HiFi Blog: digital audio goodness

Head-Fi member carsncars posted a review of Sony’s NW-A3000. We’ve taken the most important bits, summed them up below and added a few of our remarks and observations in the mix.

Note that as the NW-A3000 shares many similarities with its smaller brother, the 6GB NW-A1000, you can apply most of the stuff that follows to that device too.

(This may also be a good time to read our presentation of the complete new WALKMAN line-up—think of it as a preview on the NW-A3000.)

Let’s have a look at the NW-A3000’s specs first:

• 20GB hard drive


• 2-inch OLED display


• weighs 182g


• measures 65.2×104.2×21.4mm


• comes in violet/silver colors

Body/construction:

An OLED screen that’s gorgeous unless when viewed in direct sunlight (in which case it’s a no go). The body is rather scratch-resistant, though a figerprint-magnet. A protective case, or cloth is not included. According to the reviewer, it feels good in the hand, with the dimensions being similar to that of a 4th-gen (clickwheel) iPod. The buttons change colors (white/orange) depending on the mode. The sync/charge port is proprietary (but hey, iPod users don’t mind right?). The battery is easily replaceable which is a nice and welcomed touch.

Sound quality

Pretty good, similar to the HD5, meaning it’s a bit bass-heavy (bass-heads rejoice!). This could be a nice place to note that Sony’s engineers apparently gave the HD5 a slight boost in the bass department.

Note that you can only unlock all the EQ options if you’re listening to tunes encoded using Sony’s proprietary ATRAC format, which is sad. (To further lure you into ATRAC, they’ll tell you you get gapless playback too, but don’t succumb!)

Features

The playlisting system is revamped and powerful, and we finally get to play with “smart” playlists. There’s also the infamous “ARTIST LINK”, which according to the reviewer works. When a song plays, you press an orange-lit button on the top-left corner of the player, and the device will come up with a list of artists similar in genre/mood to the one you’re currently listening. There’s also very smart rating feature:

The A3000’s GUI also incorporates a dual-rating system. It uses two star-values, one that is assigned by the player based on the number of times you’ve selected the song, the number of time’s you’ve listened to it, when the last time you’ve listened to it was, and the number of times you’ve skipped it. The other star rating is assigned by you, like iTunes. I leave it to the A3000 to rate my music, as it works quite well. For the first couple days, it was sort of lopsided (my moods again..), but it has started to even out and become more accurate.

Unfortunately, the synergy between Sony’s PC software and the device sucks. Sony’s CONNECT Player (the successor to SonicStage) has nifty features and a pleasant UI but fails to co-operate with the NW-A3000 nicely.

Price/availability

They debuted in Japan and, as regular HiFi Blog readers should now (i.e. we reported it last Monday):

The 20GB NW-A3000 goes for ￥32,800 (~ $275)—original estimate:￥35,000 (~ $295); ￥2,000 (~ $17) cheaper than Apple’s video iPod.

• Not available in the US as we speak—no word on availability yet, but getting there before Christmas is not to be excluded


• In continental Europe, these go for €300/$350


• In the United Kingdom, these go for £200/$340


• In Canada, these go under the AURA line (as in “Sony AURA NW-A1000”) for 350 CAD, or 300 USD.

Conclusions

It’s a solid MP3 player with rather innovative software features and some goodies (replaceable battery) that you don’t regularly expect from big, arrogant guys like Sony. The lack of a color screen is a bummer, but not exactly a deal-breaker considering we’re talking about a portable audio player. Unfortunately, we guess that the rather high price tag will prevent many people from giving it a shot—which is what Sony needs to bet at if it ever wants to see bigger marketshare.