Get Connect Software working!

[atracTED]

Ok, having read all the horror stories about the mess that Connect softare is I thought this might interest a lot of people.

I am in the same boat as anyone else here. I bought the beautiful A3000, found it excellent, tries the connect software and a week on down the road the A3000 is still empty and next to useless.

The first time I used Connect, it opened up and asked to import my library. I let it import about 1/3 of it -approx. 7000 tracks. It took over an hour and in the process it grew to over 250MB in memory, pushing my cache to the limits.

When it eventually did get there, I tried to put some tracks on the A3000. I noticed that the actual device is really fast. In full speed it will transfer a 4 MB file in about a second.

When it DID transfer it did so quickly. However, the program took ages to get the file to move to the transfer window, get it to send, etc etc.

I tried the solution of using Sonicstage 3.4. Sure it works -just-, crashing and shutting down a lot when importing my library etc, but it eventually gets there. BUT: No top100 lists, no artist links, etc. I mean you get a piece of hardware for its features, and these are disabled by the software later on down the road?? Come on!

So now what? Send the player back? No way! I absolutely love its looks, speed, sound quality, display. I am not going to let some software get in the way.

So yesterday I tried to see what makes the Connect software work so slowly if at all. I did some reading on the web, found a few suggestions, put them all together and what do you know? They DO work, making connect player quite usable! Finally! It DOES work!

First of all, the trick with connect is to know what you are dealing with. It is a flawed software, buggy and can get quite big, bogging down your PC. So when you use is it would be a good idea not to have too many other programs open. (Having said that, I have firefox with 5 tabs, outlook 2003, word 2003, itunes, avedesk, rk launcher, konfabulator with 14 widgets running and photoshop open, and connect works just fine. CS memory footprint is 90 MB now, and total CPU use is 20-25%)

- Load time now is 30 seconds, where before it could take 3+ minutes and in the process bog down the PC almost to a halt.

- Right now it is transferring some mp3s over and plays a track and the infamous Tinyhttp stands at about 80 MB. A lot by any other standards but for connect that quite good I think.

The best part: It works like a charm! You have to see it to believe it!!! It opens folders quickly, imports a folder of 20 mp3s in 3-4 seconds, and drag/dropping is lightning fast!!! How fast? As soon you drag and drop a track to be transferred it is done before you can select the next one on the list.

Solution/suggestions

Note: You will have to delete your existing database in Connect Player (Your files are not affected ofcourse).

I will describe what I did, and it would be a good idea to replicate my steps and see if you get the same good results. That way we may have found the solution to connect's problems.

1. Download the update 1.0.03.13130 from Sony's site and apply it. (reboot)

2. Go to the directory C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Sony Corporation\CONNECT Player

and DELETE the folders Library and Data. These contain the database. When you delete it connect will start 'fresh'.

3. Right click on the connect shortcut icon and select Properties -> Compatibility -> Tick Run in compatibility for Windows 2000, apply, close.

4. Make sure you don't have too many programs open (as I said your mileage will vary, but why not help things?)

5. Run Connect. It should load up in about 30 seconds on a reasonably fast pc! If you followed the steps the library should be empty.

6. Now, the key to its horrendous behaviour is library size.

When you import a big library (as I guess most of you lot have done), the connect really loses the plot, slows down and eventually becomes useless. That exact thing happened to me previously.

So, do the following. In preferences do NOT set a watch folder, but rather add folders/files from the Open -> Import menus. Do NOT set it to import a folder with 50-100 subfolders, but rather choose the artists/albums you want in say 5 folders/per time, and let the program import them. When it imports files, cpu usage will rise to 90-100% so just let it do its thing. It should import 15-20 mp3s in 3-4 seconds.

7. Now that you have a couple of albums in the library (don't importing more that 5 albums for now), connect the A1000/3000 and open the transfer window. Drag a file over to transfer. It should be instantaneous.

Now try importing a whole album.

The WHOLE process in my pc for 12 tracks (from adding to finish) took 13 seconds, which essentially means that it transfers at full speed. Also CPU usage didn't exceed 70%.

Conclusion

So, have we found the solution to connect's hideous behaviour? I suspect it has to do with its database becoming too large. Since most of us have huge libraries of songs, it maybe that adding too many tracks was exactly the source of our problems.

Please have a go at the solution I suggested and post your experiences. As I'm writing this I have casually added, transferred, edited and deleted several albums all using connect, without it ever slowing down or bogging my computer.

Result!!

[JSP62]

First of all, the trick with connect is to know what you are dealing with. It is a flawed software, buggy and can get quite big, bogging down your PC. So when you use is it would be a good idea not to have too many other programs open. (Having said that, I have firefox with 5 tabs, outlook 2003, word 2003, itunes, avedesk, rk launcher, konfabulator with 14 widgets running and photoshop open, and connect works just fine. CS memory footprint is 90 MB now, and total CPU use is 20-25%)

You do realize that this information is half informative right ? Without telling your comp specs this doesn't really mean anything.

[willykyu]

We shouldn't have to do this AT ALL! Connect player should work as I-tunes, or even Sonicstage. There should be a lot more features and options etc. It's time and stress consuming.

Connect Player is useless.

And still no news about a new update of anything from sony Walkman. Wasn't March the month a the big Connect relaunch??? Shouldn't there be an update every month??? silence is pain...

[JSP62]

We shouldn't have to do this AT ALL! Connect player should work as I-tunes, or even Sonicstage. There should be a lot more features and options etc. It's time and stress consuming.

Connect Player is useless.

And still no news about a new update of anything from sony Walkman. Wasn't March the month a the big Connect relaunch??? Shouldn't there be an update every month??? silence is pain...

My guess is that there is either 1 team or 2 teams (probably 2) working on the Connect/PS3 issues (1 team for Connect, 1 team for PS3). There is focus on the development of the PS3 and obviously Connect is going to be playing a role with this for the when PS3 comes out, online capabilities for the music/video contant will surely be overseen by Connect.

What does this all mean you ask . . . I am willing to bet that a new version of Connect would not be coming out until finishing touches have been made with PS3. Hopefully by then though, they would have worked out all the nuissasnces.

[atracTED]

Ok, first thing's first. I should apologise if my tone was overly enthusiastic. I am just happy that the program IS working.

@JSP: You are right I should have mentioned my pc's specs; but they are nothing to write home about. It's a 2.4 GHz Athlon XP with 512 MB ram. So the fact that connect is working happily on my low(ish) specs, means that on higher specced pcs it would be even better.

@Willy: Yes, connect is useless. Yes, it should have a lot more features etc. Yes, Sony should have gone with something like itunes (which IS my favourite and sole mp3 program), or at least given us integration with it.

I know we shouldn't have to go through all this process in order for a program to work. But what can we do? You know that no other programs work with the players. Isn't it better that SP IS working -even as it is?

At least now

Granted it is bad soft. But at least now after these little tweaks it is working ok and I don't have to sit in a corner sulking about the software waiting for Sony to get off its a*s and come up with a better update. I will happily use the update when it comes along but for now I am perfectly happy!

And the best part: I can now fully enjoy the excellent player that A3000 is!

Hope some people out there who have similar problems can be helped by this thread.

[Ascariss]

Never had major issues with connect player, and with the recent updates, the problems stopped. Once i upgraded my pc, the program has been perfect, no crashes or stalls no nothing.

I have a watched folder and it imports the songs I added there, and it doesn't slow down the program or my pc.

I imported an entire directory in one shot of 1000 songs and had no issues, cpu usage was low, and I was running 4 other programs as well.

CP is not buggy, the program works fine, it all depends on your pc's specs and the condition of your windows OS.

[atracTED]

Could well be Ascariss. My PC although not the highest specd around, is kept in shape and the OS is well sorted out.

However, CP buggy or not is horribly written. There is no excuse for ANY software to have a memory footprint of 100 MB - 250 MB!!!

I wrote this guide today in the hopes that others who ARE having problems with CP will rejoice and finally be able to enjoy their walkmans.

[mgillespie]

CP is not buggy, the program works fine, it all depends on your pc's specs and the condition of your windows OS.

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).

[Ascariss]

can't handle 20 gigs of music? lol

I have now 12 gigs in the player, and in the program and CP works like a charm.

Tell my why on a pc which is similar to your specs, but only a P4, CP opens in less than 30 seconds?

If it was the fault of the software, I would have the exact same problems as you then, wouldn't I?

[mgillespie]

can't handle 20 gigs of music? lol

I have now 12 gigs in the player, and in the program and CP works like a charm.

Tell my why on a pc which is similar to your specs, but only a P4, CP opens in less than 30 seconds?

If it was the fault of the software, I would have the exact same problems as you then, wouldn't I?

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.

[Ascariss]

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.

I don't use gracenote, it tags my Mp3s with the wrong info plenty of times, and I would have to retag a lot more songs then if I had it on. i tag my mp3's from info i get from sites I use that has my genre of music.