Sony MP3 player

[vipers]

Hi guys,

After some info on the Sony NWA3000 20Gb MP3 Player.

Question, can you record/copy/rip or whatever is the word, tracks from CD's onto this MP3 player, or does it only use stuff you download?. I am new to this stuff and after seeing a good deal for one in Sainsburys, was wondering if I could use it to record my existing CD's on, and do I need any particular software for it, or does it come with it.

Thanks in advance for any info you may have for me.

[ThePassenger]

Sony MP3 players. The first question to get yourself and answer to is "Is it actually an MP3 player or a 'portable music player'?" as Sony for quite a while forced you to use their proprietary ATRAC format (so you went from CD -> MP3 -> ATRAC).

Second, can you use something other than SonicStage (or is it SoundStage)? It's not a patch on iTunes and has a tendency to crash or chug along for no apparent reason; from reading a few peoples blogs it seems to be very sensitive to system configuration.

Assuming it IS an MP3 player and your happy enough with the software, it should be a simply matter of dropping a CD in and hitting the appropriate 'rip' format, it'll go off and query a CDDB for track names and the like and then rip the disk. Again for existing content, create a playlist and drag the files.

[twister]

The wife had one of those for about 48 hourd before realising it was one of the biggest piles of junk Sony have ever produced. As noted above, the frontend PC software isn't a patch on iTunes, and the player itself wasn't much better-low output volume, annoying playlist handling and randomly deciding to reset itself were the 3 things she discovered within the first day of use. Despite us wanting to try and find an alternative to the iPod, and having tried some other players beside the Sony, in the end we gave in and bought an iPod Video...


...and you know what, the iPod fanatics aren't misguided in their love of the damn things. As much as we disliked the idea of paying a premium for the styling, I have to admit that the whole experience, from PC frontend through to the device UI and playback quality, is like a breath of fresh air in a world of poorly designed/implemented consumer electronics gear which hever quite works the way it ought to (or indeed, claims to on the box).

So by all means try out the Sony, just make sure the store will take it back without quibbling if you decide you can't live with its quirks and shortcomings.

[vipers]

Thanks guys for the feedback, may pass on that one, save up for the iPod after all. Better still have wifey get it for me for crimbo!

Thanks again, and a very merry christmas to all our readers out there.

[mr_yogi]

Ok, i'm gonna stand up for Sony here

I've got one of the first Sony MP3 players (HD1) and love it. SonicStage is ok and the latest version is perfectly adequate. However I believe the new Flash based players now use Sony Connect not SonicStage, which when it first came out was supposed to be even worse than SonicStage Probably ok now though.

The very first players only played ATRAC3/ ATRAC3+ files where as later players are able to play MP3 as well, I assume the latest ones still play MP3's.

If ATRAC3 is a pro or a con depends on where your music is comming from. If you have a huge library of MP3's already then ATRAC3 may be a waste of time.

Most of my files on my HD1 were ripped from my own CD's and in this case ATRAC3 was much better than MP3. 64bit ATRAC3+ is roughly equivelent to 128bit MP3 but is half the size, meaning I can gete twice as many tunes on my Sony HD1 as I could on an iRiver or whatever with the same size hard disk (20Gb).

Like I said MP3's can be used directly on the Sony players now but by converting them to ATRAC3 you can half the size.

Also they are very small and the battery life is amazing compared to other brands.

It's not perfect though, the navigation is not a patch on the iPods spinny wheel thing.

just my 2p

BTW my HD1 is almost full