Well, considering people are likely to wear these things to the
gym, it seems odd to me. I just bought a Sony Atrac CD
Walkman (D-NE1), and I love it, but I can't figure out a way of
wiring myself up *comfortably* when wearing a t-shirt. ATM,
I've got the player in my pocket (preferred) and the remote
control clipped to my t-shirt sleeve (awkward). If the
earphone's cable was longer, I could clip the remote to my belt
- which would be perfect - but I can't because it's too short.

Am I missing some obvious t-shirt wearing configuration g or
do I simply have to buy new earphones with a longer cable?
Suspecting the latter, I'm a tiny bit annoyed considering the
outlay, but more importantly, should I be aiming for any
specific make/model of earphones? I don't want to buy anything
which is likely to wear out (dodgy cable) within a few months,
nor anything with questionable sound quality.
--
Lee J. Moore
http://cafe-society.com

Am I missing some obvious t-shirt wearing configuration g or

Heh. I know /exactly/ what you mean. I have the same trouble. The only way
i've sort of found to get round it is have the MD player in trouser pocket,
cable coming up inside t-shirt and out of the neck. I take the clip off the
remote and just leave it hanging inside my shirt.

Obviously, you can't see what's on the remote LCD screen, but you can, after
a bit of practice at least, operate it through your shirt. It keeps all of
the wires out of the way too and stops you getting tangled up in things.

Stu

Well, piercings at the right places could do the trick......

Karsten

"Lee J. Moore" wrote in message
...
Well, considering people are likely to wear these things to the
gym, it seems odd to me. I just bought a Sony Atrac CD
Walkman (D-NE1), and I love it, but I can't figure out a way of
wiring myself up *comfortably* when wearing a t-shirt. ATM,
I've got the player in my pocket (preferred) and the remote
control clipped to my t-shirt sleeve (awkward). If the
earphone's cable was longer, I could clip the remote to my belt
- which would be perfect - but I can't because it's too short.

Am I missing some obvious t-shirt wearing configuration g or
do I simply have to buy new earphones with a longer cable?
Suspecting the latter, I'm a tiny bit annoyed considering the
outlay, but more importantly, should I be aiming for any
specific make/model of earphones? I don't want to buy anything
which is likely to wear out (dodgy cable) within a few months,
nor anything with questionable sound quality.
--
Lee J. Moore
http://cafe-society.com

In uk.rec.audio, Stu waffled thusly:

Am I missing some obvious t-shirt wearing configuration g or

Heh. I know /exactly/ what you mean. I have the same trouble.
The only way i've sort of found to get round it is have the MD
player in trouser pocket, cable coming up inside t-shirt and
out of the neck. I take the clip off the remote and just leave
it hanging inside my shirt.

Aye, well, I had resorted to this...but then, blimey, more
significant (ie software) problems occurred and now I'm about to
get a refund on the damn thing.

I paid a premium for this (compared to other brands), not just
because it's a Sony, but because it can play Atrac encoded
files. Of course, it's a proprietary format and software to
burn these files is limited. Atm, I can find nothing other than
Sony's SonicStage Simple Burner software (that comes with the
walkman).

So, wonderful, I can burn approx 30 albums onto a CDR/RW. But
by the time I get to encoding the fifth or sixth CD, it decides
to crash. Just shuts down without even an error message, although
when I tried it on a friends Sony VAIO (FR105 IIRC), it said
something about an exception in sb.exe.

This wouldn't be so bad if you could backup every 30 minutes,
and return to where you left off if the software crashes. But
no, Sony didn't think of this principle, which is hardly
revolutionary.

It just seems extraordinary that the developers, knowing full
well the number of hours involved in encoding around *30*
albums, before encoding to disc, didn't include a backup
facility. Sony can't promise a technical support callback
within 48 hours...and, bar a software update (research indicates
there isn't one), I'm not sure what they can do anyway.

Initially, I'd have given this a 5 star review. But it's been
more than let down by the software (what's the point of an Atrac
walkman if you can't encode Atrac CD's?). Now I'd give it 1
star and advise buyers to beware of these things until Sony
learn how to develop software.

If there was only an Atrac encoder for Linux (or maybe a way of
using Sony's proprietary codec with grip) I'd probably keep it.
At least that would be stable and I'd be able to save my work
every x minutes.
--
Lee J. Moore
http://cafe-society.com

more from the 'Lee J. Moore school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:

Given your bad experience with proprietary formats I'd wait until cheap ogg
players take off.

I'll never understand why people pay good money for companies like Sony to
take away their liberties.

--
Jim H jh
@333
.org

In uk.rec.audio, Jim waffled thusly:
more from the 'Lee J. Moore school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:

Given your bad experience with proprietary formats I'd wait until cheap ogg
players take off.

I'll never understand why people pay good money for companies like Sony to
take away their liberties.

Because it's a here and now, rather than whenever, solution.
Plus, the hardware is actually pretty remarkable. I don't even
need to enable G-Protection when sprinting because skipping
simply doesn't occur. All other models in the shop had problems
when I was jumping around like a fool to test them.

Aaah, stuff 'em anyway. This is the first time I've fallen for
investing in something that plays a proprietary format (as well
as MP3s), and they can kiss it in future. I've certainly
scrubbed the Sony VAIO notebook off my list after witnessing
this appalling piece of software. I'm still aghast at Sony's
expectation of their customers to spend hours and hours encoding
without any kind of backup facility. Unbelievable.

There were *always* going to be complaints, because no software
is 100% stable. I'm just glad I couldn't get past the fifth or
sixth disc. That took an hour. Imagine the frustration at
getting twenty CDs encoded only for the thing to crap-out when
there's approx. another ten to go.
--
Lee J. Moore
http://cafe-society.com

In uk.rec.audio, Kurt waffled thusly:
[..]

Can't say it's crashed on me like that (under Win XP), though
I have had it come up and tell me that although the bar shows
there is enough room for the files after burning I get an
error message that says "all files may not have been written
to the disk" - "may" doesn't the sodding thing know if (and
what) files haven't been written.

I did have other problems too. Like, if one CD is unreadable
(through dust, or whatever), that also brings the application
down. It's just frozen, even after removing the CD, still
apparently trying to read the contents.

The other thing that tickles me is that one part of the Sony
Corporation is pushing you to rip CDs by providing both
hardware and software to do the job, then simultaneously
another part of Sony is spending fortunes on finding ways of
preventing CDs being copied.

I'm not sure I understand that philosophy

hehe. I was looking at the RIAA site yesterday and noticed
they're a member. Gotta larf.
--
Lee J. Moore
http://cafe-society.com

more from the 'Lee J. Moore school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:

In uk.rec.audio, Jim waffled thusly:
more from the 'Lee J. Moore school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:

Given your bad experience with proprietary formats I'd wait until
cheap ogg players take off.

I'll never understand why people pay good money for companies like
Sony to take away their liberties.

Because it's a here and now, rather than whenever, solution.
Plus, the hardware is actually pretty remarkable. I don't even
need to enable G-Protection when sprinting because skipping
simply doesn't occur. All other models in the shop had problems
when I was jumping around like a fool to test them.

Lol. actually I do remember owning a sony CD player that'd stand up to
anything. The hardware involved was excellent.

Aaah, stuff 'em anyway. This is the first time I've fallen for
investing in something that plays a proprietary format (as well
as MP3s), and they can kiss it in future. I've certainly
scrubbed the Sony VAIO notebook off my list after witnessing
this appalling piece of software. I'm still aghast at Sony's
expectation of their customers to spend hours and hours encoding
without any kind of backup facility. Unbelievable.

np3 is strictly a propietary format, I'd like to them try, but Fraunhofer
could legally start charging to use it (like the GIF thing)

There were *always* going to be complaints, because no software
is 100% stable.

Exactly why open formats are important - you're not tied to any one piece
of software if it doesn't like your system. Ogg, for example, is defined as
a standard which anyone can implement however they choose.

I'm just glad I couldn't get past the fifth or
sixth disc. That took an hour. Imagine the frustration at
getting twenty CDs encoded only for the thing to crap-out when
there's approx. another ten to go.

Like if (presumably) you were to insert one of those protected/faulty CDs
Sony sell! That'd be an interesting question - do sony CDs crash Sony
software?

--
Jim H jh
@333
.org

In uk.rec.audio, Jim waffled thusly:

There were *always* going to be complaints, because no
software is 100% stable.

Exactly why open formats are important - you're not tied to
any one piece of software if it doesn't like your system. Ogg,
for example, is defined as a standard which anyone can
implement however they choose.

Aye. I have encoded ogg files in the past with grip, and they
were pretty damn well encoded files. Slightly smaller than lame
encoded mp3s IIRC, with slightly better quality, even though
encoded at the same bitrate.

Like if (presumably) you were to insert one of those
protected/faulty CDs Sony sell! That'd be an interesting
question - do sony CDs crash Sony software?

They make it behave strangely. The track list appears for a
split second but then disappears. You can bodge your way around
it though by changing the CD drive letter on the preferences
screen, then changing it back again.

Voila!
--
Lee J. Moore
http://cafe-society.com

On 11 Sep 2003 14:14:45 GMT, "Lee J. Moore"
wrote:

In uk.rec.audio, Jim waffled thusly:
more from the 'Lee J. Moore school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:

Given your bad experience with proprietary formats I'd wait until cheap ogg
players take off.

I'll never understand why people pay good money for companies like Sony to
take away their liberties.

Because it's a here and now, rather than whenever, solution.

The new Rio Karma looks interesting - supports both Ogg Vorbis and
Flac (lossless) formats as well as mp3. If someone would combine the
functions of this, with the record-to-WAV capablity of the Creative
Nomad 3, I'd be reaching for my credit card :-)

I've certainly
scrubbed the Sony VAIO notebook off my list after witnessing
this appalling piece of software.

VAIO's are OK as standard notebooks, but I tend to not use (often
delete) all the Sony-specific s/w.

I'm still aghast at Sony's
expectation of their customers to spend hours and hours encoding
without any kind of backup facility. Unbelievable.

It seems to have a fundamental flaw in its concept of operations - for
any such device, you want to be to rip/create/compress/whatever the
audio files, in your preferred format, separately, and *then* transfer
to the portable player.

Julian


--
Julian Fowler
julian (at) bellevue-barn (dot) org (dot) uk