Dear Sirs,
Although I’ll sadly have to part from my Sony Z1 (for other issues reported on this forum and to Sony Xperia Care, namely the touchscreen issue), I would still like to leave a suggestion for the most underachieving app (imho) from a Sony Smartphone.
With the long tradition on audio excellence and the Walkman brand, I would suspect that it would be a strong point on a Sony Smartphone. Strangely enough, the Walkman app made me buy a third party app (PowerAmp) to get some basic functionality like I had on my old iPhone 3GS.
One of the most serious faults of the Walkman app is the lack of volume normalization between audio tracks. Although Sony does provide a workaround (which is nothing more than a dynamic range compressor), it doesn’t make any sense (imho) with today’s technology.
Replaygain (for instance) is a free (but very effective) way of normalizing volumes without degrading the sound quality. Many apps like PowerAmp have it, and even iTunes has a proprietary version of it built in on every device for many years now.
As I said before, this can be done with third-party apps and third-party media management software (like JRiver or the free Foobar), but by doing so, the user loses the integration provided by a unique manufacturer (Sony Media Go -> Sony Walkman).
I’m really just trying to help, as it gets harder to understand why Sony lacks on such elementary things audio-wise, when the same company has Walkmans supporting the highest definition audio formats available today.
I tend to relate Sony with high quality digital audio products, so it seems strange that this particular app is so rudimentary on these levels. The Walkman app is eye-candy, but it should also be “hear-candy”, which it isn’t.
