SonicStage - Frustration

[harrisi]

Thanks Sony for developing such a poor music interface. Obviously designed as a second thought with little or no development funding.

Microsoft have been designing Media Player interfaces for some time now, yet Sony has to try and re-invent the wheel, and for what - a program that offers no advantage, provides a very poor interface to manage music, and as an interactive tool causes frustration due lack of basic layout and features - If you want us to move to your fantastic ATRAC, then write an import tool that can actually read MP3 Tag information as I now have scattered across my Vaio player tracks in the wrong albums, let alone the tracks which didn't even import (with no errors). Did I mention blank named tracks on the pocket viao even although they are already in SonicStage !

Very poor - either sort it or stick to what you do best - building TV's !!


Can anyone tell me if the pocket Vaio links with Media Player 10 - the less I have to use SonicStage the better.

Version 2.3, my Mini Disk has a better interface !

[Psaila]

If the player¿s firmware has been updated to version 3.0, please
ensure that the software used to transfer the music files to the
player is also updated (use SonicStage version 2.3 or later, or
alternatively VAIO music transfer version 1.2 or later). Firmware
version 3.0 will only function correctly when used in conjunction
with these software versions. Neither SonicStage version 2.0/2.1
nor VAIO music transfer version 1.0/1.1 will recognise the player¿s
upgraded firmware and therefore it will not be possible to transfer
the music files correctly.

pdf of Full List of options May be Read / uploaded Here

[harrisi]

Thanks for the reply. The Vaio player was successfully upgraded on the 2nd day of release along with an update to SonicStage to version 2.3.

Microsoft and others seem to have more feature rich programs, all using MP3 which can be interchanged between programs with ease.

SonicStage, while I can only see an advantage if used with Vaio Media, has very few.

Recently when I imported over 5000 tracks so they could be uploaded to my Vaio player, found 15% were not uploaded, resulting in incomplete albums - no errors were reported through the import to sonicstage.

Has anyone managed to use another media interface rather than SonicStage ?

[ivan-d]

unfortunately sonicstage is the only software around that handles oma/omg files, hence why it is used with the vaio pocket... unless microsoft wishes to license the codec from sony, windows media player cannot support playable music transfer to the pocket. i know its a bummer... right now i'm in the middle of converting my music collection from wma to mp3... i have to say that though wma is far superior to mp3 with regards to sound quality, on a lower bitrate, it is still better to convert to mp3 (for me) than to atrac...

[Michel75]

Sony have finally recognized that SonicStage is bad (before everybody knew this except them) and it looks like they created a special branch to develop things like SS. Lets hope for a good SS 3.0

[ivan-d]

thats great to hear! where did you read this?
i have another problem with sonicstage... its being very picky with my mp3s... most of the times if i transfer an album into sonicstage, some songs aren't recognised as mp3s or anything at all for that matter, it says that they their length is 00:00 and the codec is "unknown". thats just stupid as all of the files were encoded together and there is no reason for just some of them not being recognized... i found the only thing that helps is ripping the cd again... now thats all good if you actually have the cd... and yes, there is nothing wrong the files themselves as they play fine on all other players (even sonicstage for some sick and twisted reason plays them!!!) maybe somebody can help me out?

[Thorin]

@ivan:

some songs aren't recognised as mp3s or anything at all for that matter, it says that they their length is 00:00 and the codec is "unknown". thats just stupid as all of the files were encoded together and there is no reason for just some of them not being recognized

..in this case I work with itunes, i convert it there in mp3 and then i put it with drag and drop to SS.
Thorin

[ivan-d]

thanx i'll try that:smileyhappy:

[Automan]

SonicStage was designed for use with MiniDisc recorders which at most only had a 74 minute play limit at launch time.

With small numbers of tracks SonicStage is fine plus in those days due to limited capacity you would only transfer your favorite tracks to minidisc.

Now with the Vaio Pocket with a 26,000 track limit SonicStage is nearly useless.

It was not designed for HD devices and Sony have just bodged it to make it sort of work with them.

They need to start with a clean slate and design a program for use with high capacity devices and of course the ability to edit playlists with ease.

Automan.

[harrisi]

It looks like i'm not the only one with frustrations then - which is a comfort, but reality is, we have a great player, it's just that we are not able to make the most of it !!

I use mine in the living room, a great product for having all your tunes in one place, and stops the morning after clearing up of CD's or worse finding the wrong CD in the wrong box.

If sony are going to redevelop SS then some suggestions would not go a miss - if they listen to the actual users they could build a great product. While they are at it another update to the VP wouldn't go a miss.

Some ideas :

An active playlist - being able to add to a playlist while it's playing (like the squeeze box). This would prevent any interruption to play. (VP)

Use of Reference ID's for songs. If you have a number of custom playlists you actually use up disk space storing the same song twice. A playlist could use the song ID rather than the storing the song again.(VP)

Iain