New A-Series Walkman - A840

[gebal]

UE 11's and TWO A840s? You spoilt son of a..

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by gebal

UE 11's and TWO A840s? You spoilt son of a..

[The DarkSide]

Originally Posted by gebal

UE 11's and TWO A840s? You spoilt son of a..

I second that motion,....................

[walkmanforever]

hey..how does it sound as compared to the walkman X?

[daves007]

I don't know I'm afraid, I have never owned an x-series. All the reviews are pretty good but they seem to have the word sony in the URLs (lol) and there are no real user reviews that I have seen.

I only got it yesterday and have been working all day here so can't test it yet beyond what it was bundled with it grrrrrrrr (the bundled tracks sound lovely though and the headphones seem really good too).

[shigzeo]

I've ordered an 845 and will pick it up next Friday. I have the A828, S615, S636, a bunch of Sony MD units and CD players. What I enjoy is Sony's warmth, but hate the hiss. I understand the A845 still hisses, but oh bother.

Loads of earphones to enjoy as well.

[daves007]

Originally Posted by shigzeo

s. What I enjoy is Sony's warmth, but hate the hiss. I understand the A845 still hisses, but oh bother.

Please do post when you get it, I can hear absolutely no hiss with mine - but when I used my other headphones instead of the ones bundled the sound deteriorated - the Sony EX's seem to have a fatter connection than my Sennheiser CX200s.

[The DarkSide]

Originally Posted by shigzeo

I've ordered an 845 and will pick it up next Friday. I have the A828, S615, S636, a bunch of Sony MD units and CD players. What I enjoy is Sony's warmth, but hate the hiss. I understand the A845 still hisses, but oh bother.

Loads of earphones to enjoy as well.

Welcome to ABI>>> shigzeo, glad to have you here (nywytboy68 from Head-Fi).

[shigzeo]

^^ thanks for the welcome.

For headphones I use anything but what comes bundled: ACS T1, Sensaphonics 2X-s, Sleek Audio CT6, S1, Sherwood SE777, Fitear 333 - all of those hiss, but the sensaphonics the least. The truth of the matter is that no matter how much I like the Sony sound, it hisses waaaaay too much for comfort.

[Ascariss]

A series now in white

http://thewalkmanblog.blogspot.com/2...hite-a840.html

16 and 32 gb tho, japan only as well. :/

[mandersen]

Originally Posted by Ascariss

A series now in white

http://thewalkmanblog.blogspot.com/2...hite-a840.html

16 and 32 gb tho, japan only as well. :/

Great news!! Do someone know some netshops that from which this white A Walkman can be ordered and sent to Europe?

Alternatively: Is there a Japanese shop that can sell it to an European customer?

[Ascariss]

anyone know if there are any silicone cases for the new A series?

[dmistry]

Can someone please help, is it really worth selling the x series to purchase the new a845 model. I heard that the a845 sound is not that loud when comparing to the X series. But the a845 just looks good, as I am getting bored with the touchscreen and the wifi features (as UK does not have wifi radio which is lame).

Please help as I am on the verge of selling a very new NWZ-X1050 walkman

[bob123]

dmisty,

There is definitely a sound difference between the x and the a845. I have found the sound of the a845 to be more out in the front but also a little brighter and slightly less warm than the x. the a845 certainly looks and feels much nicer than the x but the UI is pretty similar.

After having the a845 for about a month and becoming disatisfied with what seems like an ever increasing lack of warmth with each walkman that is released, I decided to take the plunge and buy the cowon J3. It took me a couple of days to tweak the EQ settings (and there are an unbelievable amount of options there!), but now that I have it just how I want it I doubt I will ever go back to the walkman. the sound of the J3 is significantly warmer and clearer. It has its quirks like not properly supporting m4a tags/album art etc, and the UI is confusing at times, but once the music is playing all those issues are forgotten! I have been a very loyal walkman supporter dating back to the discmans and minidisc players, but if your primary issue is sound quality then you should think about cowon.

[Ghibli]

Finally got myself an A846 yesterday. I'd actually given up on it a while back because of the high price but I suddenly managed to find stores slashing the price by S$100 so I jumped at the chance.

Absolutely beautiful design that manages to continue growing on me, and I was pleasantly surprised to find how noticeable the noise-canceling effect is. My only gripes are the missing functions that are on my A806 like on-the-go playlists, song deletion and ability to jump straight to the artist, album, genre or year of the song playing. Other than that it's a step up in every way.
There are several 16GB players that could seriously rival the A845 in a few aspects (especially price), but I'd say nothing compares to the A846 at the 32GB level. I was kinda excited by the Cowon J3 but it's still not officially imported here and those that have made it are 16gig units only.

[Marvin the Martian]

Very nice! So after the $100 price cut, how much was it? I'm in the segment where 32GB would be enough, I don't need 64GB.

[Ghibli]

S$450 (down from the current RRP of S$549 which Sony Style stores still maintain), which is about US$320.

[Teknosaga]

Hi peoplez, im new to this forum. I have used walkmans for quite some time now. And have made everyone who wanted to borrow my player actually call it a walkman before he/she would get it. Cause if you know an ipod you should know a walkman imo.

I bought an nwz a845 a couple of days ago. Loving it although i miss not being able to jump to the artist/album of the playing song like @Ghibli mentioned before.
I am having some minor issues with it though. The lower volume compared to its predecessors doesnt matter to me because i have never had to crank the volume all the way up on my older models.
The issues i'm having are:

1. Slower startup time.
2. Slower read times. The player doesnt instantly make song info pop up if your scrolling rapidly through the library. My two year old s series never had that problem.
3. Some weird screen flicker, although i havn't seen any after i had formatted the device (built in format option).
4. And lastly a faulty battery indicator. After a full charge the indicator went to 3 bars after 2 hours of music playback (~128 kbs,15 sec screen timer, half screenbrightness) then to 2 bars after another 2 hours and another 2 hours to 1 bar. And now its at 1 bar and playing for over 7 hours and still going!

The last issue is not so minor as i NEED to know the battery life of my devices. Anyone else experiencing this? I'll update as to how long it lasts on that one bar.

I welcome myself to the forum and good day.

[Ghibli]

Regarding the issues above:

1) Yes, I notice this too compared with my A806 which is practically instantaneous. Doesn't bother me though since it's like three seconds.
2) Yes, this is quite obvious and I was quite irritated at first but I realised it doesn't affect navigation at all because titles will load instantly once you continue to scroll, just ignore the blanks...
3) Yes I notice this too, it's rare but happens usually to me when scrolling through album art. I haven't bothered to format mine so I don't know if it will go away if I do.
4) I wouldn't say my experience is as extreme as yours but I have noticed that it is quite eager to lose the first bar yet the last bar seems to last unusually long. A little unsettling for me at first but now I use the Battery Care function and charge it everyday regardless of juice remaining anyway.

I guess we can just hope for new firmware releases from Sony. The A840 seems a very niche model with very little promotion so I wouldn't hold my breath, but the older A series were too and they did get firmware updates.

[Teknosaga]

Thanks for letting me know im not the only one having these "very minor" issues. As for the battery indicator issue, seems it lasted around 10 hours on that last bar. I do hope they fix it in a firmware upgrade. I think we might get it if the firmware has any similarities to the japanese version.

Edit: @Ghibli, your pictures of the player connected to the pc reminded me of windows 7 being able to indicate the remaining battery charge on a device. So the player was indicating 2 bars for me just now after 3,5 hours of playback but windows 7 indicated it was at an 80% charge. Really hope Sony address this issue, i dont always have a pc around to give me a good estimate of the remaining battery life.