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> Walkman = good sound quality? WRONG!
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I posted this on another forum, thought I would share here too.
Please dont post here if all you are going to contribute is "phones are not meant to play music". Some phones make quality music players, but Walkman is not one of them despite the fancy marketing.
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I, like many others was looking for an mp3 phone so I don't have to carry a separate device for music. I chose the w810i because of the walkman brand. I expected good software and sound quality and the phone offered neither. Seems like I was expecting too much.
Note: this applies to pretty much all SE mp3 capable phones, not just walkman.
1. Hissing!
I will not go into detail. Read here:
http://www.contralogic.com/w810i/
I have since reduced the hissing problem thanks to the smart people at NSE that showed us how to hack into the phone and change the sound drivers, but the signal to noise ratio still leaves a lot to be desired. A hiss can still be heard and SE are not doing anything about it.
2. Loud clicks and pops when changing tracks
This seems to be caused by the buffer being emptied. One would think that a Walkman device knows better?
3. No gapless playback.
This combined with the the clicks and pops makes it very annoying to listen to electronic mix cds.
4. A 3.5mm port would have been nice.
5. Walkman software
Screen crops the name of the song you are playing
How hard is it for them to make the song title scroll, or make the obnoxious font smaller? Obviously, whoever is engineering this is not paying much attention to detail.
Megabass is a joke
It is just an equaliser preset (you can see the Megabass preset in Farmanager) that distorts your music, but unforuntately stupid features like these sell to some people.
Sorting tracks is limited
The phone requires your albums to be tagged, and in some cases with properly tagged albums, it still manages to get the sorting wrong.
If you did not tag the track number, you will not be able to play an album in the correct order because you cannot sort tracks by filename (very easy feature to implement). And who sorts tracks by the title anyway?
No folder view or album view (must create playlists manually)
This means that a various artist album will not play unless you create a playlist. Not having a folder view also causes endless problems for mp3s without proper tags.
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Bottom line, if you are looking for a quality music phone, stay away from the Walkman series, there is nothing "Walkman" about it at all. The average user will be happy with it and not realise that they are just using a low quality mp3 player but there are others that care about their music. As far as I know, the new walkman phones still have not improved on the above problems.
Hopefully one day, someone will figure out a way to hack into the walkman app.
[ This Message was edited by: juw177 on 2006-12-29 02:57 ]
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Posted: 2006-12-29 03:56:21
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agree with everything you said. however the hissing does not exist if you use higher end headphones that prevent distortion. the ones that came with the phone do not stop reduce hissing and they have a little hiss inbuilt in the earphones themselves.
megabass works nicely if you don't turn it all the way up. the phone is a great mp3 player if you use better equipment. a 3.5 mm would of been Godly.
[ This Message was edited by: tupac1 on 2006-12-29 03:59 ]
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Posted: 2006-12-29 04:57:31
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On 2006-12-29 04:57:31, tupac1 wrote:
agree with everything you said. however the hissing does not exist if you use higher end headphones that prevent distortion. the ones that came with the phone do not stop reduce hissing and they have a little hiss inbuilt in the earphones themselves.
[ This Message was edited by: tupac1 on 2006-12-29 03:59 ]
"Good headphones" do not get rid of hissing. The job of headphones is to reproduce sound from the DAC, not limit sound.
I have several sets of quality headphones including AKG closed headphones and Etymotic in ear monitors. In a quiet environment, the hiss sounds exactly the same.
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Posted: 2006-12-29 05:05:33
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Good headphones should be able to reduce distortion and they say it on the description. the speakers in them should be able to produce sound that sounds like your listening to speakers around you from a distance hence the nulifying of the hissing.
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Posted: 2006-12-29 05:22:19
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hmmm.... i think that is why the stand alone mp3 player still exist in the market today!
btw, my w850 works perfectly recently & i'm happy with that...
[ This Message was edited by: wanakin on 2006-12-29 07:11 ]
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Posted: 2006-12-29 05:48:43
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My N91 has everything you're looking for.
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Posted: 2006-12-29 05:49:54
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On 2006-12-29 05:49:54, xpx wrote:
My N91 has everything you're looking for.
just pass it over here ; ) hehe
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Posted: 2006-12-29 05:52:46
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Residentevil Posts: > 500
Tough crowd.
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Posted: 2006-12-29 05:52:59
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^ I second that. 9 months through and people still never get tired of starting threads like this
the gapless playback part especially annoyed me: before the iPod implemented this, there wasnt as much whining
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Posted: 2006-12-29 07:25:27
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Quote:
On 2006-12-29 05:52:46, tupac1 wrote:
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On 2006-12-29 05:49:54, xpx wrote:
My N91 has everything you're looking for.
just pass it over here ; ) hehe
sure. it will cost you alot. =p
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Posted: 2006-12-29 07:26:11
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