Sony Thinks You'll Pay $1200 For a Digital Walkman 391
An anonymous reader writes: The Walkman is one of the most recognizable pieces of technology from the 1980s. Unfortunately for Sony, it didn't survive the switch to digital, and they discontinued it in 2010. Last year, they quietly reintroduced the Walkman brand as a "high-resolution audio player," supporting lossless codecs and better audio-related hardware. At $300, it seemed a bit pricey. But now, at the Consumer Electronics Show, Sony has loudly introduced its high-end digital Walkman, and somehow decided to price it at an astronomical $1,200.
What will all that money get you? 128GB of onboard storage and a microSD slot to go with it. There's a large touchscreen, and the device runs Android — but it uses version 4.2 Jelly Bean, which came out in 2012. It also supports Bluetooth and NFC. Sony claims the device has 33 hours of battery life when playing FLAC files, and 60 hours when playing MP3s. They appear to be targeting audiophiles — their press release includes phrasing about how pedestrian MP3 encoding will "compromise the purity of the original signal."
What will all that money get you? 128GB of onboard storage and a microSD slot to go with it. There's a large touchscreen, and the device runs Android — but it uses version 4.2 Jelly Bean, which came out in 2012. It also supports Bluetooth and NFC. Sony claims the device has 33 hours of battery life when playing FLAC files, and 60 hours when playing MP3s. They appear to be targeting audiophiles — their press release includes phrasing about how pedestrian MP3 encoding will "compromise the purity of the original signal."
Ha (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they should talk to their friends in Sony Music about the Loudness War [wikipedia.org] first before going on about music purity.
Re:Ha (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the genius of Hi-Res Audio, the same company can both create the problem and sell you the solution.
Sony Music releases extremely loud, clipped and generally crap sounding CDs. Then they release a Hi-Res version that also happens to be properly mixed, but you need an expensive player to listen to it.
Their plan is working. In Japan Hi-Res Audio is a big deal at the moment, but many people don't realise that it is more to do with the recordings being properly mixed and not insanely loud than it is the higher sample rate and bit depth.
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Out of interest are they using DRM to stop people buying the high res release and downconverting it themselves? or are they just relying on people to be too ignorant to realise that is an option?
Re:Ha (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's just normal FLAC.
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I don't know the answer for sure but this is Sony, is there really a question?
Re:Ha (Score:5, Interesting)
to be pedantic it is actually about properly 'mastering' the audio. Generally the mix stays the same and you create different masters - from squashed to hi-res - from that.
Re:Ha (Score:4, Insightful)
"Hi-res" does not imply that it has not been DRCed or that it was properly mastered. A recent Bowie CD, for example, that was brickwalled also had hi-res audio that suffered the same issue. "Hi-res" is mostly audiophile marketing fluff.
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Which is pure fluff since it says nothing about the actual quality. I can take an 8-bit 8khz mono track that was heavily DRCed and export it as faux stereo 24-bit/192khz FLAC. Sure it is "hi-res" due to fluff specs but it's gonna sound like shit.
Re:Ha (Score:5, Funny)
the same company can both create the problem and sell you the solution.
Sounds just like a church... Just saying.
Nothing New for Sony... (Score:2)
This highlights the one and only problem with Sony: It is always too expensive.
Re:Nothing New for Sony... (Score:5, Interesting)
This highlights the one and only problem with Sony: It is always too expensive.
I think the product longevity issue that Sony has *might* be a slightly bigger problem. I don't have any real data other than my personal experience, but I have owned a slew of Sony products and with the exception of our two Sony CRT TVs growing up, they have all shat them selves within 18 months. The two TVs we had when I was growing up lasted for over 8 years each. I think the second one needed to have a transformer replaced at some point, but that was about $20 in the early 90's.
Other than those two products, my personal experience has been awful. I don't think I ever had a sony walkman that lasted more than 6 months due to stupid things like belt clips that were TOTALLY inadequate for doing anything other than standing still. My Sony amplifier shat itself the same month the warranty ran out. The display crapped out and was eventually repaired by re-soldering and bending the PCBs. My Sony car stereo crapped it's display about a year after I bought it. No amount of blowing, hitting, or poking around inside could fix it. The digitizer in m Sony Clie (late Palm Pilot clone) shat its self a few weeks after the rotary encoder at the base of the display filled with pocket lint and stopped working. After the Clie disaster, I have refused to buy a Sony electronic device. I'm not going to get burned again.
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tried using an emergency mechanical ejection tool?
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ever considered it might not actually be the hardware that's locking the tray?
Re:Nothing New for Sony... (Score:4, Informative)
As another bonus Sony made their blu-ray players stream netflix through Sony's own proxy servers. So rather then use the caching servers netflix places all over the country they are forced through a single bottle neck.. Streaming on that thing sucked ass while every other device in the house was streaming fine. I got a Roku and never had another problem.
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And they wonder why pirated versions are so popular...
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Re:Nothing New for Sony... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's far from the one and only problem with Sony.
They're assholes. They're anti-consumer. They're constantly trying to achieve vendor lock in. They treat the security of their consumers data as an afterthought.
Sony is a malicious entity, and has been for the last 20 years.
From what they do as part of the *AA mafia, to rootkits, to pretty much every damned thing Sony does ... they do not deserve your money or your respect.
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I thought that was Apple's problem...
Re:Nothing New for Sony... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple arguably offers higher-quality (made) stuff, Sony doesn't, not really.
To me, "overpriced" means "I'm selling the same shit anyone else sells but at twice the price because the logo on my shit says $BRAND".
Re:Nothing New for Sony... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sony's smart-phones are actually pretty damn good nowadays, possibly because their brand-recognition is bad in that area.
Not expensive for an audiophile device (Score:5, Insightful)
Audiophile equipment often costs in the tens of thousands of dollars -- and there will always be a market for it.
Regarding your title: SONY clearly does not think *you* will pay $1200 for this device. But they know that *someone* will. This isn't a mass market device. It's a very niche product, well-targeted at its niche.
More importantly: It's great for publicity. After all, it's already being discussed on Slashdot.
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i'm wondering, can there be anything in there that justifies this cost?
most of the hardware isn't stellar (the software is android, probably not the fastest chip, some decent batteries and screen on it, some audiodecoding software that is probably already available for all android devices)
So all that is left is the hardware for actually creating the audio signal, which should be worth a lot in this thing, is there really hardware that is so suberb in quality that it's worth this price?
Re:Not expensive for an audiophile device (Score:4, Insightful)
No, there is no hardware that is so superb, but there are people who think there is. We call them audiophiles.
Re:Not expensive for an audiophile device (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd hope that you do in fact get higher quality DAC hardware, connectors, etc., so the actual sound quality is better. But the price is also "inflated" by the product being a niche, audiophile product. That is, if they're targeting a smaller market, they have to cover development costs, marketing, profit, etc., on a much smaller number of unit sales. For example, if they had a $1m marketing budget, and sell 10,000 units, that's $100/unit just for marketing. The same marketing budget for a product that sells 1m units would only be $1/unit. Now do the same math for covering the cost of everything about the product (R&D, running a manufacturing line, support team, etc.). It's the same reason that, back in the day, a "workstation" cost 5x as much as a "desktop computer" - there were some functional differences (unix, etc.), but most of the price difference was just due to the niche market having smaller volumes, so less "economy of scale". Heck, look at sports cars - they don't really cost 20x as much to make as a regular car, it's that they're covering the costs on a tiny fraction of the sales volume.
This is why, in every market, the best "price/performance" is for the most popular models. When you go up from more you're always paying disproportionately more for better than average.
I used to think this was insane - why doesn't everyone buy the best price/performance? Then I realized - if you're rich, and you need one of something (car, audio system, watch, etc.) and you can pay a lot more for it to be better than average. As an extreme example, a $24m watch (http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/12/business/24-million-gold-watch-sothebys-record-patek-philippe/) doesn't keep time better than the $10 watch, but it's literally one of a kind, an insanely cool piece of engineering that packs astounding functionality into a mechanical watch. But price/performance is near-zero - a $10 plastic watch tells better time, and your smartphone has more functionality.
So Sony's aiming for the "willing to pay more for better than average" crowd.
Re:Not expensive for an audiophile device (Score:5, Funny)
Low-oxygen solder. To reduce bit-slew, of course.
Re:Not expensive for an audiophile device (Score:4, Funny)
And the vacuum tubes kept setting my messenger bag on fire.
.
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i'm wondering, can there be anything in there that justifies this cost? most of the hardware isn't stellar (the software is android, probably not the fastest chip, some decent batteries and screen on it, some audiodecoding software that is probably already available for all android devices) So all that is left is the hardware for actually creating the audio signal, which should be worth a lot in this thing, is there really hardware that is so suberb in quality that it's worth this price?
Once you hear it, you will realize it's far superior to any other listening experience. Of course, you might not be a prosumer audiphile with the refinement and experience required to properly enjoy it. Maybe you can just stick with your beats by dr dre and ipod shuffle like the rest of the plebes.
run along now. my highly acute audio perception wants to enjoy the miracle of hi-res audio as it was meant to be heard, devoid of the racket of the unwashed masses.
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The assembly line moves arythmically to prevent resonance from causing distortion-generation biases in crystal formation during solder solidification. Also, a currency filter allows only electrons which meet strict quantum mechanical specifications into the battery, thus preventing playback artifacts due to variations in elementary charge. Finally, every unit is manufactured with enough employee oppression to make even the most satanic
3x the cost of the equivalent (Score:2, Interesting)
The Pono player is the same thing, allegedly, and costs only 1/3 as much.
http://ponomusic.force.com/
Re:Not expensive for an audiophile device (Score:5, Informative)
You will get good equipment if you pay tens of thousands of dollars for audiophile equipment. But there is also a lot of air in that price.
Pro shops like Thomann [thomann.de] demonstrate that you can buy real HiFi gear for very reasonable prices.
Re:Not expensive for an audiophile device (Score:5, Insightful)
For the "audiophile" market, it's all about marketing. There are companies out there that are quite successful at selling multi-thousand dollar speaker cables to the gullible with deep pockets. It doesn't have to actually "sound better". I doubt they expect to move these in high volume, but there are certainly a number of folks that will buy it as a prop and show that they really care about their music. :)
Re:Not expensive for an audiophile device (Score:4, Funny)
After all, it's already being discussed on Slashdot.
Yes, the standards to show up here are quite high.
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You owe me a new monitor...and a cup of coffee....
Re:Not expensive for an audiophile device (Score:4, Interesting)
The big downfall of the Minidisc player was that it came with ridiculously bad software that limited the number of copies of a particular song you could write to Minidisc, and you had to check-in/check-out songs to make sure you didn't run out of licenses. The software was also really slow and would crash all the time too. They had a great technology that was miles ahead of the competition in portable audio but they screwed it up by messing up the software in the name of DRM. They would have lost out to flash based MP3 players eventually, but the Minidisc could have ruled the market for 5-10 years had they not screwed up the implementation.
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love minidisc, fucking hate the lock-in. I don't use Sonicstage because of the lock-in and the fact that it crashes like Richard Hammond on roofies. Analogue hole all the way here, but I do sometimes miss the insane speed of USB. Which basically means I use MD for live recording and streaming transfer to my editing suite.
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I use MD for live recording and streaming transfer to my editing suite.
So are you getting a minuscule recording period due to lack of compression, or is ATRAC shitting all over your recordings? Either way, how do you justify not using a more reliable media which supports non-streaming transfers?
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being as each session rarely goes more than an hour, I use SP mode and carry half a dozen spare discs. I have plenty of discs, yet each is infinitely re-recordable (not had one fail yet after twenty years). And who the fuck uses compression on session recording masters??
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I don't think even 'audiophiles' that think they can tell the difference between 128kbs and 320kbs MP3s on their PC speaker are that stupid ... their are already phones with 'premium' sound that do everything this does.
Hell, it probably runs android too, meaning its EXACTLY like the premium phones ... except without the phone part.
Oh and they can't subsidize it on your phone contract either.
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Just to be clear incase it was missed, yes, I'm aware it runs android, thats meant to be (poor) sarcasm.
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my laptop has JBL speakers in it. Funnily enough, the drivers look pretty identical to the ones out of my Dell laptop. Sound about the same as well (ie shit). I thought JBL speakers were supposed to be good?
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The zx1 seems better and a lot cheaper, and has been on the market how long?
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there is zero market for this.
I just tested a friend's android samsung g5 with usb/audio dongle out and flac players. it truly did play back 24bit 96k audio that I gave him as a flac file. just get an OTG cable and a usb/uadio (uac1 prefer but maybe someday they'll all support uac 'event' style protocol) and a good flac player app.
no reason to carry a music player anymore if you have a phone. and more phones are starting to support usb OTG and that opens up the usb/audio dongle market to them..
sony can't
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Oh, there is market for this. I personally have a iBasso DX90. If you think this is expensive, look up the AK 240 by a now rebranded iRiver.
I have never used my smart phone as a media player, I just don't want to. There is not enough storage and I strangely want to make sure my phone has enough power to make phone calls and playing music will impact this. To each their own here.
If I had the extra funds, I would have an AK 120II in a heartbeat, I just cannot justify $1200. It's on par with this offering, wif
Cassette tape SD carousel (Score:2)
If it had a cassette tape SD carousel where you can load multiple SD cards in and swap them in out with "fast forward" and "reverse".
Me? No. Audiophiles? Yes. (Score:3)
They have defective bullshit detectors, it''ll sell.
I won't buy it, you won't buy it... (Score:3)
...but there are a lot of stupid-ass rich people who will buy it.
It'll sell a few, anyway (Score:2)
Nostalgia + Audiophiles = sales.
Both of those groups are notorious for a) having lots of $, and b) spending it stupidly.
Not You, Them (Score:2)
Price wrong! Sony was hacked recently... (Score:5, Funny)
Output amplification (Score:4, Insightful)
They appear to be targeting audiophiles — their press release includes phrasing about how pedestrian MP3 encoding will "compromise the purity of the original signal.
Well, does it have proper headphone amplifier? The audio output of typical mobile gadgets is poor for driving good chunky headphones: there is noise, there is not enough energy to deliver good bass, and the sound is just smudgy.
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mod parent "+1 hysterically ironic". BOSE?? Of all the steaming great piles of SHIT to compare to Sony, you pick BOSE!?
On the plus side (Score:4, Funny)
It does come with a microSD slot!
Re:On the plus side (Score:5, Funny)
It does come with a microSD slot!
I don't know if you are kidding, but this is Sony: they could have used Memory Stick instead of microSD.
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the 1.0 specification, with the max capacity at 64MB??
Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, Sony... (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess what the price of the MZ-1 was 22 years ago?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.minidisc.org/part_S... [minidisc.org]
Well, it was 1200$ in Canada....
I was a Sony fanboi back then and having one of the first MZ-1s was like being a space alien. Just ejecting the disc on the Metro (subway) was a reason for complete strangers to ask what it is! Fun times.
Sony, like me, now appears to be a grumpy middle-aged man with graying hair denying that it's 2015...
Phone calls (Score:2)
Stupid, stupid, stupid (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Better Value (Score:2)
I paid $79 for a Motorola Luge Android 4.4 pay as you go smart phone at Best Buy specifically to use as a low cost media player with no phone service. I have it connected via Blue Tooth to my GM Bose "MyLink" Audio System. The audio playback is superb! It sounds as good or better than the other resident audio sources that come with the vehicle (XM, CD, HD Radio). Media Information is displayed via BT to the "MyLink" Console. Limited navigation and media selection can also be performed via BT.
Seriously,
hmm... (Score:2)
This is not a terrible idea.
The price is WAY off though.
It needs to be in the $200 range.
Include wifi and some way to sync it with your home audio collection automatically.
The drive size is perfect.
Give it a display port so I can plug it into a hotel television.
Make sure I can use streaming services like pandora if wifi is available.
Yea yea, I know I can use my phone. But my phones full of stuff and hard to deal with in the car. I'd like something I could generally leave in the car that would sync my music
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? (Score:2)
Why does anyone buy a music player anymore when there are smartphones?
short playback on FLAC? (Score:2)
Why is FLAC playback so battery-intensive? Is it because its not implemented in hardware while the mp3 playback is?
I want one! (Score:2)
I want one!
It'll go great with my Beats® headphones.
At least it takes Micro-SD. (Score:2)
Being Sony you would think they would fuck their own product over by insisting on Memory Stick.
Not totally high-end (Score:5, Funny)
Pono Player? (Score:3, Interesting)
Neil Young already has the Pono Player [force.com]. It plays FLAC.
Cooler name origin, just $400 (BKA one third the price), Kickstarter funded. And helps you keep on rockin' in the free world [youtube.com]
My cube mate has a $300 bland iPod-ish thing with it's own FLAC capable firmware, and a true hardware amp. Did i mention $300, B.K.A. one fourth the price.
Methinks this is a non-starter. They will sell when heavily discounted, much like the HP Tablets finally sold (as Linux devices) when prices came down.
Re:Pono Player? (Score:5, Informative)
I have one, and its technology sucks balls.
It's got a great DAC - an ESS SABRE 9016 - that powers many modern A/V receivers. Point there.
The problem is the amplifiers suck.
Ayre amps supposedly have no feedback, and that makes it "good". I suppose it is given they sell amps for $20,000 that are handmade in Colorado. However, just because you can hand make something doesn't translate into a mass-manufactured product. First off, the amp in the Pono is fully discrete (transistors, no op-amps). This is fine, if you manage to match all the transistors in each stage properly. Also fine in a $20,000 handmade product where you can go through and characterize every transistor and find matching pairs so they behave identically. But in a mass manufactured product, they probably are grabbing transistors off a reel, which means instant mismatches since they're within their specs, but will deviate due to manufacturing issues.
So a discrete amp already is at a disadvantage because without taking time to characterize every part, you're going to get an amp that behaves differently between channels and between units.
Yes, integrated units are better - best are dual units because matching within a die is far better (under 1% difference) that matching between dice (over 10-20%). IC designers know this, and they know that manufacturing can trim the differences down to practically nil within a die (in IC manufacturing, everything is based on ratios - you cannot say you want a 1K resistor because you'll get 1K +/- 30% tolerance. But you can design two transistors that will be well within 1% of each other, even if you need a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio or more - so designers work on ratios rather than absolute values). It's why you have dual DAC and dual op-amp or even more (6 channel DACs are common too) in a single package - the matching between the parts will be remarkably close, brought in closer because they can be laser trimmed during fab.
The next problem is lack of feedback causing a REALLY HIGH output impedance - about 5 ohms. If you don't know, this causes EQ because headphones with 8 ohm impedance can really vary between 1-12+ ohms over the audio range. This causes EQ (equalization) which means the amplifier actually produces different gains at different frequencies, a la a graphic equalizer. You can use an EQ to reverse this trend (that's what they're actually for - to equalize the response), but that's a bunch of processing. I've seen comments that say you should go for 8 times the output impedance at a minimum - so 40 ohm headphones or higher to minimize the EQ (at 8 times, the variance is around 0.5db).
Again, Ayre amps may do this because you're going to pair it up with good speakers that already will have higher impedances so you won't notice. But Joe Average will be using jellybean 8/16/32 ohm headphones (most common impedances).
The problem with Pono is that it hits EVERY audiophile rumor out there. Discrete good, op-amp bad (true back in the 70s with early opamps, but since the 80s we've had great audio op-amps that have excellent transfer characteristics). Feedback is bad (because feeding back a "time delayed" signal just ruins the audio purity - never mind that we're talking nanoseconds here) - even though using it lets you have lower output impedances. And that high output impedance means EQ up the hell.
And let's not say about the claim from Ayre themselves saying it's 80-90% as good as their $20,000 amp. That's just wrong on so many levels - are you saying that the amp is overpriced? Or to go the extra mile costs an extra $19,600?
Hell, I'm surprised they stuck with 3.5mm jacks given all the design work - 3.5mm jacks while convenient, do have limitations w.r.t. cross talk and other parameters.
And the hardware's kinda crappy - underpowered SoC running Android AOSP 2.2. yes, 2.2. it's sluggish all around.
I've actually never wanted to back out of a kickstarter as much as I have with Pono.
O2 Amp (Score:3)
You might be happier if you pair your Pono with an O2 amp. The O2 was designed to be portable.
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/08/o2-details.html [blogspot.com]
If you like to solder you can build your own; the plans are open-source.
I don't like to solder and bought one pre-made from JDS Labs. I didn't care about portability and I wanted to use it with a computer so I bought the O2+ODAC all in one.
http://www.jdslabs.com/products/48/o2-odac-combo/ [jdslabs.com]
You can spend more money, but you really can't beat the performance of an O2
I'd glad pay $1200... IF (Score:3)
Re: Clearly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Clearly (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that would be enough storage for a typical audiophile's full collection if it was all lossless, which this device espouses. For $1,200 it should be at least 512GB IMO, which the NAND storage alone should have a BOM cost of less than $100.
Anyway it seems that Sony made the same mistake in the MP3 player market that Microsoft did in the smartphone market; they saw the incoming demand for a new kind of product and just flat out ignored it.
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Re: Clearly (Score:3)
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No kidding. I never notice "poor quality" from mp3's. Frankly, even if I could tell, I don't think I'd care. I mostly listen to music at an office (plenty of background sounds and I'm focused on work), in the car (tons of noise), or at home with the family making so much chaos the music is at best an accent and at worst a distraction I have to turn off. I'm trying to imagine a scenario where I've got enough quiet and focus that I could be so absorbed in the tunes the encoding quality would tarnish the exper
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I do with they'd offer a hard drive version of the thing, I still love my iPod classic for my main traveling music player so that I can fit most all of my music collection on it as well as some video and podcasts. This is the one I keep in the car and fly with...the smaller ones are just for the gym with a sub selection of my stuff.
But I have longed for a good portable player I could use with flac which is what I have my music ripped to on m
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I won't. We're at a tipping point, on the verge of a paradigm shift in personal devices. The smartphone has already replaced the functions of consumer-grade cell phones, personal digital assistants (calendar, e-mail, task list, alarm clock, contacts list), GPS receiver and mapper, and casual point-and-shoot camera. It's also marginally replaced music players, though the software for on-device libraries is seemingly mediocre at best. Intr
BINGO! I WIN! (Score:3, Funny)
I already had:
"paradigm shift"
"arena"
"consumer-grade"
"on-device"
I kid, I kid, it's the meds, seriously.
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However when I want to shoot serious images, I have a dedicated DSLR for that, a 5D3. For my music that I like to listen to in as good a quality as I can, I have a nice system for home and I prefer to have as nice as I can for out and about too.
I know the gym and the car are probably the worst listening environments available and that's why I don't mind doing mp3 for that, but if flac were available portable and at the
Re: Clearly (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Clearly (Score:4, Interesting)
Bear in mind I'm talking specifically about portable devices for audiophiles that want them despite the environment in which they're attempting to use them being subpar.
I don't think the market is big enough to justify the development of the device. I very well may be incorrect, but the difference between a $300-cash dedicated music player or a $600-cash multifunction smarthphone that plays music well enough versus a $1200 device that just plays music is a pretty steep curve to ask while the former options, with high-end headphones, are already available.
Look at another market that Sony played in, the Laserdisc market. Was for high-end customers, also played music from compact disc perfectly well, and was meant to be integrated into a home theatre system with multispeaker surround sound where the owner could control the environment. It was unlikely to be dropped or damaged or otherwise lost and didn't require the user to do anything more than load the media to play the content. Despite the relative ease-of-use the Laserdisc was not a runaway success, and Sony only made a handful of players before effectively yielding the entire market to Pioneer. It was not a particularly profitable market even when the premium content at the time was vastly superior to the next step down, the video tape. Jumping to now, we can look at the differences- On-device content is competing with on-demand streamed content, modern devices like smartphones run loadable software so new things like codecs can be added, and the sound-reproduction end-device, the headphones, isn't an integrated part of the device but a user-selectable module. All that remains in-question is the quality of the audio reproduction in the DSP in the smartphone itself, but since the advent of computer-based sound at 44KHz, 16-bit with the sound cards of the mid-nineties, the differences between low-end sound and high-end sound have been very, very hard to differentiate.
Given that the cell phone is so ubiquitous, I find it very unlikely that even most audiophiles will want to carry a dedicated device in addition to their phone, and throwing a steep price on top of it isn't going to help matters.
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A moderate, mid-market music player will do g
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> it doesn't mean it isn't a valid product
It's a valid product.
It's a valid music player.
China says it's about $0.10 to add such function to your consumer electronic.
The product's capabilities decide whether it's $1200 valid, and they're delivering three-figure at best.
the audiophile market is a weird place... you can pay $100k for a pair of speakers. seriously, the laws of normal economics do not apply. I don't swim in that pool, but for those that do, this product could be highy valued.
why would you say it costs a dime to add the function to a consumer electronic? What kind of oncommon connectors will they be using? Will parts need to be custom-designed for the high quality audio? The DACs alone can get complicated (and bulky). And what about the engineering and marketi
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It costs a couple of bucks to produce a headphone, and the bulk of the research into sound quality was finished decades ago, yet people still spend 300-5000 on high end headphones that don't sound much better than a 50 dollar pair.
WRONG: I've never heard a $50 pair of head phones that are anywhere as accurate as the Etymotic er6i [amzn.com] which had an MSRP of $99. Unfortunately, I broke mine and Etymotic discontinued production. I found their newer offerings are to uncomfortable for extended use, so I switched to the Shure SE215-K [amzn.com], which also has an MSRP of $99. The SE215-Ks sound almost as good, but are far more durable, and like the ER-6is, no $50 headphone compares.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Clearly (Score:5, Informative)
But I have longed for a good portable player I could use with flac which is what I have my music ripped to on my living room BIG system (tube amps, klipschorn speakers, etc).
Android has supported FLAC since 3.1 : http://developer.android.com/g... [android.com]
So nearly any android phone or media player will do it. Samsung Galaxy Player was a decent iPod-touch-like device.
In addition, the Sandisk players (I don't know if it's all of them, but at least the Sansa Clip) support Flac, and they can be found very cheap.
Archos was one of the first with a really polished player that also supported Flac, and kept making a HDD based one for quite a long time. Sadly, I think Archos backed out of the media player arena (probably because people kept saying "I have longed for XYZ", and then not buying it when they made it).
This Sony thing has a little more than normal onboard memory. Otherwise, it's nothing special AFAICT.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Sony thought that their playstation game console would outsell everyone
Result? Another also-ran product
What the fuck are you talking about? Sony created the modern market for games consoles, moving it away from the child-aimed Nintendo & Sega offerings towards the nascent adult gaming market which now economically dominates the entire industry. They then launched the PS1 and PS2, finally got some competition from MS, crapped all over it for the first iteration, kept level on the PS3/X360 and now they'
Re: (Score:2)
1. uh... VHS won with marketing. Simple as.
2. In your opinion. I'm sure there are people who get PAID to critique movies who would heartily disagree with you.
3. PS1, PS2 and PS3 hold three of the four top spots of the greatest selling video games consoles of all time. Nintendo hold #3 spot with the Wii. Source: Tekrevue. By what metric is the PS3 an "also-ran"??
Re: (Score:2)
I won't disagree on Betamax or MGM, but describing the Playstation series as "also ran" is one of the dumbest statements I've ever heard on slashdot - which is really saying something.
The Playstation series revolutionised the video games industry and opened up whole new demographics to gaming. Sony may have stumbled a bit around the time they released the PS3 (the wrong hardware at the wrong price), but with the announcement today that the PS4 has achieved 18.5 million units sold to consumers in just over a
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I always wondered why codecs do not parameterize over known musical instruments, detect them, and subtract them from the signal, to encode the remainder using psychoacoustic models.
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Cymbals are even worse when you're listening to orchestras, and then there's gongs and whatnot. Encoding has gotten a LOT better over the years, but even today you need to encode at 192kbps at least for it to have an okay sound. Certain instruments just don't encode very well.
Re: (Score:3)
Certain instruments just don't encode very well.
True.
I used to work for James D. Johnston ("JJ") who was the co-inventor of MP3 while he was at Bell Labs. He told me that MP3 has a particular problem with reproducing the sound of a glockenspiel.
He was never happy with MP3. My understanding is that the standards process forced him to compromise the design in ways he didn't like, and later when he did AAC it was more like what he had wanted MP3 to be all along.
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24976 [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:3)
given that the SD 1.0 standard is deprecated, and that to be supplied preformatted (AT ALL) a card can ONLY be formatted wtih exFAT (necessitating a licence from Microsoft) and still be called "SD-anything", necessarily so.
Re: (Score:2)
And a microSD slot? Where on earth [sandisk.co.uk] would I get one of those cheaper?
It would be very interesting to run some double blind tests and ABX comparisons between a $50 Sansa player and the new Sony. 'Audiophiles' tend not to like these sorts of tests, for some reason...
Re: (Score:2)
In so far as I can tell, Monster cables are largely a joke in audiophile communities too. Monster cables are sold to schlubs who think they're getting audiophile quality cables at big box shops.
If you really want quality, Monster cables are too cheap.