Of USBs and Men

[jimifan1970]

First up, please be gentle with this poor, muddled, old (but classified as Junior) Emeritus Hippy. You guys know a million things that would make my brain cells overload, but I shall take my daring in both hands and post this simpleton thread anyway.

I've got a Sony Media Player SMP-U10, which is basically a small black box with three blue lights, some rear connections and a hole on the front for a USB connection. Very cheap off E-bay. I got it because someone said it 'would do' for plugging into my hi-fi and playing MP3s from my Sony Walkman and USB memory sticks. It has a digital coaxial out socket, so I've plugged it into my recently-acquired Caiman. The problem is, it sounds like mush compared to everything else coming out of my Linn Keilidhs, including exactly the same MP3s burnt to CD-R and played through my Rotel CD Player.

Serves you right for buying such cheap crap (the Sony,not the Caiman) I hear you all cry.

But here's my question: if the digital files stored on the Walkman/USB stick are all 1s and 2s or whatever, and are then put through a good DAC, shouldn't that give reasonable quality? Spotify coming out of my laptop and through USB out to the Caiman sounds great (at least to my not-recently-syringed ears), and isn't the data stream going to be the same as that from files stored on USB/Walkman?

Actually, I may just be looking for an excuse to ditch the Sony Media Player as it has a truly dreadful OSD anyway ... but I'd still like to know WHY it sounds so poor and if it IS possible to pump MP3s off my Walkman/USB sticks into the system via some other media player. Any suggestions?

'Get a Cowon and a Squeezebox Touch and stop being so bloody miserly!' I imagine some moneybags crying out in impatience. But that's going to make Spotify on the laptop redundant and ... well I bet you all have at least a little experience of being confused and well-knotted.

Hope you're all listening to some nice sounds.

Paul

When things get too heavy, just call me Helium. The lightest gas known to Man.

Jimi Hendrix

[sq225917]

I'd put my money on it either being something wrong in the menu, up-sampling, EQ settings or some-such, or the fact that the digital out on the Sony is simply a piece of junk. It does have analogue outs that you could wire straight into your pre-amp.

[Themis]

Oh well, it has little to do with1s and 0s....

Simply the chip turning the MP3s into PCM (necessary to go through coax) is crap. Ditch it.

If you need some good sound, there are several solutions, the cheapest being transferring your MP3s to your laptop (where spotify resides) and listen to them from there.

[jimifan1970]

Thanks so much for your quick replies.

As a totally non-technical kind of guy, can I ask a question here: digital outputs are not all the same i.e. the digital output on such a device as my Sony is dependent on the quality of a chip inside said device? I kind of assumed it was a straight pass through of data. Are there accepted 'good' chips and 'bad' chips, and can this be spotted in spec. sheets before purchase?

The Sony is probably on the way to long-term storage in the loft shortly, but I'd still like to learn something from the experience, if you can bear with me.

Cheers.

Paul

[Themis]

As a totally non-technical kind of guy, can I ask a question here: digital outputs are not all the same i.e. the digital output on such a device as my Sony is dependent on the quality of a chip inside said device? I kind of assumed it was a straight pass through of data. Are there accepted 'good' chips and 'bad' chips, and can this be spotted in spec. sheets before purchase?

No, nothing on the specs. The chp should be one of cheap ones, the same that you find in any portable MP3 player @ 10$.
There's nothing of a "passthrough" as you seem to consider : an MP3 stream cannot be output from the S/PDIF digital out. It has to be expanded into "normal" PCM.
Don't know which kind of chip Sony uses in this, but, if you find the sound crap (on a MP3 stream) then it is clearly a failure.

[jimifan1970]

Thanks for this, Dimitri.

The Sony is on a one-way trip to the loft, and I've learnt something of value about digital outputs, so already I'm glad I joined the forum.

Cheers.

Paul