Mp3 Player
Sony walkman digital media player 16GB NWZ-A729 – Review
A couple of years ago I bought my girlfriend a samsung yh920 16gb mp3 player.
She liked it, she didn’t love it though – but it was 16gb and at the time for the princely sum of £50 on ebay it was a bargain. But she didn’t love it.
It was difficult to add songs to because of the horrible napster software crap and the fact that it couldn’t sync properly with windows media player.
Over the years she’s forlornly looked at ipods, every so often making murmurs about wanting an ipod.
Ipods in my opinion are expensive for what they are, but hey she had a birthday coming up and I said your choice but I’ll buy you an Ipod 16gb.
Then we saw the price and she baulked, she’s not stroppy or selfish when it comes to these things. I on the other hand although not flush with cash will all the same spend what I need to, when I need to.
But she couldn’t justify the cost.
I then had a flash, what about Sony?
Now we both automatically thought that Sony would be a much more expensive option.
We were very wrong.
We found the NWZ-A729 after an online search, and it was half the price of a similar spec ipod.
So ok it’s not got radio but well she had that on the samsung and never used it.
£85 seemed almost too good to be true.
When it arrived though she was blown away and I was a tad jealous having inherited the brick that is the samsung yh920.
The NWZ is extremely light, it’s thin, and it’s simple to use.
I hate Sony,
Well not quite, I have ‘issues’ with sony over mini disc but that’s a long story, if you are a musician who fell for minidisc you’ll know what I mean…
This walkman mp3 player makes up for it(well not quite grrr)
It’s good looking, easy to setup and more importantly it is easy to add songs to, just drag and drop.
Like an ipod it uses images of your songs album covers to illustrate as your scoll through.
It’s battery life is reported at 36hours for audio – since we got it we have been on a weekend road trip which entailed about 700 miles of driving and it barely hit the battery.
By all accounts it shows video but I’ve not tried that, bought it to play music. That’s it’s job really.
Besides the screen is a bit small for video.
Really can’t see the point!
I mean I’ve got a whacking great TV that I spent a fortune on why would I want to watch something on a screen so small?
I say small – it’s big enough to read and view album covers.
All in all though this MP3 player is cool as.
Sony walkman digital media player 16GB NWZ-A729 black
Related Reading:
If like me bought the Samsung YH920 and have found out that Napster want you to pay for the privelige of importing your tracks to your mp3, then pull your hair out no longer sunshine, there is a solution.
http://pmplib.sourceforge.net/
It might look a bit daunting but it is relatively simple.
First get a copy of winrar this is the software you will need to extract the zip file.
The file you need is here on this page look for this file easypmp-0.14_win32.zip
You’ll need winrar to unzip the file, remember to extract it somewhere easy to get to.
Once that’s done let’s test the setup.
Plug in your Samsung YH920 and let windows find it.
Now goto my computer, you should see the YH920 icon which you can open, navigate to SYSTEM – MUSIC.
Now minimise and go to My Computer or wherever you store your mp3s.
Find a couple of tracks not already on the Samsung and copy, right click – copy or ‘Ctrl c’
Now maximise your YH920 window and paste – right click-paste or ‘Ctrl v’ – make sure your in the MUSIC folder.
Important T ip No. 1: When copying tracks over please make sure you have all your tags updated otherwise the software will not understand them properly and you’re Samsung YH920 will not read them.
Now you can start the software up.
Locate the folder you extracted and start: easypmp_win32gui.exe
The only thing you need to take notice of here is the ‘Portable Player Device‘ – make sure ‘Location:’ matches the drive letter of the Samsung.
Change ‘Identifier:’ to samsung_yh920 and press ‘ok‘
Important T ip No. 2: Make sure you don’t put a tick in the ‘Eject the player on completion’ box – I had problems with this – best to do it the old fashioned way.
Look for the USB device plug thingy in ‘system tray’ – if you don’t know what the system tray is it’s the box in bottom right hand corner with the clock in it.
Right click on the added hardware/usb icon and – it should say ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ – when box opens click ‘Stop’
Another box will open choose Samsung/Napster YH920 Mass Storage Device.
Now check your Samsung – the tracks should now be there – if not then you did something wrong.
I understand it’s a bit of a runaround but it does work as long as you think first.
If this tutorial doesn’t work for you check out this page.
Now if you want to go as far as playlists then you need to get a software program that will create these for you.
Foobar2000 or Winamp
Both of these work great although Foobar seems simpler to use. That said Winamp rocks as a player too so it’s apples and oranges between the two.
Once you’ve picked the software to use create a playlist – the way I do it is this.
Add songs to mp3 player as above – then I create a playlist using the Samsung YH920s ‘System/MUSIC‘ folder as my
source for the song files.
I then name and save the playlist to ‘System/PLAYLIST‘ – save as .m3u file
Now start up easypmp_win32gui.exe again.
Go through as before and eject player
Check mp3 player for playlist you should have two.
Plug mp3 player back in and navigate to System/PLAYLIST.
You’ll see 2 files – one will be ‘yourfile.plp‘ and the other ‘yourfile.m3u‘ Delete the .m3u file.
Done, you now have a working playlist.
If you haven’t already you can read my rant about Napster.
Then again I’d hope you had better things to do.