Hi, I'm new here and I'm thinking of getting a NW-HD5. I have a question: Can you use the eq with mp3s? I have heard that you can only set the bass and treble with mp3s, but could someone tell me what exactly can you do to the sound, when playing mp3s?

Thanks, and nice forum by the way...

Edit:

Can you play what mp3s (or atracs) you want with the NW-HD5? I mean that is it able to play any mp3 file (or atrac file), that hasn't been bought from the Sony connect service or hasn't been ripped from a CD? I have read that it can only play files ripped from a CD or bought from sonys connect service. Is this true? Could someone give me some info? That would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[MR2Harvey]

Well I have not got one yet but have read up on it. You can only adjust bass and treble for MP3's as you suspect.

I believe you can play any MP3 from 32 to 320kbs and variable rate also. So any MP3 to have or aquire whether ripped from CD or downloaded, except I believe certain copy protected ones.

Hi there, I have recently got a HD5 and have just realised that i cannot use the equaliser with MP3's. I already have about 100 MP3 albums and was going to rip the rest of my cd's the same using sonic stage. Does this mean i have to now use Atrac's? Is there anyway of converting MP3's to Atrac's using Sonicstage? How do you adjust the bass and treble on the HD5? Haven't found that, just the equaliser.

Also, does anyone know what the best leads are to play my MP3 on my stereo?

Cheers.

Hi all!

Let me try to answer all your queries:

First: you can play ANY (unprotected) MP3s from 32kbps-320kbps, CBR or VBR, on the HD5, whether these were created using SonicStage or not. But you MUST use SonicStage to transfer ANY music to the player.

Second: You have a limited choice of EQ settings if you use anything other than ATRAC3/ATRAC3Plus files. My experience has shown that using Sony's own format - and therefore having access to the other EQ settings - results in AMAZING sound quality (trust me, I'm not exaggerating here).

Third: Converting MP3s to ATRAC3/ATRAC3Plus is a sinch. Just import the MP3s into 'My Library' in SonicStage, then highlight the tracks you want to convert and right-click on them. You'll see an option to 'Convert Format' ... you can figure it out from there.

Fourth: All sound settings can be adjusted by pressing SEARCH-MENU twice, selecting OPTIONS, then SOUND, and looking at the various settings you find in there. I imagine some settings won't work using MP3 (wouldn't know, 'cos I prefer ATRAC3Plus).

Think that covers it from me. Let me know if you need more detailed advice.

Originally Posted by NexMaster

Hi, I'm new here and I'm thinking of getting a NW-HD5. I have a question: Can you use the eq with mp3s? I have heard that you can only set the bass and treble with mp3s, but could someone tell me what exactly can you do to the sound, when playing mp3s?

Thanks, and nice forum by the way...

Edit:

Can you play what mp3s (or atracs) you want with the NW-HD5? I mean that is it able to play any mp3 file (or atrac file), that hasn't been bought from the Sony connect service or hasn't been ripped from a CD? I have read that it can only play files ripped from a CD or bought from sonys connect service. Is this true? Could someone give me some info? That would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Welcome,


It plays all of my mp3's, i dont have any bought from online stores so dont know. I use mp3 when sonicstage cant get cd name info (japanese characters) so i use WMP10 in that case.


With MP3s you can use the eq to some extent.
The sound menu looks like this:

1.Sound off
2.VPT acoustic eng. (Engineering)
3.6-Band Equalizer
4.Dgtl (Digital) Snd (Sound) Presets

1. Sound off is supposedly a flat band eq.

2. VPT Acoustic eng contains cool things that my home theatre amp has...it changes the sound to simulate: A studio, Live performance, Club music, or an Arena.....its quite good, if you really want it to sound like those things.

3. The 6-Band EQ has presets too and 2 custom eqs:
Heavy, Pop, Jazz, Unique, Custom 1, Custom 2.
As you would expect from a 6-band EQ there are 6 switches (left is bass, right is trebble) that you can shift up or down to + or - 3 in increments of 1.

4. The digital sound presets contain Custom 3 and Custom 4.
They look like the normal 6-B eq except the bars move proportional to each other....so there is the bass setting which if you turn up to 3 puts the lowest frequency at three, the next highest at 2 and the next at 1. In this one you can also go down to -4. If only you could go UP to 4....So if you set bass and treble to full you get a V shaped EQ.

The Sound setting is shown when you change the volume as 'S3' or similar.

For MP3's you can only use the first and last one....the two in the middle will sound the same as 'Sound Off'
But this is not a problem because in my opinion the digital sound presets with bass to full (3) and treble set to one sounds the best out of all the settings including the custom EQ 1 and 2.....For some strange reason you cant get them to sound the same even with the same Band settings.

I use the digital sound presets even on Atrac tracks with great sound.


However may i recommend you re-rip your CDs to an Atrac format (For best use atrac3+ 256kbps, dont use 64 its listenable but not that great)...IF you convert to mp3 first then to atrac then its only as good as the mp3...so you'll lose quality bigtime.....Or if the firmware comes out soon and you install sonicstage 3.2 you have more options such as Atrac in 128kbps or 192kbps, and 320kbps....The other advantage of Atrac is gapless playback (no gaps between the tracks when playing live or blending albums) Mp3 will have tiny but noticable gap.

Any mp3s that you dont have on CD dont bother converting just wastes space....just transfer straight to the player.

make sure you Tag all of your songs correctly before transferring, and when you are finished all of your songs for the moment defragment the player's drive in my computer, it saves battery.

[rigger123]

I only have a hd3 but i only use the digital sound presets (even though my files are in atrac format) for the same reason as Sasso - cos i believe it sounds the best. I have it set on bass 3 and trebble 2, this sounds amazing no matter what music im playing!

Infact i used to use the 6 band EQ but couldnt get it to sound like my sony Hi-Fi, so i messed around with the digital sound EQ and its like i got a new player! I'm really happy with my player and hope that if you get yours you will be too.