NW-A3000V and Connect

[gusto]

Hi,

I really want to buy an NWA3000V but I'm put off by the horror stories I've read about the connect software.

I went to my local Sony store today and the assistant told me that Sony have solved all the problems with the software. Forgive me for not trusting a salesman.

I don't want to buy an ipod but I do love the itunes software.

Have the software problems been rectified?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[Le_Chat]

no, an update is on the site of sony, and its right its better than before, but, that's not the paradize ... i wish sony will dont stop here ...

[gusto]

Anyone have any advice?

[imagine_]

My brother just got a NW-A608 and he is using connect on a Pentium III 600mhz with 256 mb ram... He imported over 300 tracks without any crashing and everything seems to work smoothly. Even on his system, which is very slow compared to most of your systems, connect takes less than a minute to start up.

Of course, I'm not saying you won't have any problems, just saying this is my experience with connect after 1 day.

[gusto]

Thanks.

Just wanted to know what Sony have done to rectify any problems.

Edited March 26, 2006 by gusto

[imagine_]

Update: I have changed my mind about connect... I just tried removing a couple of songs from the player and the software was simply unresponsive. I checked task manager, and there was a tinyhttp.exe program taking up 95% of cpu useage... ending that process closed the whole program .

[Ascariss]

Have had zero problems on my pc now with the latest updates, can easily import files and have np problems.

[gusto]

There must be other opinions out there!

[Ascariss]

Yup there are, I'm just a secret agent from sony sent here to skew all the results of connect not working.

but it all depends, trying cp and seeing if it works for you is one thing I recommend.

[Miura]

Hi,

no real Problems with crashes BUT you definately need to have consistent ID tags on your music, otherwise CP will not do what you want.

I would buy the NW 3000 again!Good machine with some weaknesses!

Regards

M

[metal]

If you really worry about CP, you could always use SS 3.4 to transfer your songs, though minus some functions like Artist Link.

[mgillespie]

Hi,

I really want to buy an NWA3000V but I'm put off by the horror stories I've read about the connect software.

I went to my local Sony store today and the assistant told me that Sony have solved all the problems with the software. Forgive me for not trusting a salesman.

I don't want to buy an ipod but I do love the itunes software.

Have the software problems been rectified?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

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.

Edited April 3, 2006 by mgillespie

[eggtimer]

I have the NV-A1000 but the software issues are the same.

It is possible (although unpleasant) to use Sonicstage 3.4 to load your music onto the player. If you are a power user you obviously need other software as well. Here's what I did:

(1) Rip all my CDs to MP3 using EAC and Lame --alt-preset standard

(2) Copy all music intended for the Sony player to a new folder on a different PC harddrive

(3) Use foobar2000 masstagger system to give all files consistent tags (time-consuming, and you need to know foobar2000)

(a) set album names as Artist: Album

( on various artists albums, set track names as ## - Artist: Track and set Artist to be the same for the whole album

(4) Import that folder (no others) into SonicStage3.4

(5) In SonicStage, check the 'Compilation' checkbox on any albums which are still compilations/Various Artists (laborious and time-consuming - you have to do this track by track, three mouse-clicks per track)

(6) Initialise the player's hard disk (from the player's Options menu) to wipe it - note, this will reset all your options to factory defaults.

(7) Use SonicStage to transfer your music to the (now empty) player

Step (7) is fairly quick - took about 10 minutes to transfer 5.1GB, and anyhow you need the player to be connected to the PC for much longer than that to recharge it.

Do not use SonicStage to edit or delete multiple files from its own library, it goes through track by track and takes an hour or more - better to uninstall SonicStage and reinstall it.

Do not use SonicStage to edit tags, convert music etc (unless converting to the Atrac format)

Do not use SonicStage to delete music that is already on your player - either use the player's own Trash function, or just re-initialise the player's hard drive each time.

It really is unbelievable how much Sony's software stinks. The important thing is not to try to use the software to do any operations to multiple tracks at the same time.

Edited April 3, 2006 by eggtimer