mgillespie

Errm, you don't need to do anything!! the NWA-300 has never worked correctly since it was launched...

I gather most of the posts here are from technically literate users, as you pretty much have to be, just to use Connect or SonicStage, and dodge all the problems that plague these programs. How on earth to "regular" joe bloggs users cope? I'm figuring they don't and simply return the units for refund. I consider myself technically literate (I work as software enginner myself), yet due to annoying problems with duplicate entries, crashes, slowdowns, I have deleted my library 5 times, and reformatted the NW-A3000 3 times... Everything is currently working fine (apart from the obvious lack of Top100,History, ArtistLink), but fear that every time I add new content, it will screw everything up again. A simple task like adding a M3U playlist, is enough to screw my NW-A3000, that only a re-format another 18 hour transfer marathon will sort out. ( see post about adding M3U creates duplicates in library, and device).

Prehaps that are hoping that a re branding, people may forget all the horrendously embarrasing problems that both Connect software, and Connect online server have suffered. Unfortunatly for Sony, people remember. I certainly won't be buying another Sony product that relies on Sony software, not will I be using the awfull online Connect service (got my free album, that was serious hassle, which is enough for me).

As with all of us, we are all dispointed with Connect, yet Sony still seem to be hashing it up. They have wasted another 3 months, not fixing the fundimental issues with it, but making minor tweaks. We still don't have a version of SonicStage which works with NW-A3000. What have Sony been up to? Busy picking their arses it seems....

:-( Is that all we get for the 3 month wait since the last release of Connect? Not even gonna bother installing it, as it's almost certainly going to make a mess of everything, just like 1.0, 1.01. 1.02 and 1.03 always did. I was holding out for a release of Sonice Stage that supports NWA3000, not a rehash of a badly flawed Connect.

Trying to load music on my NW-A3000. I gave up on Connect months ago, and been struggling with SonicStage ever since. Whilst it works, it has a REALLY annoying problem, which I cannot get to the bottom of. 1. Import all my music (mix of MP3 and WMA), this appears to work fine. Library is fine. 2. Import some M3U playlists, and SonicStage then tries to import the tracks again. This results in duplicate items in my library, which also get duplicated on my NW-A3000. Deleting the M3U playlist does not delete these duplicates. The playlists are a "My Favorites", and has tracks scattered across all my albums, there is no way to find these dupliucates, the only method, is to delete EVERYTHING from my library, and start again. Can someone tell me what I am missing here? Why does SonicStage import all these tracks a 2nd time, when they already exist in the library? Why does it leave them, when the playlist is deleted? How can I find these "orphaned" duplicates, and delete them, without starting from fresh again. Seems like a massive oversight!! I can't even believe such a majot bug exists...

Then I can only assume 1 of two things. 1/ They are referring to a totally different Connect, than the version they inflicted on us 2/ The have never actually used it outside the test lab, with real Sony products

This is WORST part. My NWA-3000 is unusable with Connect, and a pain in the butt with SonicStage, Sony UK are totally hopeless, cannot fix the issues, have no idea if or when any fixes are coming. I may as well have bough the cheapest nastiest MP3 player on the market, considering the product and support quality Sony have delivered with the NW-A series.. Very disapponted. :-( Someone from Sony, PLEASE tell us what the hell is going on. The longer you leave us in the dark, the more frustrated we are getting with your Walkman series.

Funny the all heralded Sony Connect software is absent from their latest players, instead being shipped with SonicStage instead. Bit of an admission from Sony, that Connect is not fit for purpose...

Don't listen to the salesman, he is comission biased. There are still many serious issues with the software for the NWA series, all them them unresolved. The people that are not having problems, are not "power users", who have lots of music, in various formats, use features like playlists etc. As soon as you move from loading a few tracks, you will start seeing problems. Connect will be virtually un-usable, SonicStage will work, but still be far from perfect... After buying a NV-A3000 in Decemeber, I am still very frustrated with it. Sony UK simply cannot support it, they have no idea if or when any software fixes will be available, and care little that Sony's name has been damamged so much.

Jeez, can you imagine how slow Connect would be with double the amount of tracks!!! 16 minutes to start up,

There are serveral things you can do. 1/ Update the firmware on the device to V2 2/ Update connect player to 1.03 3/ decide that Connect player 1.03 is no better than 1.0, 1.01, or 1.02, uninstall it, and install SonicStage 3.4 4/ decided that Sonicstage kinda works, but it still flakey. 5/ Phone the Sony helpline, and scream at them for releasing such cr@p software for such good hardware.

I noticed today, my NW-A3000 have loads of duplicate tracks. If I open a parcicular album, many of the tracks in the album have more than 1 copy of a song. I defintely only copied 1 version of the song, so how did the duplicates get there?? I think I may have found a pattern, all the duplcates, are song I have added to playlists. I am wondering, if SonicStage is too dumb to realise the tracks already exist on the player, and send a 2nd copy of the file. NVA-3000 F/W 2.01, SonicStage 3.4 Anyone else seen this problem, and know the fic???

Not at all, depends on the music (if it's found in the Gracenote DB), the format of the music, what options are set, where your media is located (i.e. local, network), and many other factors.

Anyone want to bet his feelings change after living with connect for about a month? Tell us 3 months from now, that's is still a pleasurable expereince putting music on your player.. Your still in the Honeymoon period...

Sorry, but that's total BS. Connect is VERY buggy. The problems are not related your PC spec, not the condition of Windows. Before even talking about the horrendous list of bugs, On a clean install of XP, on my Althon64 3500+ with 1GB or RAM, Connect takes almost 8 minutes to start, importing music is a very slow and painful experience. Mermory footprint exceeds 700MB. This to me is buggy/poorly designed. The problem is the size of the database. The more tracks in your library, the more problems you will get. Connect simply does not scale, you can have a 20GB player, but Connect cannot handle 20GB of music in it's library. Whilst SonicStage works in the same scenario, (not that SonicStage is the greatest thing ever, it's 1,000,000 times better than Connect. I just wish they add full support for NW-A features).

Have to agree, mostly. The NW-A series software, at best (SonicStage) is adequete, and at worst (Connect) un-usable. My Vaio FS series has a horrendous assortment of disjointed applications, selected not for my needs, but for licencing tie-ins. The ONLY Sony software division that is any good, is Sony Media Software (AKA Madison Media Software), the did the Sony PSP Media Manager, a excellent piece of software, along with Vegas and DVDArchitecht. I wish Sony would ditch their entire software development teams in Japan, and get Sony Meida Software to sort out these never ending problems....

I had a similar problem. I formatted the device, started again. Used connect to create the initial database, then SonicStage to transfer all my music. Connect took about 8 minutes to start for me, and was pretty much useless. SonicStage works, but I lose most of the features of the device, which is outragous. Sony don't seem in any particular rush to fix these problems..

The only fix, is to sell it, and buy an iPod :-( Sony are dragging their heels on fixing any of the masses of problems with the Walkman series.

If they were trying to keep a lid on their problems, then it's not going to be much longer... Now everyone knows what a state Sony's Walkman and Connect divisions are in.. http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/02/2054249 http://news.com.com/Sonys+software+future/..._3-6044937.html PS. Sony, still waiting for that SonicStage upgrade to make my NW-A3000 pretty brick actually work as it was intended to.... Getting tired waiting... The part about this article that made me laugh (cry) the most: "The resulting product, released in mid-2004, was a flop. A year later, in early 2005, Sony Corporation of America Chief Technology Officer Phil Wiser conceded that the software had been a problem but said the company had learned from both its own mistakes and iTunes' gains. "The software has gotten killed," Wiser told CNET News.com in a February 2005 interview. "We were well aware of the changes in the market, and clear on how we could address these things, but we didn't move fast enough." It seems they THINK they have learned their lessons, and are now on the right track. They really need a wake-up call. As from a end user, I am telling them, they are still not moving fast enough, nor are they on the right track. I have owned this damn NW-A3000 for 4 months, and it's no better than that fatefull day back in Decemeber, when I bough the thing, thinking "nobody got fired for buying Sony" (to use a IBM phrase). How wrong I was...

AMD 64 3500+ 1GB RAM, 250GB HDD, Connect takes about 8 minutes to start, and another 3-4 before it's usable. about 4000 MP3 and WMA tracks. :-( It's got so bad, I have totally ditched Connect, and using purely SonicStage, and praying there will be a update soon to enable alll the non-functioning features. If there is nothing in the next month, I think i'll take the unit back, as it's not fit for purpose. Not sure what to buy thou.. Perhaps the new Creative unit....

Play Next Plays whatever is selected (Album, Track, Artist, Playlist), after the current list of tracks have played. My 4 year old Creative Jukebox had no ploblem doing this, why is it so diffucult for Sony to do this on their current products?? (Poor Design??)

Sony UK told me that a NW-A series version of SonicStage was currently in testing stage. This suprised me, as the current quality of Sony software, I could not believe it gets tested at all!!!

Don't bother wasting your time. I wasted 30 minutes with these muppets. They could not resolve the problems, escalated the problem, promised a call back within 24hours. That was a week ago..

How do I delete the database? Is the database part of play history? As part of my fixing, I also lost all my Top100, and Play History data, I would REALLY like to get them back, before I start deleting files from my PC>,..