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Is there any Sony player supporting natively AAC?
To me it means that Sonic Stage supports AAC DEcoding, not encoding.

From the first quote:

"Note: a new firmware for the WALKMAN A series (specifically, NW-A3000/1200/1000; curiously, the NW-A600/500 series has been left out) should complement the new SonicStage CP 4.0 on its debut to utilize recording and playback support for AAC format."

In other word, it seems that Sony is going to support AAC. A very good point for them, for their customers and for the AAC format

I wonder what AAC encoder is bundled with SonicStage. A new one?

Although Sony will remain unable to support m4p files downloaded from itunes.

That's is because Apple does not allow to do.
And Sonic Stage 4.0 encoder wrap LC-AAC in .3gp container. (no option for .mp4, correct me if im wrong)

Other DAP support .3gp for AAC?

I have the Sony NW-A3000, and it indeed does support AAC with the 3.0 firmware. I only have one album encoded in the AAC format, so I couldn't test it much. Playback worked fine, only it didn't read the tags. Not sure why, I'd have to investigate.

But it's a really nice player. Battery life is great, looks super sexy and even support gapless. Well, if you use Atrac.

because those tags are invented by apple and are not official mpeg-4 (so sony has no specs of them)?

I downloaded this update for my 1GB Sony flash player (NW-E407) and noticed something interesting (well, besides the AAC support): there's now a 352kbps mode for ATRAC3plus. Although that's really a ridiculously high bitrate for any codec (even ATRAC), I wonder how it performs on problem samples that traditionally gave ATRAC/ATRAC3/ATRAC3plus the shits. The only reason why I mention this is because many Sony players will play back ATRAC gaplessly - so if 352kbps is finally transparent, it might be useful for those rare albums that REALLY need to be played back seamlessly (i.e., Dark Side of the Moon, et al).

I also wonder who's AAC codec Sony has licensed?

FIIS?

Interesting. The line about HE-AAC also makes me wonder if Sony's AAC-capable hardware can decode the SBR portion of such files.

Also, how is it going to affect battery life?

I've just recently bought the NW-A3000 specifically because it now has AAC playback support. Here's what I've found so far:

I had to manually tag all my tracks within SonicStage CP 4.0 in order to get the tags to work on the player.
I converted all my albums in foobar2000 from Wavpack to AAC using the latest Nero command line encoder at ~135kbps (Q0.42). I also used the 'optimize mp4' option after conversion to ensure that they played back on the player without any problems.

Gapless: I was really surprised about this. Although the change between tracks isn't gapless, there's no real pause either. All you can hear is a slight pop as the tracks change.

Battery Life: Just over 24Hrs. (24Hrs & 5min to be percise)
DAP: NW-A3000 fully charged before test. (2nd full charge since owning the unit)
Headphones: E4C
Album: Beverley Knight: Voices, set to repeat
File format: AAC ~135Kbps
Volume:16
Sound (EQ): None
Screensaver: None
Brightness: Lowest Setting, screen set to switch off after 15 seconds, and screen was on 4 times during the test.

UPDATE: I've since removed the volume lock, set volume at 8 and run the same test again. This time I got 25Hrs 10Min

Was it just a precaution or was it needed for the files to play properly?

The tracks play fine on the NW-A3000 without using the 'Optimize MP4 Layout'.
I have to use it because I've got a car player that does have problems if I dont optimize them.

Pretty interesting guys...
Do these hardware play AAC-HE ?

Sincerely,
Nick

I don't think so, mine definitely doesn't.

Notice the part about the bitrate. No less than 80kbps means no point in using HE-AAC.