A846 Quickie FYI and some help needed..

[rie-chan]

Hi there! Just made the switch from my ipod nano 2nd gen to the new Sony A846, and thought I'd post some of my trials and tribulations over using this player. Specifically I'll be dealing with use of Winamp and the A846, in case other newbies find themselves in a similar situation..

I'm using the latest version of winamp, v5.572.

Questions:
I'm having some problems getting chinese characters to show up. The japanese and korean characters appear fine, but certain chinese words just refuse to display. I see chinese words and blocks side by side for some titles. The titles show up fine in Winamp, and the tags are ID3v2.3, which shouldn't have any issues with unicode. Has anyone had a similar experience and found a fix?

Also, anyone happen to know if sony walkman in general supports multiple genres in the Genre field of the ID3v2.3 tag? I've figured that will be an easy workaround for me instead of creating multiple smart playlists, but I wanted to know if sony supports it before i embarked on retagging all 60 gb of my music.

Ok now on to my FYI/review..

==
Appearance:
Really gorgeous! Slightly heavier than I'd expected, but otherwise very thin and feels solid.

Wallpaper resolution:
For those who like to make their own wallpapers - the graphic size is 240x400 pixels.

Language support:
The asian model has language support for all major european languages, korean, and chinese. Japanese titles will display too.

Sound:
As mentioned in other threads, there is a pretty loud hissing when nothing is playing. I'm not sure if it's because my earphones (Shure SCL3) are very sensitive. This bothered me slightly, but once the music starts playing it becomes unnoticeable. Tones are rich, much better than the ipod IMO.

Managing the player with Winamp:

1. Need to switch the player to MTC mode before Winamp detects it. See following link: http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?postid=2519608
   Installation of any software on the player is NOT required. =)
2. General use with Winamp documented here thanks to lestatar (http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...ad.php?t=51024)
3. Important to note that dragging other playlists in winamp into the walkman portable device tab under the Media Library does not result in a playlist being created in the player. None of my playlists showed up.
   Playlists need to be created within the walkman portable device tab itself. Thought this was crappy since the iPod could do it.
4. Album art will not be transferred if it is not already hard-coded into the ID3v2 tag. To include the album art, a separate program like Tag&Rename has to be used to add the artwork into the tag.

Buying the player..
I did a quick search and found it here:
http://www.yesasia.com/global/sony-n...0-en/info.html
In case anyone not in the asia-pacific region is looking to get one.

Guess that's all i have for now. will update this as and when i find new things with the player =)

[CrowdAds]

[fugusushi]

have you tried using MediaMonkey to sync.?

why not try a test - export a test m3u playlist from WinA., import in to MediaMonkey and try syncing to 846...

i've used MM for a long time now and it works just fine with walkmans + plenty of transfer options with MM... and reading your description of how WinA works with tagging etc, i think you'll have a much easier time with MM - v.reliable for tagging/playlist creation, etc.