Care to take a stab at guessing this one? I'll give you a hint: it's fabulous news. As you may have gathered from Sony's abandonment of SonicStage, the company is giving its Connect music store the ax as well. Considering the new Walkmans are now PlaysForSure devices capable of playing both purchased and subscription WMAs--and they support unprotected AACs purchased from iTunes--it only makes sense to get rid of the faltering (and horrifically designed) store. For my part, I'm pleased as punch by the death of SonicStage and Connect. Yes, I'm a little bit sadistic...especially this week. For a less insensitive take, check out the News.com story.
This e-mail from Sony sums it up nicely.
OK, OK, two Sony products in two days doesn't mean Crave's all loved-up with the Japanese Walkmanites, but considering how much we bash its media-manager software SonicStage, we felt compelled to mention that the company's ickle new MP3 player--the NWD-B100--doesn't require it. About time, too.
(Credit:
Sony)
The NWD-B100 is possibly the most respectable Sony Walkman product to see the light of day in 2007. Yeah, the NW-A808 is a superb piece of audio gadgetry, and the E series earned kudos points for including a system very similar to iTunes' Cover Flow on a tiny colour display. But the B100 not only kisses a hate-filled sayonara to SonicStage, it also rebukes Sony's ATRAC audio format to the extent of vanquishing support for it altogether.
While this may not be good news for devout Sony fans who naively claim SonicStage is the hound's knackers and that ATRAC is, for the most part, a lovely bit of codecular genius, your learned portable media guru knows somewhat better. The B100 plays just WMA and MP3 (no AAC, though), sports a fairly poor 12 hours of battery life, an FM radio, voice recorder, built-in equaliser and, as we mentioned, is managed through Windows using drag and drop.
The NWD-B100 comes in 1GB and 2GB, costing 45 and 55 pounds respectively (about $93 and $113), and will be out in August for UK buyers. Go on Sony, release the NW-A808 with drag and drop--we'd bearhug you right here and now.
(Source: Crave UK)
Earlier this month we wrote that Sony would be releasing an iPod Nano-style MP3 player in the US with a built-in active noise-cancellation feature. Well, the Sony NW-S705F is here, and CNET's review has just posted along with a slide show.
If you lose those fancy earbuds, I'm sure Sony will be happy to sell them to you again.
Sony's NW-S705F Noise Canceling MP3 player is now on sale in the U.S. for about $199 for 2GB version and $169 for 1GB. You may remember when Crave reported on Sony's announcement of this player back in October. The big hullabaloo is that the NW-S705F has active noise-cancellation integrated into the player. Before you get too excited, the active noise-cancellation system will still require you to use Sony's proprietary earbuds. Even though the noise-canceling circuitry is in the player, microphones located on the outside of the earbuds are necessary for the function to work properly. The other catch is that despite its support of DRM-free MP3, WMA and AAC files (as well as Sony's ATRAC), you'll still have to use the abysmal SonicStage software for loading music from your computer.
Those drawbacks aside, noise-canceling is a great way to save your hearing during those subways commutes. Plus, the NW-S705F includes an FM tuner, a 50-hour battery life, and a unique shuffle function called Time Machine that will pick a random year and play a selection of songs released in that year.
For more information, you can read CNET Australia's in-depth review of the Sony NW-S705F Noise Canceling Walkman.
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