I'm a huge music listener. I always have music or the radio in the background. In the morning, I tune in to The Morning Rush, with Chico, Del, and Gino at RX 93.1 Then on my way to work, I'd listen to music on my player. At work, I would have iTunes open on my laptop to listen to some classical music (they say it makes you think more effectively) or kpop (I don't understand the lyrics so I would be able to concentrate more). At night on my way home, I would listen to my podcasts. At night, I'd set the auto-power off on my player so that I could doze off to sleep while listening to some relaxing music of Enya.

I can't live without music. During college, there was this period when my player back then got broken and I had withdrawal syndromes because of that. I couldn't concentrate much on studies and my thoughts always had negative energies. I couldn't take it so I had to buy myself one cheap portable radio (our budget was very tight back then). Music really serves as my source of strength and inspiration whenever I feel down or depressed.

So that's a little background there on my relationship with music. :D Just this week, unfortunately, my ever-reliable player, Archie (which is an Archos 2 Vision) that I bought more than two years ago suddenly malfunctioned. I couldn't hear the main voice of the songs. The music sounded like that from a karaoke. I felt really frustrated so I told myself I had to buy a new one as soon as possible. 

And so here it is, my new friend, Sonyiah*!
(Yes, my gadgets have names, and I think I am not the only one who does that. :p)

It's a Sony Walkman NWZ-E473. It came with this Hello Kitty box and accessories (I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes when the salesguy told me this). Erm, I felt like this is something made for younger girls, and it's too girly for me, but anyway I still bought it. xD



We all know that Sony has such good reputation for having great music quality for their Walkman products. I know this item is expensive for a music player (compared to others out there). I even considered buying an iPod Touch instead, but I learned that it has bad reviews on the sound quality. I just had to stick with the audio quality over the cost or the other functionalities of the gadget that's why I decided to buy this one. 




Here are some of the key features that I like with Sonyiah:

It has FM Radio! I like to listen to The Morning Rush on my way to work. Unfortunately, using my Nokia phone for this is kind of frustrating because the signal reception fluctuates on the road and most of the time I would only hear white noise. I hope it would not be the same case as with this one (I would find that out on Monday).

[update: It has indeed better reception. I was able to listen to TMR without much signal intervention. Yay! :D]


I can make playlists on it. I know this is somewhat basic for players but I didn't have that on my Archie. Now, I could group my tracks accordingly. I am thinking of creating playlists depending on the mood of the music (happy, sad, feel good, etc.).

[update: This player has a feature that does that automatically. It's called SensMe™ Channels. Based on the beat pattern of the song, it is classified by the player under the following themes: Daytime, Energetic, Relax, Upbeat, Mellow, Lounge, Emotional, Dance, and Extreme. Though I think the analysis for each song is not accurate all the time, because for instance, it sorted DBSK's Doushite Kimi Wo Suki Ni Natte Shimattandarou under Dance. =_____=]

Its sound recorder is better than my previous one. Archie does this somewhat fairly. I recorded my piano covers using that, and I am actually not that satisfied with the output. I've done a few trials with this new one and I think the microphone picks up the sounds clearer than Archie. We'll find that out the next time I record on the piano. :D

Some of the downsides about the new player is that I downgraded on the memory. Previously, I have 16GB on Archie (8GB internal + 8GB microSD). Now there's only half of that available with Sonyiah, since it doesn't have a memory slot. What I plan to do is that I would just refresh my playlist every now and then, so that I would still be able to listen to all of the songs in my music library. 

Also, the earphones that came with it are canalphones. Actually I am not fond of these kinds of earphones because I think they are unhygienic to use everyday (I guess I just have to clean them everynight) and I don't like the feeling of it on my ears. I'm more comfortable with earbuds, but I guess I have to get used to these.








I am thrilled to get to know more about this player. 
This would definitely be a whole new level of music experience. :D

~o~

Disclaimer: This is not a paid post. I just couldn't contain that I finally have my dream music player so I had to blog about it. Yay!~ Listening to music will never be the same again. :D