SonicStage 3.0 US Version Online

[Du Mistvieh]

Go to http://sonicstage.connect.com/SonicStageInstaller.exe, it downloads the usual Installer, then Setup for SoS 3.0 starts

Havin' a look right now, but my line at work is very slow, so it takes me over half an hour to download all the stuff needed, including DirectX 9.0c

[MZ-NH1]

Is this the English version?

[Du Mistvieh]

It's still downloading, but as the Installer is in English and it's from the US Connect site, I assume it IS English

No German Version online yet, what a pity

Edited March 3, 2005 by Du Mistvieh

[MZ-NH1]

Nice. Will download it now then, and report back.

[MZ-NH1]

Well that was good. Clicked Installed, and it said, "retreiving data from interent" waited 30 secs, then said.. no internet connection present :|

edit:

!!! downloading at 360kb/s here. the download was just under 30mb

New drivers, SonicStage Add-ons.. looking good

Now have to restart computer. Installing process took about 3-5 mins... downloading the files at 360kb/s took about 2 mins...

[Du Mistvieh]

!!! downloading at 360kb/s here. the download was just under 30mb

Someone's jealous here - I don't have DirectX 9.0c on my working machine yet, so I have to download this, too, and as if that's not enough, I only have ~12KB/s here.. Looking forward to go home soon

[MZ-NH1]

A WARNING TO ALL - after installing SS and restarting my pc (XP SP2)

I then logged back on, but it seemed to just freeze on the welcome screen after entering my password in for about 3-4 mins. I then restarted the pc, and signed in with another account with no problems. I then resigned in with my account and after waiting another min at the welcome screen, my desktop showed up, with the SS window saying

"UPDATING SS DATABASE LIBRARY"

So just letting everyone, to be patient when signing back in after installing it, especially if you have a large library, as I do. 2000+ songs

[Du Mistvieh]

Good to know that. DirectX is done here, now downloading OpenMG Secure Module, again 9 MB What a pain!

[MZ-NH1]

Ahahah mate... as I said previously, the total download for me was just udner 30mb

Now all I have to do is wait for SS to update the library which of course is taking its time

by the way, how did you find that link? because I went to that web site, and all I could find was the link to download SS 2.3...?

Nice! the new SS has a timer which lets you know how much longer it will take to import all your music. I have another 2 hours and 30 minutes left!!!! and I wanna go to bed

Will have to stop it

well now it say 2hrs... hmmmm 1:50 looking better

Opppss.. my bad, it actually ment 2 minutes

Just about to finish The process of importing music is a lot quicker for me now

[Du Mistvieh]

I just tried some URL guessing,, and there it was

What time is it in Australia now, round midnight? Well, just let your PC go on, go to bed, and once you wake up, it's finished .

SoS was always slow at importing files

So you just edited your post - 2 mins, WTF? Sounds like a real Improvement !

Edited March 3, 2005 by Du Mistvieh

[MZ-NH1]

Yeh, 10:37, but I am very tired went and got my drivers liscence today very nerve racking!

It finished the importing, having a look at all the features now.

Thanks very much for the link! What a great way to start off your membership here!

Hope you like it, this is a very friendly and informative place!

Well from what I have seen, SS 3.0 looks pretty nice. Nice GUI and everything

Hope everyone else likes it

[Du Mistvieh]

Sure, I DO like it - been here often before, but only reading... I'm way more active at http://www.minidiscforum.de, which is a great German Board for MD Users, but this one is really frienldy and infomative, too

But that link was so important (at least, I thoughtso), that I did post it.

BTW, Congratulations to you having your drivers licence

Edited March 3, 2005 by Du Mistvieh

[MZ-NH1]

Yeh well done!

Talk to you later mate! have a good one

Ahahah yeh thanks. All I have to do now is buy a car

[grf]

Hi,

Just read the post about sS 3.0 available on the link posted.

I have just followed the link and it downloads the installer. The installer then only has options for SS 2.3.

I see no 3.0 options available.

I am in the UK

Best regards

Graham

[Du Mistvieh]

Well, it works fine for me, see Screenshots:

Installer 1

Installer 2

[grf]

Hi,

I like the screenshots. They are in no way the same as the ones that I got when I followed the link.

The link upgraded my SS 2.1 o SS 2.3 so it was not a waste of time. However I am really puzzled about which link/installer is available where.

Best regards

Graham

[Christoph]

Sure, I DO like it - been here often before, but only reading... I'm way more active at http://www.minidiscforum.de, which is a great German Board for MD Users, but this one is really frienldy and infomative, too 

But that link was so important (at least, I thoughtso), that I did post it.

BTW, Congratulations to you having your drivers licence 

←

Hello, I do have only an internet access at work, whereas my SS is at home on a PC without access. Can somebody post the sonicstage complete download ( a link )?

P.S.: interesting username, you don't adress anybody with this or? Ist auch nur ne Frage

[Du Mistvieh]

Hello, I do have only an internet access at work, whereas my SS is at home on a PC without access. Can somebody post the sonicstage complete download ( a link  )?

P.S.: interesting username, you don't adress anybody with this or? Ist auch nur ne Frage 

←

What you could do is starting the installation on your PC at work, then locate the downloaded files (I don't know where the installer puts those) and then place them in the same place at hom, and run the installer again, on your home machine. But I don't know how this exactly works.

Regarding my nickname, I don't address anybody with it, it's just the name of a figure (a camel) in a novel by Terry Pratchett (In English, it is called "You Bastard").

[lamewing]

Well, this is a big improvement from 2.3. SS 3.0 now recognized my PSP!!! Unfortunetly it will not transfer as the Memory Pro Duo card I have isn't magic gate and therefore doesn't support non-DRM files. To top it off, the PSP won't recognize ATRAC files even though the manual says it will. My japanese is limited so if anyone else has a better understaninding, please let me know.

Too bad SS 3.0 doesn't support direct mp3 encoding (for the PSP) and transfer (again for the PSP). Grrrrr. When will Sony get their act together? I should divorce Sony, but they keep tempting me.

It seems that SS 3.0 will play mp3s just fine. I had hoped that the mp3's (no DRM) would transfer via SS 3.0 to my PSP. Nope. This SS 3.0 won't even transfer mp3's due to DRM limitations. Why Sony, why?

Joe

Edited March 3, 2005 by lamewing

[zerodB]

What you could do is starting the installation on your PC at work, then locate the downloaded files (I don't know where the installer puts those) and then place them in the same place at hom, and run the installer again, on your home machine. But I don't know how this exactly works.

←

It may or may not work. I know from playing around with SonicStage 2 that it's not always a simple matter of just located the downloaded files and executing the setups. The programs sometimes need to be run in a particular order, and with certain command line switches. Still, it's worth a try.

I am working on a MDCF stadalone installer for SS 3.0 (originally was for 2.3 but now for 3.0). Stay tuned to the forums for more info.

[bug80]

Installed without problems here.

By the way, it seems that the built-in ATRAC encoder has improved a little, see my last post in this thread.

[Christoph]

What you could do is starting the installation on your PC at work, then locate the downloaded files (I don't know where the installer puts those) and then place them in the same place at hom, and run the installer again, on your home machine. But I don't know how this exactly works.

Regarding my nickname, I don't address anybody with it, it's just the name of a figure (a camel) in a novel by Terry Pratchett (In English, it is called "You Bastard").

←

Well, what I did, due to the fact that the installshield didn't work on my Athlon64 machine, (don't know wy), I copied all the temp files from S2.3 and than installed from within this directories by runinng setup in each.

I managed to get the S3.0 isntall on a laptop here at work... and I could also get the downloaded files... if anybody has space, this are five files, all zipped and easily recognised.

the files are DX.zip > Directx

msc.zip > Music store something

openmg.zip > guess

sonic.zip > guess

addon.zip > addon to S3.0

and the installer does installs them in these sequence, so first dx > msc > openmg > sonic > addon

will try it at home in the evening, if anybody wants, I could upload these files...

And the german translation for "you bastard" was " Du Mistvieh" ? that is a very free translation...

Edited March 3, 2005 by Christoph

[Latexxx]

Well, this is a big improvement from 2.3. SS 3.0 now recognized my PSP!!! Unfortunetly it will not transfer as the Memory Pro Duo card I have isn't magic gate and therefore doesn't support non-DRM files. To top it off, the PSP won't recognize ATRAC files even though the manual says it will. My japanese is limited so if anyone else has a better understaninding, please let me know.

←

To get Atrac into PSP you need Magic Gate Memory Stick Duo and Sonic Stage to transfer the files.

[bug80]

First impressions: The new version looks better and seems to "respond" a little faster. Deleting tracks via NetMD seems to take much more time, however.

Edited March 3, 2005 by bug80

[lamewing]

To get Atrac into PSP you need Magic Gate Memory Stick Duo and Sonic Stage to transfer the files.

←

Sounds good in theory, but I cannot seem to even google a Magic Gate Memory Stick Duo. It seems there aren't any MG Duos.

UPDATE: Found some, but nothing over 128MB.

Edited March 3, 2005 by lamewing

[sxc]

So does SS 3.0 let you transfer MP3s to current Hi-MDs without conversion? I doubt it...but please tell me I'm wrong!

[lamewing]

So does SS 3.0 let you transfer MP3s to current Hi-MDs without conversion? I doubt it...but please tell me I'm wrong!

←

No dice. It has to convert them to ATRAC before transferring to MD.

I noticed in the index that SS 3.0 can encode in mp3 "with the MP3 encoder add-on that is supplied with some Vaio computers". What the heck is this. I googled around and only really saw one or mentions of it online. Is this program still being supported or did Sony just cut and paste the index?

[kalo]

How do you import songs directly into your desired playlist? SS 3.0 seems to just import the songs in my library and I have to find them and put them in the playlist individually

Edited March 3, 2005 by kalo

[rauer]

Goddamn, I hate the SonicStage. I have only tried it a few times and always ended up doing all my recording in real time using the optical in. That software is just so profoundly un-user-friendly and un-intuitive and unreliable.

Just installed 3.0. Can't tell if it's better or worse than the previous ones but in the first few minutes I somehow managed to delete several semi-important WAVs from my HD! Geez. It's probably something I did, but have to say I'm not this clueless with other software.

Back to real-time recording again.

[Latexxx]

UPDATE: Found some, but nothing over 128MB.

←

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...724934?v=glance

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=msx-m2...=ff&oi=froogler

?

Edited March 3, 2005 by Latexxx

[The_Stamp]

UPDATE: Found some, but nothing over 128MB.

←

magicgate Memory sticks cannot go any higher than 128 MB due to the way it was designed. So they put a switch at the back, and called it 256 mb

so they redisgned it, made it super fast, and called is "pro". which so far supports up to 2 GB.

maybe im off on the "duo" part, but im sure about the switch thing.

[streaml1ne]

DId anyone save the files the installer downloaded so we can do offline installs? I can host them if so, or we can setup a torrent.

(edit): Woops, missed the other topic. Nevermind...

[lamewing]

magicgate Memory sticks cannot go any higher than 128 MB due to the way it was designed.  So they put a switch at the back, and called it 256 mb

so they redisgned it, made it super fast, and called is "pro". which so far supports up to 2 GB.

maybe im off on the "duo" part, but im sure about the switch thing.

←

I don't think we are talking about the same thing. I have a 512MB Memory Duo Pro and SS 3.0 clearly states that this isn't MG technology and will not download to it.

Sony wonders why Apple is kicking so much butt with the iPod and iTunes. I have given up on iPods after REALLY listening to the quality difference between them and HiMD. I know I will regret having to deal with the hassels of Sonic Stage, but WOW, I guess I just don' appreciate the neutral sound the iPod has. Anywho, I picked up a HiMD unit today (just the 600D for now) and am pleasantly suprised.

Even though I have given up on the iPod, many many folks haven't. And I can truly appreciate the intergration between all the iPods and iTunes. Why cannot Sony accomplish this? Look at my situation. I have a new HiMD unit which works fine with SS 3.0. I have also have a nifty PSP that plays mp3s (drag and drop). According to the manual, the PSP will play ATRAC. I can drag and drop them, but I cannot get them to play. Sonic Stage recognizes my PSP as "PSP (memory stick)" but will not copy songs to it.

You would think that Sony would make sure their new toy worked with their music program. Sony is so trying to cover so many bases, and they COULD do this if they would just intergrate all their devices to Sonic Stage (or iTunes - I wish!!!) If Sony would only add mp3 encoding as well as 100% compatibility with all their products: Clie, PSP, HiMD, Pocket Vaio, etc. they would have some very happy customers. They won't dethrone the iPod, but at least they might gain more customers.

Do I hear a "Hell Yes"??

Edited March 3, 2005 by lamewing

[jadeclaw]

First Views of 3.0:

First a Warning: Before updating, make sure, that you mark all 'My Compilation' Albums

as normal Albums.

( Right click on Album, then select 'Properties', then uncheck the 'My Compilation' checkbox. )

Otherwise, SS 3.0 will throw all tracks inside the MyCompilation albums into additional 'Untitled'-albums,

which cannot be removed without deleting the tracks physically. Plus turning your 'My Compilations' into playlists

Second, make sure, that ALL tracks have the correct Artist information,

otherwise tracks will be scattered across the library in multiple 'Untitled'-albums.

Since I didn't know this, I have now to deinstall SonicStage completely plus deleting the library as well,

reinstalling 2.3, restoring the from Backup and resorting the whole thing before upgrading.

(Roughly 44 GByte, ~10000 Tracks. *GRMPF* )

No, you cannot prevent the resorting, when SS3.0 starts for the first time.

Negative:

Flexibility has suffered, MyCompilations can no longer be switched into regular Albums,

Albums can no longer be removed without deleting the tracks. Atleast it asks before killing the stuff.

Playlists can be removed without deleting.

Albums and tracks cannot have different Artists anymore, I have a ton of Albums,

where the composer is set as Artist on the Album and the orchestra is set as Artist on the tracks.

Now I have to edit that information on 5000 plus tracks, so that the stuff appears again under the composer's name in the Album list.

Positive:

You can now select the bitrate for transfer independently of the bitrate in the library.

It converts on the fly. A big plus!

And you can transfer imported tracks without keeping the converted files.

You can now upload, convert into Wave and store the stuff directly into a directory of your choice,

allowing immediately working with the uploaded files with external programs. Another big one!

Playback from the connected recorder works better now, access is quicker.

That's it for now, I may have more time on Sunday. (Damn work )

[roguefan99]

I had the upgrade problem, I have multiple versions of ATRAC files everywhere, I have MP3s that it searched out on my HDD in there. Only plus side is it gives me a chance to lean off my HDD with all the mp3 files I never listen to on that computer! I wont think about putting this on my laptop though

Umm you can have different artist between track name and Album name, I did this by manually correcting the name of the album. I have a lot of Various Artist albums (Game soundtracks) that I've had to do this with. Its a damn pain though, especially seeing it was all done in SonicStage v2.3 and was discarded in the upgrade.

I was shocked at how much quicker it loads up.

[Ryan07]

Did Sony think that importing a cd to mp3 would not be a necessity? Come on man... get with it! Your equipment supports mp3's but you don't include an encoder!?! These are the little features that Sony's going to have to incorporate if they want Sonicstage and Connect to be legitimate alternatives to iTunes. In addition to adding an mp3 encoder Sony should decrease the font size, the "Music Source/My Library/Transfer" tabs, and the audio control buttons to give the Connect Music Store and My Library screens more realestate. A name change might not be a bad idea either... the word Sonicstage still leaves a bad taste in my mouth from that piece of junk 2.4. The software offers major changes and barely resembles the last version. The look and feel are great and for the first time I didn't get errors or file corruption while importing my +25GB of mp3s. All in all it's pretty good. \m/\m/ My NetMD is finally going to get some use.

Edited March 4, 2005 by Ryan07

[orb_cz]

I have no idea why sony dicided to change it so album artist and artists in the album HAVE to be the same. Now i have bout 4 copies of every album i have in my library. It's confusing and extremely annoying. So much for "improved usablity". The only benefit is it's a bit faster, but still the the cons out weigh the pro by a lot. Im even thinking of reinstalling v2.3. That's just my opinion

[JavaGeek]

I just downloaded the new version, and I must say that I'm impressed so far. It does look like it's faster, the interface is more responsive. I still need to play with it a little more, and I haven't transfered any song yet.

I just wish they supported FLAC.

More info as I play with SS more.

[doclloyd]

Interesting upgrade. I'm not a huge fan of the auto-creating albums for every track, but if it's for the sake of progress... I guess it just made me realize that I have a number of MP3's with improper ID3 tags. For the most part, it kept playlists and albums together right. Some, not so much. Made some albums "Albums" and some "playlists". In the end, they still provide the same purpose to me... The convert and auto-delete (esp. for MD/Hi-MD) is very nice. Definitely will save on hard drive space and annoying factor for MD users. Should've been part of the SS 2.x series.

There is also (I think) a "Scan Folder" option to more quickly import music into SS under File->Import->Scan Folder... Only tried it on a small folder, but it worked as expected.

CDDB data is a little more comprehensive. SS can now utilize Year Released and Composer information that is available via CDDB. Wish there was a way to go back to all the discs I already imported and get that data, especially for classical discs.

There is a section under the Options->Download Music->Personal Information that has a checkbox for "Send information about tracks in Sonicstage to the music service." Not sure what it means. There is no useful data in the Help file either. Can you believe that? ;-)

The app seems slightly faster, but it's difficult to tell. I have a good amount of music in My Library, so it still takes a while to load. Overall responsiveness is fine. I always turn off animation.

The whole "playlist" thing they're moving towards makes me wonder and hope about new devices from Sony and whether or not it will truly support playlists... perhaps via firmware/software updates to the NW-HDx series and the flash players.

Of course this upgrade could've had a lot more to it, like checking the device for a track/group, noticing it's already there and notifying the user of it. True playlist support *has* to come at some point. It may take Sony a while, but it has to come to compete.

I have more thoughts, but this is good for now. Time for sleep

[Leland]

Installed fast and fine on my laptop which only has a small database. Interfaced with my Clie and tranferred.

I have a 256 meg MS Pro Duo that says "MagicGate" right on it, I will test it tonight at home with my PSP and report back.

Now, BIG potential problem: In the bit rate selection list for transferring, there does not appear to be a "Stereo" selection which used to mean standard MD (pre MDLP) for compatibility with non LP enabled devices (such as the head unit in my car). I will try again tonight when I have a MD recorder hooked up, but if this is true, it is a deal breaker for me at the moment since I could no longer create MD's for the car. I can see not supporting this with the new HiMD recorders perhaps, (well, not really) but why they would take it out of SonicStage beats me. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

Otherwise, performance seems much snappier.