iPod isn't any more proprietary than any other player. As far as DRMed music goes it only plays Fair Play files, which are proprietary. It also plays MP3, AAC (Basically MP4. Not proprietary at all!), AIFF, etc.

The battery is built in and can be replaced if you're willing to break the thing open. It's rare that the battery 'quits taking a charge' and more common that you only get 3 or 4 hours out of a charge, instead of 8.

This is less of an issue with the new iPod which has 12 hour battery life and, after the 500 or 600 complete charge cycles that will wear out any LiIon battery, will probably only hold a charge for 6 or 7 hours.

The problem with the Sony players has been that, up to now anyway, the interfaces suck and they only play ATRAC files.

If I was choosing a player based solely on it's ability to use an online music store, I'd pick the Apple/iPod/iTunes combo over the Sony/Walkman/Connect Music Store combo, but that's all irrelevant to me as less than 10% of my music came from online music stores.
 

JOshooter

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I'd hate to say this, but I'd get the ipod too, especially after my incident with my Sony MiniDisc player. The software that came with it was <font color="brown">CRAP</font>, it kept freezing my both my computers up, so I used RealOne, which works fine with a Sony Device download. But, 8 or 9 months after I bought it for some reason it stopped recording, but plays prerecorded tracks fine. Nothing I can do about it, except get a cheaper model and use that for recording, and my other for playing.
 

raggie33

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o there software is aweful it has got better though.i just love the sound of atrac. do a blind test rip a mp3 from ya cd then rip it at same bitrate in atrac.it to me is far better
 

raggie33

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irver is good stuff i see they have suport for ogg? cool. my ideal player will be like 15 gigs i dodnt need more. unless i encode in ogg.man we came so far the first mp3 players was like 16 megs lol
 

DLG

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We are a 2 iPod family now. Son and daughter. They are very nice units with very nice software to compliment them on both the MAC and PC. Younger daughter now has her heart set on one.

Daughter is in college and when walking the campus, its interesting to see the # of students walking around with these things.

They don't really care about mp3, proprietary formats, etc. They just know they are cool and store and play their tunes.
 

Aloft

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I checked out Sony's cool looking players myself. But what everyone says here on the forum, I found to be true also. The supporting software is very buggy, according to reports. And they don't really play MP3's, they "transform" it to Sony's proprietary format. . . ok, if the software works for you, but bad news if it doesn't. The IPod's proprietary format is easy to work around, especially using Apple's own superior iTunes software (I'm using the Windows version), so if you're looking for a HDD unit, I wouldn't let that stop me.
I own an iRiver flash player (512Mb). It's not expandable, but other than that, it's a fabulous device. If they're HDD unit is as good, I'd recommend it too. And if they are supporting Ogg-Vorbis. . . BONUS for Linux guys, and very cool of iRiver!
 

matt_j

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Yeah Iriver here too. I have their hard drive 20 gig version and love everything about it )including battery life).

Matt
 

paulr

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I think the new Sony thing doesn't play mp3 at all, and there's no way to transfer the files back to a PC from the player.

The most "open" dedicated player is the Neuros, www.neurosaudio.com , but I haven't tried one yet. I'll at least look at it carefully though, if and when I feel up to buying a player.
 

Saaby

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[ QUOTE ]
The IPod's proprietary format is easy to work around, especially using Apple's own superior iTunes software (I'm using the Windows version), so if you're looking for a HDD unit, I wouldn't let that stop me.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not trying to plug the iPod, ok maybe I am, but nothing about it is "Proprietary." When you put your MP3s into iTunes it moves the MP3 files over to the hard drive in the iPod for playing. It moves them into a hidden folder that you can't access by default, but there's lots of programs out there to help you get around that.

You could even move your AIFF files right off the CD and onto the iPod, but that would take a LOT of space, so that's why you use the encoder in iTunes to encode to your format of choice. I happen to encode to AAC because I feel it's a superior format, but if you want MP3 that's fine too.

iPod plays (With no transformation from iTunes):
AAC (16 to 320 Kbps)
MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps)
MP3 VBR
AIFF
WAV
Audible
Apple Lossless
 
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