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

cwep2

With respect to the Atrac/MP3 quality issue.

Yes MP3 at a decent bitrate will be good quality - to be honest ever since vbr mp3 encoding became widespread, mp3 quality for a particcular filesize has been much much better.

Atrac3+ also gives good quality results.

One key advantage is that using Atrac you can get very good sound quality to most peoples ears (especially for a portable player) with a much smaller filesize. So you can pack a lot more onto this 20gb player than you could onto even a 30gb ipod.

I ripped most of my music to mp3 a couple of years ago (EAC+Lame) at 192 vbr. I tried a few bitrates and below this I could tell the worse quality, above it I could not so this was the best use of a limited space. I got an A3000 and did a similar bitrate test - again this is only my own ears so others may find different results - and using headphones (albeit fairly decent headphones). I found Atrac3+ 64kbps to be the equivalent level. So I now get about double the amount of CDs on this 20gb player than I did on my previous player at *to my ears* the same sound quality.

I'm sure listening through decent amp + speakers you would be able to hear the degradation of the music with this compression, but that's not what i'm using it for. Also there is of course the fact that the sony may just 'sound better' even if I stuck the same mp3s on it, so this is a very subjective test. Either way I'm very happy with the player.

You will also find lots of talk about gapless playback - this is nice to have and improves the listening experience for me - I know there are mp3 alternatives but the market leaders players do not do gapless in their standard form (yes I know about rockbox) so for me this is also a big plus for this player.

Software you only use infrequently for a big capacity like this (you are not adding things every day) so as long as it works it is not a problem for me - the usability of the player itself is much more important (battery life, ease of use etc) and in this respect the sony scores very well.

HTH Clive

reehsetin

has anyone tried today - went yesterday the electrics department was shut
today theyre telling me its 199.97! anyone else?
does anyone know if they will change the price on a saturday?

haloman

cwep2: I rip everything at APS/V2 (~192kbps average) and it's generally regarded as being transparent in ABX tests.

Oh, and ATRAC3+ at 64kbps is _certainly_ not comparable to a well encoded MP3. Sorry, it just isn't - OGG is supposed to be the best birate at 64kbps and is far from transparent.

Evidence:
* See this listening test on HydrogenAudio which shows that ATRAC3 is the worst of many codecs at 128kbps, with LAME and AAC both beating it.
*Another one showing 128kbps MP3 performs much better than 48kbps ATRAC3+.. * More here saying 64kbps doesn't touch 128kbps LAME.

I honestly don't believe any format at 64kbps is reasonably listenable.

I think you've got the placebo effect - your ears can lie, double blind tests don't.

reehsetin

after a few thousand calls to head office and a few million tesco stores! we've been told theyve never been sold at tesco at that price, they never had them in stock - even tho we saw it in front of us - and finally that tesco did have them but they arent allowed to sell them and a billion other things - anyway the one in northampton has them so my lovely cousin is buying us 3 hehe
ps tesco is now officially full of idiots

trippy

I think the confusion is because it's only the purple ones on offer at £99. The black and silver ones aren't actually on sale yet in Tesco, even though they've been sent out to stores and are held in the back. So some stores have been putting the DVD cases/ boxes on the shelves thinking that what they see in the stock room are the same. Maybe some stores didn't have a surplus of purple ones so never had them for £99 in the first place?

reehsetin

trippy wrote:

I think the confusion is because it's only the purple ones on offer at £99. The black and silver ones aren't actually on sale yet in Tesco, even though they've been sent out to stores and are held in the back. So some stores have been putting the DVD cases/ boxes on the shelves thinking that what they see in the stock room are the same. Maybe some stores didn't have a surplus of purple ones so never had them for £99 in the first place?

the official line from head office was that they were being discontinued so stores wernt allowed to sell them - because they wanted to send them back to sony and reclaim the money - but because they were scanning at that price people have been selling at that price.
theres a new one coming out but i think its got to be a new purple one cos the box that they scanned was purple and 20gb (looked exactly the same box as my existing one that came up at 199.97

natanddan1

Tesco Camberley are now scanning at £199.99. definately way over priced, you can get a 30g ipod for that price and it plays videos

Welshdan

Just picked a purple one up at £99.97. Tried to sync with Windows Media Player 10. It copied the tracks to the player and I can see them in Windows but they won't show up on the player. Looks like I will have to use the connect software or take it back.

kuroitsuki

Well guys and gals,

New software will be launched by the month end and will be free to download!

Point your browsers at http://support.sony-europe.com/DNA/SSCP/sscp_dl.asp?l=en

This is set to be the best Sonicstage version yet ^_^

Hope this helps

Omertron

kuroitsuki wrote:

New software will be launched by the month end and will be free to download!

As I said HERE