Silva Bokis

New Walkman models - Sony abandons ATRAC for WMA

This morning, news emerged of a new series of Walkman MP3 players that no longer support ATRAC and do not use SonicStage.

The players support security-enhanced Microsoft Windows Media Audio (WMA), as well as non-secure AAC and MP3 music formats, plus JPEG files for photos, in addition to the AVC (H.264/AVC) Baseline Profile and MPEG-4 video codecs.

Music and other media management will be provided by Microsoft Windows Media Player 11.

New Sony NW-A800 Video Walkman: Hands on review

Here's a hands on review of the new NW-A800 video Walkman. The NW-A800 was kindly lent to me by Sony Europe.

And here's some more Sony Walkman material.

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

nav-u promo film

Here's a short promo video we created for the latest Sony nav-u navigation system.

James Bond Casino Royale Online Game at Sony UK

Sony UK has just launched an online game to promote the upcoming release of Casino Royale, the latest James Bond movie. 

Access the game here.

Sony S700 Walkman - Exclusive pictures & mini-review

Here are a couple of (rather blurry) pictures of the Walkman S700 announced by Sony UK yesterday.  I managed to borrow this sample for half an hour and have a quick play with it.

You can find larger versions of these photos at http://www.pbase.com/silvabokis/s700_walkman

Here's a very quick summary of my impressions of the player.

• Design - This is a nice unit. It's solid, well built and has just enough weight to feel high quality rather than flimsy. The one I was lent is the same purple as NW-A3000 units and the design definitely makes it feel like part of the same family of products.
• Ease of use - It took less than 5 minutes to unpack the S700, attach it to my laptop and transfer a couple of albums across. At the same time the quick charge got me enough battery life to start listening straight away. The controls don't take very long to get used to and the 'collar control' (can't think of a better way to describe it) makes it easy to navigate through albums and songs.
• Sound - The sound quality is excellent. The S700 has noise cancelling circuitry built in and comes with a high quality set of earbud headphones that have the noise cancelling microphones built into the earpiece. This is a big improvement on previous MP3 Walkmans that have typically needed a headphone upgrade to get the most from them. Holding down the 'Sound' button on the rear of the unit for a couple of seconds switches between EQ modes - personally I prefer to listen to the music with flat EQ but bass-heads will like the second EQ setting that really pumps up the bass level.
• Display - A big difference on this Walkman is the colour OLED display that shows cover art for the songs you're listening to. There's also a clock display and a colour screensaver (multicoloured bubbles that move up the screen).

It's difficult to say any more when I only had the unit for about 30 minutes, but my overall impression is very good. In fact, I might just try and 'borrow' one of these S700s on a longterm basis.

Update - 16th October:

I just did a direct compare of the S700 with my NW-A3000 (with noise restrictions disabled). I used the noise cancelling headphones on the S700 and a pair of Westone UM2 high sensitivity headphones with the NW-A3000.

Bearing in mind the Westone headphones cost about $200 the S700 performs very well in comparison. Bass response is good and percussion sounded very lifelike. The sound is detailed but not as loud as the NW-A3000 + Westones - given the sensitivity of the Westones that's hardly surprising.

As I was testing in a quiet living room it was difficult for me to discern the effect of the noise cancelling features - I'll test again on a plane journey this Wednesday.

The only real test of any MP3 player is whether you enjoy the music. I have had players in the past that I couldn't listen to for long periods because the sound somehow irritated me. This is not the case with the S700 - it's easy to listen to.

2 of the tracks I chose to test with are quite challenging - 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and 'Orgasmatron' from Albert Kuvezin's Re-Covers album (Check out http://www.yat-kha.com/html/what/yat_kha_cd_recovers.php to download the tracks yourself). The S700 performed very well - the soundstage was very lifelike with individual instruments easy to place in the mix. The only downside was that I had to drive the volume on maximum to get a volume even approaching the NW-A3000/Westone combination.

My final test was to play the S700 through the Westones. The unit automatically detected that the noise cancelling headphones weren't present and I was able to run the volume at 22 to 24 out of 30 to get an excellent soundstage.

Overall conclusion - excellent sound quality but needs more volume. I really need to test in a location with ambient noise to evaluate the noise cancelling feature.

Update - 19th October:

I had a good opportunity to test the Noise Cancelling feature of the S700 yesterday. I listened to various tracks on a flight from London to Brussels.

Initially I thought the feature didn't work - when you navigate through the menu to the Noise Cancelling option it displays the option 'ON' which I assumed was a button to turn the feature on. In fact it was showing me that the feature was already on and so I turned it off by mistake.

Once I had rewired my brain to cope with the strange usability error I found that the noise cancelling worked very well.

By turning down the volume on to 1 or 2 and then switching Noise Cancelling on and off I could hear a huge difference in the characteristic of the background noise. I also found that I could listen comfortably with very little outside disturbance at volume settings of 23 to 25.

It's worth mentioning that Noise Cancelling doesn't remove all ambient noises. Instead it filters out high frequency noise leaving lower frequency noises in place. When you turn on your music the lower frequency noise gets lost in the mix.

One strange feature - if you switch tracks with Noise Cancelling enabled there is a short (<1 second) burst of non-cancelled noise before the Noise Cancelling kicks in again. I guess this is becase the noise cancelling circuitry builds up a buffer of ambient noise before it starts cancelling.

Another interesting feature I tested is the Dynamic Normalizer. This is intended to balance out the volume levels between tracks. In practice it seemed to give a considerable volume boost to most tracks that I played. Maybe I recorded them all too quietly in the first place ;-)

Slow NW-A1000/NW-A1200/NW-A3000? Defragging will help.

Since the last firmware upgrade my NW-A3000 (NWA3000) player has been working perfectly with SonicStage CP, except for one thing - navigating through the menus on the NW-A3000 suddenly became very slow.

Looking around in various places online I saw a suggested fix - to defragment the hard drive inside the NW-A3000. I tried it and it really works.

Here's how you can do it yourself:

• Connect your NW-A3000 to your computer using the supplied cable.
• Open Windows Explorer (Start/All Programs/Accessories/Windows Explorer
• Open the My Computer section in the file tree and right click on the 'removable drive' symbol for the NW-A3000.
• Select 'Properties'
• A window opens - Select Tools tab
• Click 'Defragment Now' button
• Disk Defragmenter opens - Click 'Defragment button.
• Wait until defragmentation is complete.
• Disconnect NW-A3000 from computer.
• DONE!

Note that this even speeds up the player if Disk Defragmenter tells you that you had 0% fragmentation.

Sony Sports MP3 Player confirmed - the WALKMAN NW-S200 Series

Sony UK has today confirmed the addition of Sports MP3 players - the WALKMAN NW-S200 Series - to their range.

The linked press release gives some details of the range - we have received a product briefing from Sony that allows us to provide some extra details.

• Water resistant - The body of the NW-S200 series is manufactured from water resistant aluminium. This creates a water and sweat resistant casing.
• Sports Mode - The user can set targets for their workout based on calories to burn, distance run or steps taken. Music will start playing and then stop when the target is reached.
• Music Pacer - The Music Pacer function lets the NW-S200 series detect user movement and automatically switch between 'running' and 'walking' playlists depending on how vigorously it detects you are moving.
• Shuffle Shake - Shake an NW-S200 three times and it switches to shuffle mode. Shake 3 more times and it switches back to normal play.
• Quick charge - Charging the NW-S200 series battery for 3 minutes gives 3 hours of playback time. A full 45 minute charge is claimed to give an 18 hour battery life (the usual manufacturer caveats of '18 hours when played in non-shuffle mode.. ..blah blah..) apply but it still seems like a very good battery life that means the unit won't be sitting on charge when you're ready to hit the road.
• The unit also has a built in pedometer (I guess using G-Sensor again), stopwatch.
• Sound functions - A dynamic normaliser minimises the difference in volume level between tracks.

Silva Bokis has seen pre-production models of the new WALKMAN NW-S200 Series Sports MP3 Players - we will post photos in the next few hours.

UPDATE: NW-S200 Photos now available on Pbase.

SonicStage CP 4 lets you copy and play tracks from one PC to another

Here's a strange thing.

I've got a desktop PC at home that I use to synchronise music to my NW-A3000 Walkman using SonicStage CP v4. I've been ripping to ATRAC 160kbps with High Recording Quality and Add Copy Protection unchecked.

I discovered yesterday that I could open up SonicStage CP4 on a different PC and drag these ATRAC tracks from the device to My Library and they played back with no DRM blocking. MP3's on the NW-A3000 couldn't be dragged over, just the ATRACs.

SonicStage CP Version 4 breathes life into NW-A Series Walkman

I've held off posting this news until I could assess the impact of SonicStage CP Version 4 - the new version of SonicStage that supports the advanced features of NW-A Series Walkman mp3 players.

I've downloaded the update onto 2 different PCs and it works perfectly on both. What is more, the feedback on Atraclife and other websites is also positive.

So, if you're having problems with Sony Connect Player (and even if you're not) you should download SonicStage CP Version 4 and give it a whirl..

Download links:

• Europe
• Japan
• USA
• Asia-Pacific
• JEB

NW-E003 Hands-on review

Following on from last week's post of exclusive pictures of the new E-Series Walkman Flash MP3 players I now have my hands on a production unit of the NW-E003 1GB Flash Walkman. I managed to blag the NW-E003 at the Sony offices in Weybridge just before travelling to Brussels for work so I don't have a digital camera to hand to take pics - I'll try to beg/borrow/steal one tomorrow.

First impressions

Packaging for the NW-E003 is similar to the NW-A3000 I bought before Xmas. A cardboard box with metallic purple finish is opened to slide out a plastic tray that contains the NW-E003 and, underneath, a set of headphones. In addition there's a software CD (SonicStage 3.4), guarantee certificate and manuals in various languages.

First thing to note is that the NW-E003 is noticeable lighter than the 400 and 500 series Flash Walkmans. Without using the manual I managed to set up day/date and navigate around the various menus.

I just plugged in the headphones to listen to the pre-loaded demo tracks. The sound quality is pretty good with the supplied headphones. Swapping to my favourite Westone UM2 headphones reveals excellent sound reproduction. The NW-E003 doesn't drive the Westone's as high as the NW-A3000 but the sound is very good and I certainly don't need to use maximum volume.

Anyway, enough for now. I'm off for dinner. If anyone has questions feel free to ask & I'll try to answer them asap.