Just bought a Sony Walkman NW-A45

The NW-A45 is not one of those players and does gapless MP3 (and FLAC) playback without the need for any work arounds (ripping a whole album as a single track, etc).

 

it all depends on how you rip and the player. i'm assuming you use EAC (rip) and Foobar(play)? Using EAC to rip with your correct drive offset, even mp3's will play gapless actually any format will. But only on foobar as it has a gapless feature that is turned on by default. as for WMP it'll play cd's gapless but that's it.

But other than that i know a most portable audio players players and most pc programs will add a 2 sec gap between each track. That's what drew me to the Hifi Walker H2 because now i can take my albums w/ me and they will play correctly. Not sure if the other more expensive Hi-Res players do gapless. they don't ever list it as a feature. so who knows.

 

oh that's nice it has gapless so i'm assuming most likely all the sony hi-res players do then? that's cool.

 

I can’t confirm that (and it’s not a given) because the higher end Sony players are Android-based, whereas the A-series players use proprietary Sony firmware.

But for the A-series they seemingly went to the trouble of supporting both the LAME and iTunes implementations of gapless MP3 so I’d be surprised if they overlooked it in the newer software.

 

All new Sony players, including A series, have gone back to Android. While it makes them more versatile (streaming, apps etc), disadvantages are: shorter battery life, inability to remove the volume cap for EU models and sound quality (android sound quality cap) outside the Sony's software player.

Regards

 

Looks like they’re moving that way, which is a shame as I’ve found the Sony firmware (though lacking a bit of polish) to work very well and deliver excellent battery life. And I’d certainly miss the ability to remove the EU volume cap, as I found the output to be weak and weedy with it still in place.

If you’re looking to buy new, the A55 is still available (it’s been out in Asia and Australia for a while but only got a European release late last year) and runs the non-Android system.

 

man i was just looking at sony's website and DANG they want an arm and a leg for some of those players. do they require you to use proprietary software to load music on em?

 

No. You can simply drag and drop. I don't use Sony's software (PC Centre) myself, as its piece of $#$@.

Edit: By drag and drop I meant you can use windows to copy files. PC treats the player as an external USB disc.

 

I recently purchased ZX300 for a steal price of $AU450. Its an amazing player with balanced output, great battery life. I don't mind the Sony's firmware. It certainly lacks the polish but it never gets in the way. I owned ZX1 (Android) and really disliked fiddling with apps/processes.

Regards

 

That is one of the things I didn't like about my NW-A45: It moved away from Sony's traditional user interface (UI). Their traditional UI has been improved for over a decade and was basically perfected by the time it reached the NWZ-A17 (the player I've gone back to from the NW-A45).

While their touchscreen interface is an improvement over their first attempts, it still has a fundamental issue when it comes to touch screens, which I will illustrate by the following:

Getting to a specific song in the middle of a 1,000 song list:

- Tactile controls like on the A17: Pull up the list, press down until you get to the song (the scroll will speed up as you hold the button down so you can get to it in a few seconds) then press play twice (once to select and again to play it).

- Touchscreen controls like on the A45: Pull up the list, then swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, oops I overshot, back swipe, back swipe, back swipe, touch the song, hit play. Even if you use the alpha shortcut it often still requires a bit of swiping to get to the song.

 

I used to use Sony's Media Go because I found it a very usable and easy to use program. Unfortunately, Sony stopped supporting it and brought out Music Center For PC (MCFP) as a replacement. My main issue with MCFP is that while Media Go did everything I needed in one program (managing music, pictures, podcasts, videos, ripping CDs, creating playlists, creating on-screen lyrics files, doing SensMe analysis of files, and simple editing and conversion of files), MCFP took away much of that functionality. Now, all MCFP does is work with music files, create playlists, and do SensMe analysis of music. It's nowhere as good a program as Media Go was. It's the reason I've returned to using MediaMonkey.

 

Yeah. I don't disagree. It doesn't bother as much, mostly because I listen to albums, and have to swipe a bit less.

Regards

 

I will check Media Monkey out.

 

I've been a MediaMonkey user for years and it's a very powerful program, although it might take a while to get the hang of the program. One issue that you might encounter is that some players (like my NWZ-A17) are not supported out of the box (it will see it as a generic device). However, it is fairly easy to manually set up the player yourself in a few minutes.

 

Great deal. Over here in the UK, Amazon have just dropped the price of the A55 by nearly 20% to looks like there are bargains to be had on the non-Android Sony DAPs.

 

I just wonder why sony uses a proprietary charging/data cable? I mean what do they gain from that when you can buy a non sony branded one off the net or even walmart for like $4 all that means is now you have to bring another cable with you if you want to be able to charge and/or edit your collection, rather than just plug it in to any old phone charger/usb cable.

one more reason i love my H2. I think i'm going to leave this thread now. I've owned both cassette walkman's and dicman's back in the day and this could've been their chance to grab a good market share and promote the use and benefits of not only Hi-Res audio but digital audio players in general because as you can see most of the lemmings of the world are just using their phones to stream compressed audio. and it's sad really. it's even cost the job's of countless disc jockeys because now most dj'ing is done by the streaming service's computer. makes me sick to even think about where this is all heading.

The millenials of the world are getting brainwashed into never owning anything just renting it. But good luck to them when they get injured and lose their job or some kind pandemic hits and the world shuts down, then what are you gonna do? Well do i pay for my streaming service or do i buy some hot dogs, because i can't afford both?? decisions, decisions....

 

They finally dropped a proprietary charging cable with the new models. It's USB-C now.

Regards

 

I haven't had much of an issue with Sony's proprietary cable for one reason: It hasn't changed in over a decade (and I've purchased a number of Walkman players so I ended up with over a half-dozen Sony cables). I can still use the cable that came with my first Walkman (NWZ-A810 series) with all of my current Walkman players. Compare that to the iPod where I had to quickly purchase one with the classic 30-pin cable that worked with all of the iPod accessories because they went to Lightning.

On the subject of streaming, I think of it as a good way to sample music so that you can find songs that you like. However, I would never rely on it for music that I want to keep. If I want to keep a song I buy it (either as a download or on CD). Its the same reason I still buy DVDs/Blu-Ray discs.

 

Something that I recently came across with MediaMonkey concerning autosyncing: I was autosyncing my player's (A17) internal memory and memory card with MediaMonkey and it took a very long time to complete the autosync (it took so long with my memory card that I ended up stopping it). What worked for me was just send the files to the player's internal memory and memory card (mark the files, right click, and send them to my player). While it does take a little while (it was slower with the memory card), it worked reliably. It's basically the same thing I used to do with Media Go (while it was a good program, I had issues with using it to sync with my player so I gave up trying to sync with Media Go).

 

i know to some it may sound like a pain but i just take the memory card out and put it in a usb card reader and just drag and drop the files on to it and it's always WAY faster than trying to do it through the player for some reason. It was like that with the cheap sansa players i use to use too.

but then again i've never been able to sync my whole library because it's always been way too big. if that's what you guys are doing.

i guess some people like my uncle were lost once i got him switched off of apple products because he was so use to having to use itunes and always had to "sync" to load music on it. Never understood why they made you use special software just to transfer files.

 

My main reason for using MediaMonkey to load the music on my player is that once it is set up it is very easy to load the music on my player in the correct locations and organized the way that I want (first letter of album artist's name/album artist/album/track number - song title), and it will also autoconvert the files as needed.

Another issue is that I have a very large collection to load on my player, and much of it consists of individual songs from albums rather than entire albums. Due to this, dragging and dropping would be a lot of work since I'd have to go into each folder and copy the individual song to my player and also organize them manually. While I could have MediaMonkey sort out the songs that I want on my player so I can just drag-and-drop them on my player, it would likely make my music library extremely scattered within my library.

With MediaMonkey, this is what I've done to load music on my player (both in the internal memory and the memory card):

• Create a collection for each location. Songs rated five stars will be loaded in the internal memory. Songs rated three or four stars, audiobooks and podcasts will be loaded in the memory card.
• Open a collection, select all of the songs, and send it to the appropriate location.

If I want to delete a song from the player, I change its rating to zero stars and send it to my player. Then, I go to the player and delete any songs rated zero stars.

If I want to add a song to the player, I rate it three, four, or five stars (depending on where I want to stored), open the collection, sort it by the date modified, and then send the newest songs to the player.

Having to use iTunes is one of the reasons I no longer use my iPod Classic. It was the only reason I had iTunes on my old computer and I didn't want to install it on my new one.

One of the things I've liked about Sony Walkman DAPs is that they are not tied to a specific software application. You can use a number of applications (MediaMonkey, Music Center For PC, MusicBee, and Windows Media Player come to mind off the top of my head), and you can also just drag and drop the files on to the player if you choose.

 

An update on using music management software with the Sony Walkman NW-A45 that I think may help other users.

I was recently having trouble getting the player to sync with MediaMonkey. It would usually take a very long time (often more than an hour), especially when I was syncing the memory card. Sometimes MediaMonkey would lock up and I'd have to terminate the sync process and try again. I tried just sending the files to the player but it was inconvenient to have to do that. Plus, playlists would not show up on my player.

Due to this, I decided to give MusicBee a try and it was a vast improvement. It quickly synced my entire memory card (128gb) in around an hour with no problem and the subsequent syncs only take a few seconds (since it is just updating the changes). I also like that when you sync the player it shows you everything that is going on (files that are deleted, songs that are being copied to the player, and playlists that are being synced).

Plus, I figured out what was causing the playlists not to appear on my player: By default MediaMonkey (and MusicBee) were creating a folder named "Playlists" on my player and putting the playlists in there. I discovered that in order for playlists to appear in "Playlists" on the player you have to put them in the "Music" folder (the same location where your music is placed). When I manually moved a playlist into the Music folder it appeared. Then I set MusicBee to put the playlists in the Music folder, created new playlists, and they appeared there.

The one quirk I noticed is that while it will load new playlists on the player and update existing playlists in MusicBee that are on the player it won't delete playlists that have deleted from MusicBee. In that case, you can go into Playlists and manually delete the playlists.

I hope this helps.

 

I have 120gb of apple lossless music on my old, faithful Ipod Classic. The song/albums are all in my itunes software. Can that format be imported to the NW-a45/55 etc?

 

Yes, the Sonys can play Apple Lossless.

 

It can play the ALAC, but I prefer FLACs on that device, so I either re-rip to FLAC if I still own the disc, or, convert the ALAC to FLAC if I don’t have the disc, lol....