Arve Bersvendsen

Audio archive

The Sony NWZ-S618F

2008-03-31 23:22

Yeah, I know, it’s been less than 12 hours since I asked for advice on which MP3 player to replace my dead iPod. I ended up dropping by the local electronics pusher on my way home from work, and had a look around. They had the YP-P2 in stock, but only the 4GB version, and seeing as it was quite a bit more pricey, only really offering the larger touch screen, I picked up a Sony NWZ-S618F instead.

I have now spent the whole evening mostly ignoring everyone around me, listening to it, and am offering my impressions

The good

Source code

I was a bit surprised to open the package, with a link to Sony’s Source Code Distribution Service — the player seems to be running on some form of Linux. If now Sony could open up all of the source for the player, I’d be even happier.

Because the sound really is that ridiculously good.

Mass-storage device

This was, as I mentioned, a prerequisite for me. I really don’t understand why any device can’t just act like one. It allows any application to interact with the device. This one does that (unless you are clinically insane, and want to put DRM-infested media on your device, in which case you’ll have to put up with Windows Media Player).

The size of the mass-storage is 8GB, quite enough for me to only rarely replace content on the device, and if I’m in a pinch, I can just delete a few GB and put other data there.

The screen

While I have not yet tried to use the unit to view video, I only have good things to say about the screen: It’s clear, bright and vibrant, even on the lowest brightness setting, and is viewable from almost any angle. This is quite unlike other screens I’ve seen on similarily priced equipment.

The physical interface

The iPod had exactly one redeeming interface component: The click wheel which offered an easy-to-use means of controlling the volume of the player. The Sony instead has dedicated volume buttons on the side of the unit which proves to be just as easy to use.

The other buttons on the device are easy to reach, easy to distinguish, and due to the way they are placed, the buttons are easy to reach, even when the device is sitting in your pocket, regardless of whether the unit is operated left or right-handed.

The UI

The UI is no-nonsense: There is little in terms of fancy UI effects, and there is little distractions in terms of features. The layout also closely resembles what you find on a mobile phone, with a nine-item home screen, with the music library smack in the centre and selected, with lesser-used functionality placed in the corners, and other functionality such as the radio and video placed one click away. The color scheme is a light-text on dark background with colors used sparsely. I haven’t yet tried the player in direct sunlight, but I expect this to be fairly readable under such conditions.

The earbuds

Really. The first thing I did to my now-deceased iPod’s earbuds after I tried them was to throw them away — they really sounded no better than nails on a chalkboard with any form of music, and it ought to be an offense for Apple to include them with a player.

The earbuds included with the NWZ-S618F on the other hand, are quite good, under the circumstances, for what they are: There is reasonable definition through the entire spectrum, and if you can stand earbuds and you don’t plan on spending some serious money, you can totally live with them. This is quite unusual, and very surprising.

The ridiculously good

Ok. There is one aspect of this player that is ridiculously good, and this is the point where I started ignoring everyone: The sound.

My day-to-day headphones are a set of Grado Labs SR60. I connected these, and started playing. And I didn’t stop. I played through Metallica, Roger Waters, Kruder & Dorfmeister, a bunch of stuff you’ve never heard about, and some stuff I might not want to admit listening to. And I totally forgot I was wearing headphones. The NWZ-S618F offers clarity and definition throughout the entire spectrum, and quite unlike my last PoS, it allowed the bass on the Grados to shine, I could again hear details I knew were there, but were missing from the iPod playback.

For those that live in the vicinity. If you see someone wearing Grados, that’ll quite probably be me.

The bad

So, no complaints? Well, yes, but I don’t really know if I can blame Sony for all of it. The problem is described in Bug #209483 on launchpad: The player flat out refuses to mount in Hardy, and mounts fine in Gutsy, even if it spits a lot of error messages into /var/log/messages.

And, oh. I don’t think there is any excuse for any device in 2008 to use a proprietary connector. This one, like way too many devices has one, and to top it off, it feels just a bit flimsy and awkward - it fits only one way, but it’s nearly impossible to tell without looking at the logo on the connector. Do not operate while drunk or blind.

My final “complaint” does not relate directly to the product itself, but rather the packaging. It’s difficult to open, and has about a metric ton of leaflets inside. I’d advise getting rid of half of the paper the next time around, and then making it into a booklet instead of leaflets in six languages. While I had no real need for the manuals, I can imagine someone wanting to consult it feeling a bit frustrated by having to locate a leaflet and a booklet in their own language in the metric ton of paper shipped with the device.

Conclusion?

Overall, it gets a definitive thumbs-up from me. Very good screen, very good UI — focused at that one thing: Playing music, and it has a well-balanced feature set. And it sounds from “good” with the default earbuds to “ridiculously good” with a good pair of headphones. If your interest is primarily in playing music, you should look no further: It essentially leaves anything I’ve heard in the dust (Including the Cowon players I’ve tried)

The Sony NWZ-S618F | One comment | Audio

My iPod is dead

2008-03-31 14:02

Some time ago, I said that my iPod was dying — well, it’s now thoroughly dead. A round in the washing machine at 40°C took care of that.

I am not sorry. But I am looking for another player. The same requirements as last still apply:

  • Must support any OS
  • Must work as a regular mass-storage device
  • Must be flash-based. 8GB or above
  • Should have decent multi-format support
  • Should be small
  • Should have upgradable firmware
  • Should sound better than the iPod
  • May have radio
  • May have video playback capabilities, but this is not important

So, what should I pick?

I have shortlisted a few candidates:

  • The Meizu M6SL — likable as this device seems to be, I’m a bit unsure about build and sound quality. I would appreciate input from someone who owns one.
  • The Sony NWZ-S618 — It seems reasonably compatible with Linux, has good battery life, and allegedly good sound.
  • The Samsung YP-P2 — seems like a really nice alternative, but it seems to be quite a bit more expensive than the alternatives, and while it supports replacing the firmware, I find it a bit worrying that people have reported bricking of devices just to switch between MTP and UMS modes, I am sceptical.

Are there any other alternatives I absolutely must look at?

My iPod is dead | Six comments | Audio , Misc , Technology

What was the name of the first opera?

2007-10-29 23:33

This question is straight from my server logs, and since I don’t know the context of the question, I’ll answer both.

Opera, the music: The name of the first opera is, according to Wikipedia, Dafne by Jacopo Peri — a quote from Wikipedia says:

The word opera means “work” in Italian (from Latin opus meaning “work” or “labour”) suggesting that it combines the arts of solo and choral singing, declamation, acting and dancing in a staged spectacle. Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the “Camerata dé Bardi”. Significantly, Dafne was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance.

And for Opera, the browser: The first version of Opera, the browser, was called Multitorg Opera and was initially a research project at Telenor. A brief history of the browser is on Wikipedia’s Opera entry, but Multitorg doesn’t seem to be mentioned. Wikipedia’s guidelines and my moral compass forbids me from editing the page to correct the omission of the Multitorg name, but feel free to edit this on your own.

What was the name of the first opera? | Three comments | Answerblog , Audio , Opera

Semi-automatic offline synchronization of a digital media player

2007-10-29 14:33

When writing this post, I initially titled it “I ♥ rsync”. And I really, really do. Through the magic of rsync and a couple of scripts for Nautilus, I now have more-or-less automated synchronization of my Rockbox-equipped media player.

And it’s so easy, you can do it on your own in a few simple steps

How it works

My solution works by adding a few nautilus scripts that do two things:

  1. Create symbolic links in a (predefined) directory, so you can sync this folder with the mp3 player. This is achieved through selecting files and folders for synchronization in Nautilus, and using a context menu script to create the actual links.
  2. Perform the actual synchronization. Also done with a simple context-menu Nautilus script (that can be run from a shell, if wanted).

Prerequisites

The first prerequisite here is actually that you have some familiarity with the shell, and that you have a backup of the important files on your media player. I have not devised this way of synchronization for the feeble of mind, or the ones with no backup, or able to restore their device, should this method leave it unusable. See the warning at the end of this post.

The first thing you need to do is to download the create_symbolic_links
nautilus script from the G-Script repository, and save it to the .gnome2/nautilus-scripts folder. From a shell, you can do it this way:

$ wget -nv -O ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/create_symbolic_links http://g-scripts.sourceforge.net/nautilus-scripts/File%20System%20Management/create_symbolic_links

Next, you need to create a directory into where you want to sync. I have called mine “rockbox”

$ mkdir ~/rockbox

Further, we now need to slightly modify the script we downloaded, so that it syncs in to the correct directory:

$ sed -i "/\/Desktop/rockbox" ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/create_symbolic_links

Now, we need to make the script executable:

$ chmod +x ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/create_symbolic_links

Installing zenity

The symbolic links script requires Zenity to display dialog boxes, and we need to install it

$ sudo apt-get install zenity

Common steps for all devices using Rockbox

If you have a device using the excellent Rockbox firmware, you now need to copy your rockbox firmware directory to the sync folder you created in your home directory a few steps back:

$ cp -r /media/IPOD/.rockbox ~/rockbox/

This example assumes that your device is mounted on /media/IPOD. Note that this step is cruicial, or you might end up losing all of your customizations for Rockbox, and may end up with an unbootable device.

rsync with automated updating of the Rockbox firmware

If your digital audio player is equipped with Rockbox - follow these instructions. Otherwise, just skip to the next step.

First, go to the Rockbox build index, locate the correct rockbox firmware, and copy the link to that firmware. Next, copy the contents below to a file, that you save as ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Sync_now

#!/bin/bash
rsync --delete --force -irKLtWvu /media/KABOOM/.rockbox/ ~/rockbox/.rockbox/
wget -nv -O ~/rockbox/rockbox.zip http://build.rockbox.org/dist/build-ipodnano/rockbox.zip
unzip -quo -d ~/rockbox/ ~/rockbox/rockbox.zip && rm ~/rockbox/rockbox.zip
rsync --include=.rockbox -irKLtWvu --delete --force ~/rockbox/ /media/IPOD/

Remember to change http://build.rockbox.org/dist/build-ipodnano/rockbox.zip to the actual rockbox URL for your model, or you might end up with an unbootable media player. Also, if your device mounts somewhere other than /media/IPOD/ remember to change it (and keep the trailing slashes in the path). Ditto for the ~/rockbox/ directory.

Remember to make this script executable:

$ chmod +x ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Sync_now

rsync for all other devices

If your player is not using rockbox, or you do not wish to update your firmware automatically, the ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Sync_now.sh script is simply a few lines shorter:

#!/bin/bash
rsync --include=.rockbox -irKLtWvu --delete --force ~/rockbox/ /media/IPOD/

rsync and whole-file synchronization

Those already familiar with rsync may notice that I’m only syncing whole files, instead of syncing only bits and pieces of them. When I originally tried using the rsync algorithm, I couldn’t unmount the device afterwards, getting complaints about too many file handles being open, and I ended up corrupting the contents of my iPod upon forcing an unmount, so this is a “better safe than sorry” approach.

Restart Nautilus

To make the scripts visible in Nautilus, you need to restart Nautilus

$ killall nautilus

There should now be a “Scripts” submenu in the Nautilus context menu, where your scripts are available, and you can start using the tools. When you want to make a folder available on your iPod or other media player on next sync, you select the files/folders and choose Script>create_symbolic_links. You will be prompted for a “new name” for every file, and usually, just selecting the default option should be good enough.

When you are finally ready to sync with your iPod, just select “Sync_now” in the menu, and synchronization automatically commences. You will not be given any further progress, so you can follow whatever progress meter your device offers, to decide when to eject/unmount.

A word of warning

The method outlined here leaves your media/mp3 player as a perfect replica of the folder you synchronize to. This means that files that were on the media player before synchronization, but weren’t present in the folder on disk, will be gone after synchronization, so you really want to ensure that you have copied those files that you need copied back to the device to the synchronization folder (the one named ~/rockbox/ in these examples). Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Gotchas

This method does not currently attempt any sort of disk space checking, so you might very well end up running out of disk space during the process, if you aren’t careful. To check if you have enough disk space to perform the synchronization, you can cd in to the directory containing the files you want to sync and do this:

$ du -hLs

Which will list the size of all the files you are about to put on to your device. Compare this number to the “Size” column for your that shows up when you do a df -h with your device mounted. To be on the safe side, you would ideally have a 0.1-0.3GB difference; your device likely uses FAT32, and therefore wastes a bit of free disk space for every file. (On a 4GB iPod Nano, a 0.1GB difference translates into having only a few MB free after synchronization.

Semi-automatic offline synchronization of a digital media player | Answerblog , Audio , Linux

Radiohead: In Rainbows

2007-10-11 12:03

I am not actually that big of a Radiohead fan, but that’s beside the point. I like their attitude, politely telling the greedy creeps over at RIAA and the record labels to roll over and die already.

Which is why I bought the album. Which is why you should as well. Pay over about a pound, and you’ll have the satisfaction of having paid the musicians, and having told the music labels, represented through RIAA you don’t approve of suing the living shit out of single moms.

What are you waiting for? Go shop!

(A sidenote, if your e-mail address contains a + anywhere, like mine did, the generated download URI you get upon ordering is invalid. Just edit the URL and substitute with %2B.)

Radiohead: In Rainbows | Audio , General , Misc , Technology

I cannot begin to express ...

2007-04-02 16:12 – Five comments

... how satisfied I am by EMI's newfound sanity

Apple, iTunes and DRM

2007-02-07 10:15 – Leave a comment

Using Quod Libet with Rockboxed iPods

2007-02-04 20:14 – Leave a comment

The iPod problem

2007-01-28 10:19 – Three comments

What is the real problem with digital media distribution? Why have the media industry been fighting a losing battle against piracy? The answer is, predictably, their insistence to stick to DRM that just end up limiting their potential market penetration. They have created an enviroment in which piracy offers a better product than the recording industry does.

My iPod is dying

2007-01-11 11:18 – 21 comments

Help me find a replacement player for my dying iPod Nano.

The sad state of media players, part II

2006-11-28 19:39 – Nine comments

A review of media players first suggested to me in "The sad state of media players, part I" - the state is not all sad. Here is the roundup of the good, the bad and the ugly.

The sad state of media players, part I

2006-11-26 09:39 – Ten comments

I've been looking for a media player/manager for Linux for some time. And during that time, I've become increasingly frustrated. Isn't there one such application that doesn't suck fiercly? In this first part of a two-part blog entry, I'll cover the requirements for a media player/manager.

Cannon Fodder

2006-01-04 17:19 – One comment

MP3 - Street Legal

2005-03-01 20:05 – Leave a comment

Audio test CD

2004-09-07 10:30 – Ten comments

Guide to placing you stereo and home theatre equipment using simple maths and a downloadable audio test CD.

foobar2000

2003-10-27 17:25 – Leave a comment

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