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Hi So i was looking to upgrade my current Hi res audio player ( a fiio x1) and i was looking at two different DAPs currently one a sony walkman NW-A26HN and the cowan plenue D. While i like my x1 i find the battery life is annoying me a bit and it tends to lag a little. I was wondering which of the two would be a upgrade sound wise as well.
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What were the odds I'd find a pair of Sony Walkman speakers in the original box at good will for 7$? I just ripped then out of the box they were living in for the last 22 years about five minutes ago. Here they are in all their glory hooked up to my Sony Walkman sport just as they were intended to be. Thought you guys would get a kick out of this retro find.
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I’m trying to bring back my old Walkman from the grave and I need to change the belt but yesterday I tried to play a cassette and these (see picture) came out. Does anyone know how to put these back. I’ve tried inserting the pegs back through where they were but they don’t stay in. (The pieces are the parts that go into the cassette and spins the cassette)
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- cassette deck
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Specs/Features: $220 USD market price Touch screen with physical buttons on the side It comes in several colors (Most places I saw that sold this had it in dark gray, gray, and "midnight blue") 16GB of internal storage. Can expand this using an microSD card up to 200GB. Which probably means it can take the 400GB cards that were recently released. Supports the popular formats (MP3, MP4 HE-AAC, FLAC), and DSD audio if you use that. Supports Bluetooth and NFC Can be used as a standalone USB DAC Website: https://www.sony.com/electronics/walkman/nw-a40-series Pros: It's purely a music player. So there's no extra features to clutter it up. Expandable storage! No need for extra software to sync your music library It's not too big. If you're used to carrying around an iPod Classic, this'll fit right in Screen is sharp and clear Touch screen works well Simple to navigate to where and what you want Home screen is customizable Cons: 16GB of internal storage is inexcusable these days at this price point. Apple offers 32GB on the $200 iPod Touch. Cable is proprietary. Seriously Sony, start using micro or Type-C USB like everyone else. :T UI is 30 FPS, so it can feel jerky. Some UI elements are open to mis-hitting. Bluetooth reconnecting is odd and inconsistent. But this may be mostly due to what the Walkman is connecting to. Current playback is not in some "Now playing" queue that you can add on to it to create playlists on the fly. SenseMe and on-device Playlist editing features seem to only be available for internally stored media Recommendation: Yes! If you're looking for a standalone MP3 player has some quality to it but don't want to spend a fortune on higher end players, the Sony Walkman NW-A45 is a great option. ------- Would you believe there's someone who's still making an MP3 player that isn't one of the many $30 iPod knockoffs that feels cheap or a $1000 Android-based device that seemingly runs on audiophile snake oil? And that someone isn't Apple? That's where Sony came in, having rebranded the Walkman into a portable music player lineup ranging from the budget friendly (if $50 is budget friendly) all the way up to the boutique where you can spend $1000, if you really want to. What I picked up recently was the Walkman model NW-A45. I'd argue that if we were to put this in between the cheap PMP players you can find all over Amazon and the "audiophile grade" ones from brands like Astell & Kern, Cowon (okay, they make a high-end PMP), and Fiio, I'd say this is in the midrange. In that it supports a lot of the high-end features in software, but maybe not all the high end features in hardware. Not to say it sound "meh", but you're not going to find things like line-level out, a volume knob (I'm presuming analog volume control), or other buzzwords that I don't care for. And if you haven't noticed by my choice of words, I'm not what you'd call an audiophile. Most of the equipment I have would fit in the midrange section if I were to compare it against price alone. So I'm not going to spend my time talking about the Walkman's quality. After all, quality is dependent on a ton of factors like how my ears are feeling that day, what headphones I'm using, what kind of environment I'm in, etc. I didn't pick the Walkman up for sitting down in a meditation room so I can listen to my collection of music (most of which is either at least 192 kpbs CBR to VBR MP3 or "higher quality" AAC). This is my everyday "I need something to listen to on the go, be it in the car, at work, at the gym, or anywhere not at my desk." I just wanted something that was better quality than... well this: So what can I talk about? How about the Walkman itself? Its features? The UI? The "objective" stuff? Packaging The packaging is fairly sparse. Open up the box to find the Walkman, then underneath a sleeve is the cable and some documentation. And if you need a disclaimer, the SD card was a separate purchase. The Walkman itself The NW-A45 is a touch screen PMP, so navigating and poking around options is done primarily through that. On the right side there are buttons for Power, a volume rocker, previous track/rewind | play/pause | next track/fast forward, and a hold switch. The left side as a microSD card slot. The bottom side of the unit has a headphone jack, Sony's proprietary connector (ugh!), and a lanyard hook. The actual case of the unit itself feels like it's made of plastic, but it could be anodized aluminum. Either way, I'm not going to test this The touchscreen isn't superb like an iPhone or a flagship Android, but it's responsive enough. What may get people is the 30 FPS UI, so while you can scroll fast through menus, it feels jerky. But the quality of the screen is great. It's definitely an IPS screen with a resolution of I believe 800x450. With the resolution and physical size, the display is barely out of "Retina" territory, but everything still looks sharp. What about it's size? The screen is about 3" and kind of thick for its size, but not that bad. It kind of reminds me of my Motorola Droid in size, but the Droid was actually bigger. Here it is next to my LG G6 and the Walkman NWZ-A17, the PMP I'm replacing. Features The one thing I like about the NW-A45 is that Sony looked at what they're making and went "Who buys these play videos or view pictures? This isn't going to access YouTube and Instagram" and made it simply a music player. So in addition to supporting a wide variety of formats, including FLAC and DSD for you audiophiles, it has a radio tuner (I don't know why PMPs still put this in), a "Language Study" mode, and a DAC mode. Since the first two is probably of little interest to anyone, let's talk about DAC mode. When you plug the Walkman into a device capable of outputting over USB, the Walkman acts like a DAC. And it looks something like this: While I had it working the first time, I think Windows thought it found better drivers that don't really work, so now it doesn't work when I plug it into my computer. But I'm not really going to pursue this, I have a USB DAC already. Anyway, here are the features that pertain music playback and libraries: Library management can be done using music player software. However, the Walkman shows up as a USB drive, so you can drag and drop your music. Your music library is sorted by artist, genre, playlists, and user-set bookmarks. Some internal file management (i.e., deleting stuff) You can edit playlists, but I think this only works if you're using the internal storage, not the microSD Card. The playlists I imported were not editable. On the main music player: Shows album art, title, artist, and album. Playback buttons like Shuffle Toggle, Previous Track/Rewind, Play/Pause, Skip Track/Fast Forward, and Repeat toggle An equalizer with some presets plus two custom ones Various "enhancements", like upscaling CD quality to 24-bit 192Khz, loudness normalization, some "DC Phase linearizer", and a listening environment simulator. Or if you want the Walkman to do everything for you, there's a toggle to switch on "Clear Audio+". Stop playing at the last song in the current selection of music or go to the next selection. So if you play an album, this will either stop once all the songs are played, or go to the next album on the list. Ditto with other categories like Artist, Genre, or Playlist. Bluetooth or NFC wireless audio. The Bluetooth part supports aptX, SBC, and LDAC. I've had some issues with the Bluetooth in that while it can auto-reconnect to devices, it seems to be hit and miss. Sometimes it won't do it, other times I feel like I have to go to the Bluetooth menu. However, in the Walkman's defense, the device I connect it to the most (my car), has weird quirks too. UI and Navigating The UI has two constant areas and a third one that is usually up, but can disappear depending on where you are. The first is the status bar on top which shows whether it's playing something or not, the current volume level, icons if Bluetooth or NFC are on, and the battery. The second are the soft nav buttons. These are go back, go to the main player screen, go to the top menu, and settings. The third part that can disappear is showing what's playing now with playback controls. The top menu is clean of any extras and is focused solely on accessing music in different ways. And the best part is that you can customize this. Normally there's a few other options, but this is what I stuck with. You may notice the three circles on top. These are for activating certain features. The left one is the radio , the "Language Study" mode, and the DAC mode. Tapping on one of the categories brings up a list like this: There is scrolling acceleration for fast scrolling (so keep scrolling and it'll go fast). And once you start scrolling, a scroll bar will appear on the right. You can drag this around to skip across letters. I found this a miss sometimes as the scroll bar is right on top of the three dots on the right side of every item (this is for more options if you tap it). I would've preferred, in addition to the scroll bar dragging, a button to take me to an alphabet index much like how the Zune HD did fast travel on a list. Once you select a song, it takes you to this screen: Swiping right brings you to the bookmarks selection where you can add favorites to one of ten lists. Strange place to put it I think. Swiping left brings you to the Play queue, which is neat when you want to skip around tracks: And if you swipe down from the main screen, it takes you to the audio enhancements screen: The nice thing too is that there's two "Oh crap, take me back" buttons available anywhere. So if you ever get lost, you can press the one for going back to the top menu or the one for the main player screen. Overall the UI is nice and navigating my songs is straight forward. The only thing I wished it had was a search function. But I guess Sony was expecting people to load this up with high quality FLAC files so those people wouldn't be packing as many songs as I did. One of the oddest things I noticed though is that you do set a date and time, but if you notice, there's no clock anywhere on the screen! What gives? According to the settings, all date and time information is used for library management. Comparing this to... Sony Walkman NWZ-A17 This was my last PMP. I got this to replace my Zune HD since the audio jack went out (plus it was 5 years old). I love the NW-A45 over the NWZ-A17 by far as the A17 has a ton of quirks that I can see turning off people if they've come from something that had a bunch of quality of life features. For example, here are all the flaws of the A17 that don't exist on the A45 and makes the A17 something I don't want to use now Not pausing playback when the headphones are removed. I have no idea how Sony missed this one. Holding Previous/Skip track wouldn't rewind or fast forward respectively. Also I have no idea how Sony missed this one. Bluetooth connections are manually done every time. You can pair devices up and it'll remember it, but when you want to actually use Bluetooth, you have to go to the menu and select which one you want to connect to. The A45 can automatically connect to a Bluetooth device it knows about. Also connecting a Bluetooth device goes back to the Bluetooth menu. It would've been nice for it to go to the playback screen. When the Bluetooth audio device is turned off, the A17 tries to reconnect to it. Since I usually don't reconnect, I have to manually cancel it so it doesn't spend the next 2 minutes trying. Also, it boots itself to the Bluetooth menu rather than go back to the previous screen you were on. No option to stop playback on the last song in the current selection It doesn't show what songs it will play in order, i.e, if you select a playlist and shuffle it, it can only show the playlist in order. If you set the current selection to shuffle and you want to skip around on the playlist, it'll restart the progress. Repeat/Shuffle are buried in a menu The only "Oh crap, take me back" button was holding the "Back" button to go to the home menu. If you went to the main playback screen, it also buried you in three layers of menus depending on how you accessed the music. Microsoft Zune HD This was my first higher-end PMP I owned. If my Zune HD went bad now, I wouldn't have missed it as much if I went straight to this than when I went to the Walkman NWZ-A17. But there were some features I enjoyed on the Zune HD that aren't on this Walkman, like enqueuing songs in a temporary playlist or the indexed navigation.
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Hey there, I know it's been so soon after I posted my previous review, but this is just to clear the backlog of reviews that I wanted to write... so here we go... This time, we have the Sony Walkman NWZ-B183F Stuff happened to my B173F... I lost it during one of my commutes after slipping out of my pocket... So I went ahead and got the upgrade... Build Quality Unlike the B173F, this one is made of brushed aluminum, painted a wonderful black. The buttons themselves are feel sturdy (unlike the B173F) even if they are a bit off with their colors. Also unlike the B173F, it takes a lot more effort to scratch this one... It lives in my pocket along with a phone, a pen, and a few coins and so far, there are almost no obvious scratches on it... Features It's an MP3 player with FM (and FM recording) functionality... Sony went ahead and removed the voice recorder function, a move I still get my head around... The screen is white text on a black background, an appreciated change... It has an equalizer and a bass expansion feature... The storage size is a static 4GB... By default, it sounds as it should... messing with the equalizer will cut the music for a bit as it does the adjustment... The sound is also improved with a better soundstage (produced via DSP) compared to the B173F (tested using the same song and the same pair of earphones)... Conclusion It's a good mp3 player. It's small (slightly larger than a AA battery) yet has over 18 hours of battery life at continuous usage... For the price though, some people may think it's a bit expensive at ~55USD (2500PhP), but compared to the rubbish that is sold at cdrking, I'll take this one anyday...
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According to the latest leaks, it seems 4 new Sony Walkmans are coming, and many guess they may revealed on IFA this Sept. The 4 models of new Sony Walkmans via FCC documents are "NW-ZX100", which is under the high-end ZX series, and NW-A25/A26/A27, which seems to under the mide-range A series. If those new A series Walkmans follow the pattern of the current A10 series models, the differences on those new A series Walkmans would be on storage capacity, which A25 may have 16GB, while A26 has 32GB, and the A27 has 64GB. These new Walkmans are also confirmed via documents from the Indonesian certification agency, which showed the NW-ZX100 and NW-A27 were able to obtain certifications from the Indonesian government on June. Thus many expect these new Walkmans may announced shortly, probably on IFA this Sept. http://thewalkmanblog.blogspot.hk/2015/05/sony-planning-update-to-series.html http://thewalkmanblog.blogspot.hk/2015/06/new-zx100-and-a20-walkamans-pass.html
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Besides smartphones and cameras, Sony announced two Walkman players in IFA as well, the NWZ-WS613 and the NWZ-A17. NWZ-SW613 The NWZ-WS613 is a (i believe it is a 2nd gen product) waterproof wearable player and a Bluetooth headset. You can use a smartphone app to tweaks and skips songs, and connects to fitness apps to further enhance workouts. The WS613 will be available in October for $160. NWZ-A17 On the other hand, the NWZ-A17 is a Walkman music player that I personally think that it looks like a ipod nano. But it can do much more than the ipod nano. It has a a 2.25-inch QVGA non-touchscreen LCD display. it supports support for MP3, WMA, AAC, FLAC, AIFF, WAV and ALAC. DSEE HX is also featured for upscales regular ol' MP3s and WMAs for higher quality listening. There is 64GB of on-board storage, and it is expandable via a microSD slot (finally a Walkman that has a microSD slot), Bluetooth and NFC connectivity is also included as well. This Walkman can last for 50 hours of regular and 30 hours of high-res listening. Engadget reported that it will be available later this month for $300, while Mashable.com reported that it will be available in Nov. http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/03/sony-walkman/ http://mashable.com/2014/09/03/sony-high-res-walkman/
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http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/11/5401084/sony-mp3-player-comes-inside-bottle-of-water https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USJSOPPZoKI sony you have won the internets of today, this beats the crap out of everything both on marketing and product placement @LinusTech you seriously need to unbox this