I was wondering if anyone else was interested in MP3 players when Ken80s posted about one. These are mine These are all genuine Sony Walkmans, but from their Network Walkman range. All the model numbers start NW. They were all bought to be used (honest) as part of my quest to find the ultimate Flash based player. I am not a fan of MP3 or heavy compression. Quite a few years ago I ripped all my CDs to .wav files on a desktop PC on the basis that .wav is closest to what is on the CD itself. This started my my quest to find a player suitable for holding large quantities of uncompressed music. None of them requires Sony's Sonicstage transfer software, which always appeared in the "why not to buy" column of earlier reviews when comparing Sonys to iPods (of which I only have three). Of course iTunes seems to have been going downhill for the last few years. From being the place to buy legal downloads it is now difficult to work out how to do it. A quick summary starting top left and working downwards. The players are more or in less chronological order by year of releaase. Blue NW-E005 My first flash based player bought new about 11 years ago. These seem to suffer from swelling batteries and fading OED displays. This one has been rebuilt using parts from three different players. NWZ-B133F Bought because it includes a Radio. It can also record uncompressed audio like a dictaphone NWD-B105F Similar to above but different ergonomics including a separate power button. NWZ-E443 Black and NWZ-E445 Red. Possibly peak NW Walkman in terms of functionality. You can record MP3s from the radio or microphone. I have had three from this range but the first was always a bit temperamental. The black one was bought from Ebay unused and came with a small speaker dock, which I only discovered last night can be powered from the Walkman. The Red one (another Ebay purchase) was very well used. It is the top of the range 16GB model which is why I still bought it. The red control disc was very worn from years of use and has been replaced by the black one from the faulty one. NW-A25 (Teal) I only got this yesterday. The seller had zero seller feedback and helpful pointed on there is a fine line missing on the display so I got it for a bargain price. This will play High Res Audio (which doesn't interest me) and take a Micro SD Card (which was the reason I bought it). First impressions are good. NW-A45 (Slate Blue) A current model until very recently, two models on from the NW-A25. I'm not sure about this one. It is significantly heavier than the others and I think I prefer the sound of the NW-A25. Of course I am still monitoring the prices of NW-A100s and NW-A105s on Ebay. If it wasn't for Sonicstage I would be tempted by the older models. The metallic pebble style models really are little works of art.
This is a very nice collection , from my personal experience at about ten pieces it becomes addictive ! Started collecting them before 12 years or so and still do. From a collectors point of view the earlier ones are very interesting for their design and technical diversity and also for the "minidisc" Atrac codec sound quality and the later advanced lossless ATRAC3 codec. On the downside Sonicstage and proprietary connecting usb cable overprotected the system and buyers just didn't bother. A few years back someone made a workaround for Sonicstage the JSymphonic that performed really well but unfortunately their download link seems it doesn't work anymore , you can download it here but I haven't tested that link. In my collection is included the very first model the Sony NW-MS7 with MagicGate memory stick , a full circle with the latest network walkmans after hdd's and flash memory's and naturally you need windows98 to connect it to a PC !
When I got the NW-E005 I did actually use Sonicstage and tried different formats to try and tell which one sounded best. Although they sounded different it was difficult to come to a conclusion other than higher bit rates sounded better. However, the player can be used in drag and drop manner. I looked into JSymphonic in the past. I recall that the help files tell you which players will only operate with it or Sonicstage. I have seen examples the NW-MS7 for sale on Ebay. I'm not sure if I still have it but I was once given a book entirely about MP3 players comparing the different models from companies like iRiver and Diamond Multimedia. The fact it didn't include any iPods dates it to before 2001.
When transferring songs I'm using the highest bitrate as saving space isn't my priority so I can't tell , just hope that lower bitrate doesn't sound better ! Somewhere I have a backup of that , there was a special mention for the NW-MS7 . Indeed it is from the 20th century , 1999 , before iPod. I had bought my NW-MS7 several years ago boxed from ebay for not much but never justified the effort to setup a 98windows (or millennium) to test it , also I'm not aware if someone make it work in any other way , maybe that's why they are generally low priced . One thing to pay attention when buying a NW-MS7 from ebay is that it has a special adapter for the charger that is usually missing. Below two grandpa and grandson pictures , the dna (or heritage if you prefer) from cassette walkmans is there , the TPS-L2 color combination for the NW-MS7 and the basic design layout of the WM-2 for the NW-E55 which by the way is one of my favorites with very good sound , normal usb connector , ergonomic controls and surprisingly it works with a single common AAA battery.
The NW-E005 I bought had 1GByte of RAM so storage was limited. While having a clear out recently I came across this which explains why the iPod and similar MP3 players were hard disc based £79 for a 256MByte Compact Flash card at the end of 2003. It did come in a nice box though. I remember that cameras like my £400 Canon usually came with something like a 16MByte card. Enough to take a few demonstration pictures but that was about it. Today I installed a 500GByte SSD that cost me £53 new in one of my laptops. Imagine what that would have cost in 2003. The SSD came in Amazon's "Frustration Free Packaging" which was basically a cardboard envelope. Regarding PCs I actually have a Windows 98 laptop here, a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4280, like this https://www.cnet.com/products/toshi...13-1-piii-nt-4-0-64-mb-ram-5-6-gb-hdd-series/ which I picked up used in a batch of laptops years ago. Looking at the manuals it was released in 2000. I kept it as it has the excellent Yamaha XG soundchip. It also has one USB port hidden behind a little flap on the back. Something that surprised me was finding that Windows 98 doesn't natively support USB mass storage. I found one small USB stick which picked up a suitable driver. All my others came up with a message like "Unknown USB device. Please Install a Driver", How things have moved on this century.
Perhaps it is an isolated case but I have to mention that trying to load Sonicstage to my Toshiba 4010CDS Win98 ended up with a ruined hdd. After an hour of loading the program and a stuck screen it became hot and I had to force shut it off , that was the end of it.
Coincidence ? A couple of months ago the D: drive in my desktop PC failed when my wife tried to save a Notepad file to it. Luckily I had backed it up about a month earlier for the first time in about a year.
It was years back when I had bought the NW-MS7, Toshiba 4010CDS Win98 is part of my collection not for everyday use , nothing really lost except the hdd.
Happy birthday Longman , my best wishes ! With the capabilities of the NW-A105 and the fast 400Gb Sandisk you are now in serious business !
I have a Sony NW-E55 matchbox sized player too. However I struggled to get it work under Windows 10 (on Mac Mini 2018 with BootCamp). SonicStage I installed following the instructions on minidisc.wiki. When connecting the NW-E55, it would show up in the Device Manager with either no driver at all, or a wrong driver. After trying out several drivers, I settled on the following: Sony USB Network Walkman, version 10.0.19041.1288. It seems to be a generic one, signed by Microsoft. As can be seen in the picture, it now show up and I able to transfer music to it.
