http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?cc=gb&...1&pid=10376
http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?cc=gb&...1&pid=10447

Anybody can comment on the sound and earphones quality?
Also, details about the MP3 (320Kbps, LAME VBR?) and AAC (HE-AAC, HE-AAC v2?) support ?
Finally, what are the improvements of the Advanced Walkman® 2.0 music player available only with the W850i model?

Thanks a bunch.

Dc

I can't help you with this exact phone but I have the W800i. I've ran some RMAA tests:
W800i RMAA results.
Note: I had to use an MP3 file for the test since the phone won't play .wavs.
The MP3 loopback was played using Foobar2000.

There is a fair amount of audible noise at very low levels but I find that this all but dissappears (depends on the music) at normal listening levels. I think the earphones that come with the phone are just about acceptable. Earphones sound like lossy artifacting at times although, this impression does wane after prolonged listening. I use a pair of ER4Ps mostly with the phone and that combination seems to work well. The playback quality suits me and the enviroment I use the phone in. I'm happy with it.

I don't know if anything with regards to playback or earphones have been improved in the slightly newer phone. I have a colleague that has the W810i but I can't run any RMAA tests for comparison until I work with him next (few weeks time).

Next weekend I'll try and get round to running some ABX tests on the RMAA test files to ensure I can hear a difference between soundcard output and the phone (I'm sure it won't be a problem (famous last words )).

edit: link updated with corrected RMAA results.

c't magazine had a roundup of "music cell phones" where they concentrated on the sound features.

The results for the W810i:

Harmonic distortion: 1.11% <- that's very much
Dynamic range: 79.1 dB(A)
Audio quality rating: Very poor (--)
Sound with included earphones: Satisfactory (O)

For W900i:

Harmonic distortion: 0.04%
Dynamic range: 89.6 dB(A)
Audio quality rating: Very good (++)
Sound with included earphones: Satisfactory (O)


Nokia N70 and N91 had the best included headphones.

I have a K750i myself and the headphones with the proprietary plug don't sound too bad. I have to choose "Megabass" in the EQ cause everything else has very little bass, and it can be boomy with bass-heavy songs. But for the occasional couple of songs it's ok.

Do you think this applies to the k750/w800?

I have been looking for a replacement for my K750 (it is pretty beat up) and I wanted to get the W810. But not if it is that bad for music playing. I do use my phone to listen to music at work because I don't like to carry my Karma.

The RMAA results I provide above show THD = ~.04% which seems to match that of the W900i. I'm confused as to why the W810i shows a lot more than the W800i. I'm definitely gonna have to independantly test that phone now.

I own the W800 Walkman phone, and the audio
performance is quite poor. The supplied headphones
suck, and I can't find a way to keep them in my ears
properly, plus there is significant audible noise once
you switch to the Walkman application. Dunno if that's
a headphone issue as well...

W800i has the same hardware as K750i, but the "better" earphones with the adapter in the cable. I prefer the style of earphones that the K750i comes with, to be honest. But the sound quality should be alright, like evereux measured for the W800i. SE must've done something wrong in the W810i.

I have a k750i which I have reflashed to a W800i, and I use the cable CiTay mentioned with Porta Pro ear buds. Very pleased with the mp3 sound (lame -V5), but the newest firmware doesn't read AAC tags anymore (it used to!), so I don't use AAC much.

@DARcode: you should check if the W810 and W850 reads AAC tags, if that's important for you.

Thank you very much CiTay, I'll steer away from the W810i.
What about the Nokia 6233? Seems just to be missing the camera flash compared to the W810i.

tycho, I'd be very interested in knowing what formats and tags both phones support.

OSNews.com is usually pretty reliable, but I guess phones aren't their speciality...

From http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=15083&page=2
I must commend Sony Ericsson for the great sound quality produced by this little machine. I used my high quality 3.5" Sony headphones (which I usually use with my iPod Mini) and there was a clear distinction between the sound quality in the iPod and in this Walkman phone. The sound of the W810i was far more clear. There was more tremble too. I am left highly impressed. I am seriously thinking of using this phone in "flight" mode as an mp3 player only, simply because of its outstanding battery life and sound quality.

Anyone can comment on the sound quality of the Nokia 6233 then please?

I'm sorry if bumping oldish thread on HydrogenAudio is seen as bad or not, it's quite differs from forum to forum, but i couldn't resist asking:

Did you get around to test the w810i?
I have a w810i and could test it, but i'm not sure how, as the volume level is not high enough it seems, and adding an amp will influence on the measurements. However, i don't believe is is anywhere near the distortion results c't are getting. Hardware-wise, the w810i is identical to the w800i, except that the w810i features EDGE and a different TFT panel.

I got the Nokia 6233 and I'm happy with it so far, using Nero Digital Audio 1.0.0.2 -q 0.3, anyway I'd be happy to hear from more W810i owners anyway.

The w810i my girlfriend has definitely isn't as bad as some reviews claim, I'm running the 3.5mm jack output into my regular amp (not "audiophile", but definitely no entry-level stuff) and there's no noticable hiss or noise*.

The w850i is not out yet so little can be said about its quality. Its features look very promising though (A2DP, improved music navigation).

* not ABX'ed

Yes, connecting it to an amp really helps it greatly. There's very little current capability available at the headphone output of the w810, hence connecting it to a high impedance source rejects noise and "digital artifacts" that many users are unsatisfied about.

DARcode, good to hear

I will try to make some RMAA measurements tomorrow, with two different (headphone) amps.

Now I'm even more puzzled: CNET has Great sounding audio in the THE GOOD section of their review here.
Can anyone please provide some more serious reviews please?

Finally got around to bench my W810i. Test signals were Lame 1.92 encoded MP3s, 16 Bit 44.1 KHz with an --alt-preset-extreme setting, and VBR (low: 256Kbit/s, high: 320Kbit/s). The soundcard used to measure this was an RME Digi 96/8 PAD, which measures just a hair better than the PST posted at the RMAA site

The volume output of the W810i is NOT high enough (-10.3dB) on it's own, so there no way around amplifying the signal. The Test report (comparison) will tell you what amp was used and the rest of the testing conditions.
To test if the amp was the culprit, i tried it with another amp, a modified version of an SDS Labs amplifier, actually with the exact same results, so the amps are not bottlenecking it seems.

If it makes any difference my firmware is R4CE012 (can't upgrade for some odd reason)...

>> RMAA test of the W810i <<

Comments, suggestions are absolutely welcome.
No matter how much i tried, i couldn't achieve the C't result of 1.1% THD, so either they don't know how to do a reliable benchmark, or the W810i is influenced by output load it sees (hopefully this is the case). I'm not sure how C't tested, but i would imagine they would need some kind of amplification to have all phones at the same line level.

So DARcode, that review you posted from CNET may just mean that there is a treble emphasis, which also is clear from the benchmark.

I find it strange that your frequency response differs so greatly from my W800i. Can you try measuring with the phone plugged straight into the soundcard (not via the amp) and also do a loopback of the soundcard itself to ensure nothing odd is going on there? My measurements were taken with an unamplified signal. These phones should be more or less the same?

Ok, but does RMAA account for the lower signal levels... i.e. -10.5dB vs. -1dB ideal? Did you amplify the w800i by using software or did you leave it the way it was?

Here's the loopback test, and an unamplified w810i that was not amplified with software afterwards... Amplifying the recorded signal to approx -1dB in cool edit pro yielded similar results to those in the earlier test

http://users.cybercity.dk/~dsl35822/RMAA/w...comparison2.htm

Very interesting, thank you. No amplification was done to the signal in my test, whatsoever.

Thank you very much indeed for your time and all the info, really thorough and helpful.
Any chances you can get your hands on a Nokia 6233 for a direct comparison?

My ears like the 6233 so far, but I'd like to comfort a review or a thorough test would provide me, anyone can give or link one?

Finally got the lead required to test devices via my laptop and Transit USB.

Below are my results of the W810i, I've also included the other phones I've tested.

W800i, W810i, K800i and because it was available the K750i.

As you can see, the W810i and W800i measure remarkably similar. Which goes against the results we have above and those reported by Citay from C't magazine. What's interesting are the K800i results. I'm going to try some music on that to see if it suffers from the Walkman phones hiss.
I did get similar results to donoester12 at first but I was then careful to make sure I'd started to play the track, paused and rewound and that I had a good connection to the phone. I know that on my W800i the play>rewind before testing prevents a click at the start of playback. My results for the W810i are 100% reproduceable.

Very useful and interesting, many thanks.

Is it possible c't had a bad/defective W810i?

I suppose it's possible. I suspect a minor mistake was made though, I made them a few times myself.

I hope to do the 8GB Nano (2nd gen) this week too.

Interesting results..but if you are testing the with the W810i at maximum volume your results are showing the phone's performance in the most favourable light possible.

On my W810i the level of hiss remains constant even at lower volumes, so the signal to noise ratio gets worse. Also as the volume is lowered digital distortion artifacts increase. I've written more about my understanding of the problem here: www.contralogic.com/w810i.

However, I'm not yet certain whether the problem affects all firmwares - Does the W810i you tested have the latest R4EA031 firmware?

this is going to be a really interesting comparison! So the k800 is actually the best mobile device for music playback? It would be nice to find a w850i to test too, since I've read it should be even better than k800!

Anyway, thanks a lot for your work.

p.s. are these Sony Ericsson able to perform a gapless playback, or there's a small silence when switching from one track to the next one?

The W850i will be my next phone. My current contract runs out within the next couple of months ..

No gapless playback on any phones I've tested so far.


chris_b, the firmware on the W810i I tested will almost certainly not be the latest. I'll find specific information in the week. I got my W800i the day they came out in the UK and I don't remember a firmware not having this hiss problem. Do we have any hard proof (not a comment from a SE rep ) that there was a time this hiss wasn't apparent?

You can see firmware versions on this page: http://www.se-world.info/firmwares.php (babelfished)

The changelogs there are not official, they come from user observations. To see your own version, you have to press > * < < * < * on your SE phone.

You can update the firmware with the official SEUS tool (needs Flash with ActiveX). I've done it twice already and it's quite easy.

nice to hear that!



that's really a bad news.. in some albums gaps between tracks are really annoying, don't you think so?
Anyway, have you tried also any "particular" format, natively gapless? For example, I know that using Foobar + Nero AAC Encoder it's possible to

you can find more info here

ps. don't waste your time on this feature, it's just an idea for future tests

I'm very sorry for not responding to the new replies... I registered a new user, and i'm terribly sorry it is against the TOS, but what could I do? I have forgot my account name, and have not found even ONE single mail from hydrogenaudio from when i registered. I have three email adresses, so i don't know which one was registered with my earlier account, so contacting a mod/admin would be pretty stupid. I've tried from time to time to log in, when i thought i knew my account name, but i never figured it out. Maybe i misspelled it upon registration

Anyways,


No, sorry... the best i have in possession from Nokia is the 6230i which belong to another family member.


Mine are 100% reproduceable too, wether using an expensive soundcard or not, or with and without amp, different amps, and oldest vs. latest firmware (R4CE012, R4EA031), and THD is still 0.012% but with an inferior frequency response to yours. I have discussed this with http://jimmyauw.com/?p=21 , see the comments section. The phones must be different inside, different HW revisions?




The issues you write about belongs to the W800i which uses a different firmware. The W800i is a different phone because it is/was available in CID36 and CID49 editions. I've confronted SE with the background hiss issues, suggesting a compromise of deactivating the volume control and what not. Here is the reply, from 07/17/06, translated from Swedish:
--------------------------------
Dear Troels (me),

Thank you for contacting Sony Ericsson Call Center.


Sorry, but you will recieve a reply in Swedish.

We have no indications/informations about that there's any kind of hiss or other artifacts with the Sony Ericsson W810i.

Please contact Sony Ericsson Call Center again, if we can help your any further.

Kind regards,
/Alexander Ekdahl
Sony Ericsson Call Center
--------------------------------
Sorry, just didn't bother to confront them any further.

Oh, and by the way:
I hope to test the W810i THD+N using a Tektronix AA501 distortion analyzer in about three weeks - i think this will be way more reliable. Got some exams to do first.

Is this you?

Hi
Nope, not me... I am donoester12 (see the previous page), but i just can't recall what my account name was - nor find any emails from when i registered...

EDIT:
D'oh, i just thought of something to (maybe) prove donoester12 is me, if you can see what IP donoester12 has... My IP is 212.242.225.xxx, the ip ought to be the same for donoester12. PM for the last three digits, but i'm not sure if they're static or not.