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Connect Vs SonicStage CP 4.0 for the NWA3000

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ConnectUser

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I have had my NWA3000 since April, and have been using the Connect Software supplied with it, upgrading when necessary.

As we all know, Connect is clunky, slow and tempramental. This has not caused me major problems as some users have found, just inconvience due to the software's bad design, and it's slow speed.

I have now downloaded SonicStage CP 4.0, which should support the NWA3000 and it's various features. However, I am not sure whether to transfer my library to this software now for the following reasons:

The Sony website advises that I delete all music from my MP3 player before using it's transfer tool to migrate my library from Connect to SonicStage. This makes me nervous. Can anybody tell me if the the transfer keeps a record of the existing play history in SonicStage? One of the features I quite like is the top 100, and I don't want this to have to be built up from scratch again.

Another concern I have is that having had a quick look at SonicStage after I downloaded it, it doesn't look too great anyway. Is it easier to use than Connect, or am I better off sticking with what I know already?

Are there other problems in using the NWA3000 with SonicStage, for example, is the walkman's performance adversly affected?

Has anybody undertaken a similar transfer, and if so, did it take long, and were there any problems.

Your help would be much appreciated.

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I too, was reluctant to make the switch as I found Connect generally OK. But I plucked up courage a few weeks ago, upgraded to firmware v3.00 and SSCP4.0. Immediately I was alarmed by how slow my A3000 was when searching by initial letters. Horrendously so. I found a tip on here which advised to connect the A3000 without opening SS, then defrag it. Instant success and speeds back to normal.

I have a few issues with SS, but then Connect had it's own problems. My first reaction was to switch back to Connect for the following reasons :-

1. Editing a track in the library of SS does not edit the track on the player. I have to connect the player and edit it on there too.

2. Deleting a track in the library of SS does not delete it off the player. (Others may see this as a good point.)

3. When the player is connected, the tracks can't be listed as one complete list. They are displayed by Artist Name or Group. I found something on here to enable them to be displayed by album but that's not as simple as it sounds if you have compilations with various artists. It's much harder to find a track on the player when it's displayed through SS.

However, I vowed to try it out for a week and have stuck with SS ever since. I like the way you can display tracks according to the date transferred. My main reason for sticking is that you can edit multiple tracks at once, whereas Connect wouldn't let you highlight and edit a group of tracks. There still seems to be the odd bug e.g. I have a track which keeps transferring every time I connect my player (maybe I should turn auto-update off?) so I had the same track 3 times when I looked at the album. I also noticed that after a few weeks of use, my player had fewer tracks than SS. Eleven tracks had gone from the A3000 and I swear I haven't deleted them knowingly.

I notice SSCP v4.2 is now out. I think I'll upgrade to that and see if that solves any of my issues. But even if it doesn't, I'm sticking with SS. At least until Connect gets upgraded!

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I only vaguely looked at CP, and it really made me think of the OpenMG Simple MD/Sonicstage Simple Burner soft of old that we used to use as standard with ATRAC CD decks til SS 2.0 came along, and some people still use for direct CD to MD transfer on Net MD.

Basically, consider Connect Player to be the 'simple mode' choice of software, if you dont need to support any other types of deck and/or dont need the extras of SS, then you may feel happier to stick with CP.

Personally, i reckon most dont regret moving to SS CP and happily discarded the original CP to the virtual trashcan ;)

I work with three types of ATRAC deck, CD Walkman and NW-A's and Net/Hi-MD's, so really SS is the only game in town for transfer/management unless i want to crud up the machine with two or more instances of essentially the same thing with diff levels of facilities.

Go with your instincts, that's the best advice i can give.

'Tom Kat'

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Thanks for sharing your views and experiences.

My instinct is to stick with what I know. Like I said, apart from the speed of starting up CP, and its slightly erratic behaviour, it does what I need it to do. It could be better, but SS doesn't sound like the answer to me at the moment. Alas, I'm pretty sure CP will never get further upgrades.

If anyone else has any similar experieces they would like to share, please do...

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Hey ConnectUser,

I had the chance to use Connect player as well as every incarnation of OpenMG/Sonicstage, and I must say that I think Connect player is either hit or miss, while SonicStage seems to be better for the majority of netwalkman users..

I installed connect player on two systems..

1. Laptop: 2.30Ghz Celeron/1GB RAM/WinXP

2. Desktop: 1.5Ghz P4/512MB RAM/WinXP

Even though the desktop is considerably slower than the laptop, the laptop installation was a nightmare, with Connect player freezing up, and not syncing up properly.

I think the Connect player experience relies heavily on how "clean" your installation of Windows is. The more cluttered it is, the more problems you may run into

With SonicStage, (especially with this newest version out 4.2), it syncs up properly and doesn't freeze up on me on either system. The major features of Connect have been ported over (rating system/ artist link/ playback history/etc..) and with the newest SonicStage I feel is the least "bloated" of recent ones, with it opening up within 10 seconds.

It's been a while since I last touched Connect Player, but I remember it kept building database in the beginning, which took quite a long time sometimes.

As always, there might always be a personal bias, since I've used SonicStage for all these years (at least 6?) and the basic look and feel of it has been pretty similar throughout. So yeah, like others have said, it's best to stick with what you know. If you feel adventurous, I'd highly suggest giving SonicStage a try. Otherwise, go with what you know :)

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