Sonicstage v4.0 woes (artist order)

[JamieB]

Right-

I have the latest firmware for my NW-A3000. and thought I'd update Sonicstage to version 4.0 from 3.4 (which worked fine).

Not only have I noticed that my player is slower after the 3.0 firmware update, since hooking it up to the new Sonicstage, the artists are now no longer stored in alphabetical order (the logical way) they are displayed under album title, on both Sonicstage and the player. This is no use to me at all. I'm going to have to register for the Minidisc forum, uninstall ver 4.0, reinstall 3.4 and PRAY that the artists are re-organised into alphabetical order. If not, I am going to be very annoyed...

Has this happened with anyone else, and if so, how did they fix it? J

Edited June 5, 2006 by JamieB

[JamieB]

Just in case anybody has a similar problem, I have now removed ver 4.0 and gone back to 3.4 with no problems, all back in alphabetical order (big sigh of relief).

I'd like to put ver 4.0 back on, if anybody knows how I can work around this that'd be great.

Cheers, Jamie

(PS- I recommend Sennheiser CX-300 IEM's if you want a cheap and noticeable upgrade from the stock NW-A3000 buds)

Edited June 5, 2006 by JamieB

[Beethovenian]

This is weird. I don't use SonicStage 4 to load my player because it makes it too slow, but when I did it, I didn't notice anything different about the artist order. What do you mean by having artists under album title? What kind of order is that? If you go to A in artists, does it show albums instead of artists?

[JamieB]

I was so annoyed that I simply switched back to the old version, I din't spend long looking at what the upgrade had done to the list. All I know is that before the first few artists (when sorted by artist) on the player were AC/DC, Arcade Fire etc, whereas after the upgrade this order was changed, but I wasn't sure about the exact layout.

What program do you use to load the player? If I didn't have to use that program, then I wouldn't! When you say "it makes it too slow" do you mean the pc you are using, or the player? Do you know of a way I can speed up my player, now that I have slowed it down? Sorry for all the questions!

The artists seem to be displayed in a bizarre order, with the album title AND artist title being used to create the list. Now that I have put SonicStage v3.4 back on, it reverted to normal alphabetic artist display.

I have defragmented the player, but I find it takes longer to load up from 'off' now than previously, and longer to jump from 'now playing' back to the artist list.

Many thanks for any help, J

Edited June 6, 2006 by JamieB

[peterjf]

I found the same issue on my NW-A608 when I installed SS 4.0 on my PC at work. While it is less of an issue on this player than it would be on my NW-HD5H, it is still an inconvenience. As I am not really bothered about missing things like Artist Link (and as my two HD players do not support the extra features anyway), I have not installed SS 4.0 at home.

Hopefully the next generation of players will go back to listing contents by album (as the HD1 does), but I am not holding my breath...

[ub_]

After my upgrade to sscp 4 all tracks I transfered to my a3000 where listed under etc in the Artist list and all my mp3's in SS had no tag info, ie no track order, track name etc..

The firmware is definitely slower, the "see you later" display when it shuts down stutters now, not the smooth fade in it was before, other stuff is slower too.

I use the shuffle all feature a lot and it can take up to a minute to start playing now after I select this ( was only about 20 secs with the easlier firmware, however the tracks are more random so that's one good thing.

[Beethovenian]

Very bizarre, I have no idea what is happening with these changes in artists orders. I didn't notice anything like that when I used SonicStage 4.

I'm using Connect Player to transfer to the Walkman. Even though Sony has officially discontinued it, I find that SonicStage 4 makes my player unbearably slow to navigate. It takes 2 or 3 seconds just to move from the A to the B column while browsing the list of artists. Apparently, defragmenting the Walkman helps, but I'm still not willing to try it.

ub, did you check if your mp3s have just one type of tag (like id3v2 or id3v1)? Maybe the player reads only one type and you had the other. Though that doesn't make sense if you had them before displaying the correct info. I don't know what's going on. Just when you thought Sony was getting things right...

[JamieB]

I have defragmented my NW-A3000 twice now (both times it was hardly fragmented at all). I have used around 9 Gig of space, and I found it was quite fast before the v3.0 firmware update. I expect using SonicStage v4.0 has made it even slower.

The shutdown screen is reminiscent of the startup screen on a Sega Megadrive/Genesis, all pixelated. I have absolutely no care about the animation/screensaver/clock/calendar etc, these things are useless to me. My CD player has none of these trivialities, why does Sony insist on putting them on this player? I would rather they spent time speeding up everything than giving me these functions I will never use.

It would be VERY good if they could alter the length of time the player will remain on pause before shutting down- if they created an "automatic turn off after x seconds" option, I would be very happy. As it is, if I answer the phone, print off something, talk to someone, the machine turns off after 10 or so seconds, then, after the v3.0 update, takes a while to go back to playing the track. What a pain.

J

Edited June 6, 2006 by JamieB

[userno2]

Yes i have the same prob, this is from my post in an incorrect thread.

I haven't updated my A3000 firmware, but i did update Sonicstage to 4.0.

When I connected my player it SS updated the players database. When I'm looking for tracks I can either search one long list from 'a-z' or another long list 'etc' for all options.. The a-z list is unsorted (the first album name begins with a 's'. Infact all the various lists are sorted incorrectly.

Can anyone help with this?

Also does artist link function still mess up the ID tags on mp3s?

Sorry if this in the wrong thread but is seems to cover a number of topics

[justified_sinner]

I think I've posted something similar on another part of the forum; so if it looks familar, apologies!

I downloaded the new software yesterday and it look a frighteningly long time - so long in fact I thought my machine was on its way out. But everything was OK until I then connected the machine to SS4. It took ages to adjust and load new info but then came the real surprise.

Yes, I now have clock/calendar/intelligent features etc but what has gone is any order of my CDs in Albums. Totally gone has the organisation by letter A, B, C etc which has now been replaced by by a stark choice between either 'A-Z' or 'etc'. And the really odd thing is that the A-Z is not remotely alphabetical! What has happened?!

I used the Albums to get CDs recorded as I have mostly classical music and it was easier to sort that way. I've gone from a beautifully arranged library to a complete jumble. Also if I've got a piece of music that comes as 2 or 3 CDs, the player has now split some of those up making it even more difficult to find (and yet it hasn't done this to everything).

Any help/advice/explanations?

[Beethovenian]

So it seems that this is one of the bad collateral effects of SS4. I suppose if you reformat your hard-drive and transfer your files again via SS4 the albums will reappear in order. Why they don't do it when you're just upgrading to the new software is anyone's guess. And this is particularly annoying when you consider that SS4 is much slower to transfer than SS3.4, probably because of the artistlink feature, which I wish Sony just got rid of (as it works now, I don't really see utility for it; it should just be another shuffle option in the menu, without requiring all this CDDB thing).

[userno2]

it should just be another shuffle option in the menu, without requiring all this CDDB thing).

You can set the artist link yourself all it does it group artists together, why they could'use the tack genre to do this i don't know.

[ub_]

So it seems that this is one of the bad collateral effects of SS4. I suppose if you reformat your hard-drive and transfer your files again via SS4 the albums will reappear in order. Why they don't do it when you're just upgrading to the new software is anyone's guess. And this is particularly annoying when you consider that SS4 is much slower to transfer than SS3.4, probably because of the artistlink feature, which I wish Sony just got rid of (as it works now, I don't really see utility for it; it should just be another shuffle option in the menu, without requiring all this CDDB thing).

Re-formatting does not fix this, how could they miss such an obvious fault

[Beethovenian]

Re-formatting does not fix this, how could they miss such an obvious fault

So odd. And the amazing thing is that all these problems were created because Sony didn't do the right thing of putting the "intelligent" features directly in the player, as Rio did almost three years ago with the Karma. That certainly makes SS, and CP before, bloated and more difficult to handle. Not to mention that it's ridiculous that you have to connect the player to the PC software to have a song you just played displayed in the Play History.

[JamieB]

I think that Sony have forgotten what this machine is all about... playing music. I don't need to be told what artists are similar to the one I just listened to, I bought all the music that is on the player without this silly function! Basically, all I want the player to do is turn on (quickly), play the music that I ask it to play (which is stored in a sensible, easy to find order) and play the music with good sound quality and long battery life. I think the NW-A3000 has the latter points sorted, I can't fault the sound and the length of life the player has. But I just see no point in these gimmicky features (like the clock, screensaver, calendar, artist link, etc) and feel that the software is targeted at these gimmicks.

The only way I found to get the artist order back to alphabetical was to uninstall SS v4.0 and re-install SS v3.4. I haven't installed SS v4.0 since.

I don't even keep the music that I have transferred from my CD collection on my pc, as it caused it to operate so slowly. I only have the atrac3plus and mp3 fles stored on the player. I know I'm in trouble if the player has a fault or I lose the tracks, but I have all the albums that I have transferred over on hard copy anyway.

I just hope that Sony bring out a rapid update to both the firmware and the software, removing these glitches and gimmicks and enhancing the usability of both SonicStage and the NW series of players. Jamie

Edited June 8, 2006 by JamieB

[Beethovenian]

Agree with everything you said, JamieB. I just timed the startup time of the A3000, from sleep to playing music, and it took 14.4 seconds, three times what the HD1 takes. It's too much for features that I doubt people will consistently use after an initial curiosity. Not to mention that these features are useless if you don't frequently connect the player to its software. (Thinking about that, Sony seems to overcharge for its hardware, since they don't provide enough cache memory to avoid slowdowns during navigation nor embed the "intelligence" of its features into the player itself.)

[userno2]

for people who want there track order back try this.

Connect the player to your pc, start up connect player (not sonic stage), it will read the player and transfer something. I then closed connect player, and started up sonice stage. Unplugged player and check it, the all the listings have re-ordered and and there no longer a a-z monolith.

[JamieB]

Cheers for the tip, unfortunatley I have totally uninstalled Connect from my PC, I couldn't wait to remove it (thinking stupidly that there would be no glitches with SS v4.0). I think I'll just use SS v3.4 until a better version of SonicStage is released.

Thanks for letting us know, Jamie

(Oh, has anybody else realised how long the player takes to 'fully drain' the battery? It seems to go from full, to almost empty fairly quickly, but then stays on nearly empty for AGES. I tried to do a monthly total drain of the battery and had it playing on the 'empty' display for almost a whole day!)

[kaledi]

I don't have a NWA series walkman, but I'm pretty sure that I have seen in the transfer settings the option to turn artist link off - i.e. that info won't transfer to the device. I could be wrong and I'm at work at the moment and therefore can't check myself. However, go to transfer settings for your device and the advanced button.

The slow battery drain is surely a reflection of the immense battery life these machines posses! The battery in the NWA3000 is a Li-ion, so surely it doesn't need a periodical drain?

[JamieB]

Maybe I have been running it down for totally no reason then! What a fool I am. I simply meant that the full, then half full, then a bit empty stages seem comparatively equal, whereas the nearly empty stage seems to last a great deal longer- I guess it is designed to give the owner leeway so they recharge the player before it dies (much like an empty fuel warning on a car).

Well at least I know now not to run the battery to totally empty every month or so (saying that, it just died on me in work... it'll be a quiet afternoon!)

Cheers, Jamie

[martins]

I had similar trouble when upgrading from 3.3 to CP. However I then formatted my NWA 1000 and transferred my 1500 plus songs back from SSCP. Everything now works. Songs, albums and artists are all filed alphabetically and the Initial search works. It took about 20 minutes to transfer the 1500 songs.