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How Sony's HD Audio Player Falls Short
Mr_Silver writes "Sony's new MP3 based HD player (the snappily titled NW-HD3) is reviewed over at head-fi.org. Unfortunately it can't remember where you last were located when browsing, you can't list all the songs by an artist, 1.5 hours to transfer 2100 songs (instead of the iPod's 15 minutes) and a wall of noise in the output. Final conclusion? 'If there was a way I could return this thing, I'd do it in a second.' So close, yet so far." Update: 12/14 00:35 GMT by T : Not quite so fast: As
forums.minidisc.org Administrator Christopher MacManus writes, it turns out that (as the threads below this review reveal), "The reviewer
discovers that the unit he had is defective as someone else employs one
and there is no hiss issue. Furthermore, the software woes he
experienced are related to him employing JAPANESE software on an English
operating system. Sonicstage 2.3, which he needs to use the unit, is now
available in English."
...A special kind of sadistic bastard to make a portable music player that doesn't play MP3 files (as most previous Sony products did). Sadistic bastards generally don't make stellar products when their main concerns are pushing file formats.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I originally acquired a minidisc for one main reason: Battery Life. It would last around 50 hours on a single AA and that was the only thing I cared a year ago. Eventually I discovered all the issues with the technologies involved into this portable media.
Minidiscs (Net-MD and HI-MD) do have many issues such as:
- ATRAC only.
Compress your compressed mp3s into Atrac. Noticable Quality Loss. If you want to preserve the quality, then record LIVE (SP-Mode) like a cassette but do we really have time to do that?
Compress = lose time = quality loss = why?!?
- Cheap built quality.
Sony tends to make the higher-priced models built to last longer using material like magnesium unlike plastic of the lower-end models. It makes some sense I guess since it costs more but for a company like Sony, the company who ruled in the era of Walkmans (god those things were solid), I find it sad how the tables have turned. Walkmans used to take major beatings and they'd still function.
- slow transfer.
because of conversion and because it doesn't mearly use the potential of usb 2.0. Very abysmal on NET-Md's. On HI-Md's, they try to impress you with "100X" when in fact that's 500kb/s of burning speed.
I'm glad that Sony at least understood that it will take mp3 playback capability to at least compete in the market of portable audio players but they are already behind, way behind in the western countries and have a long way. They have to improve the software these players use (SonicStage has a horrible interface and barely enough features) and built quality of these players.
I'l sum this up by saying that I just wish Sony could build their future players like they used to with the Walkmans: Built to last.
The post mortems of this and other so-called "iPod Killers" are beginning to expose the difficulty of creating:
1) a sleek, feature rich MP3 player;
2) sleek, intuitive software to run on the player; and
3) sleek, intuitive software to interface with it.
(and optionally a sleek music store to interface with it)
For those who belittle Apple's achievement or dismiss their market success as "clever marketing," the failure of Sony and others to basically get their engineering shit in order should be more than telling: apparently, creating a great MP3 player really is hard.
I think the MP3 player industry is just crazy. Seriously, its just run by loons. My original Archos 6 gig was a very simple device. I would *gasp* make folders and put songs in them. Every other device I've owned had some special client software with some fancy synch crap.
It blows my mind that mp3 player developers think the user is so stupid that a simple copy and paste is beyond them, thus they must help them will these badly done client apps.
The worst is the Neuros. If an mp3 doesnt have an ID3 tag, it wont even show it in the damn "mp3 browser" part of the client software. Its exactly like the file doesnt exist. You have to find that file and manually edit the ID3. There's not even a n "unknown songs" category so I can do this in the client by looking at the filename. Not to mention, the only way to add songs is to use the client. If you copy a file over via USB, the device can't see it until the client updates its little database.
I hear people complain about their client software all the time. Crashes, too slow, etc. Do they even still make devices that act like hard drives?
His device was defective. There is no background hiss with this device, but unfortunately, most people will not see my comment and believe the aforementioned review. It's truly idiotic how the internet can be at times..
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