A compromise...

[AudioFirst]

Well I finally decided to order a S639 black from amazon today great price at £85...

It will be my first Sony player since I bought a Minidisc player about 10 years ago...

I had up until this point been waiting for the Samsung P3 or the Cowon S9 32Gb versions (so I could carry my entire music collection with me) to be released but it seems that they are going to be several months away at the least, so I give up now with those units and wait for when there is a player with 64gb+, that support vorbis & flac, can create playlists on the unit, has good ui that doesn't make you have to go all over the shop just to playback music, and has dedicated application buttons (play/pause,ff,rw,vol+,vol-,hold) and is of a similar size to the s639.

It does pretty much every thing I want except support vorbis and flac and have 32gb capacity and have the ability to create your own playlists on the player.

Still I think it is going to be a great little player and as I am coming from using a Creative Nano TX which I liked because of how compact it was, the better sound quality and extra capacity should hold me over till someone actually releases a compact music player does everything I want...

I am wondering any recommendations for a slimline but removable case to put the player into?

[CrowdAds]

[bernado]

Funnily enough I'm just about to do the same as you. S9 will have to wait, original firmware will probably buggy any way, as is the Cowon way, when it eventially comes out sometime next year.
There are some nice looking leather cases for the Sony player on ebay for around a tenner

[The DarkSide]

I'm waiting for my S639 from Advanced MP3 Players in the UK also. I really can't wait!!!

[AudioFirst]

Originally Posted by The DarkSide

I'm waiting for my S639 from Advanced MP3 Players in the UK also. I really can't wait!!!

What price did you order for? I think Amazon had a really good deal last Friday - £79.95 - 2.143% for 15% VAT I think it ended up something silly like £78.50 with free next day shipping..

I have been a little bit, audio quality wise it is night and day compared to what I have been using to this point, I haven't used the earphones that came with the player yet...

I was going to try and post a review but abi beat me to it

Still there are a few thing worth noting:

I have no MTP software (win media player 10) the player just loaded up as a flash drive called "walkman"

The S639 disaplys 14.6Gb capacity in windows.
SenseMe must analyse each song in your library. I had approx 500 songs MP3s and some wavs which took about 25 minutes. While the analysis is being carried out you cannot listen to music, if you navigate away from SenseMe you will
Sense me can make a hash of song to channel allocation - which I think is because the analysis only checks (the first?) part of the song. My favourite eaxmple of this is song for the deaf being allocated to the Classical channel

[pimp]

Im not quit sure if sensee only reads the beggening of the song,but ones it reads all your osngs you DONT have to do it again,only ones.

[matt_t]

Originally Posted by AudioFirst

The S639 disaplys 14.6Gb capacity in windows.

Anyone with a S639:
How much of the 14.6GB is used up by the 8 free music videos which come preinstalled? Presumably they can be deleted to free up some space if you don't want 'em.

Thanks for any info.

[The DarkSide]

Originally Posted by matt_t

Anyone with a S639:
How much of the 14.6GB is used up by the 8 free music videos which come preinstalled? Presumably they can be deleted to free up some space if you don't want 'em.

Thanks for any info.

I didn't delete the music and vids, but I just wanted you to know that no matter what you do, your still not going to have a full 16gb of space on the player. The players OS will be allotted a certain amount. Just don't try to sue, since creative is still up in arms over that themselves!!! We wouldn't wan't to get Sony upset also.

[matt_t]

Originally Posted by The DarkSide

I didn't delete the music and vids, but I just wanted you to know that no matter what you do, your still not going to have a full 16gb of space on the player. The players OS will be allotted a certain amount. Just don't try to sue, since creative is still up in arms over that themselves!!! We wouldn't wan't to get Sony upset also.

I know all this! Just trying to squeeze every drop, as it were.

[AudioFirst]

I filled my player up with audio last night - 14.5 Gb over 1890 music files took about 2 hours to transfer it is not fast.

I removed the video files before I did this - they take up about 200 mb of space. The audio tracks - which I haven't deleted yet. I think about 100mb at a guess something like 14 tracks @ 256 kb, based on rough guess of counting tracks that I don't recognise

Regarding MTP issue - I have one PC (Toshiba Tecra S1) runing Win XP SP3 Windows media player 9.0, no other media player software installed (aside from vlc) this PC just treats the Player as a Mass storage device.
However my desktop which runs Win XP Sp3 but has Win Media player 10 treats it as an MTP device... I will try to get it back to WM player 9 to see if it then sees the player as mass storage device...

[AudioFirst]

Originally Posted by pimp

Im not quit sure if sensee only reads the beggening of the song,but ones it reads all your osngs you DONT have to do it again,only ones.

Sense me and adding music ...

Well as I took all the music off my player and then filled it to the brim (3mb space left...) transfer of 14.5 Gb - took approx 2 hrs can't tell exactly I slept through it...

After removing the player from the PC it "recreated" the library, which didn't take too long - couple of minutes (I am betting it will be different for everyone based on number of music files).

Sense Me:
To sort through the 1900 or so tracks took about 1 hour 30 minutes.

Let me give you an example of how good SenseMe is:

Here are the 32 songs in my "Classic Channel" after they have been sorted:
Ray Charles - The snow is falling
Linkin Park - Reanimation song 12
Ray Charles - The evening blues
Ray Charles - All to myself alone
Symphony #9 (track that comes with the player)
Lisa Miskovsky - back to stoneberry road
Team Sleep - Live from the stage
Rolling Stones - Shes a Rainbow
Half Light (credits track from Mothman Prophecies)
Tenacious D - Destiny
Ray Charles - Baby let me Hold your hand
Linkin park - reanimation song 10
Ray Charles - C.C rider
Led Zeppelin concert
Queens of the stone age - You think I aint
Ray Charles - aint that fine
Incubus - pistola
Ray Charles - Can't you see, darling
Billy Joel - river of dreams track 3
Filter - Can't Stop this
Beach Boys - You're so good to me
Linkin park reanimation song 3
Placebo - 36 degrees
Jimi Hendrix - Machine Gun ->(This one is my personal Favorite example)
Ray Charles - What have I done?
Ray Charles - Honey, honey
Ray Charles - Rockin Chair blues
Depeche Mode - Introspectre
Meat beat manifesto - wild life
Linkin park - stand
Single cell orchestra - transmit liberation
Tori Amos - Landslide


Some of these songs are classics but I don't think they are "classical" !!! I think the channel that works best is is "Pop Ballads" which appears to be ok... I haven't found any of my Rob Zombie songs in that channel yet ...

And no comments about my music !!!

[pimp]

Lol "audiofirst" you`re right,after testing the senseMe for a while,you`re tottaly right it does not order the music properly at its genere,but I DO like the way of having similar beats ,as i ONLY listen to r&b hip hop and all that black stuff...and it does kind of sort the "Beats" at least...and tha morning/day/night feeling does its job as well at SenseMe...i got the 638 8GB and i`ve not filled it up yet, i do have 120 GB of nice music,but im really like sellecting the Besto of,not complete albums, so y still got 3GB left to fill up...

[The DarkSide]

Heh,........Meat Beat Manifesto & Tori Amos,.......together at last!!!

[welshie]

my favourite 'classical' selection so far has been 'My Way' by Sid Vicious- I am guessing it only checks the first minute or so!!!

I really like the sensme on SOME of the channels- acoustic seems to work, Relaxed is OK. Lounge certainly throws out some odd songs, but it does seem to work in a totally cool wierd way- this is the best for 'surprise' songs that work!!!

My Favourite though is upbeat, which really is pretty spot on, and great for using whilst exercising. Energetic is good too.

However it certainly does not guess the genre right, rather MOST of the song properties.

But I do really like it- I find it is most useful to plug into the stereo and leave running for a few hours whilst working around the house and stuff....

[babya]

These seem to be MTP-only-no UMS unlike third-generation Walkman players