Beethovenian

WMP 11 is actually quite good handling lots of tracks (WMP 10 was slow, I know). Or at least it's fast. I don't know about transferring to a player, though. What's annoying about Connect is that transferring the first 5GB can take, say, 35 minutes, but transferring the last 5GB (out of 18) will take a couple of hours. SonicStage is consistently slow during the whole process. I just wonder why few people complain about the slow navigation when using SonicStage. To me, it was just unbearable. I prefer SonicStage in general as a program, but I can't stand my Walkman stuttering just to see a list of albums.

So after a long fight, uninstalling and reinstalling everything, I finally managed to load music again on my A3000 using Connect Player. The difference is amazing. The player's navigation is much faster. That only shows how Sony is not realizing that people may have big music libraries. Their products have clearly a hard time managing thousands of tracks. CP is very fast to transfer the first 5 or 6GB, but it gets progressively slower and buggier later. SonicStage 4 has the same problem, with the additional problem of not optimizing the library in the player (how the Sony coders were able to do that with a later, and late, software, I don't know).

SS4 became a nightmare for me. Since it makes my A3000 extremely slow, I initiallized the drive to use Connect again. But Connect is now unable to transfer to it. It just stays there, doing nothing. So I uninstalled e reinstalled Connect, tried to restore the computer to an earlier stage etc. Everything remained the same. And now my computer is messy. So much for an improved software. Now I have an useless player and a computer in serious need of a clean-up.

Does anybody else notice a difference in performance when using SonicStage or Connect to load the player? To me, navigation is much slower now that I retransferred everything via SS4. I had that impression before, when used SS3.4, but wasn't sure about it. Now, it's very clear. When I select long lists, it often needs to access the hard-drive just to go to the next page, when browsing horizontally. The All songs menu become impossible to use, since it takes about 3 or 4 seconds just to go from the A to the B column. What could be the cause for that? I even reloaded the firmware to see if that would help. I'll probably end up going back to Connect Player just for transfers to the player. Ah, and why doesn't Sony make the artist link information obtained in Connect Player available for SonicStage, and vice versa?

Just tested AAC files ripped using SonicStage CP, which uses the extension 3gp. It's definitely not gapless. Gap is more noticeable than with mp3 (which is essentially only a click), but maybe slightly less than with WMA, which is closer to the iPod gap. Won't even try with Nero's AAC, since I doubt Sony would make the player read the tag information about gaps.

It lets you edit the artist links, which by itself makes it better. But to me SS4 is proving to be the slowest transfer software ever. If I select a big amount of albums to send to the player, it will take an eternity "preparing" those files, and then the transfer itself goes faster, but apparently in spurts, with the "Do not disconnect" warning coming and going on the player. Transferring 1GB took 20 minutes, 13 of them only in the preparation stage. Before, for the HD1, 13 minutes could be the preparation time for 18GB, and the player could be filled with a little more than one hour. Even CP was faster than this SS4. Don't know what's happening.

That's great. I initialized my A3000 to reload it using SonicStage, and two times it hanged after a while. The first time it hanged for hours, since I had left the computer unattended. Not a good signal. SS 3.4 didn't have any problem handling large amounts of music. Now I'm trying to rebuild the database and see if that helps.

Indeed, there's nothing that makes this a real improvement. It's just the old SonicStage with the "intelligent" features for the A series. I still like SonicStage better, both in interface and basic usability (Connect Player is a pain if you want to edit tags, and synchronizing takes a very long time). But it's disappointing that if you want the automatic updating of the player, you'll need to stick to CP. As for the firmware, I like it much better than the previous one. Faster, and not having the screen taken by that little disc spinning when it's accessing the hard-drive is much better. You may not have the instantaneous response some other players offer, but at least it doesn't feel that's as slow, because there's relevant information on screen. I think they still should change navigation when you're browsing by genres. Instead of the All X artist menu, it should just be All albums, and then, when you're in the album list, All tracks.

So it's what I understood. But my player doesn't do that. If I choose a genre, then an artist, it will show only albums by that artist within the selected genre. So various under soundtracks will not display the tracks or albums for other various that I have in other genres.

I suppose it'll follow the usual Sony pattern: First to Japan, with lots of warnings it's only for Japan users, then slowly to other regions. Anyway, if it at least preserves the automatic tagging updates of CP, it will already be a notable improvement to SS. Just hope it's not as slow as CP to scan drives and add tracks to the player.

What are you referring to? Is that in any of the Walkmans? My A3000 doesn't do that. It narrows it down. For instance, I use the composer name in Genre. So if I choose Handel, then John Eliot Gardiner, I'll get only Gardiner's albums by Handel, not any of the many Bach's, Beethoven's etc that I have. The HD1 does the same, with the difference it doesn't show albums when you browse by genre, only artists and then tracks.

Weird, I don't have any stability problem with WMP 11. For me it's as fast as iTunes, with a much better interface. Of course, I don't use it to connect to any device, since my players use Atrac. But I simply love how easy it is to find music with WMP 11. Since more than 90% of my collection is of classical music, browsing albums by composers is crucial, and being able to just clicking a name having an expanded search is also great. And I like to have cover arts and not lists as the main interface, since it reproduces better the experience of choosing an album. Then again, because of my musical taste, I never browse based on songs. (It's silly to go after an Allegro when you have thousands ot them.)

I love the interface of this player. Wish SonicStage or Connect were like it. The new Toshiba Gigabeat S must have an interesting interface.

SonicStage actually allows you to change what you want. Just select the tracks you want to edit, right click and select properties, and there you can write as you like. But there are better programs to do this. My recommendation is Tag & Rename, which has a 30-day trial period. It's very easy to use.

I have the HD1 and the A3000, and both are flawed in their own ways, so it's hard to give a recommendation. But let me try to consider each one's advantages and disadvantages: - In terms of hardware, the HD1 obviously wins in size and weight, though the A series' specs are very misleading, since they don't feel as big as their numbers suggest. The HD1 is also less prone to scratches. The magnesium case is very resistant. The aluminium back cover of my A3000 got scratches the first time it went into the pocket. Also, the screen of the HD1 is in general more useful, for being available all the time. It's smaller, but actually gives a little more information. The volume controls work well for both. I don't think the slider of the A1000 would cause you pains. The design of the A series is a little unwieldy, though, because its shape puts most of the weight in the fatter center, but the controls are on the bottom, so when you hold it you don't have the best grip. (Plus, the position of the volume slider makes it more difficult to use it when you're browsing your music.) - In terms of battery life, the HD1 and the A3000 are supposed to be equivalent. My HD1 doesn't last the advertised 30 hours anymore (actually, I think it never did, since navigating shortens the battery life considerably), but my A3000, which is much newer, seems to offer much less too, though I haven't done any testing. - In general, I prefer the interface of the A3000, because of the browsing options and the fact you don't need to deal with mode buttons. And the alphabetical and page-turning method of browsing both vertically and horizontally through long lists is a very smart alternative for a device that doesn't use a scroll wheel. The problem is that the interface of the A3000 is also slower than that of the HD1. Both have their databases in the HD, which means every time you activate the menu, it spins up the disk to retrieve information, wasting 3 or 4 seconds. The difference is that once you're on the menu of the HD1, everything works instantaneously. With the A3000, it's not uncommon to have more "accessing" waits when you move to genre, or to artist, or to tracks. Jumping between tracks is also slower with the A3000. Database caching is much more inefficient with the A3000 (and I assume the A1000 would be the same, though the smaller capacity may help by diminishing the caching requirements). - Of course, the A series has the advantage of more formats support (and more Atrac bitrates, one of the reasons I bought it for). But if you don't mind converting, that's not an issue. - As for features, I find ArtistLink and Intelligent Shuffle useless, but that's me. ArtistLink actually seems to offer reasonable suggestions (meaning, they're logical), but I don't see why that thing would justify a whole button for it.

Thanks, willykyu. By the way, you reminded me of another issue: - Get play modes right. When a user starts playback of an album at the third track, I'm convinced the majority would "normally" expect the player to continue until the last track and stop, and not go back to the first two, unless you choose a "repeat album" mode. (This going back to early tracks is aggravated in the A series by the fact that the player forgets where you started if you shut it down and resume later. It will go back to the point where you resumed.) Sony should adjust this. It should also offer you a "continuous" play mode in which the player would follow to the next album or playlist, as in the "normal" play mode of the HD series. And since there's no more "units" to play with, a "shuffle albums" could be a good idea for those who want random playback of whole albums.

We all know Sony has a lot of big problems to solve before starting to offer some serious competition to the iPod, mainly on the software side. But there are also a lot of little issues that may not be that important individually, but nonetheless bug users and may add up to big annoyances. Here are the ones that came to my mind. Add yours. I'm not mentioning the obvious ones, like poor playlisting features (especially on-the-fly), unreadable screens in the sun, etc. - Slow navigation: Sony needs to be less stingy and put more RAM in their players. The 3-4 second lag to get into a menu shouldn't exist, at least not as commonly as in the HDD Walkmans. That can be easily solved by adding memory and caching the database there, instead of on the hard-drive. Considering Sony already charges a premium for its brand, that shouldn't add much in terms of cost. And if you advance to players that display album art and photos, caching for fast browsing is an absolute necessity, otherwise the experience can be frustrating. - Sorting the alphabet: It's about time Sony's players learned to list The Beatles under B, instead of T. Rio has put that in the Karma more than two years ago. Actually, Rio has made the Karma identify even Die Zauberflöte as a piece for the Z entry, not D, or Il Postino as P. Apple and Microsoft don't go that far, but at least for the English they know how to separate the article from the substantive. - Use visual resources: Sony took the right decision, in my view, when it decided to include little icons to identify artists, albums, tracks and genres in the HD series. Unfortunately they went the Apple way for the A series, simply listing names without any icons at their side. That's a step back in my opinion, since the old system gave you a clearer, more immediate idea of where you were. Sony also opted to follow Apple and put all fonts looking the same in the menu. It's something I always thought made the iPod more confusing. I think the "All Artist" menu at the top of the lists should be in a different font, or with some sort of icon differentiation, so that it would have a clear distinction that that's not an album or track name. The Vaio Pocket differentiated that by using double icons. It's the right thing to do. Use visual resources for the easiest navigation. (By the way, why does the "all" menu in genre take to the track list, insetad of the album list?) - Add composer: Sony is the only company offering gapless playback, an important "feature" (the quote marks are for the fact that this should never be considered a feature, but simply part of basic playback) for classical music. Why doesn't it take advantage of that and let people browse by composer? Especially for a company that had until recently a dilletant conductor as its CEO. - Add album artist: Connect Player has added the distinction between album artist and song artist, which is useful to sort albums that include various performers. Why hasn't that made to the Walkmans as well? - Include time remaining: Or at least total time of the track. But I like the fact that the Now Playing screen displays title, album, artist and genre. (It could lets us choose between genre or composer for that fourth item.) Just don't follow the waste of screen space format of the iPod. More information is good, though I agree data like bitrate and format could be left only for the detailed track information, since the majority of people don't care about it. By the way, it would be nice if a detailed view included comments or lyrics. - Less title scrolling: Give us the option to choose the size of the letters. Some people may prefer to have more information displayed, and therefore less scrolling, instead of big letters. My HD1 has a smaller screen than the A3000, but it actually shows more. That doesn't make sense.

Yes, that's true. WMA Lossless files don't produce gapless copies. Actually, for me WAV files were also non-gapless after transcoding. Only CDs directly imported in SonicStage. Don't know why it works like that for me and not for you. But if one doesn't have many gapless albums, the WMA Lossless method can be easier to deal with.

As far as I know, you need to select the Play Unit mode and just go to the track list of an album. It's not necessary to be in album mode. When in Play Unit mode, it will play everything from the unit you're in. So, if what you're seeing is a track list, the "folder" (album, group etc.) of those tracks will be played entirely. If you're looking at a list of albums, all of those albums will be played. And so on.

If I understood correctly, what you want is to rip your CDs directly to the player, without leaving copies in the PC. I don't think that's possible and, to be honest, even desirable. It's always better to have some backup. As an alternative to maggior's method, I'd suggest ripping your CDs to WMA Lossless in Windows Media Player. It's a reasonably fast ripper, and it will add tag information already during ripping. You can then just import your files into SonicStage and select an Atrac bitrate for transfer. Since the NW-A3000 doesn't support WMA Lossless, all files will be converted during transfer (and theoretically no copies of the Atrac files will remain in your PC).

I'm making my first attempts of working with Connect Player and a NW-A3000, which I got as a stopgap until a higher capacity player comes out (I wanted the new bitrates and the navigation scheme). Connect Player itself seems reasonably stable, but when it comes to transferring, things get more complicated. For some reason, the software just hangs on two tracks. Strangely, it hangs even after I deleted the original albums, re-ripped them and re-imported them. I get the error message after a long time. Have no idea what's wrong. Still, I'll stick with Connect for now just because it felt to me that the player acts faster than when loaded via SonicStage. It's a shame, because SonicStage is much better.

You've probably downloaded SonicStage 3.4 from a different region than the previous version. Try to get the version from the same region as before.

I know, that's why I said streaming. Files would not be transferred, just the listening or viewing shared. But they should allow you to transfer pictures. I particularly don't like touch screens, but if they manage to have one that looks nice and doesn't get smudged all over, OK. I think one alternative to the patented click-wheel is a scrolling ball. The challenge is to make it small without being difficult to use. For small capacity players, without video capability, I think Sony should go for the e-ink screens. Having them in color would probably be prohibitive now, but they look cool nonetheless.

Yes, Sony should stop announcing something that's so far in the future. Still, one can only hope Sony finally gives Apple some competition. This microsoftization of Apple in the digital audio market is not a good thing. But I fear Sony will be only catching up. What they need to do is be ahead of the market. To me, what they should do is include wi-fi in a small player with a good, high resolution screen and partner with Starbucks, offering free access to hotspots where people would be able to download songs and maybe videos (sort of a Starbucks Connect). They should offer Atrac 64kbps files in these downloads and let you download later a higher bitrate copy to your PC. Also, they should add some kind of streaming feature, maybe for use with LocationFreeTV, and for sharing music with others, so that when you meet somebody in the streets and want tho show that person some music, you could just stream it. Connectivity with the PSP would be good as well. Making a portable audio player sort of a social networking device, instead of an isolating one, could be a good marketing tool, I think.

One question here: Is the installation from the update file the full Connect Player, or is there something that only the CD bring? I wonder because the auto update, for instance, doesn't do anything. And if it's better to install from the CD and then update, does saving the library folder preserve all database or is it necessary to reimport everything (and wait for all the artistlink work again)?