Sony NW-A3000 20GB MP3 Player - £99.97!

bleugh

gromituk wrote:

Well you should know that however much fancy gold plating you have on your hifi system, unless you conducted a double-blind test, the results are null and void. You did conduct a double-blind test, didn't you? :rolleyes:

And of course it is going to be superior to MP3 - it's a more recent coding format.

But all this is fairly academic anyway. People buy these things to listen to music, not subtle differences in sound quality.

yep, we did that a lot in Uni, in a house of 17 of us, 8 with real nice hifi kit (seperates >1k) we all swapped bits all the time, and played around with bits testing stuff to see who's was best, without knowing whats playing


and technically, the test can't really be double blind, as it's really only sony's players that support artrac, and they 'could' be knobbling the MP3 playback

either way, it's superior, so there :-)

WeirdoMagnet

Sold out in my Tesco (Ayr) - was after one for OHs birthday!

trippy

Picked up one this afternoon which scanned at £149! So got it for free! There were another 2 left on the shelf but both scanned at £99 (I checked first in case they all scanned at £149 and I'd have bought all 3!)

When they checked their stock, after I got my free one, they didn't have any purple ones left anyway. The shelf ticket DID specify Purple btw. In the stock room they had some silver and black ones which aren't for sale yet but scanned at £199.

dk143

Omertron wrote:

Apparently, when I called Sony direct this player (NW A3000) is being discontinued, so that maybe the reason for the sale

So does anyone know if they are introducing something new? Or does anyone know of any websites that could tell me?

Norman-B

trippy wrote:

Picked up one this afternoon which scanned at £149! So got it for free!
trippy, you got it for nothing!? I must be a bit thick, but can you explain that part.

There were another 2 left on the shelf but both scanned at £99 (I checked first in case they all scanned at £149 and I'd have bought all 3!)

When they checked their stock, after I got my free one, they didn't have any purple ones left anyway. The shelf ticket DID specify Purple btw. In the stock room they had some silver and black ones which aren't for sale yet but scanned at £199.

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haloman

bleugh wrote:

erm...........ATRAC is superior to Mp3 for a given file size

thats quite important really,

and don't argue, please, technically speaking, on paper it's superior, and i can definatley vouch for it on listening tests also

(NW-HD5, arcam alpha 8 amplifier, KEF Q15 speakers, Ixos gamma biwire cables, an old combination, but one that shows music flaws very well)

Hi.

Lossy file formats are something I know quite a bit about. ATRAC as "superior to MP3" is a bit dodgy ground. Why? For various reasons:
* Sound quality of MP3 depends very much on the encoder used. LAME is much better than every other encoder
* The higher the bitrate, the smaller the difference. ATRAC is optimised for 128kbps, while MP3 is optimised for 192kbps or above. As such at 128kbps the difference is huge, as you approach 192kbps and above the quality difference will get smaller and smaller
* You cannot trust your ears, unless you've done an ABX test - a double blind audio test to see if you can tell the difference. This isn't possible easily for ATRAC due to it's proprietry nature, so testing if it is better is very difficult.
* At high bitrates with a decent encoder, MP3 (eg LAME -V2 and above) is indistinguishable from lossless in ABX tests
* You probably won't be able to tell sound quality from a portable MP3 player. These players typically give poor output, and even worse when you consider most use in-ear headphones.
* MP3 can be used on anything, this is a massive advantage if you want to upgrade as it doesn't rely on you reripping everything

I'd recommend ripping everything in 192kbps or better to get reasonable quality, preferably using LAME preset -V2, or 320kbps for the best quality, preferably using LAME preset -V0.

Also, I would really recommend _not_ using applications like Sonicstage or iTunes to rip MP3s. You'll get substandard results - they use poor outdated commercial encoders for MP3s, and they don't provide secure rips. You'd be suprised the sound quality difference between a good ripper/encoder combo and a bad one. EAC provides the best results, but isn't very user friendly, so CDEx is a good alternative that is a good compromise between useability and quality. Both are free and open source.

Hope this helps anyone.

trippy

I got it for free as it scanned at a higher price than it said on the shelf. Tesco policy if this happens is to refund and give you the item for free. There's a long thread somewhere else on MSE on Tesco misprices.

gromituk

A long tome, you mean :rotfl:

redsquirrel_3

I might go have a look myself tommorrow

mcsquared_2

picked up one from tescos yesterday, bit dissapointed that there's not much in the way of accessories does anyone know a cheap place to get a remote, case or docking station? (remote is the main one i want)
cheers
mike