4 ms·

In terms of UX, it's really hard to beat high fidelity audio and hardware buttons. Spotify is just an app. The real experience is the playback.

by cush 4y ago

hnlmorg 4y ago
Hardware buttons I agree with. But the Sony NW-A55 Walkman we are comparing against requires constant touchscreen interaction too so it's not really any better than a smart phone. Plus most phones have hardware buttons for volume anyway. As for high fidelity audio, I doubt there is much between devices these days. I remember back when I was buying portable cassette and, later, CD players there did used to be a real noticeable difference between the audio fidelity of different brands (ironically with Sony often cashing in on their brand and than having worse fidelity than hardware from significantly cheaper competitors). However these days everyone is listening to lossy compression over bluetooth so there isn't really going to be much room for the host hardware to improve. As always, the headphones you use will make much more of an impact.
- alpaca128 4y ago
  I like to keep music playback separate from my phone because I hate having it interrupted by some random app notification. And on my smartphone I have to push the volume to the max to barely reach the level I consider normal with my headphones. On the Walkman that's not an issue and the difference in sound is immediately noticeable. Of course that doesn't matter if you use Bluetooth, but as there isn't a single decent pair of BT headphones with replaceable batteries on the market I'll keep using cables in the foreseeable future (and headphones have a minimum size, so the manufacturers can't even use their typical excuses for using glue). Of course some phones are quite solid in terms of sound, with some music there's no difference either way, but without comparison you can't really know what's missing unfortunately.
  - hnlmorg 4y ago
    I have done comparisons. :) It used to be that the key differentiator was a hardware's DAC but I can't say I've noticed that much difference in the last 10 years. Even a cheap Chinese phone I used for a bit sounded equivalent. And that was before I switched to bluetooth. I do really notice the difference on non-portable hardware though. I have used a bunch of different USB devices and they vary wildly. I have 4 amplifiers and several audio switching boxed rack mounted right next to me (they power 9 speakers, 2 CRT TVs, 4 LCD monitors and a projector :D).

In terms of UX, it's really hard to beat high fidelity audio and hardware buttons. Spotify is just an app. The real experience is the playback.

by cush 4y ago

In terms of UX, it's really hard to beat high fidelity audio and hardware buttons. Spotify is just an app. The real experience is the playback.

hnlmorg 4y ago

Hardware buttons I agree with. But the Sony NW-A55 Walkman we are comparing against requires constant touchscreen interaction too so it's not really any better than a smart phone. Plus most phones have hardware buttons for volume anyway. As for high fidelity audio, I doubt there is much between devices these days. I remember back when I was buying portable cassette and, later, CD players there did used to be a real noticeable difference between the audio fidelity of different brands (ironically with Sony often cashing in on their brand and than having worse fidelity than hardware from significantly cheaper competitors). However these days everyone is listening to lossy compression over bluetooth so there isn't really going to be much room for the host hardware to improve. As always, the headphones you use will make much more of an impact.

alpaca128 4y ago
I like to keep music playback separate from my phone because I hate having it interrupted by some random app notification. And on my smartphone I have to push the volume to the max to barely reach the level I consider normal with my headphones. On the Walkman that's not an issue and the difference in sound is immediately noticeable. Of course that doesn't matter if you use Bluetooth, but as there isn't a single decent pair of BT headphones with replaceable batteries on the market I'll keep using cables in the foreseeable future (and headphones have a minimum size, so the manufacturers can't even use their typical excuses for using glue). Of course some phones are quite solid in terms of sound, with some music there's no difference either way, but without comparison you can't really know what's missing unfortunately.
- hnlmorg 4y ago
  I have done comparisons. :) It used to be that the key differentiator was a hardware's DAC but I can't say I've noticed that much difference in the last 10 years. Even a cheap Chinese phone I used for a bit sounded equivalent. And that was before I switched to bluetooth. I do really notice the difference on non-portable hardware though. I have used a bunch of different USB devices and they vary wildly. I have 4 amplifiers and several audio switching boxed rack mounted right next to me (they power 9 speakers, 2 CRT TVs, 4 LCD monitors and a projector :D).