Sony NWA3000 Walkman
Well we’re not sure if you’ll be able to wait until the end of October to be able to get your hands on this super cool Sony NWA3000 Walkman. This is being released to coincide with the big launch of the Ipod Nano, and it certainly is going to be the rival to it. The NWA3000 as it is manufactured by Sony gives it the experience of years of successful musical gadgets backing it up. Sony released the original Walkman in the 1980’s when we were so used to having tape cassettes and then moved onto CD’s. This is the best Mp3 player that they have released.
Remarkable this small, pocket sized gadget can store up to 13,000 tracks so you have plenty of room on the 20GB hard drive. This is a vast increase from the storage that the Ipod Nano has, at just 4GB. To go with this increased capacity, the Sony NWA3000 has a 35 hour battery life which means you can be without your charger for much longer periods of time. In comparison the Nano has a battery life of just 14 hours.
The one thing that stands out on the new Sony Walkman is the display. How impressed were we when we saw it. It’s nothing like we had seen before. The text on the display comes through the outer case, so when the gadget is turned off you would not realise the display was on it. It is highly visible and crystal clear when it’s switched on. Also the menu on the display is easily navigable. The software on the Sony is great too with features such as the Artist link which suggests similar songs to listen to, and the Time Machine Shuffle which plays songs from a chosen year. Added to this is the Favourite Shuffle which will play songs randomly from your most listened to tracks. Just like having your very own DJ in your pocket. This Mp3 player will sell in the UK for around £190-£199 and will be available in a range of colours including black (as shown), Silver, Lilac and Pink.
Postscript: Looking to take the Volume Limiter / Restrictor off your European Sony Walkman, then see link
Postscript: If you are looking to incorporate the Sony Walkman into a mobile phone check out the Sony Ericsson W900 Walkman mobile phone.
October 30th, 2005 at 11:37 am
Thankyou for your review, it is the best one i’ve found!
November 4th, 2005 at 5:47 pm
I’d choose this over a pink Ipod
November 4th, 2005 at 5:57 pm
At the moment you’d have to as the Pink Ipod Mini’s are very hard to come by in the UK. People are still wanting the Mini iPod over the Nano due to the screen problems with the Nanos.
November 8th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
Check out amazon for the price, the price is £176
November 8th, 2005 at 9:19 pm
Aloso the 6GB version comes in blue
November 8th, 2005 at 9:22 pm
Somebody tell me if it has a volume restrictor on it though, cause if it can’t be cancelled out easily i wont get it
November 13th, 2005 at 6:38 pm
volume restrictor can be cancelled if required
November 14th, 2005 at 1:27 am
Anyone know if it
a) definitely will play .wma files as well as mp3s and atrac, and
b) can be used as an external hard-drive (and if so what limits to hard-drive usage it has)
November 14th, 2005 at 11:14 am
Hi Jimmy
The Sony NWA3000 converts songs to it’s own format,
Data conversion from MP3 / WMA / WAV to ATRAC3 or ATRAC3plus
As for using it as an external HDD we would say no.
Techlounge
November 15th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
I am really keen to get one of these. However, i currently have a battered old iPod, but 2000 songs on it… is it going to be possible to simply move them all from iTunes to Select/sonicstage? or I am going to need to be more clever do we think?
Cheers!
November 15th, 2005 at 12:25 pm
Bought one on Sunday, thrilled with ease of use and sound quality. So much better looking and better made than the IPod. Is a real quality device.
It can store files in MP3 format if you want to do that. I have found Atrac quality good so far but not tried any classical music.
November 15th, 2005 at 12:44 pm
I am interested to see the positive comments above re the Connect Player software that comes with the NWA3000. After installation the software ran extremely slowly on my PC – and eventually came to a complete standstill. I am aware that others have experienced this problem with this current version (1.0) of Connect Player.
Two days and several re-installations later I eventually gave up and downloaded Sonic Stage 3.3 from the Sony website instead.
This does work with the NWA3000 – except that it doesn’t allow you to take advantage of the intelligent shuffle feature.
I eagerly await an updated version of Connect Player.
November 15th, 2005 at 5:33 pm
I’ve downloaded the new connect player update from their website (http://www.sonydigital-link.com/dna/wm/NWH/NWH.asp?l=en&m=NW-A3000) . Solved most of my problems, I guess that’s the price you pay for new software. It’s better than SonicStage already, but still some job to do, good thing is the soft upgrades itself regularly so pretty soon we’ll have the perfect soft
November 15th, 2005 at 6:40 pm
Thanks woko – but have just got the very latest update and tried again – It still goes like a snail. I suppose I will have to stick with Sonic Stage for now.
November 17th, 2005 at 4:18 pm
Does anyone know the dimensions for the NWA3000?
I can’t seem to find them anywhere
Thanks
November 17th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
Hi Tekkie
The dimensions of the Sony Walkman are
H 10.4 x W 6.52 x D 2.14 cms
Hope this helps
Techlounge
November 18th, 2005 at 12:09 am
Question:
Does the file allow the easy drag and drop of MP3 files from your CDs or backups or does all transfers have to be routed through the device.
Is the battery itself replaceable?
Thanks in advance,
Dave
November 18th, 2005 at 6:32 am
yes the battery is replaceable, but it isn’t removeable like on the HD5. drag and drop is possible in the Connect player. it has native mp3 support, wma support arrives in december via a firmware update.
November 19th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
A quick question:
Does anyone know whether you can make playlists on-the-go with the new Sony?
Thanks
November 19th, 2005 at 7:45 pm
hi, i am thinking about asking for one of these for christmas. I was wondering if anybody knew if they broke or anything. my friend says that she knew somebody who got one and then had to have a replacement twice before changing to an iPod. However, i have heard iPods have problems too. She tends to lie to make herself sound better, so just wondering. also, are you sure they are 10cm tall???? i saw one in dixons and im sure it wasnt that big….
sorry for confusing you all! laura xxx
November 19th, 2005 at 9:41 pm
yes, you can use the nwa3000 as a harddrive. download the manual to learn how to do it: Sony NWA 3000 manual
November 19th, 2005 at 9:48 pm
laura: i’ve ordered one from amazon today, so i haven’t got it yet, but have heard only good things re the quality of the nwa series. there are two sizes: nwa1000 with a smaller harddrive (6gb) and the nwa3000 with a bigger harddrive (20gb). the nwa3000 is also bigger in it self, so the one you saw must have been the nwa1000; it’s only 8.8cm tall.
November 19th, 2005 at 10:23 pm
thankyou andreas, you have helped clear this up! also does using it as a harddrive mean that you can use it as a portable storage device? im not good with all this technical stuff!!! so does it mean that you could put a word document on it and then take it to another computer? i read this somewhere but then comebody further up said no…..so confusing…..
November 20th, 2005 at 3:31 pm
Hi Laura, the sizes of the Sony Walkmans differ buy model. For instance the NWA1000 is (H)8.8, (W)5.5, (D)1.87cm.
November 20th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
thanks!
November 20th, 2005 at 9:24 pm
Wonder if anyone can help – will windows recognise this player as an external drive? ie will I be able to transfer drag and drop tunes from a PC Windows without Sony SS or Connect software installed? In the manual it says you can, but I need to know if the player is recgnised as an external drive BEFORE any Sony drivers or software have been installed (so I can use it at internet cafes / with friends PCs etc). Also, is the charger cable standard USB?
Thanks in advance
November 20th, 2005 at 9:42 pm
i’m really interested in buying one of these but i don’t get a lot of the technical stuff so please bear with me! just a few q’s…
do you have to pay to get music off sony?
can you get songs and stuff off cd’s?
how do you charge it up?
to someone who’s got one… isn’t it quite big?
November 20th, 2005 at 11:20 pm
You do have to pay to get music from the Sony connect site – from what I have been able to see (on the few moments that I got access to the Sony site before the connect software hung again) tracks seem to cost 99p each.
Yes you can get songs off cds but a number of people including myself have had difficulty doing this with the Connect software – which for a lot of people simply does not work properly (even in its latest version). You can get round this by downloading Sonic Stage software instead from Sony – if you do it that way then although the listening quality is excellent you can’t use the special intelligent shuffle functions of the player.
You can charge it up from a PC using the USB connection or from the mains (which is faster) with the supplied adaptor.
November 20th, 2005 at 11:39 pm
thanx! what do you think the iklihood of the Connect software being improved is? i’d like to be able to use the shuffle functions if possible so i’d rather not use Sonic Stage… i also think my computer maybe a little too slow to deal with it… by the way… sorry for sending the last message twice! as i said, not very good with technology!
November 21st, 2005 at 2:47 pm
Is it possible to downloand music from iTunes onto this? Looking at getting one for my girlfriend but haven’t got a clue how all this works!!
November 21st, 2005 at 11:42 pm
Connect is so bad (the worst piece of software I have come accross in years!) that it will have to be improved quickly if Sony is serious about selling this player. I presume they are working on it now but who knows how long it will take.
November 22nd, 2005 at 11:14 am
does anyone know how to cancel the volume restrictor on the nw-a1000? or can someone recommend a link to a website that can?
November 23rd, 2005 at 4:22 am
does anyone know if the NWA 3000 can accept a remote controller (like on MD players?) If so, which model remote would I need?
thanks in advance
November 23rd, 2005 at 10:01 am
I’m new to all this MP3 stuff so could someone let me know if this player will play podcasts from radio station websites like the BBC?
Thanks
November 23rd, 2005 at 10:23 am
Raiden > I found out there will be a remote controller called Sony RM-NWS1, due to be released in December. Try searching for it on the net for more info.
Rio > Podcasts are usually simple recordings of a show, encoded in usually mp3 – so of course you will be able to download and listen the podcasts.
November 23rd, 2005 at 1:26 pm
Thanks for the reply – sorry if it was a dumb question
November 23rd, 2005 at 1:35 pm
thanks for the info, martin
November 24th, 2005 at 10:15 am
hey peeps i was gonna ask for one of these for christmas do you think i shud because i have a really slow computer and by the sounds of the software it may die completely so if sum1 can answer plz do cheers
November 24th, 2005 at 12:56 pm
Hey Jimmy, if Connect will be slow just use SonicStage (you will find it on the net) to upload the music. It should work fine, and anyway, Sony will definitely fix this software problem some time later.
November 24th, 2005 at 10:15 pm
hello people,
just wondering if people get the same problem i do with my nwa3000.
the problem is that it takes a very long time when i open up connect and ive only got 1000 tunes on it so far.
the other problem i have is that it just will not import half the tunes i want to import, it just keeps skipping them.
replies are welcomed
November 25th, 2005 at 10:17 am
enver > if you’ll read through all the comments you’ll see the people say SonicStage is better – did you try that?
and re the skipped tunes while importing – is it possible that those tunes are different by some way? like an unsupported file format or so? anyway, I think the SonicStage would solve this problem too.
November 25th, 2005 at 5:51 pm
Just gotta say that the Sony Walkman is fantastic. Been wow’ing my friends with mine. Better than any ipod in sound quality and looks
November 25th, 2005 at 7:54 pm
right… asked a little earlier on if the software from sony was really that bad and someone suggested Sonic stage does that really mean you cant use the shuffle function?
November 25th, 2005 at 8:00 pm
martin, you said the sony software will get improved some time later… is that like soon? coz i REALLY want one but cant work out whether the softwares gonna let it all down!
November 25th, 2005 at 8:23 pm
i got mine yesterday, and can confirm three things:
1) it will work as a plug-n-play removable drive under windows xp
2) the connect software is really crap (but i use sonicstage, thats’ just a little crap..)
3) it looks incredibly cool!
oh, and it’s quite a good mp3 player as well..
November 26th, 2005 at 1:01 am
I bought one last week from Amazon.co.uk and immediately experienced problems with Connect: Slow to load and shut down, wouldn’t allow me to import specific tracks or folders – had to scan local drives which picked up EVERY sound file on my PC all 8987 of them. Even so it wouldn’t let me upload anything to my NW-A3000. Went to see a Sony dealer who assured me it was just bugs in the Connect software and should be patient and wait for patches and updates.
After reading this thread decided to try Sound Stage: It operated much faster and seem to be uploading successfully until I got error message pop up.
“Windows – Delayed Write Failed Windows was unable to save the dat for the file I:\OMGAUDIO\10F00\10000004.OMA. The data has been lost. This error may have been caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.”
I am getting really p***ed off with the fact I have a really cool looking and rather expensive electronic paper weight! Can anyone suggest anything?
November 26th, 2005 at 11:22 am
Hi, I have a NW-A1000. It’s very good apart from the volume is too low (thanks French Governement).
Does anyone know of a fix for the volume limiter yet?
Beacuse of this I much prefer my HD-5, I also prefer the operating system.
Mark.
November 26th, 2005 at 9:17 pm
Have Sony A-3000 but could not get Connect Software to work – Every time I started it my computer crashed and restarted with a then serious error notice – Tried several removes and re-installes to no avail
Desparate to get the A-3000 working I used SonicStage V3.1.00.03290 which I use for my NW-E99 – It works great and all functions on the A-3000 perfect – No crashes and can add further albums at any time
A-3000 sound thro good earphones or on line-out to my Hi-Fi is “MAGIC”
Sony have a superb pice of kit with the A-3000 and I will only change to Connect Software when I see on the web that they have issued a Bug-Free programme that works as good as SonicStage V3.1.00.03290
Anyone having problems with Connect should try the above version of SonicStage they may be surprised at how efficient and steady a programme it is
November 26th, 2005 at 10:30 pm
hi. I was just wondering if the Sony NWA3000 was worth buying instead of the Ipod Video 30GB which are both at similar prices.
And also i was wondering how the Sony NWA3000 could hold up 13,000 songs on a 20GB and Ipod can only hold up 7,500 on a 30gGB.
Gef
November 27th, 2005 at 11:46 am
stephen… i havent got one yet, you might have just put me off… but hey! at least you have an incredibly cool paperweight!
November 27th, 2005 at 11:48 am
bdw, whats the dimesions for the NWA3000?
November 27th, 2005 at 10:28 pm
hi i have a nw-a100 but it’s stopped at the mo- theres a constant clicking noise from inside the unit- initially the screen freezes with the connect logo when it shuts down, then theres just a constant cd moving round on the screen when it is restarted!? it happened before but fixed itself- does anyone have the same problem !?! or know how to fix it!?? cheers!
November 28th, 2005 at 10:35 am
Hi Charlie
The dimensions of the Sony NWA3000 Walkman are
(H) 10.4 x (W) 6.52 x (D) 2.14 cms
NWA1000 is (H)8.8, (W)5.5, (D)1.87cm.
Techlounge
November 28th, 2005 at 10:39 am
David > I would definately get your NWA1000 back to where you got it from… the clicking noise sounds very dodgy
November 28th, 2005 at 12:21 pm
You can hear it from there? Must be dodgy.
I have the a3000 and am very pleased with the unit itself, but the software sucks. There has been a major update to it which now gets the software to a useable state (yes it really was unusable on release – poor show sony) and I’m using it every day.
Sound quality is good, althogh I havn’t converted the files to ATRAC format (which is what permits you to hold 13000 songs on the device) so I’m not sure on how they sound.
All in all I love it. Just hoping Sony continue to update the software.
November 28th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
I have spent two days struggling with software. Connect will install OK but will not open. It hangs on the flash screen. I see from earlier comments it takes time to open but how long? The update on the Sony site does not seem to apply to my version. SonicStage let me upload one CD but it crashed when I tried to add MP3s from my PC to the music library and will not now reopen. My PC exceeds all the system requirements and no amount of reinstalling either program seems to improve anything. Any suggestions?
November 28th, 2005 at 2:54 pm
Hi John. To get the latest update I would uninstall your version of CONNECT, then goto C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data and delete the sony library folder contained within. Then reinstall your software from the CD provided with your player and make sure you don’t skip the downloading of the update which it should do automatically.
You should notice a great improvement. There is an animated “progress bar” similar to when you load windows, on the splash screen of the updated CONNECT software.
Hope this helps.
November 28th, 2005 at 8:58 pm
Are you able to simply transfer music from PC onto the new sony walkman without using the Connect software?
November 28th, 2005 at 10:23 pm
Hi guys, all this info is really good, i wanna get this sweet looking device but the key factor in choosing the sony nwa3000 or the new ipod is VOLUME! I had a net md that the french government decided to limit the volume.
Does anyone know the output (watts) of the nwa3000 amplifier?
November 29th, 2005 at 12:46 am
DJ – you can transfer the music to the player by drag and drop through windows, however it will not play it – it will just be like a portable harddrive. You need to use the software to transfer tunes to be able to listen to them through the player. If you dont like the CONNECT software, Sonicstage is also compatible although you will have to go without the artist link function.
Pumba – No idea, sorry. But it’s loud enough for me. As in some tracks are too loud and I have to turn it down. I know that probably doesn’t help you.
November 29th, 2005 at 1:28 am
Bill – Thanks for the advice but no success. I get the splash screen with the animated progress bar but that’s as far as it goes. The program will not open. I’m at a loss
November 29th, 2005 at 1:50 am
John – Ok, so you have the updated version. If you are comfortable in doing so i would try uninstalling again and removing all registry entries before doing a reinstall.
Other than that I’m also at a loss mate. Sorry.
November 30th, 2005 at 9:02 am
Does anyone know if this player will be available in the U.S. and if so when? If not, do you think I’ll have problems with the software or hardware if I import it from the UK? Thanks
November 30th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
to anyone who’s bought one at amazon- my brother reckons that amazon’s crap when you try and order stuff. roughly how long was it before you got yours? also, with this artist function thing… is it like the menus on the ipod? oh! by the way, has anyone got the Connect Software to work for them? like at all? thanx!
November 30th, 2005 at 5:07 pm
are these any bigger or smaller than an ipod?
November 30th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
ok… just one more… if you buy one now and then they update the Connect Software, can you still get the new software… and do you have to pay for it? sorry… i know that sounds like a stupid question!
November 30th, 2005 at 5:41 pm
I have had trouble actually installing the Connect software on my machine. The bottom few lines of the text in the install window is cut off so at the relevant point I can’t tick the “I accept the terms and conditions” bit to unghost the next button. I know its my machine because I installed it fine on a friends PC with the same install disc.
Has anyone else had similar trouble, did you fix it and how?
Thanks
November 30th, 2005 at 6:24 pm
charlie > as far as I know the Connect software is free. the dimension comparison is here: http://www.techlounge.co.uk/78/which-mp3-player.html . as for the amazon – I recon the dates should be stated once you proceed with the checkout, they also depend on the type of delivery you choose.
Stephen Ginever > try scrolling the Terms and Conditions down to the bottom, there’s a chance the NEXT button will grey out then. Or just use the TAB button to cycle through the elements of the form and change their values by pressing the SPACE button.
December 1st, 2005 at 11:52 am
Hi,
I have an old NWHD1 and its broken beyond repair. My insurance company are about to send me a huge cheque to buy a new player and I wan’t this one! However as my computer has been around since the beginning of time, it has Windows 98SE. Will this player need a newer operating system to work? I have been trawling the net for days looking for somewhere, ANYWHERE, that says which OS my PC needs, but I can’t find it anywhere. I might be a fool (quite possible) but I haven’t a clue if this will work. I can’t go on with music much longer so somebody please help me out!
Cheers,
Batty Betty
December 1st, 2005 at 12:53 pm
Hi Batty Betty. The best place to go for system requirements is the Connect store. If you go to the page and click the link in the top right hand corner the specs will appear in a pop up.
They recommend that you have at least a 450Mhz processor, 2GB HDD, 128mb RAM and a CDR/RW drive.
Hope this helps, Techlounge
December 1st, 2005 at 4:35 pm
what i meant was… if i buy it now, will i have to pay for the new and better software when that comes out at a later date?! sorry!
December 1st, 2005 at 9:22 pm
My best guess is that any future upgrades to the Connect software will be freely downloadable – as the only people who would want it would be those who have the hardware to go with it.
I downloaded SonicStage:3.3.03.10270 from Sony free of charge – it works fine for me – and with this player – but as I said before it doesn’t allow you to use the fancy intelligent shuffle and artist link features of the NWA3000 (you can still shuffle within albums and playlists etc).
I ordered mine from amazon and it was delivered a couple of days later – that part was excellent. If only the software had been as good!
As far as volume goes I think it has plenty – I have never had to turn it up full – though I suppose that will partly depend on what headphones you use. It has a volume limiting function which you can switch on and off via a menu. For those who want to plug it in to an external system, the headphone socket can also be converted to a dedicated line out socket (again via a menu option).
December 1st, 2005 at 9:47 pm
wondeerful! thank you stewart! the playlists… are they like the ones on ipods? and by the way, what headphones are you using?
December 2nd, 2005 at 11:42 pm
Hi anybody, I have a HD 5 and was thinking of getting the 3000 instead, however I have 7g of music on the HD-5, does any one know if it is possible to just transfer all my music in to the my library section of sonic stage and then plug the new player in and transfer it all on to that one??
December 4th, 2005 at 5:38 pm
can anyone please give me an adress of where to download sonicstage V3.1.00.03290 or V.3.3.03.10270; also which one is better?
im thinking of buying a sony nwa1000 but i am worried about the problems with the software, does sonicstage work completely fine with it??
thanx
xx
December 4th, 2005 at 7:00 pm
Does it come with a case in the box?
December 5th, 2005 at 10:13 am
Miriam > you can download the sonic stage version 3.3.* here: http://www.sonydigital-link.com/DNA/sonicstage/sstage_dl.asp – the newest software is always better – sometimes new features, always bugs fixed and so on.
December 5th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
To all of you asking whether there is a way to get around the volume limitation placed on these units in the EU the good news is yes there definitely is.
The bad news is the fix I found which was posted on a forum called ATRACLife Colloquiem (google it – I can’t remember the exact syntax and I’m in work now not a home) which for some reason was not available on its server last night (Sunday 5th Dec) or today – don’t know why this is?
The forum was excellent with lots of technical advice – stupidly I didn’t print out the instructions which involve getting into the systems test mode because I bookmarked the site and assumed I would be able to access it when I came to changing mine (can’t do so until the wife allows Santa to deliver it on the 25th – humbug and bugger).
So all I would say – is if the volume limiter is putting you off – don’t let it – there is a fix available and it will resurface on the net eventually or hopefully the Atrac forum at least in which case I will post.
cheers folks
Steve
December 5th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
Hi,
Mine and my boyfriends arrived today and to my horror it says that connect player is only compatible with windows 2000 and XP. I have windows ME!! Oh dear! I am really really annoyed now because nowhere on the sony site or Amazon did it say Windows ME is not compatible. In fact, sony have been very misleading and offer links to Connect music store which tells you that Windows ME is compatible. I therefore assumed Connect Player would be. How wrong I was! The first I know is when I received the boxes and the connect player compatibility is printed on there. I phoned Sony and they were rude, useless and unhelpful and just said try sonic stage which might work or return the player.
I really want to keep the player and have sonic stage from a previous mp3 player and can upgrade it to V3.3.
Could someone who has been using sonic stage with the NWA3000 please tell me what is compatible with the player and the software. ie. What of the shuffles can I use and which ones can I def not use.
Can I search album, artist, song title alphabetically??
Can I play things on random shuffle?
I’m trying to work out if its worth me keeping this player. Which would be more convenient since mu mum has also ordered us the docking station speakers!! I do plan to get a new pc at some point which would mean I’d annoyingly have to blank the players and start all over again I guess.
Help! I need to decide to keep or return!
December 5th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
Can someone please tell me whether the NWA 1000 is compatible with Mac. As some websites that sell them say that it is compatible with both PC and Mac and some say only PC! So what is the correct answer?
cheers
December 5th, 2005 at 6:15 pm
This is the post posted on the Atrac Colloquium website which describes the hack to boost Volume of the new sony players – go take a look if the volume restrictions here in Europe is something thats putting you off buying the machine.
The server seems to be accessable again this afternoon – I’ll save the whole page when I get home for when I need it.
cheers
Steve
Europeans: Boost the Volume of the NW-A3000/1000
Posted by kurisu – 11-28-05 16:45 – 20 comments
Just like the NW-HD# hacks to defeat the European output limitation, there is a service mode trick that will do the same for the NW-A3000 and NW-A1000 as well. No word yet on the NW-A608, but it will most likely not be able to be changed.
http://www.atraclife.com/index.php?s=4057e1d270766f20817b24f069452288&showtopic=509
December 6th, 2005 at 10:56 am
Hi Stevetynant
Thanks for the help that you have given to many of the Techlounge readers on the problems with the NWA3000 and NWA1000 set with volume restrictor in Europe. We have made the NWA volume restrictor hack available here now at Techlounge, just in case there are problems again with the Atraclife website.
December 6th, 2005 at 11:11 am
No Problems TL – will be good to hear some feedback from the board before I get my own at Christmas
cheers
Steve
December 6th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
Hi. I dont know much about these portable music players, but i am getting a walkman for xmas, and so downloaded the connect music player of the website so that i could start putting my music on there in preparation for when i get the walkman. I have put all my CD’s on to it, but all the songs that i have put on there from my CD collection say the file format is “OpenMG Audio”. Will the walkman play these, as i thought it was an MP3 player, but i cant turn the songs of my CDs into MP3′s. Thanks
December 6th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
PLEASE can someone tell me if the NWA 1000 will work with a Mac! I really want it to be as I really dont want an Ipod, but no other mp3 player seems to work with Mac!
Thanks
December 6th, 2005 at 5:33 pm
Hi Jenny
Mac’s don’t fair too well with anything other than Apple products. The system requirements are on the Connect site, (see comment 70 for the link), which gives the info.
Techlounge
December 6th, 2005 at 6:41 pm
Hi Techlounge,
cheers for the information! it looks like one of my christmas present ideas is buggered now!
thanks
December 6th, 2005 at 9:28 pm
hey jenny! you can always sell the stuff on ebay!!!! = D
December 7th, 2005 at 11:00 am
Hey, I’m considering getting one of these, (The 6GB version probably), but I’m unsure whether it’ll be worth my while.
I have Windows 98 (Tragic, I know), and I’m wondering whether the Walkman will actually be compatible with my computer? I’ve already gathered that the CONNECT software won’t be compatible, but it doesn’t sound like I’m missing out on much there, so I’d probably go for SonicStage anyways.
Gutted that I’d have to miss out on the intelligent functions though. Also, anyone know where I can find a list of what MP3 players work on Windows 98? Cheers for any help.
December 7th, 2005 at 12:34 pm
Jenny – have a look at http://www.kanai.net/weblog/archive/2005/11/10/06h20m47s a guy has posted (towards the bottom of the page) how he has gone about using an NWAX000 with a mac. Dont know if this will be of any use to you.
Incedently, Sony have released another update which seems to have made my version of CONNECT a little more stable.
December 7th, 2005 at 5:08 pm
ok… bill… right, you already had the connect software yeah… so how did you get the updated versiony bit? did you just download it or something? by the way, where do you find out this stuff? this place is the best source of info i’ve found so far!
December 7th, 2005 at 6:00 pm
i went into my local sony stockists and looked at one one of these walkmans and put the 6gb version by for xmas….. 1 problem it looked and felt asthough it would break or damage really easily!
the wlman is likely to be put in my blazer pocket for school wich is no problem becuse i had an IPOD MINI and it survived without any damage.
i was just wondering if it was pretty durable and didnt have any problems like screen breaking (even though it doesnt have much of a screen) or if there were any reports etc
i think this is a great site and will use it in the future
JOSH
December 7th, 2005 at 6:20 pm
Hi Josh, glad you like the site…
It terms of damage to your Sony Walkman, they are pretty durable. No bad reports as yet until the Nano which has had loads of problems. The main issue with the Sony is the software…but there are fixed and new versions being made available the time…. and the volume limiter in the uk, but there is a hack for that too
Techlounge
December 7th, 2005 at 11:29 pm
Hey, I’ve had a NW-A3000 (violet) and it was great, I took it back though because the volume was low even with AVLS turned off. This was a problem as I use and spend alot of money on inner-earphones. Also, Connect media player was a disappointment. Now I am about to get a black one, the reason for this is that I have seen files that hack some other place and in the last post, so the volume limit so it will be louder. Also, the new Connect software update is out!
NB to Gef:- The reason it can fit 13,000 songs onto it is because of ATRAC3 compressing. It’s lower bit rate yet still good quality!
December 8th, 2005 at 12:04 am
Charlie,
Yeah, already had the connect software (reluctantly) Initially i had to uninstall and then reinstall and let the installation program update it automatically. Since the first update the connect software has done it for me. It’s still far from perfect however. As for finding the information – when you’ve spent the best part of £200 on something, you wanna find out everything you can about it and how to get the best of it – I think google know me by name now.
I think there’s light at the end of the tunnel here, however i do feel VERY let down at being used as a gineau pig for this utterly awful software that should have been tested before its european release.
As i’m sure you’ve read everywhere else, it’s a great player – but there are ways to work around the difficulties experienced until sony pull their finger out of their…..ears and do what needs to be done.
December 8th, 2005 at 1:10 am
Don’t know what everyone makes of this but all the NW A3000 players have now gone back up in price on Amazon. For the last two weeks they have been at abrilliant £158 now up to £175 which is still comparatively cheap.
Does this indicate they are flying off the shelves and discounts no longer required?
Would be interesting to hear some sales figures in the run up to Christmas or are the well publicized software issues putting people off?
Steve
December 8th, 2005 at 11:39 am
We’ve been doing a bit of NWA hunting this morning and these are the latest prices that are available online for the NWA1000 and NWA3000.
Availability is starting to become a problem on these with Christmas fast approaching. Often though the online stores give a better price than buying products in the shop itself… but watch out for delivery charges.
Techlounge
December 8th, 2005 at 2:13 pm
Ok, I didn’t get an answer to my post above (no. 79) but I’ve decided to keep the walkmans and gone with using Sonic stage.
I am still annoyed at SONY though. Why oh Why does nowhere tell you that connect player is NOT compatible with anything except Windows 2000 and XP!! The reason I went for this player was because I had Windows ME and IPODs aren’t compatible. The sony site is misleading. The connect store indicates that you can use connect with Windows ME. In all the descriptions on the sony website about the walkman, it doesn’t mention compatibilty. Even on a link to connect player it doesn’t!! I bought mine from Amazon and it doesn’t say it on there either!! Grrrrr. First I knew was when I received the player and its written on the box. I did finally find a F&Q on the sonydigital site which says which operating systems work. So BEWARE anyone without windows 2000 or XP!
December 8th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
I have a question about Sonic stage 3.3.
I’ve used Version 3.0 with a previous player with no probs (E107). However last night I was converting about 150 mp3s to ATRAC 64bps and after it was finished some of the songs were currupted. Annoyingly some are corrupted at the beginning but some don’t sound odd till half way through! They sound corrupted on both sonic stage and therefore on the player because I’d transferred them, so I know it’s not the players fault. They sound all distorted and crackly. Does anyone have any ideas what happened? The original mp3 tracks are fine. I’ve converted the very same mp3s before to ATRAC 48bps with no probs on the previous version of Sonic stage that I had. I’m going to have to delete the lot and start again, any advice anyone? It took ages to convert them, and I’ll have to retype all the titles, albums, genres etc again because mp3s don’t translate into sonic stage as they should.
Help, please, I don’t want to waste another whole evening!
December 8th, 2005 at 2:28 pm
wow! post number 100!
December 8th, 2005 at 4:19 pm
thanx bill! that explained quite a lot. and thanks techlounge for the prices! i was going to buy mine from play.com and hadn’t even thought about looking on ebay. do you think there will be better availability on amazon and stuff like that than in the actual shops?
December 8th, 2005 at 5:11 pm
Charlie, availability online may be a bit dodgy. Liking the “buy it now” offers on ebay though. At least if you walk into a shop and have to pay a bit extra you know you will get it… plus you won’t have to wait anymore for one.
December 8th, 2005 at 5:24 pm
i suppose… anyway, do you think they’ll come down in price after the christmas rush… i’d like to get one now if the answers ‘probably not’ but if its a yes i think ill save my hard earned money!
December 8th, 2005 at 6:10 pm
They will more than likely come down in price in the new year, plus you will be getting one that hopefully has been improved in terms of software etc.
Techlounge
December 8th, 2005 at 7:30 pm
i dont really know alot about this software that everyone is talking about all that i do is that its not very good?!
can somebody explain to me (without jargon) what is wrong with the sotware and all this transfering MP3 to ATRAC what does all this mean!!!
please explain if you can
thanx
December 8th, 2005 at 7:43 pm
HI,,
ive seen one of these today 8/12/05 and was just delivered today at the shop i was wondering wether it would have the new sony softare?
thanks
December 8th, 2005 at 7:49 pm
ahhhhhh please write bak plz
December 8th, 2005 at 7:57 pm
Y IS NO1 REPLYING TO MY POST PLAZ REPLY PLZ PLZ
December 9th, 2005 at 12:09 am
hey! i cant answer any of your questions but i thort id reply anyway… so you didnt feel like we were ignoring you!
December 9th, 2005 at 5:29 am
Hi, I really like the look of this player, beats an ipod or creative by miles.
Anyway, just a couple of q’s:
- I had a sony md (minidisc) walkman, and u couldnt transfer MP3s directly to it, but had to convert to ATRAC or something beforehand. Is this new walkman the same? I think ATRAC sounds muddy, when compared with an MP3 and want to transfer my MP3s directly on to the player.
- Also, are there any alternatives to sony’s software, eg using itunes or something.
thanks, Ian.
December 9th, 2005 at 5:58 am
you can transfer mp3′s directly but they consume more space – personally I cant tell the difference in quality
liking your reveiw – the software hogs alot of cpu therefore slowing you system down alot, sony have released a patch assuaging this a little. But if you still find it unuseable you can download sonicstage from sonys site.
ATRAC is sonys version of the mp3, (music files) in theory they’re smaller than mp3 files so you can fit more onto the walkman although you may have to compromise sound quality.
December 9th, 2005 at 9:37 am
ATRAC is a much better format for mix-CD’s. MP3′s always have a small “silence gap” at the end for some reason.
December 10th, 2005 at 6:18 pm
Hi someone please help!!! I want to buy my partner a MP3 player. Is the Sony NWA3000 the right one? He has a huge vinyl collection-can tracks be recorded on to it? I presume you can download anything from the internet? (please could someone advise on best sites?) Also can this be used in the car? W have an existing CD player which claims to be MP3 ‘friendly’ and you can connect directly into it via usb cable. We want to hear the music through speakers-not via a headset. Also can it be used through our home sound system? Please help me someone! I know, as you can probably tell-NOTHING about these things AT ALL!!!!!!! (I have got Windows XP!-This seems to be something that I need)
December 10th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
Hi
I saw the dimensions of the player near the top of this, but can someone please please please tell me, as i seem to find different stats everywhere, is the 6gb version exactly the same size (dimensions) as the 20gb one?
I dont have that many songs, but was just going to get the 20gb one so i would never run out of space, but if the 6gb is smaller, i will probably get that.
Hope someone can help, or if not maybe Tech Lounge can.
Mat
December 10th, 2005 at 8:24 pm
hey matt, to check out the dimensions for the NWA3000, see comment 53, it came from techlounge so it should be right!
December 10th, 2005 at 11:00 pm
Hi
Cheers Charlie
By the way, can you (or someone else) please tell me how many songs both the players will hold if i do and if i dont convert them to ATRAC
Thanks
Mat
December 11th, 2005 at 12:24 am
Mat Jackson >
According to this sony site (http://www.sony.co.uk/view/ShowArticle.action?article=1123689905907) the 6GB player will hold up to 4,000 songs and the 20GB player will hold up to 13,000 tracks in ATRAC format.
The ATRAC is almost the same as MP3, achieving not very significant size differences.
Just remember that “UP TO 13,000 TRACKS” is as always a marketing trick. They give numbers and not much information. I suppose that track number can be achieved if you specify lowest quality or something like that while uploading (I don’t have the player so can’t say for sure).
So I’d say you go for ATRAC (since the mp3 is a pretty old format anyway) and play with the bitrate of the files while uploading to achieve the best balance of quality size.
December 11th, 2005 at 12:00 pm
i went out and got one of these with my mum ….. wot the hell is up with the earphones one cable is shorter than the other and the wire is really short i might be bieng a bit fussy here but its a bit disapointing also
December 11th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
josh > that is a usual thing, one cable being shorter than other. This way you can have the longer wire behind your head, round the neck, so it does not stick out in the front of your face all the time. I don’t know how long the headphone cable itself is but I believe the sony engineers would have thought of everything and wouldn’t provide a cable which is too short. I wonder how long it is now and how long do you want it to be?
Anyway, you can always use your own headphones as far as I know.
December 11th, 2005 at 4:48 pm
There should’ve been a headphone extension lead in the box Josh.
December 11th, 2005 at 5:30 pm
cheers evreyone that replied im just bien dumb im ty!!
December 11th, 2005 at 5:39 pm
i want a sony walkman but i cant afford 1 :’(
December 11th, 2005 at 5:42 pm
json u cheapskate (dnt wurry i no him)
December 11th, 2005 at 8:21 pm
I wouldn’t be worried about not being ablel to afford one. Nor bother getting one Josh, until they give them away or sort out their software.
December 12th, 2005 at 10:21 am
Hi Jason
The best thing to do if you can’t afford the £175 or so for the NWA3000 at the moment, is to wait for a few months for when the price will have to come down. Plus by then the software should be better so that you won’t need to go through all the hassle of downloading the latest fix.
Techlounge
December 12th, 2005 at 5:16 pm
I see the sony website regularly offers updated versions of the connect software. Is it best to download the auto-update version or manually update each version when they are available? Or does it not matter?
December 12th, 2005 at 6:33 pm
bill, do you really think it’s not worth #175 (sorry, the pound signs not working on my keyboard) in it’s current state?
December 12th, 2005 at 8:48 pm
ok let me gat this prob cleared im not to bothered about this jargon and whatever you are talking about the software but is it actually really bad and if so why (in its simplest form please)
josh
December 12th, 2005 at 8:48 pm
Every time i open my connet software it reads my NWA3000 but closes itself down when it gets to 100%, has anyone else had this? I managed to upload about ten albums yesterday and now i cant do anything else…..
I tried using sonic but it was unable to write accross some files, does anyone have a link on how to use sonic?
My recommendation — dont buy until Sony sort out their software..
Cheers
December 12th, 2005 at 9:15 pm
o ive already bought one
is the software exrtremly bad im not one of those people that downloads as many songs as it can take and all the rest of it.
all the songs ive downloaded are on windows meadia player
when i plug in my walkman will all the songs be transfered onto the sony software and all i’m gonna use the software for is puting the songs onto the wlakman
please help its bugging me
December 13th, 2005 at 10:50 am
Please can anyone answer??
I had Sonic Stage Version 3.0 from a previous player. It worked fine, I could import mp3s into it, convert them to ATRAC and out them on my player.
I got the NWA3000, upgraded to SS3.3 and then when I imported mp3s into SS3.3, they all sound awful. They sound crackly, popping, bass is distorted and the drums in the background are now in the foreground and sound like cowbells.
I’ve tried playing the mp3s in media player and they play fine, so something happens to the mp3s when I transfer them into SS.
I reinstalled SS3.3 and it still didn’t work
I uninstalled SS3.3 and reinstalled SS3.0 from the disc and now mp3s won’t import properly in SS3.0!!! THEY USED TO!
I did a system restore back to when SS3.0 was there and worked, but mp3s are still corrupted on import.
I’ve contacted SONY, and I’m still waiting for them to get back to me!
What has happened to my PC?
I’ve got Windows ME which is why I’m using Sonic Stage instead on Connect Player.
I have a huge collection of MP3s and can’t put them on my NWA3000. Currently I can only put CDs on, which is not the reason I bought this player.
If anyone has any clue? Are you all able to import MP3s ok? Whether they are ripped from CDs or downloaded legally/illegally?
I need to do something, I have to decide whether to keep this player or not and haven’t got long left to decide. I am getting XP in the new year and will start using Connect player then, but has anyone had problems with importing MP3s into connect player?
December 13th, 2005 at 11:34 am
When I use Connect I find that after ripping two CD’s the software hangs up (I’m using Windows XP). Any ideas how I might be able to overcome this as its driving me mad?
December 13th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
charlie,
I really do think that it’s not worth the money, yeah. This is because the software HAS to be used to use the player and it doesn’t work properly, so you can’t use the player as you should be able to. Therefore i would be annoyed if i had spent £50 on the player and couldn’t get it to work, let alone £175.
The player itself is a great bit of kit – but what’s the point if you cant use it to its full potential? It’s like having the best parachute available, but without the ripcord to open it with.
December 14th, 2005 at 12:15 am
ok so until sony sort out their software, i shouldn’t buy one. and if they don’t sort it out, what other player would you recommend?
December 14th, 2005 at 11:59 am
Hi Charlie
There are other good looking Mp3 players on the market, other than the Ipod, that have a good storage capacity such as the Philips Hdd6320 or the Creative Zen’s
Techlounge
December 14th, 2005 at 12:53 pm
Alex, why don’t you just use the SonicStage software for the time being? Yes, the intelligent shuffle won’t work, but you will still have the usual shuffle function. And the SonicStage should be just fine, until Sony hopefully fixes the major Connect issues.
December 14th, 2005 at 5:09 pm
yeah… i know… out of those two i’d end up with the phillips but as someone else said on that blog, because of the shiny suface and the nature of the product, the sleek look wont last long, it’ll soon be covered in fingerprints and scratches… and i dont like the zen…. so i’ll end up being a sheep and getting an ipod if i dont get this… thanks for the options though!!!
December 14th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
by the way, if sony do sort out the software, is the sony worth waiting for? just so i dont jump in and buy an ipod any time soon…
December 15th, 2005 at 11:30 am
Yes, i would wait. The player itself is great. Plus it will be cheaper too.
December 15th, 2005 at 12:49 pm
Thanks Alias. If I use SonicStage would I then have to re-rip all the tracks using Connect as and when Sony finally pull thier fingers out and release a useable program?
December 15th, 2005 at 6:45 pm
Has anyone tried using the new Sony walkman – NW A3000 with an add on to itunes called iwalkman – I have been following comments on this site with interest – am really keen to buy one of these machines which sound really great but have been totally put off by the problems with the connect software. iwalkman is supposed to work with any mass storage device that appears on explorer. does the sony walkman meet this requirement. I have bee
December 16th, 2005 at 10:46 am
Hi all,
I’ve had my NWA3000 for a few days and am generally pleased. just wanted to know if people have experienced anywhere near the battery life quoted. I’ve got around 2000 songs on the player, all in ATRAC format at 128kbps with a few imported mp3′s at between 128 and 192kbps. i’ve not listened to it constantly, probably around 6.5hrs or so but the battery is already on the last indicator and i fully charged it before i first used it.
Anyone else experienced the battery running out quickly?
Thanks!
James
December 16th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Alex > I suppose re-encoding is always being done by the software if you choose atrac format while uploading, automatically, and no re-encoding is done if you just choose that.
And for the quality of Sony software – well if I’d be a Sony boss of a kind I’d definitely shake up the software engineers responsible for that
Alas I’m neither a Sony boss nor have any contacts there – so I cannot tell you anything about that.
December 16th, 2005 at 5:58 pm
James, there’s certain features you can turn off/down in the settings menu to maximize battery life – consult your manual
December 16th, 2005 at 8:22 pm
so is it only 35 hours of battery if everything but the music is turned off?
December 17th, 2005 at 12:03 am
hi all..this site is great! i have a problem. my HD5 got stolen and now im wondering wether to buy the same model again or the A3oo. is there a huge difference? Did Sony just forget about the lovely HD5? thanx in advance
December 17th, 2005 at 8:49 am
I think the HD5 have been discontinued
December 17th, 2005 at 8:59 pm
Can some one who’s got a NW-A*000 tell me how hard/easy it is to get your WMA-files to work? I have a lot of songs of this format, so it’s important to me that the player CAN play these files.
P.S. Forgive me for my bad english, i’m from holland…
December 17th, 2005 at 9:06 pm
I’ve got about 12,2 GB of music on my PC, and i’ve been using Windows Media Player for the last few years, so is it doable to get all those files to Connect Player/SonicStage?
December 18th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
Hi there!
Just bought the NWA3000… I have 2 questions…
So, you can’t shuffle albums as you can with an iPod, this correct?
And… how on earth do you put the damn thing on hold when it’s turned off to stop it from randomly turning on in your pocket? I turn it off, and then I can’t put it on hold, coz it’s turned off…
Man, i feel stupid, but any help here appreciated!
Thanks !
December 18th, 2005 at 6:58 pm
I just thought i would post a message to tell anyone that is worried about the software to forget about it and buy one of these. Just go and download sonic stage for connect and it is almost exactly the same as iTunes but re-decorated and works well.
I read everything here, but still went ahead, and i dont know what people are getting so worked up about. I tried out connect, and it wasnt great, but was certainly not as bad as people make out, but gave sonic stage for connect a go and thats great. As everyone says, the player is great, and with this software, it walks all over the iPod, it really does. It looks ten times better than an iPod, and because it converts songs to ATRAC, the 6gb one holds 4,000 songs, and i dont think it compromises quality at all.
If you still are not sure, go and download sonic stage for connect before buying a walkman and see what you think.
Mat
December 18th, 2005 at 7:15 pm
Hey all, trying to find a good comparison on the two models, the A1000 and A3000. Any idea on whether it’s really worth spending the extra money on the A3000 just because my eyes are bigger than my brain? I mean, I’m tempted by the extra size, but I’ve been told that it would be best to go for smaller as you never really need that many songs in the end. I mean, 1500 songs is so many!
Trying to find some comparisons on the net but having trouble…
December 18th, 2005 at 9:45 pm
Just got one of these, came accross this site after i ordered was a bit concerned about the software issue, so i downloaded SS3 which my PC did not like?? when it arrived i installed the connect software expecting all sorts of problems, but to my pleasant suprise it has worked fine so far (fingers crossed)
December 19th, 2005 at 11:25 am
I have bought the A3000 for my girlfriend for christmas,
l have a though the connect software says loaded successfully (conected to the internet with updates). The connect icon does not show on the desktop or anywhere else on my system, whats going on?
appreciate some help as I want to put some music on this paper weight!
cheers oh and happy christmas
December 19th, 2005 at 4:11 pm
Neil, i would check your add/remove programmes list, see if its there, or do a search on your C:\
If you installed it it will be there,
December 19th, 2005 at 6:09 pm
Justin, pause your music then press hold – it will turn it self off shortly.
Dont know what you mean by album shuffle.
Stijn, the wma format isnt supported by the player itself but connect player or sonic stage will convert them for you, 12gigs will take quite some time to convert tho
December 19th, 2005 at 6:28 pm
i have alot of wma files will they remain unchanged and just be altered on the player
December 20th, 2005 at 10:48 am
Anyone got any ideas why when I import a directory of wma files into connect it doesn’t recognise the genre and puts them into a “various” category?
December 20th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
Alex, afaik wma files do notsupport ID2/3 tags – maybe that is the reason?
December 20th, 2005 at 5:41 pm
Rory, connect player will make a duplicate track in the atrac format
December 20th, 2005 at 9:11 pm
Hi, i just got the NWA3000 and am pretty confused. I put a load of Cd’s onto my computer a while ago, but this Connect software wont pick them up to stick them on my player. How do you convert them to a format that the player likes? Do I have to download some extra software or something? What is this sonicstage thing? AGH!! I’m so frustrated and confused!
December 21st, 2005 at 10:15 am
alias, thanks once again for the advice. It turns out that if I import all the music files in one go (rather than trying to import the directory in which they are saved) it seems to recognise the correct genre category. We live and learn!
December 21st, 2005 at 4:53 pm
Just ordered my NWA-3000 from play for 179, but will it come before xmas, i bloody well hope so,
December 21st, 2005 at 6:17 pm
Chrissy K, load connect player > insert a cd > click the drive with said cd > click rip tracks
December 21st, 2005 at 6:54 pm
Thanks Nesta, but is there no way i can put them on my player from my computer cos they’re already on my harddrive
December 22nd, 2005 at 5:45 pm
you should be able to, click file > import directory > choose their location
December 23rd, 2005 at 1:35 am
hi just got the nwa3000 today and everythng seems to work fine imported loads of tunes of my pc, plus off cds as well, softare seems fine so far, only small downside is volume is a little bit on the low side on max for my liking, maybe ther are better phones out ther anybody got any suggestions, enjoy the music.
December 23rd, 2005 at 10:18 am
hey steve, try disabling the volume limiter: http://www.techlounge.co.uk/96/sony-nwa3000-volume-limiter-hack.html . It should help.
and by the way….
happy holidays, merry Christmas and happy New Year everybody
December 23rd, 2005 at 12:50 pm
just got my nwa 3000 it has a volume thing on the settings menu does anyone elses have this. it looks great i haven’t really used it yet i’m letting it charge. and i need to get some good headphones i had small ones.
December 23rd, 2005 at 9:43 pm
What’s the best format to rip CD’s for the NWA3000? I presume it’s ATRAC3, but what bit rate should I use? I’ve tried ARTRAC3 at 192000 and average file size is 5 – 7 MB with 256000 I get approx 7 – 8 MB. Does this sound right? When transferred these are transferred to player, is there further file compression? Is 192000 too high at bit rate?
December 24th, 2005 at 2:58 am
Rusty, I’d say 128kbps should be enough – I doubt you will notice any significant difference between a 128kbps and a 192kbps track while playing them on a portable player.
December 24th, 2005 at 12:09 pm
Hi,
Bought an a3000 for my daughter’s xmas; it is too slippery to be even a good paperweight; it is not an MP3 player…it will not play MP3 tracks; the connect software is unusable and sonicstage is only marginally better; spent 2 evenings trying to get it to work; took it back to Comet today and got a Creative Zen Micro 6GB….flawless software; everything working within a few minutes and MUCH BETTER sound….so glad I checked things out before Xmas day……
Merry Xmas
Tim
December 24th, 2005 at 7:48 pm
Hi there.. just got NW-A3000… looks great.. works.. not so great.. :/
Just as Tim.. Connect is a piece of software crap
Will have to try SS.
But.. making a firmware upgrade supporting MP3/WMA (and MPC.. i think i wish too much
) would be great.. just like any Creative’s stuff.. upload few treacks/albums naturally just drag and drop (no side progs .. especially Connect) and go play… 
Cheers and merry x-mas
Greg
December 25th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
i agree working with computers all day, the software is shite sonic stage and connect.
December 25th, 2005 at 1:07 pm
ARGGGGHHHHH i HATE the software, please buy something else ipod or creative because i ignored people saying connect was crap and it really is. i am so dissapointed with sony and i love there products but this is crap DO NOT BUY. Trust me
December 25th, 2005 at 4:03 pm
hey.
just got a sony NW A1000 for my xmas and i love it to pieces, it’s the coolest looking thing on the planet! unfortunately i’m tryin to copy my cd’s on to Connect but its not working anymore, i’m really confused as of why its stopped working. But what id like to know is, does anyone know a good place to buy skins for it coz i am afraid that its gonna scratch very easily.
thanks!
December 25th, 2005 at 10:14 pm
Can anybody help me? I’ve just bought the sony NW A1000 and cant figure how i can put it on hold when its swtiched off. It keeps switching back on at the touch of a button in my pocket… Thanks
December 25th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
Woo! Got the NWA 3000 for Christmas. It’s great! Was a little worried about the software after what everyone has been saying but I’ve had no problems at all! I’ve even been ripping and transfering 2 CD’s at the same time
Love it.
December 26th, 2005 at 1:27 am
Lindsey, as someone already told – pause/stop the music and put the player on hold. It should turn itself off and the hold should work.
December 26th, 2005 at 1:36 am
PLEASE can someone help. I have got my daughter a sony NWA 1000 for Christmas but after instaling it and doing a play list she is unable to transfer it to the Walkman as my computer which has windows XP does not recognise the driver in the USB port. She has tried to re install 3 times but the PC is still unable to detect the device in any of the USB ports she puts it in.Please help if you can.
Thanks.
December 26th, 2005 at 1:44 am
I need help.
Got a nice surprise for Xmas – a Sony A3000. I hve never owned an mp3 before and my knowledge is zilch. My daughter uses an i-pod all the time so i-tunes is installed on the family computer. Consequently I have built up a collection of 2000+ songs in i-tunes in readiness for that day when I get a player of my own. Can I easily transfer my entire i-tunes library onto the A3000 ?
Thanks and Merry Christmas
John
December 26th, 2005 at 1:55 am
Geri…There are good looking silicon skins on e-bay for £12.99.
Re. connect software, I have had no problems at all, works fine for me
December 26th, 2005 at 1:56 am
Unfortunately not, you have to install the CONNECT software that comes with the Walkman player. You can easily import all your files into there though, same way you import MP3s into iTunes.
December 26th, 2005 at 1:57 am
(above post was for John Stockport, sorry)
I’ve also had no problems with the CONNECT software. Loving it
December 26th, 2005 at 2:31 am
Hi
Got a new sony NW-A1000 MP3 player for xmas today. I cant seem to transfer any files. I can add to play list but wont transfer onto MP3 player as transfer icon looks disabled ….please HELP
December 26th, 2005 at 2:48 am
Grant, Does the connect software see your player? it should be listed as nwa1000 in the upper left hand corner along with the library and your cd/dvd drives.
I think the transfer icon will be greyed out until it recognises the player is connected.
December 26th, 2005 at 3:07 am
Dear Chris
Thanks for your reply to q181. I have now installed Connect . Forgive my thickness but I don’t understand anything about importing mp3 files into i-tunes. All I have ever done is transfer cds onto i-tunes.
Regards
John
December 26th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
Hi,
Just noticed updated firmware for the nwa-3000 on this page: http://www.sonydigital-link.com/DNA/Downloads/downloads.asp?c=WM&sc=NWH&f=FRM_NW_A3000&l=en#disc
It says that it enables wma support. Has anyone tried this? Does it enable native wma support in the player itself?
I haven’t bought the device yet as my music collection is all in wma format and I don’t fancy waiting for it all to be transcoded before it can be transferred to the walkman. If this upgrade does offer native support though, amazon will get my order tonight!
Otherwise, I’ll wait for the creative zen vision:m to arrive!
Cheers,
Steve
December 26th, 2005 at 1:22 pm
John: to import MP3 files into CONNECT:
Open up CONNECT, then go to File > Import Files
Then browse for the MP3 file you want to import and open it. And you’re done! This is the same for iTunes also.
If you have a folder with all your MP3s in, you can go to File > Import Directory instead and import a whole folder, so you don’t have to do each MP3 individually.
Hope this helps
December 26th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
I received an NW A1000 for xmas and the model itself is v cool but the CONNECT software is causing a nervous breakdown. I have been installing and reinstalling for the last 48 hours and it still isn’t working perfecly. I cannot instal the updates for the software which i downloaded from Sony wesbite – I keep getting the error message: ” “. I installed the software from the CD with the kit, so it is installed. Does anyone know if it is necessary to install these updates as I was connected to the internet during the CD installation and I notice that people have mentioned here that the updates install automatically during this process? If the updates are already installed, would you recommend using Sonic Stage instead as CONNECT is incredibly slow and frustrating and completely non-user friendly! Further, is it possible to just use Windows Media Player and bypass CONNECT? I have installed the firmware update available from Sony. Any help is really appreciated as I want to get this v cool player working and – it is v frustrating!
December 26th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
Sorry – the error message is: “the target software for this module is not installed”. Thanks for your patience!
December 26th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
Hi Colin. Theer is no sign of my player. I have library, connect store, E drive D drive (both empty) and i have playlists. i have imported 13gb into library but still no sign of my player. What do i need to do? cheers
December 26th, 2005 at 2:13 pm
my nwa has been working but then when i plugged it in 2 mins ago my pc just won’t find it just un reconized device found. argghh
December 26th, 2005 at 2:15 pm
I have just got the new A1000 walkman for Christmas, but having read all your reviews, don’t want to try and use the connect software unless I really need to. I have Roxio and my sister has an ipod so I have itunes already installed on my computer and I was wondering if anyone knows whether I can use these instead of the others (preferably itunes)?? I don’t have a clue about anything to do with mp3s as this is my first one so any help would be fantastic!
Lucy
December 26th, 2005 at 2:30 pm
itunes is just for appple. i am hoping someone will do some decent 3rd party software or the next release will be better, just trying to get the update for the play sorted
December 26th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
ive just turned the walkman on and all it says is POWER whats the damn matter with it !!!
December 26th, 2005 at 3:28 pm
ive just turned the walkman on and all it says is POWER whats the damn matter with it !!!!!!
December 26th, 2005 at 3:35 pm
????? PLZ ANSWER SOMEBODY MUST KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!
December 26th, 2005 at 3:40 pm
dnt wurry i reset it
December 26th, 2005 at 4:15 pm
thats in the menu thingy for the hack
December 26th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
o its a bit pointless
December 26th, 2005 at 5:20 pm
i transfer the songs from connect to walkman and in the connect menu it says on device…but when i unplug the USB it says that there is no songs on the device……WHATS WRONG!!!
December 26th, 2005 at 5:37 pm
REPLY PLEASE PLEASE
December 26th, 2005 at 5:50 pm
PLEASE…………… :/
December 26th, 2005 at 7:03 pm
Follow-up to ans 189
Thanks again Chris for your help. I’m up and running now with my A3000 though I must confess, I finally got my teenage daughter to sort it out. She easily transferred my i-tunes library onto Connect. I’m even lower in her tech savvy estimation though. The next thing I’ll have to do is to remove the volume limiter but I’ll wait a day or two. There are quite a few google links on how to do this.
Best Wishes
John
December 26th, 2005 at 7:23 pm
Grant… The player should show up in the box youre looking at with the library, drives, playlist and connect store.
It def. sounds like your PC isn’t seeing your sony player.
What happens when you connect the usb cable? does your player power up and say connecting (it should).
Could be a driver issue or something, maybe someone more techy minded will help here.
Sorry I cant help more but at least youre on the right tracks..
Hope you get it up and running ok.
Have you tried uninstalling CONNECT and reinstalling it, might be worth a shot.
December 26th, 2005 at 7:30 pm
ok then dnt reply to mine
December 26th, 2005 at 10:09 pm
Humm.. well, I have tried to test it out today and I can’t seem to get any songs onto the walkman. I’ve ripped an album onto the connect thing and then connected the walkman, but when I disconnect, there is nothing on it. All it says is ‘connecting’ and there are arrows going in a circle? Is this normal or an I doing something really stupid? Please help me!
Lucy
December 26th, 2005 at 11:09 pm
ok. have a pretty new sony NW-A1000. santa was very good to me. slight problem. have windows 98SE and therefore there are no drivers recognised. any ideas? possibility of using soncstage instead of the connect one that can’t be installed on windows 98SE, but where can one download the whole program and not just the updates?
thanks
December 27th, 2005 at 12:40 am
Got an nwa1000 for crimbo excellent piece of hardware, shame about the software its pants. I am running XP and when I ran the installation from disc its says it installs correctly then after reeboot there is no new software??? – I then download the latest sonic stage which functions ok, but it can’t see all of the albums on my drive, I have a sole drive for mp3′s but it does not show them all ??? – Does anybody know if you can drag and drop or help with the above….merry xmas !!
December 27th, 2005 at 12:37 pm
hi lucy,
same happened 2 me too!!! its a rite pain
i will tell you if i sort it out or find the problem.
December 27th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
hi again ive just downloaded the sonic stage and transfered songs that way….will tell you the outcome
December 27th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
nope it didnt work
December 27th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
Josh / Lucy
Don’t know if this will help – but seems to work for my player.
If you haven’t got any songs on the player yet – good- download the latest firmware upgrade to allow the WMA playback – take a look here – second article down http://www.atraclife.com/index.php?
If you have, either transfer them back to the library or delete them altogether.
Rip one albumn into connect – then attach the Player – if you have a USB 2 connection make sure you use that. Navigate to the library-right click and select all-hit the transfer to a device button on the far left hand side. Then drop and drag the selected tracks from the left hand panel into the right.
Don’t disconnect
50 tracks took less than 30 seconds to transfer on my PC -
Once the software and hardware stop saying don’t disconnect it should be safe to do so – the arrows I think after that Lucy just mean it is attempting to recharge. – check the player and fingers crossed your albumns should have transferred to the player. I then delete the library in Connect (cos I don’t want my daughters thrash metal getting on my player) and load another few albumns(usually about 5 at atime). So far I’ve got about fifty albumns uploaded to the player.
Sorry if I am stating the obvious but I know it works for me so just wondered if tou are missing something obvious.
best of luck guys.
Steve
December 27th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
Thanks Steve. I will give it another go, and hopefully it will work this time!
Lucy
December 27th, 2005 at 3:04 pm
cheers steve
December 27th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
hi lucy ummm..how do u do that wma think im a bit slow…
December 27th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
plz reply anybody….is the light on the device end of the usb meant to stay on wll the time it is connected?
December 27th, 2005 at 3:50 pm
hmm… I´ve got a nw-a1000, and yes, connect player is really bad, but I think the biggest problem is that I cannot trasfer “clean” mp3-files to the unit.
Is it impossible to do that, or am I missing somehting? Do the musicfiles have to be converted so the player can put the right tags on them or what?
Anyway, I think this really sucks and if someone can help me, it would cheer me up bigtime!
December 27th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Hi Colin. Cheers for reply. I managed to re-install and load 5 cd’s as i could see the driver but then i tried to copy 10 and connect hung and crashed. now i cant load conenct at all , just sits at the splash screen. Not having much luck….few more attempts an dthink i will go for an iRiver!!!!
December 27th, 2005 at 4:45 pm
josh,
I didn’t do that wma thing, but did everything else steve told us to and it worked!!! Yey for Steve!
Lucy
December 27th, 2005 at 6:25 pm
I got the NW-A1000 for Christmas and it’s the new love of my life haha!
Just one tiny problem with Connect:
Has anyone had any problems with this programme when dragging mp3s from one folder into Connect (rather than selecting import from the menu). It comes up with an error message, somethin to do with tinyhttp.exe and then crashes.
December 27th, 2005 at 7:31 pm
ty lucy lol
December 27th, 2005 at 7:32 pm
moving switfly on…..does anybody know how to delete songs of the walkman on connect all it says is ready for delete…
December 27th, 2005 at 7:36 pm
can anyone tell me how exactly can i put my wma files from window media player onto the sony nwa3000, ive tried to drag folders and drop them onto it but they still wont come up?
December 27th, 2005 at 7:38 pm
anybody….?????
December 27th, 2005 at 7:40 pm
try opening files or importing them please answer mine…
December 27th, 2005 at 7:42 pm
HOW DO U DELETE THE SONGS FROM THE WALKMAN USING THE CONNECT PLAYER ALL IT SAYS IS READY FOR DELETE!!!!!!!
December 27th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
Josh – the way I’ve managed it so far is
connect the player to your USB2. On the left hand side of CPs control panel highlight the NW A3000 Box and a list of all the tracks on your player should appear.
Then either hold the shift key and highlight the range you want to delete or right click and select all – then right click and hit remove – wait for a few seconds depending on how many tracks you’ve uploaded and they should first say deleting then after a few moments disappear.
try a few at a time
again sorry if this is stating the obvious again but it has worked for me.
best of luck again – I think its a process of trial and error at the moment – I’m only doing the basics but seem to be getting results – will try my mp3 files tommorrow- just sticking to ripping CDs at the mo.
cheers
Steve
December 27th, 2005 at 8:10 pm
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
December 27th, 2005 at 8:18 pm
hi. i got an a3000 the other day, didnt have too much problem getting 500 songs on it, some mp3s some wmas, some atrac, it looks like connect software converts them all to atrac before they go on the player, so whats the firmware update for? (i thought it was to make it compatible with wmas)
Anyway, my only grip is that the LINK button , when pressed on any track- comes up with, ‘cannot find linked artists’ , whats that all about, all my songs have the correct tags, genre, artist, track,etc. if the artist link is a selling feature, whay doesn’t it work, does anyone else have this problem, or does the link button work for everyone????
help
December 27th, 2005 at 8:23 pm
I think people are just glad to get the software loaded and songs on the players at the moment Ben.
December 27th, 2005 at 8:46 pm
i have clicked delete not remove though
December 27th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
anybody able to answer me question?
December 27th, 2005 at 10:25 pm
I don’t understand Josh – thave you tried right clicking against the highlighted songs and hitting remove – should do the trick
December 27th, 2005 at 11:32 pm
what i have found is best is to created a new folder on your hdd and put a few albums (3/4) in at a time and do it like that, as it’s easyier to see and understand the ss software
December 27th, 2005 at 11:52 pm
Must admit I’ve got used to it – loaded all my CD albumns up now – downloaded a few that were showing as data disks by ripping in WMP and importing.
Has only stalled once since I eventually got it loaded.
I keep the library empty though once I’ve uploaded all the songs- about 5 albumns at a time- seems to have been a success – more updates will only make it better.
Not very intuitive but by trial and error and a few downloads I’m starting to feel a lot more comfortable with it than I did Christmas morning.
cheers Steve
December 28th, 2005 at 1:28 am
I have a NW-A3000 when using Connect to rip cds I press the “get cd info” button which takes me to the Gracenote Registration screen I tick the agree box and finish but always get the message “Internal error – CDDB server can’t be found” consequently I have been putting the track information in manually. Can anyone tell me how to overcome the problem.
December 28th, 2005 at 2:39 am
does anyone know if itunes can be transfered onto the NW-A1000 cos i have LOADS of itunes tracks but i can’t figure out how to get them onto my spanking new shiny walkman!
Please help!
December 28th, 2005 at 10:20 am
Michael – gracenotes fires up everytime I put a cd in the cd player automatically so not sure though I think earlier in the thread I’ve heard someone say something similar = if not check out http://www.kanai.net/weblog/archive/2005/11/10/06h20m47s or http://www.atraclife.com/index.php? both good sources for info on the NW A series
Vicky – again I’m sure someone on this thread has said it is possible- not having one myself I’m not sure but wouldn’t it be a case of going into the library in connect then file import and just navigationg to the library where the itunes mp3s are held?
good luck
Steve
December 28th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
dont worry anymore what happend was i clicked delete not remove so i reinstalled the software!
December 28th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
try transfering or importing files
December 29th, 2005 at 12:28 am
if anyone is having problems with the softwear i found sonys sonic stage to be easyer and it takes up less room
December 29th, 2005 at 12:38 am
Hi All,
I saw this the player the other day and thought it was beautiful. I really wanted one. Then I tried it with some decent headphones and it sounded absolutely fantastic. I had to have one.
Then I researched it a bit and found that Sony like iPod and Windows Media Devices etc are all crippled in some way. Crippled in that you can only play their files in one way or another. Crippled in that their software is full of spyware or is huge or it crashes frequently.
I have an iRiver iFP795 (only 512 meg) that has its firmware upgraded to UMS – it acts like a removable hard drive. You can use Windows Explorer but I use Winamp (one of the best pieces of software on the planet) and a free plugin to transfer playlists to my iRiver. Winamp is small, Winamp is free, Winamp doesn’t need a fast computer. My iFP795 can be used on 98SE, ME, I even use it on a Linux machine!
I would buy the NWA3000 now, instantly if it behaved like a removable hard drive; if I didn’t need proprietory buggy software, if it could play my MP3s directly.
Once again Sony; you made a superb device but then you crippled it!
December 29th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
Hi
I got the NW-A1000 for Xmas and I think it’s amazing, don’t seem to have too many problems with conncect either.
I find it easier to rip my cd’s from Windows media player and then import them onto Connect.
However, I’ve ripped mine to MP3 format and I only have 500 songs on there so far and it’s used up 4meg already!
I’m very new to all this so can someone tell me if I’m doing something wrong please, should the format be ATRACK? Whats the difference?
Cheers
December 29th, 2005 at 6:34 pm
Love the walkman. Hate the software. Its slow and crashes frequently.
!!!!!!!!! NEED HELP WITH CONNECT STORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Everytime I try to register all that happens is the home page refreshes. So I cannot purchase any music as I cannot for the life of me work out whats wrong.
Any help greatly appreciated.
December 29th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
I’ve got exactly the same problem Hoopy – any help apprecaited folks
Steve
December 29th, 2005 at 6:57 pm
Good to know I am not the only one. Sony customer service phone number is engaged all the time and as yet I have had no response to my e-mails.
December 29th, 2005 at 8:43 pm
Hi guys, wondering if any of you can help. Recently purchased an NWA 3000, and have had no problems (except obviously with connect – remedied with sonicstage). However, i turned the machine on this morning and was confronted by a white cross of light through the centre of the screen. Imagin a massive + running all the way through it. It seems to be onlya few pixels across, and the player works fine; however it is extremely frustrating as i have not dropped it or anything of that nature. Has this happened to anyone else? Also, i bought it from Amazon, but if i take it to a Sony store will they be able to exchange it for me, or will i have to send it back to Amazon if it is broken. Thanks very much to anyone who replies!
December 29th, 2005 at 8:54 pm
Hi,
We’d just like to take the 250th post slot with a big thanks to all the Techlounge readers and those who have helped so far in clearing up the ongoing problems that people are having with the Sony NWA3000. It’s a great looking device and a real opponent to the Ipod, but if only they would sort the software out we’d all be happy.
Techlounge
December 29th, 2005 at 10:43 pm
John – is this the fireworks everyone seems to have after upgrading the players firmware to 2.01.
If its random accross the screen from time to time – nothing to worry about -if its a solid line with crosses accross the centre take it to a sony service centre would be my guess- did it start happening after the firmware upgrade or has it been like that since you had it?
December 29th, 2005 at 11:14 pm
Hi Steve, unfortunately it’s not random, it’s permanent. However, it is a solid line, but without the crosses, accross the centre of the screen. I also haven’t upgraded any software so i don’t know if that’s what it is, but i definitely will take it to the sony centre tomorrow morning. Thanks very much for replying, seems as if i’m not the only one in this boat! Any opther ideas more than welcome!
December 30th, 2005 at 12:16 am
nah that doesn’t work, thanks though. If anybody else can help out I’d be very greatful as my favourite songs are all on itunes and i want them on my player!
December 30th, 2005 at 12:40 am
Hi Steve
After much trawling on the internet i found this via the sony uk web site which allows you to register using the sony connect europe icon. You do not need to download sonic stage as it allows you to sign on using Connect once you have registered.
Got there in the end
Enjoy
Hoopy
December 30th, 2005 at 12:41 am
Sorry Steve
This time I will include the link
http://www.sonydigital-link.com/Links/links.asp?l=en
Hoopy
December 30th, 2005 at 1:36 am
Hello!
Just bought the NW-A1000 and am too having problems with Connect. However with mine the programme won’t even open! Just keeps loading forever!
Called Sony and they said to just use Sonicstage 3.3 until they create an update to help. But when i transfer songs to my mp3 player through this it says they’re there, but when taken away from the computer the screen says there are no songs ‘please attach compliant software’! Is there something more technical i should be doing with my tracks than just clicking transfer?
Called Sony again and they told me to download the new version of Connect. I went on the site as told but every update there for me to download takes up about an hour of my time and then tells me i do not have the ‘target software’!
My computer has been on for 5 days so far downloading and such and still i have no songs!
Anyone experienced these problems? Anyone have any suggestions?
Please!!
December 30th, 2005 at 10:44 am
Hi, does anyone have any ideas to my question I posted yesterday?
Cheers
December 30th, 2005 at 11:19 am
Cheers Hoopy – I’ll have a go later today – appreciate the help
Steve
December 30th, 2005 at 11:42 am
Steve
Do you mean you have used 4 Gigabytes after downloading 500 songs – 4 megs would be about 1 song in MP3 format which is probably what you’ve done in WMP – if you’ve downlaoded. I’m rubbish at maths but – 500 songs at 4 MB Average is 2 GB – do you think you have 4 GB of songs because your player says there is only 16GB left on the player?
It seemed strange to me- perhaps I don’t understand but I’m assuming the player is using 2GB of memory for internal software in the same way as your PC does with XP. (unless I’ve got this wrong and Sony have short changed me with 2GB of hard disc space)
If that is the case 2 GB for about 500 songs doesn’t seem to far off .
However – if you rip the CDs in CP and use the atrac format rather than MP3 I’m assuming you get more compressed files and I suppose more music files on your player for less memory.
I’m new to all this myself so perhaps someone with more experience with Atrac can come in and comment
cheers everyone
Steve
December 30th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
Hi Claire
We are having the same problem too. We can download connect software and sonic stage but the computer will not open either. Does anyone have any suggestions apart from returning the NWA 3000 back to amazon
December 30th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
Thanks for that Steve, I appreciate that
Well, on the bar at the top right of CONNECT, it says that I have used up 4gig out of my 6gig memory. I’ve figured out that if you change the format to ATRACK, you can downsize the bit rate, but then I’ve found that the sound isn’t as good. So, is there 2 gig of memory used up for internal software then?
What format are others using, I’d be interested to know.
Cheers
Steve
December 30th, 2005 at 12:13 pm
sorry, in addition, the songs havn’t been downloaded – I ripped them from CD.
Cheers
Steve
December 30th, 2005 at 12:25 pm
With regard to the manual updates and the “Target software module not present” message. It appears because the version of connect has already been updated via the auto update, therefore the version of connect the update is looking for isn’t there anymore.
After many uninstalls/installs of connect that left me seriously pissed off, I would suggest uninstalling everything including the hidden files, as just uninstalling connect via the add/remove function in the control panel doesn’t seem to be enough.
To delete the hidden files to complete the uninstallation:
Go to the Windows Explorer, and make sure to make hidden files visible (go to the Tools on the menu and click the Folder Options, then on the View tab, select the Show hidden files and folder.)
Browse to C:\Document and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Sony Corporation\CONNECT Player\Library and delete all the files located in this folder.
Then install connect using the disk that came with the walkman and the auto update function should update to the latest version.
All this is on the sony site, but is a bit difficult to find.
My player and software is now working fine, the firmware update worked fine, connect is still a bit slow but I haven’t had to restart due to hanging yet and I’ve ripped loads of CD’s and updated my player.
One thing I’d recommend though, before plugging in the player go into preferences and set the transfer music to manual instead of full synchronisation. This gives you more control over the time you spend waiting for music to transfer, as you can do it in 30 mins sittings rather than a 5 hour marathon watching the status bar flash intermittently.
December 30th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
Hi Simon,
Cheers for the advice left 15 minutes ago. i have deleted the ‘library’ folder, and so its now just a case of installing connect again…like it should have worked in the first place?
December 30th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Well my player has decided to throw a complete wobbly and now doesn’t not work AT ALL!! Oh yeah Sony are so getting this thing back! It’s weird, I heard loads of bad things about the iPod, so I thought, I know, I’ll go for the walkman, it’s nicer looking anyway but oh my God I didn’t realise there were even more problems with this than the iPod!..
Reckon it’s worth it to get a replacement or just get a refund?
December 30th, 2005 at 4:13 pm
Vicky,
What happened with it?
I’d get a replacement as everyone I know are having no problems at all with it.
I mean, myself personally I actually think the Connect software is ok.
Does anyone have any comments regarding the question I asked earlier?
Thanks
Steve
December 30th, 2005 at 6:00 pm
I bought my wife an NW-A1000 for christmas and have had no real problems ripping CDs and downloading via the Connect software. However a couple of her CDs just show up as Data CDs and therefore can’t be ripped is there a way around this ?
December 30th, 2005 at 6:28 pm
Hiya!!!
Ive been experiencing the SAME problems as eveyrone else!!! I love the player but the software…well we all know what thats like!!
I just have one question…(for now!!)
Is anyone else having trouble downloading the Firmware update to the NW-A3000? everytime i click on the ‘accept’ button it displays the ‘page cannot be displayed’ page.
Can anyone help as I am worried that this might be something my player really needs!!
Thanks.
December 31st, 2005 at 12:58 am
Jon – rip your CD in Windows media player then import it into connect.
Several of my CDs came out as data files rather than audio and that is the way I got around it.
Carla- not sure why you can’t update the latest frmware but as far as I know all it dooes it enables the player to play WMA files- if you don’t need that its probably no big deal to be honest
cheers Steve
December 31st, 2005 at 2:51 am
Wow, sony what were you thinking!!!!!!!
I think they let the tea boy design the software for the player, im at uni doing computers and im getting confused/annoyed at the software its not the most user friendly of things.
I have around 4000mp3′s in my collection and i tired importing them at 500 tracks a go into the media library then throwing them onto the player, nah its not for working
Has anyone managed to get the linked artists working?
I would have expected more from Sony, then again theyre releasing rootkits in software so im not suprised they released this buggy software
Strongly worded e-mail winging its way to sonys mailbox!!!
Nino
December 31st, 2005 at 4:08 am
Hi all,
I was thinking about buying the Sony a few posts up but then sanity prevailed. Hear me out and you will understand.
I bought a Samsung YH-J70 with a 30 gig hard drive. It has a “stated” 25 hour battery life, a 30 gig hard drive, a colour screen, USB hosting, a cradle and doesn’t use DRM software like iTunes or Connect or SonicStage.
Anyway – the device acts like a removable hard drive! All you need is any one of the dozens of free MP3 ripper programs available on the net and you simply drag and drop what you want to play into one of the directories on the player. There are directories for movies and text files and pictures that add to the versatility of this device.
After charging the device, I was playing music within five minutes (and fiddling with the equaliser settings all in colour)! The Samsung is not crippled. The Samsung plays normal everday MP3s that probably make up your music collection now. The Samsung doesn’t stuff up your life with content protection and DRM! My Samsung is fantasic!
The Samsung has a superb colour screen and it acts as a USB host allowing you to share your music with your friends where ever you happen to be.
Most of the comments on this forum are about how bad the Sony software is – get real – the Samsung doesn’t need any! Connect takes so long to transfer files because it is encrypting them! Why do you think that Connect needs such a high spec machine!
Someone above asked what an ATRAC is – it is a proprietory form of encryption used by Sony (iTunes has its own, Windows Media Player has its own as well). Proprietory file types are the cause of the problems with Connect. ATRACS are PC specific in that the PC specs make up part of the encryption. If you upgrade your computer, you will probably need to re-rip all your ATRACS! The ATRACS you purchased online will probably not play again either.
Quote PCPlus November 2005 Page 109 – “Burnt by the US legal system over its DAT technology, Sony has instigated some of the most draconian content protection schemes in the hope of avoiding future legal problems. As great as its ATRAC compression system may be, the restrictions imposed by its Connect online music shop and portable digital player software SonicStage are worse than anything implemented by Microsoft so far”.
My advice – keep the MP3 alive! My Samsung sounds fantastic and supports MP3s and Ogg lossless compression files as well as lots more! Do yourself a favour and give it a listen. Imagine – music without crippling limitations!
Have a fantastic New Year!
YT
December 31st, 2005 at 11:48 am
What is the sound quality like though YT. I’m guessing most people buy MP3 Players for music – to me the photos and video playback are a bit of a gimmick (my opinion only – no offence).
As far as sound goes the NW A series is fantastic and at last I’ve got used to Connect and find it ok – I’m not trying to excuse Sony because when it first came out it was appalling (CP) and many people who have not perservered with it will no doubt have sent their units back which is a shame.
But at the basic level – I can get music on easily and the sound is fantastic. Glad your happy with your Samsung but I won’t be sending my Sony back anyday soon.
cheers
Steve
December 31st, 2005 at 1:22 pm
Cheers Steve, I’ll give it a go.
December 31st, 2005 at 9:04 pm
Hi got a nw a 1000, spent all xmas trying to get it to work with all of the problems mentioned above, finally sorted it out … by taking it back to shop and demanding money back since it wasn’t fit for purpose!
hope an ipod is better …
thanks for your site i had thought that it was me and that i was losing my sanity but all you guys with similar problems …
cheers
December 31st, 2005 at 11:17 pm
Thanks Steve for your advice about not really needing the Firmware!
Do you think that you could help me out with another problem I seem to be having??? Or anyone for that matter??
When I play some of my songs that are CD-Rs there is this crackling noise going on and when I transfer it to the player it come up on there to?
Could you or anyone tell me why and maybe how to stop it??
Thanks.
January 1st, 2006 at 12:09 am
Hi Stevetynant,
In answer to your question, I’m listening to My Samsung right now through a set of Sony MDR-V500DJ headphones.
These are big cans – not your average street style ones and the sound is superb. Volume is about 3/4 with 3D on and TruBass set at 2 (max 6). The Samsung pumps out 20mw but other players don’t because they are limited for one reason or another.
I’ve listened to Death in Vegas, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Digweed, etc and the sound quality is absolutely fantastic. No cracking, hiss, pops, no nothing except the music. I am also becoming aware of subtle hints in the background to pieces that I wasn’t aware of before. Its like I’m listening to music for the first time.
You are quite right that the videos and other stuff are gimmicks and I bought this device because I wanted to listen to music without crippling limitations like copy protection and DRM but I have found incidental uses for the text file reader (I always carry my MP3 player) and I couldn’t resist sneaking a few photos of my cat into the picture directory.
Its great to hear that you got Connect working. Last night I tried to help a friend get it up and running to no avail. The Sony is physically a superb machine – it is attractive and solid and really cool but speaking first hand about the software (about four hours of it) – it is not fit for the purpose it was intended.
Have a great new year everyone
YT
January 1st, 2006 at 11:52 am
Carla- are you saying the the crackling is on the Walkman when you transfer the music or is it on the CDR before you transfer the music?
Not sure why it would behave like that on walkman – have you tried rerecording the CDr from the original disc or even from the CDR a second time?
YT – sounds like you have a great MP3 player there and the point you make about picking out sounds you have overlooked on records before is quite right – its like listening to some tracks for the first time all over again.
Its a shame Sony have released the software in the state it was in originally – it has improved but has a long way to go to compete to be honest – there must have been a lot of very frustrated people out there Christmas morning.
Anyway- have a happy new year all – I’m going to find some headache tablets again
cheers
Steve
January 3rd, 2006 at 2:21 pm
Just got the NWA3000 for christmas and think its absolutely wonderful. Unlike other people I haven’t had any major problems with the Connect software but I think a fast PC seems to help. The only problem I am having is with CDs that are enhanced CDs, ie they have videos or extra features on them. When you open these CDs on a PC they come up as a data CD and the Connect software fails to recognise any tracks on them! Very annoying as a lot of my CDs are like this – does anyone know how i can get the Connect software to recognise the tracks on these CDs.
January 3rd, 2006 at 2:39 pm
sorry just seen an earlier post about ripping CD in Windows media player first and then importing into Connect so i’ll give this a try!
January 3rd, 2006 at 5:32 pm
hi all, after all the warnings about the software i decided to get an NW-A3000- whoops! the thing is awesome, but the connect program just keeps freezing my computer, and i cant download sonic stage because the sony sit wont let me because i have ‘cookies blocked’, which i dont. so for the minute at least it is just a pretty brick. i think my computer must be to blame to be honest, any ideas would be much apriechiated, thanks.
January 3rd, 2006 at 6:01 pm
A triumph of Style over functionality – looks great, what a pain the software and support is. It has taken me over 3 weeks to load my WMA collection of 4500 songs onto this beast. On my first computer the software ground to a halt, no explanation, Sony seemed to be looking for excuses to get rid of me, my previous creative Zen worked 100 x faster downloading same no tracks in under 2 hours. 3 software updates later and 4 calls to Sony UK finally the suggestion was reinitialise the hardware disinstall and reinstall the software, then the updates, In the end it took me around 24 hours non-stop manual loading to get the collection onto the machine.
I was intenting to buy the latest creative, but was seduced by the Sonys’ style, I wish I hadn’t been – don’t buy one my personal advice, well not unless you’re a computer genius with endless patience!
January 3rd, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Hi Tracey
Yeay try ripping them in Windows media player, definately works for me. I find that a lot quicker than using Connect to Rip CD’s.
I agree that a fast pc helps. My laptop is only 6 months old and is fairly quick. I don’t seem to have any problems with Connect or the actual player – I think it’s great!
My only concern is that there seems to be a lot of memory used up before any songs are added. Reason I ask is that is because apparently, using 128k bit rate compression (MP3) the NW-A1000 holds up to 1,000 songs apparently, whereas the Ipod can hold up to 1,500 for the same bit rate?
Any ideas anyone?
Cheers
Steve
January 4th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
Hi,
Again cheers for all the help on the site…I would have returned the nw-a3000b by now had it not been for the advice on here! I was wondering where the cheapest place to buy the remote for the player was? I’ve found it on amazon for around 16 quid….any better offers?
Cheers
Alex
January 4th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
We’ve just had a scour around the web and it does seem that at the moment Amazon is the best and cheapest place to get the Sony RM-NWS1 remote control at the moment.
Techlounge
January 4th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Cheers, thanks very much
January 4th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
I’ve just found out that Sony have put in nearly 2gig of software into these players, making the memory 4gig for the NW-A1000 and 18gig for the NW-A3000. I think thats a bit naughty concidering the IPOD is less than half a gig.
Apart from that I have no regrets and have had no problems with the player or the Connect software.
Any thoughts?
Steve
January 4th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
Hi again guys,
As i mentioned above, i’ve been getting on really well with the player due to this site, but connect know shuts itself down due to a ‘tinyhttp.exe’ error when i try and import files to its library. Any ideas what this is and how to go about fixing it????
January 4th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Hi all,
does the nwa-1000 have a FM reciever built in?? trying to decide between the sony or a philips 6230.
any help would be great
January 4th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
hi alex…im also having lots of problems importing files!!!
January 4th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
To Josh and Alex
If you rip your cd’s in Windows media player and then import then into CONNECT, this works.
I do this with all cd’s anyway as it’s quicker.
Jope this helps.
To Jonathan, no it doesn’t come with radio, but I would still seriously recoment the Sony one. Once you have Connect sorted, it’s an amazing bit of kit!
Steve
January 4th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
thanks!! where can i get the update for connect software???
January 4th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
Should prompt you automatically when an update is available.
If anyone else knows otherwise, can they let me know please?
Ta!
January 4th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
Hi steve, cheers for the help, like you said, its much faster as well. I keep getting this message of ‘TinyHttp.exe’ has encountered a problem and needs to be closed whenever I attempt to transfer into the connect library or the device itself. Has anyone got any tips on how to fix this file or what to do about it?
Thanks again
Alex
January 4th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
UMM can anyone tell me why i cant transfer songs with copyright (e.g from an album) and if so can u tell me a way to transfer them
January 5th, 2006 at 12:00 am
I brought this MP3
I have never owned an MP3 or used one beore and quite rankly it was so easy to use, my gran could do it.
Very impressed….
January 5th, 2006 at 12:07 am
uploaded new firmware 2.01 but for some reason now the artist link button (l.hand side glows orange) has stopped working…v strange!
also having problems with some music downloaded of the internet which is aparently in “WMA format, protected by the Windows Media Digital Rights Management” (?) basically as far as I can see means it doesnt upload onto my NW-A3000 (or ipods apparently)…any ideas if theres a way round this or if not any decent legal sites that you can download from cos napster etc all seem to have this protection!
Thanks!
January 5th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Just thought I’d share something with you all… a friend of mine had an NW-A1000 for Xmas and the back button stuck. She took it back and Sony said they said they were surprised it was a machine fault, rather than software! The guy at Sony said they were having problems with some of their software and were offering exchanges for anyone having problems with Connect – apparently it hasn’t affected them all, just some.
Sounds like a bad batch went out as I know lots of people who are having no problems with Connect at all (myself included – I think it’s a great piece of software), yet others seem to have all kinds of problems.
Hope this helps.
Steve
January 5th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
I’m getting on ok with it now Steve but judging by the posts on this and other forums you’ll probably be in the minority
Steve
January 5th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
One other thought
why is it do you think that the 2GB of software on the walkman is really good (in my opinion anyway) and yet the Connect software is so poor.
Presumably they have the same software teams working on these devices?
just a thought
Steve
January 5th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
I bought my girlfiend one (NW-A1000) for Christmas and this is my story so far:
1st one – (25th Dec) loaded software OK, charged the device fully whilst ripping a few CD’s. I then couldn’t get the player to connect, it would either crash (freezing when connecting) or it would crash my PC. Finally on the 27th after reinstalling connect I don’t know how many times, even downloading sonicstage to no avail I finally got it to connect to my computer and even started transferring an album – it crashed and the walkman died. It wouldn’t come on/charge/do anything.
2nd one – (27th Dec) Swapped at the Sony Centre, attached to the computer and promptly died.
3rd (and current) one – FINALLY! Not only does it connect but I can transfer over 600 songs over. This was after reloading the personal audio drivers for it several times, yesterday though the player crashed again and the last 5 albums I’d transferred all had an “error” status so I tried to remove them. I then got a message on XP saying an unknown USB device has been connected and it crashed again, there are now no songs on the player and I was up until 2am trying to get it to connect again with no luck. For the day or so she’s been able to use it my girlfriend says it was superb but I’m running out of patience. It now just says “connecting” but never does anything and I’ve reinstalled evertything again this morning.
*head:brickwall*
January 5th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
does anyone know how to fix a tinyhttp.exe error?
January 5th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Apparently it uses about 100Mb of memory so that may be the cause of the problem. You just have to put “tinyhttp.exe” in google to see you’re not alone. Somone has a screen shot of it using 660Mb! I only have 756 no wonder it keeps crashing.
January 5th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
It seems that Sony have been working to fix the tinyhttp.exe problems, see these update details to the Connect Software…
January 5th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
does anyone know how to transfer albums i cant because of copyright please reply
January 5th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Some albums will have copy protection built in that you can’t get round legally, but I’ve ripped about 50 normal CD’s without a problem. Put the CD in whilst Connect is running, select the drive it’s in and get the info to fill in the track names then rip it by clicking on the icon. Once that’s finished select the album from the library then transfer it to the player.
January 5th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
hi. any news on the artist link button on the actual player. mine still comes up no linked artists, my collection of songs are mp3,wma,and artecs, but my link button yeilds no results, prehaps out of my 600 songs, i have none that are similar in style (doubts)
January 6th, 2006 at 4:15 am
Hi, i got a Sony NW-A3000 to replace my ipod that was crippled by software updates besides the rubbish software I find my Sony Mp3 player much better. However whilst the ipod had hundreds of beltclip holders I have been unable to find one for my sony player and heartbreakingly its fallen out of a my tight pockets a few times and hence has slightly inverted my link button. So I just wanted to ask are there any belt clip holders for this Mp3 player? And is it possible for me to fix my link button or will i have to get that professionally done?
January 6th, 2006 at 10:16 am
does anyone know of any free sites to download music from,can i use livewire,if so please advice as to how as im a novice to this.
I also had trouble with connect player so downloaded sonic stage and can now get my cds on but dont know how to do anything else
January 6th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
I really need a belt/clip or armband for the A1000. Does anyone know if I-Pod mini ones will be ok, as they are a similar sixe/shape.
January 6th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Hi Matt
There are more accessories coming available for the Sony NWA1000 and NWA3000. We have found that this site has a few good products. Their armband is compatible with the skins.
Techlounge
January 6th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
brooky, you can use music you download from limewire but it isnt strictly legal
if the doesnt bother you try bittorrent
January 6th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
thanx for the accessories website techlounge, didn’t find a cover i like but found something else i love!
January 6th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Thanks Techlounge!
January 6th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
Does anyone know how to get the Artist Link button to work? Every time I press it, it comes up with “Cannot find linked Artist”
Cheers
Steve
January 6th, 2006 at 10:22 pm
Hi again,
Just wanted to say thanks for all the advice on everything from tinyhttp.exe files to saying to be patient with connect! Finally managed to get my mp3 collection on the 3000 so now its just all the cd’s! Thanks again for all the help and an excellent site
Alex
January 7th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Steve
Sorry, just read your post on the 5th.
Do you think 2 gig of software is quite good then? See, I’m all new to this so I have nothing to compare too. Apparently, the Ipod uses less than a gig of software, meaning that it can hold up to 1,500 songs on 128k bit rate (MP3 etc) whereas the NW-A1000 only holds 1,000 tracks at the same bit rate.
I personally think that saying something has 6 gig of memory (or 20 gig for the A3000) but taking 2 gig off you straight away is a bit bad, but as I say, I’m new to this so this could be normal.
Any thougths or comments anyone?
Steve
January 7th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
hey… am also new to this… steve, are you saying that if i buy the 20gb son, i’ll only be able to use 18gb for actual music?
January 8th, 2006 at 12:33 am
Hi, perhaps I can help you understand why 20 gigs is actually only 18.2
This is a bit mathematical, so sorry in advance.
The smallest data unit is bytes.
1024 bytes is 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes is 1 megabyte
1024 megabytes is 1 gigabyte.
Well actually, I’m lying a little, those units should be bytes, kibibytes, mibibytes and gibibytes respectively, but Microsoft seem to try to fool us into believing they are called the units shown in the table above. Bare with me on this.
OK, so now for the real definition of the units in the table above.
The smallest unit is a byte
1000 bytes is a REAL kilobyte
1000 kilobytes is a REAL megabyte
1000 megabytes is a REAL gigabyte
So the hard drive manufacturer for the player creates a 20 billion byte drive. Windows interprets this as 20 billion divided by 1024 (three times) gigabytes. That’s:
20,000,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 = 18.6 gigabytes
There’s probably a little overhead for other stuff on the drive too, bringing your total useable space down to about 18.2 gigabytes.
The manufacturer of the player is using the correct units, but Microsoft lies to you when they say 18.2 gigabytes …. they mean 18.2 gibibytes.
I hope that clears it up, but I’m sure it just makes it even harder to understand
January 8th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Thanks for that Stuart – can’t say I took all the maths in but it does make sense.
I thought it strange that the device was using the same disc space as a windows based OS.
Odd that nobody has taken Sony to task over this in advertising an 20GB device that only lets you save @18GB of files – misrepresentation?
January 8th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Sorry – read that again with brain engaegd – Gosh this is confusing.
January 8th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
urm… thanx stuart… i kinda understand now…
January 9th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Got a nw-a3000 for christmas, have had a few problems but nothing crippling, few bits of advice:
-to get artist link to be more useful: group your music under more general genres than gracenote provides(it almost has a different genre for each artist) as artist link basically gives you a list of other artists in the same genre when its working
-connect is ok on a newer pc when updated(and it does this automatically), mine gets slow when i have too many artists/albums on there, got v.slow when i uploaded loads of music with different artist/albums, copes better when you rip cds onto it than (dodgy) mp3s
-atrac files don’t have any pauses on like mp3 so if you’ve got mix cds rip to atrac to stop annoying pauses during playback
-sonic stage 3.3 works on my 6-year old win98pc so is a reliable last resort but you lose artist link, intelligent shuffle functions and left with library function, basic play modes
January 9th, 2006 at 10:43 am
Thanks for that guys.
I was a little disapointed, especially as I only got the NW-A1000 as I thought 1,500 tracks would be fine, and now I find out I can only store up to 1,000 tracks on it in MP3 128k bitrate format – not a happy bunny.
Never mind – still love it though!
Steve
January 9th, 2006 at 10:59 am
hey steve, i have a 20GB and i have 6gb left only having put around 2500 songs on, i have a lot of different bitrate musioc so cant b bothered sorting through it to get all the bitrates the same but i am now struggling to fill the last few GB
January 9th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Hey Rory
Is there much difference in quality between the bit rates? Do you use MP3 or ATRACK format?
Cheers
Steve
January 9th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
when i go to detailed information in the player they all say mp3/wma i haven’t had a good listen to a good hi and lo song but will do tonight and let you know tomoz
January 9th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Excellent, thanks Rory.
January 9th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
i’ve just been browsing through and some of my songs are like 320/280 where as they really would be ok at 192 tops, but i really can’t be bothered to allter them. can anyone reccomend some good in ear ear phones i do like to listen loud so am i best just getting some big jobbies, i am mainly saying this as i am going to oz in 3 weeks and wanted something for the airport. but i might use the sony ones for around airport and get some sennheiser’s for on the plane
January 9th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
oz? ur lucky!
January 10th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
i know that this post isnt relevant to the sony but it seems like the place to get answers,
i recently bought a philips hdd085 3GB player, it uses windows media player, was just wondering what format it is best to rip CD’s too, wma or mp3 and at what rate?
January 10th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
URGENT UPDATE DUDES!
So like me you’ve used CONNECT twice and had a brain meltdown. You’ve downloaded Sonic Stage v3.3 which is ace and 1000 times quicker (and works). You’re p*ssed of that you can’t get the intelligent shuffle and artist link on the device…DON’T PANIC! Simply follow below steps to get it back….
1. When you install SS3.3 ignore the instruction to uninstall CONNECT (there are no noticeable software conflicts).
2. Don’t use connect just keep it there.
3. Use SS3.3 to do all your music transfers, close it and disconnect device safely (use task bar).
4. Open connect player (i hated doing this after using SS3, connect runs like a man with no legs by comparrison!)
5. WAIT UNTIL ITS FINISHED “THINKING” AND HAS STABILISED THEN INSERT PLAYER TO CRADLE/ USB PORT.
6. Wait about 1000 years while connect reads from the device and leave it until it completes the read/transfer process (you can see progress at the bottom right of the screen…it takes about 10mins cos connect player is balls.) DO NOT DISCONNECT UNTIL YOU ARE SURE TRANSFER IS COMPLETE OR YOUR LIBRARY WILL NOT APPEAR IN THE DEVICE. (if this happens repeat with connect or if it never completes SS3 will rescue with the same process!
7. Safely remove device with task bar and close program.
8. Activate device and…HEY PRESTO…posh shuffle modes and artist link work once more! Problem solved.
Hope this helps people!
Ps Volume hack rocks!
January 10th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
u r officially a GENIUS!!!!
January 11th, 2006 at 3:08 am
I am really unhappy now
I have SonicStage 2.0 already and thought I could do a direct transfer to the Connect Player software when I got it. Semms not. My Connect Player refuses to import the files on my Sonig stage which are in the Open MG format. Anyway, downloaded SonicStage 3.3 as others here have recommended. Was just going to install it when I read that all previous versions will be uninstalled!!! I have loaded my music solely onto SonicStage 2.0, all borrowed albums from friends etc… Is there any way I can transfer these files to my Connect Player or even directly to the Walkman? I’m just so upset at this stage. Thanks for reading.
January 11th, 2006 at 10:34 am
Editing in Connect – help please!!
Does anyone know how to edit albums in Connect – eg change Genre for the whole album, so you don’t have to change each track individually ….
Also how can you get the jpgs dragged into the icon box – did it once but then it disappeared!!!
Finally, if you make a change in the connect library will it automatically update the NWA3000 and/or vice-versa??
January 11th, 2006 at 11:29 am
Hi All,
I have a NWA1000 and have connect working after a few attempts. Its a bit slow but does not seem to crash and freeze etc.
I do though seem to have another problem. I ripped all my albums using Winamp on the mp3 setting at 192kbps. I ripped them on Winamp before I got my walkman for Christmas so that I was prepared.
When playing songs on my walkman I get the message ‘Cannot Play incompatable file type’. Now I ripped all the albums at the same time and have left them on the walkman as the mp3 file type. If I ripped the albums at the same time and transferred the albums at the same time how come some of the tracks within the album are non-compatable, they are all mp3 files. I am assuming something went wrong during the transfer. All the songs play fine on my pc….
Just wondered if anybody else had this problem…..?
January 11th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
Dear all
having succesfully loaded/riped all my cd onto Connect without too much hassle and transfered all my music to the player (NW A3000) I know find that when i try and rip any new cd’s no information come up (except ‘Unknown’) I have contacted Sony and surprise, surprise they told me to re-install the software!!! I have done this and still no CD information is donloaded from the Gracenote site (even though Connect does all the right noises ie the gracenote logo appears on the top left of the screen when I load a CD)……… Sony Helpdesk are useless so I hoped that a bright, intelligent person on here could give me some advise on what to do next……..
PS All internet connections/settings are all OK
thanks
January 11th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
i dunno if this any help to anybody but i downloaded sonic stage and i find it alot better than the connect player
January 11th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
can somebody tell me if this is normal… the artist link function only ever comes up with..”cannot find linked artist” why is this?
January 11th, 2006 at 10:43 pm
can anyone explain why my version of connect has decided today to jumble up the order of tracks on each album? call me old fashioned, but when i want to hear a whole album not in shuffle mode, i quite like it to start at track 1, then track 2 and so on…..
any ideas?
January 12th, 2006 at 3:23 am
Im looking for a really simple MP3 player that will support basic drag and drop options from any computer. All I want is a large ammount of storage – 30/40gb. I have heard that some of Sony’s products lock themselves to one computer and as i plan to travel soon this will be totally useless. Can anybody recommend a simple MP3 player? I dont want anything clever, no photo viewing, radio, just a big hard drive with a simple flash style hard drive maybe, that can download files from any PC without any additional software. Any help would be much apprieciated! x
January 13th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
A Jones,
I’ve found that it is much better to rip the CDs in Windows Media Player (download free from Microsoft), much faster and no problems with the ‘data’ CDs that you get on Connect with the enhanced CDs. When you rip them in Windows Media Player a copy is automatically saved on your C drive (my documents/my music). You can then import them using the Connect software to your device. I’ve found this much better than trying to do the whole thing in Connect, although I had no major problems with Connect anyway. hope this helps.
January 13th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Like everyone having some software problems but am getting round them eventually – thankfully the great design of the hardware itself makes up for all the hassles.
Haven’t tried post 331 yet but check it out if you haven’t ready already!
Anyone got advice on where I can source a cable for line-out to my hi-fi as I’ve done a quick search and can’t find anything suitable??
January 13th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
3.5mm (headphone jack) to a double phono end and just plug it in to your amp, most tv shops will have the lead
January 13th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Thanks Rory – I’ll try that out
January 14th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
I have the NW A3000….all is great, except for im finding the battery running out very quickly. I didn’t charge it for 24 hours when i first got it, was i supposed to!? If so, is there anything i can do about it?
January 14th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
hi jojo
same thing is happenin to me :s
January 14th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
try downloadin sonic stage!!!!!!!
January 14th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
Delighted with my player. No problems with software, either ripping or downloading. Bu I’ve had it 3 days and the recharge plug that clicks into the port on the unit is now very loose and is dropping out. Hence it won’t recharge unless I hold it in, which is a bit of a pain! Anyone else had this problem? Is my mind playing tricks as I seem to remember it a really tight fit when I first had it. Overall – love the unit though…magic!
January 15th, 2006 at 8:22 am
Jo JO,
I found this battery life initially dissapointing with my NW-A3000, have made a few tweaks since, that have improved battery life.
One go into display settings and select 15 seconds for the screen delay, this also turns off the pointless screen flashes you would have noticed when in standby.
Two. I no it’s a pain but I experimented with formats, i.e. converting the same albums,just a couple of different types on the player into Atrac the other being Mp3, could detect no difference switching between them in the quality. But if you store the tracks as Mp3 the player has to convert them before they play = power usage. Hence when I converted all my 14Gb on the player to Atrac3 132 have got nearly the full battery life, approx 32 hours. This will aslo depend on usage of navigation.
The other thing was the original 14Gb is now only 8Gb on the player.
Took about 10 hours to remove and reload in sonicstage3.3 but I was asleep at the time, so what. And have still got the original Mp3 obviously.
Hope this helps.
Gren.
January 15th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
im sure i’ve alreayd asked, but theres nothing wrong repetition is there now!:D How do you convert tracks into atrac from mp3? And will it affect the other files where the songs are stored ie. will they turn into atrac in itunes as well?
January 15th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
cool i’ll have to try and convert some of my songs
January 16th, 2006 at 10:34 am
NW-A3000 Borked!
Got one of the silver ones for Xmas, despite knowing that the software was mince, but yestrday, in the gym, the player ceased to function. Eventually got it to turn on and after ages searching it said there was no database. Tried to connect it to my computer, but no joy, keeps timing out on Connect. Doesn’t always show up as connected to the USB port either. Checked USB with flash drives and they all work OK. And it sometimes shows the battery charging even when not connected. Tried the reset button several times but no difference. So before I resort to sending this shiny piece of *$/t back to Amazon, has anyone experienced this problem or have a helpfull suggestion?
January 16th, 2006 at 11:01 am
only on the unresponsiveness, mine occasionaly turns on but then hesitates to do anything else
January 16th, 2006 at 11:44 am
Hi Gren
What bit rate are you using for Atrack? Also, does this use less memory that MP3?
I found that by storing all my tracks as MP3, it uses a lot of memory (on 128k bitrate)
Is the sound quality the same then?
I’d very much appreciate any help or suggestions you have.
Thanks
Steve
January 16th, 2006 at 11:55 am
I’m struggling to get the s/s conversion tool to work it says
“no songs in database”
January 16th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
Hi, just got my NWA1000 from Amazon and got about 10 tracks onto it, but then I tried to do a second round (after disconnecting the USB cable and reconnecting it) and Connect isn’t displaying the USB as being plugged in now! It comes up with the “Connecting…” message on the screen of the player, but then goes blank (whereas last time it said “Do not disconnect” or something like that I think).
Any help as to what is going on and how I can get on with adding my music without all this confusion would be very much appreciated. Thank you.
- Gabby
January 16th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
NW-A300 Deborked!
No idea how, came home this evening plugged it in for one last try before parcelling it up and hurling back to Amazon and the damn thing connected to the computer and found all my lost music. Read the manual and it says something about the player not liking prolonged periods of vibration so I’m wondering if a session in the gym could upset the thing. Seems odd, as I see lots of people in the gym with i-pods and suchlike, never seems to bother them. Still a bit pissed off as let’s face it what’s the point of having the hassle of owning something that breaks down when it’s used for what you wanted it for in the first place
January 17th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
hi all
could somebody help me. IS THERE ANY WAY TO MAKE THE BASS LOUDER AND MORE DEFINED. iS THERE A HACK TO INCREASE THE BASS?
hope to get an answer-thanxs
January 17th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
There is a volume hack
http://www.techlounge.co.uk/96/sony-nwa3000-volume-limiter-hack.html
as for increasing the bass, try a good set of headphones
http://www.play.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=ELEC&title=751992&p=321&g=409&pa=sr
with these headphones you can set the bass +1 treble +1 mid -1, i find this to be the perfect sound for most types of music
hope this helps
January 17th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
hi pijo
i dunno if this is any help but if you go you go to settings then sound if you then go to custom 1 you can then customize the bass trebble etc
good luck josh
January 17th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
gabby
the screen saying connecting with the circling arrows is normal just carry on transfering your songs as normal.
the DO NO DISCONNECT message is for when songs are bieng transfered or the like.josh
January 17th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
Hi,
I converted my Mp3 files using Sonicstage 3.3 you select the bitrate and type, by clicking on the little properties for transfer icon looks like a suitcase or something in the central bar between my library and the device boxes. As previously stated I tested it a few times with identical tracks and found Atrac3 132 was spot on and took up less space than the Mp3′s. Plus in addition uses less power.
It does not affect your original files, but you must have enough space on your hard drive because the conversion is stored in one folder in the sonicstage directory on your Pc as well as being transferred to the Player. This looks a bit horrific because all the tracks are just in one mass, but thats how a database likes to see data.
I then took the step just to archive all my Mp3 tracks on to DVD’s as backup always a good move anyway.
Doing all these transfers was not without a few problems, I found that sometimes the player seemed to just die and would not responed without a soft reset (this was even after making sure the transfers had completed and hardware safely removed) after the reset all the tracks seemed to be there but would not play. I reconnected to the PC it recognised the data on the player, I made one small change, disconnected again and it built the data and all was well again. I say its done this a couple of times after long periods of connection, never after shorter spells.
My next mission will be to try the connect software again, now I have most of the files converted I want to get the remaining functionality out of the player.
Bottom line so far is glad I bought it great sound and navigation battery life tiptop not just another mong with an Iplod
hope some of this helps,
Gren.
January 18th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
i have turned the screen setting down to its dimisted which should help in the old battery life compartement i’ll try and convert my mp3′s tonight does this mean i will be able to use the faourite 100 and search artist button
January 18th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Just to let you know I got the problem sorted by restarting the computer and then it worked fine.
Thanks anyway though Josh!
January 19th, 2006 at 11:29 am
This is going to sound really thick, but does anyone have a link to download Sonic Stage 3.3 please? I tried for 2 hours last night and it didn’t work, if someone has something that works then I’ll try again.
Cheers for you help guys
Steve
January 19th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
hey… has the software for sony improved a lot since it was first released? cos if it hasn’t im going to follow the rest of the nation and get an ipod… which i dont want to do. but im bored of waiting
…also, the display on the screen… is it like colour… urm… how do explain it… is it like a mobile screen before they all got colour or is it like white with black writing?
…Has anyone’s screen broken or anything yet? Do these things scratch easily?
How difficult is it to transfer mp3 files to Atrac? (considering i am NOT good with computers?)
Do you need the internet for any of this?
Sorry for all the questions! Thanks!
January 19th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
Charlie
I (along with a lot of people I know) am having no problems at all with Connect. I spoke to a chap in my local Sony Centre who told me that Sony had a bad batch of software that went out, but the later versions seem to be ok. I have nothing to compare it to as this is my first mp3 player, but I think the player is amazing and the software is nice and easy to use.
However, I tend to rip my music through Windows media player rather than through Connect itself and then import it in, this seems to be quicker.
You will need the internet to download the actual software and if you don’t have broadband (as I don’t) it can take around 2 – 2.5 hours (as I found out Xmas morning!!)
So far, I’ve had no problems with it, although I would advise spending £8 and getting the carry case for it as it will stop any scratches etc.
I havn’t tried Atrack format yet but according to other posts on here, this seems to take up less space on the player than MP3 and you just need to change the rip format either on Connect or on Windows player, it’s really easy.
Many more people I know have had more problems with IPOD’s than these, and I personally wouldn’t touch an Ipod with a 10 foot barge pole!
Hope this helps
Steve
January 19th, 2006 at 6:50 pm
DONT BE A SHEEP AND GET AN I-POD GET ONE OF THESE INSTEAD THEYRE NOT THAT BAD
January 20th, 2006 at 11:39 am
right i tried last night to convert my songs to atrac3, i thought i won’t give it loads to do i’ll give it, so i gave it about 10 albums, hoping it would be ready for this morning, during the night the software had hung. and now my player isn’t detected by my pc at home. so i tried at work and it seems ok but i have only copied maybe 7/8 albums at 3 at a time.
January 20th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
does anyone know how to change the format of an album once it’s been ripped (i.e. MP3 to track or Windows Media Auto) or will I have to re – rip all my cd’s to the new format?
Thanks
Steve
January 20th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
Steve what do u want them to be, if its atrac3 sonic stage does it when your on the transfere screen bit click the tool box and select atrac3 133 bit rate. i did a few albums today and had a listen in my van and couldn’t notice any quality difference. but they definatly seem to take up less space but i am going to put more albums on when i get home.
January 20th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
thanx steve! that really helped! am definately going for a sony now… don’t worry josh! bdw… not THAT bad? what’s that about?
January 20th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
I hope your boss doesn’t mind you fixing your NWA3000 while at work Rory!
January 20th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Yeah Rory, I think you should be getting on with work rather than playing around with your mp3 player…or else!
January 20th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Not sure if you are aware of this part of the Sony site where you can download an album for free if you register your NWA?
January 20th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Just to let you know if you want the bees knees Sony NWA1000, then check out this limited edition Franz Ferdinand Sony NWA1000
Techlounge
January 20th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
No problem Charlie, I’m sure you’ll be very happy with your new purchase!
Thanks for that Rory, much appreciated.
Did you still use 128k bitrate for that or did you lower it?
Cheers
Steve
January 20th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
sorry one more thing, has anyone got the link for sonic stage? I tried to download it once and it didn’t work, maybe I need the newer version?
January 20th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
i used 133
January 20th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
and that takes up less space than a 128k MPEG? Superb! Thats where I’m going wrong then! I’ve used up 5 gig (although almost 2 is internal software, grrrrr!) with only 600 tracks, whereas other people thats taken up nowhere near as much space.
Thanks for that
January 20th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
right well i have 2096 songs on there and they have all been conveted to atrac 133. but thats around 140 albums at 15 tracks each. and i have 7.4 GB left
January 21st, 2006 at 8:56 am
Looks like Sony are now getting their butts kicked in the public domain – about time aswel. I haven’t had too many problems with Connect but it wasn’t ecactly plug and play and for a lot of people it was / is a complete nightmare.
Apparantly a new patch is scheduled for the end of January so hopefully further improvements on the way but in the meantime – below is an article from todays Times.
The Times January 21, 2006
MP3 comes down with a crash
By Simon de Bruxelles
Software glitch has left users unable to transfer tunes to new player
SONY is advising consumers not to use software supplied with its new range of digital music players after hundreds of users complained that it caused their computers to crash.
The new Sony MP3 Walkman was billed as the company’s long-awaited answer to the iPod and became one of the biggest-selling electrical items for Christmas.
But Sony admitted that the software sold with the player has “major problems”, which has left many owners unable to use the players. The Connect Player programme is designed to transfer music from the user’s computer to the player and to connect them to Sony’s music sales website. But distraught buyers have been posting messages on websites cursing Sony. Others have returned their £199 players for a refund.
A woman called Amy wrote that her boyfriend bought her the Sony player for Christmas after she asked for an iPod. She said: “After three bottles of wine, 60 fags and trying all night to get some songs on the thing, me and my boyfriend are over. This morning I tried again, failing and throwing the mouse at the wall. Help!” John Dolan, a software designer from Cambridge, bought the players as presents for his 12-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son. He spent the two weeks before Christmas trying, without success, to get them to work properly.
He said: “They have caused me a lot of stress and have completely spoiled my kids’ Christmas as they were not able to use their presents.”
Sony, the company that began the portable music revolution with the cassette tape-playing Walkman in 1979, was a late entrant in the race to take on the iPod. It finally produced its new Walkman range in Europe and Japan in early November. The top specification machine is smaller than a pack of playing cards and can hold more than 10,000 songs. It has a concealed screen and an iPod-shaming battery life of 35 hours.
The players were an instant success. Both the 6gb NW-A1000 and the 20gb NW-A3000 flew off the shelves despite costing £149 and £199 respectively.
Unfortunately for a significant number of purchasers, the bundled software refused to work. Users complained that they were unable to get the Connect Player programme to load on to their computers. Others found their machines crashing or got bored waiting hours for signs of life.
Six weeks after the launch Sony released a software update designed to solve the most obvious problems. Sony conceded this week that there are “major problems” with the Connect Player software. The company is advising owners to uninstall Connect Player and download an earlier programme called SonicStage, which means that some of the newest features are unusable.
Sony, which sold products worth £36.6 billion worldwide last year, is unique in that it not only manufactures the players but owns much of the music. Some users suspect that the root cause of their problems is digital rights management (DRM) and the complex layers of protection Sony builds into its software to prevent users copying music without paying.
Gregory Kukolj, Sony’s general manager for Europe, admitted that there had been a higher than usual number of returns for a new product but told The Times that many of the initial problems had been corrected by the software upgrade last month.
He said that “certain people” had failed to download the upgrade, which was why they were still experiencing problems. The problems in Europe have delayed the launch date of the players in the US market, which was originally this month, but is now unknown.
January 21st, 2006 at 10:49 am
Thanks for that Rory, thats better than mine.
I have 618 songs on mine, and that used up 5 gig of memory.
Yours works out to be 166.35 songs per gig, whereas mine is 123.6 songs per gig.
Looks like I need to convert!
Do you, or anyone else for that matter, know if there’s a way of converting my existing ripped tracks from MP3 to ATRACK without having to rip all my cd’s again?
Thanks again
Steve
January 21st, 2006 at 11:46 am
Out of Interest I’ve got @ 1450 songs on the player with still 13GB free – so 5 Gbs used.
I’m not an expert on this but as MP3 is already a compressed format – won’t compressing even further to Atrac degrade the quality of the music?
Steve
January 21st, 2006 at 11:58 am
right you can convert in sonic stage it in the transfere settings click the tool box and its in there, Well “384″ A bit rate of 192 should be fine when your using mp3′s and 128 tends to be average and your going slightly higher with 130, doubt the small jump makes any difference, i have listened to my player for hours with the 133 bit rate and haven’t noticed any difference and was reluctent to swap over
January 21st, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Am I right in thinking that these players support Windows Media Audio (WMA) files?
Cheers
January 21st, 2006 at 3:39 pm
yes they do but you have to select to support them
January 21st, 2006 at 4:17 pm
yeah as long as you have the update, i have found though that a few of my albums have been corupted on the player but if i open sonic stage it plays them from the player slight pain when you have 130 ish albums on there. if you delete them from the player and re import them it seems to work fine. just thought i’d share
January 21st, 2006 at 6:51 pm
I just bought NW A1000 today,installed connect,updated transfered about 600 song easilly,i guess i got lucky or something because there were many people with problems,awesome player,i´m really glad i bought it.
January 21st, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Sony are claiming that new models have less buggy software. i swear my battery doesn’t last long i am going to try it one day just let it play all the songs.
January 22nd, 2006 at 6:09 am
I’m not 100% who mentioned this, but someone said that the atrac format is too low quality, have you tried changeing the bitrate?
January 22nd, 2006 at 1:12 pm
i am using 133 as bitrate and it seems fine to me.
January 22nd, 2006 at 3:16 pm
I just got a sony NWA-1000. I am a bit concerned about the rechargable battery as I am using it a lot and I kknow that eventually it wll need to be replaced. I have already read above that this is possible but where from? and how much?
Cheers
V.C
January 22nd, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Do you need to do a few charge/discharge cycles on the battery to increase its life? Like mobile phones. Not sure what battery the NW-A3000 uses but The documentation mentioned nothing about this. I’ve had mine since crimbo and because of all the problems (we’ve all had) the little bugger has been in and out of its cradle like a fiddlers elbow! I hope the battery hasn’t been affected!
Can anyone shed some light?
January 23rd, 2006 at 11:18 am
Ive got a NWHD5 and have got all my tracks on Sonic Stage. I have just bought the NWA-3000 for my dad which has come with the connect player software, is there anyway of transferring all my songs from Sonic Stage to Connect player?
It says in the manual to just import the Openmg folder with all the music but I can’t find this on the computer and i thought that you couldnt get access to the tracks on the computer.
I could just use Sonic Stage but it says that the artist link function wont work this way and everytime I open sonic stage it says there is no space left on the HDD of the NWA-3000.
Any help would be much appreciated.
January 23rd, 2006 at 12:33 pm
unless you ripped the cd’s with connect i don’t think it works anyway, + there both crap
January 23rd, 2006 at 12:47 pm
So Im going to have to rip my entire cd collection again to Connect player?
January 23rd, 2006 at 12:50 pm
yes if you want the link button to work, i just woulddn’t bother the only thing i would like to use is the 100 favourite songs but i can’t be bothered sorting it out.
January 23rd, 2006 at 12:59 pm
So when it mentions in the manual that you can transfer files from sonic stage what does this mean?
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:00 pm
ok just a quick update on the battery thing. i have played my nwa for around 1hr and 30mins about 50 songs on 15 vol and my first segment on the battery has just gone, i have skipped forward about 10 songs but it’s not looking good for more than 10 hours
January 24th, 2006 at 2:27 am
Back again and still no better off! Can someone tell me if I can play music files from sonicstage 2.0 on my Walkman NWA-3000? If so, how as I have burned an altrac cd but my Connect player won’t read that. Help please.
January 24th, 2006 at 3:03 am
I am REALLY anxious to get one of these players, but Sony still hasn’t released them in the US yet…anyone know when they’re planning on doing this?
Thanx,
-Sconts
January 24th, 2006 at 9:07 am
Connect Meets its end…..??
IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR SONY NETWORK WALKMAN OWNERS – NW-A1000 , NW-A3000 and NW-A608 ONLY :
A number of users have reported problems with their Sony Network WALKMAN NW-A1000 , NW-A3000 and NW-A608 when using “CONNECT Player” software.
Such problems may include slow performance or difficulty in installing the software.
Where they occur, these issues arise as a result of aspects of some system environments and usage conditions. To enable customers to enjoy their purchase, Sony is currently investigating these problems.
In the meantime, Sony recommends that any owners of the above-mentioned Network WALKMAN experiencing difficulties with their products should first check whether there is a solution to their specific problem in our FAQ section
If none of the suggested solutions cures the issue, we recommend the use of an alternative Sony software (known as “SonicStage”) which will remedy the above-mentioned issues. “SonicStage” software may be downloaded here , free of charge.
The current version of “SonicStage” software does not offer the full range of features and functionality offered by “CONNECT Player”. A description of the different software features available with “SonicStage” can be found here. Sony intends to provide a further release of “SonicStage” with additional functionalities in the near future and in parallel remedy the issues of the “CONNECT Player”.
For further information, please contact your local Sony Customer Information Centre
Sony apologises for any inconvenience caused to our customers and hopes that the information provided above will enable you to enjoy your Sony product .
http://support.sony-europe.com/DNA/Hotnews/hotnews.asp?l=en&f=ConSon
January 24th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
I’ve changed all my formats to WMA and downgraded the bitrate to 60k instead of the 128k MP3 format and I can’t tell the difference in quality at all, and I’ve saved LOADS of memory.
After all my posts about having no problems with Connect, it’s started to crash every now and then. It just freezes up and I have to re boot. Has anyone else had this problem, and if so how can it be fixed?
Cheers
Steve
January 24th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
so basically, the connect software is once again considered crap. and now even sony are saying use sonic stage… what about that thingy angry jedi said (post 331) about getting the functions to work with sonic stage? has anyone tried that?
January 24th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
steve have you tried listing to something with high notes like the rocky theme and the symbols my sound distored or burn one of the files to cd and play on yor hi fi then you’ll find out if theres really any difference
January 24th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Just found the link above to download Sonic Stage, tell me – is this loads better than Connect?
Will I still be able to use connect when the patch from Sony finally shows up?
Cheers all
Steve
January 24th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Rory, are you saying that there is a differance then?
I ripped 2 identicle tracks, one in 128k (MP3) and one in WMA (90k bitrate) and if anything, the WMA is better (to my untrained ears!)
Microsoft advertise WMA as a superior alternative to MP3 and say that you get better quality for a much lower bitrate.
Have you tried this Rory, or were you just making enquiries?
I havn’t played it through my hi fi yet to be honest to check.
Any thoughts anyone?
January 24th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
well i just ripped the same song twice (kanye west-diamonds are forever) due to the shirly bassey into and i can’t say i noticed alot of difference but i am sure if i took it home which i will and crank it up i think there’ll be some difference
January 24th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
HELP!!!!
I’ve been using this excellent forum ever since I got my nw-a3000 just after christmas. Earlier today I was in the last stages of copying my CD collection (I dont have to tell you guys how long this takes using connect!) and all my songs have just been wiped from the player!
I made sure that it was safe to disconnect yet all my songs have now been erased.
On the connect program itself, it still recognises over 200 artists when you click on the player in the t ope left hand corner, but there is nothing on the device. Is there anyway in which I can transfer them over to the player again? As I have had to kepp reinstalling connect to avoid the http.exe errors, there are only 39 artists currently in the library.
Are there any functions that can help if I right click on the nwa3000 icon in the top left hand corner? or can any of you guys offer me advice that will help me resurrect literally 4 weeks worth of evenings?
Any help would be very very very very much appreciated!
Disparingly, hair-pullingly, head beatingly, fist poundingly yours
Alex
January 24th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
have you tried pushing the soft reset button at the top of the play i did this when i was having problems slimar to yours and it solved it. or try and put a new cd on to the device and then see what happens
January 24th, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Al – if the worst comes to the worst and you can’t resurrect your library- all the music you ripped in Connect will now be in the my music folder on the hard drive of your PC -So just reinitialise the Walkman and file import to connect again then start uploading. The ripping was the time consuming thing- this shouldn’t take a fraction of the time if all else fails
Steve
January 25th, 2006 at 12:17 am
Rory and Steve, cheers for your help on the matter. I uninstalled connect and after reinstalling, plugged the player back in to copy from the ‘my music’ folder as steve said. Magically (and unpredictably as only sony can do!) it spent 10 minutes saying ‘do not disconnect’ then all my files reappeared on the device! Very strange indeed! What makes this even odder was that I had deleted some of the contents of ‘my music’ that were on the device and as mentioned before, deleted connect player, yet all of the songs came back on the device!!!! Strange, but I’m obviously very glad this happened!!
Cheers again for the advice guys!
January 25th, 2006 at 10:32 am
Rory,
just spent a while doing tests ripping the same song, and I can’t notice much of a differance. I think you’re right though, if I were to hook this up to my hi-fi at home, I’d notice it a lot more then.
Thanks for all your help with this
Steve
January 25th, 2006 at 10:39 am
cool at least you’ll get more songs on your nwa
January 25th, 2006 at 11:49 am
yeah exactly.
I re-ripped nearly all my cd’s yesterday from MP3 to MWA, plus adding on 5 new albums and I’ve saved best part of 2 gig. Result!!
January 25th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
To anyone thinking about it…..
DON’T BUY THIS PRODUCT!
To anyone who has already bought it ( like me)
Take/send it back….. If everyone sends them back then Sony (Spits and swears alot) will have to pull their finger out and get it sorted!
January 25th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Matt, I take it you are one of the unlucky ones who isn’t getting on with it?
I along with many many others, think it’s a superb bit of kit.
January 25th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
This product really does have its up’s and downs, sometimes it works fawlessly then othertimes i wish i got an ipod
January 25th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
The only problem I have with it is connect sometimes crashes after a while. Apart from that, I think it’s superb. Top sound, easy to use, lots of features amd Connect is nice and simple to use.
I just rip all my cd’s through Windows media and import them in, simple!
Still can’t get my Artist link button to work though!
January 25th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
HOW CAN I CONVERT MY TRACKS!??!?!??! THIS IS DRIVING ME MAD!
January 25th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
I might just go and dump my Sony NWA3000 and opt for a £10 SumVision mp3 player that Techlounge has just reviewed… can’t go wrong!
Mel
January 25th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
JoJo – what do you want to convert them to?
January 26th, 2006 at 12:38 am
WHEN IS IT COMING TO THE US?!?!
January 26th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
ummmm… wats with the skipping tracks and not being able 2 copy write protected files ??? i have discovered that me and my frend are both experiencing the same problem especially when trying to transfer album tracks to a device (i have a nwa 1000 and she has a nwa 3000) Also connect player doesnt allow me to rip data files from a cd wats goin on???
January 26th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
A new day a new problem…..
scan drives with connect to import the music files to the library and connect software decides to double up about 500 tracks, I go through the whole library (about 3500 tracks) deleting the doubles only for conect to crash and delete the whole library.
Don’t get me wrong the divice it’self is very nice (although Artist link feature will not work) but the software lets it down sooooo badly it ruins the whole experiance.
Basicaly what I’m saying is SCONTS DON’T GET ONE! even if they do release in the US.
Ah… thats better, sorry to have a rant on here. good forum… Now where did i put my really big Hammer!
January 26th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
I have had many problems with connect. The best thing to do is follow the instructions in post 331. I have downloaded sonic stage 3.3 and transfered music then syned with connect and everything works fine, apart from the Artist Link which never works….but this does not seem to work from Connect as per people other posts.
January 26th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
ok… ill try again!
so basically, the connect software is once again considered crap. and now even sony are saying use sonic stage… what about that thingy angry jedi said (post 331) about getting the functions to work with sonic stage? has anyone tried that?
January 26th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
yeah they don’t work
January 26th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Anybody have any ideas where to get the codes for to register the NW-A3000 ? I’ve tried loads of different combos but the Sony website aint accepting any of them.
Cheers folks.
January 27th, 2006 at 10:51 am
I have found that using sonicstage and connect as per post 331 does work, Rory what parts are you having problems with?
January 27th, 2006 at 11:24 am
Got the purple NWA1000 and i love it, so pretty!!! But software that comes with it? NIGHTMARE!!!!!! Ended up downloading Sonic Stage 3.3 and it’s brilliant, a flyer.
All in all, bar the software, i love it.
January 27th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
i just haven’t bothered installing connect since all the problems with it
January 27th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
the purple one… is it as dark as it looks in the pictures or is it like really shiny n light?
January 27th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
hehe, u mean in the same way the silver one looks good on amazon but liiks like a mirror in real life?!
saying that, my Mrs. thinks that my black nwa3000 looks like a make up case from the side!
I wouldnt worry too much about the link button, its handy but not exactly the most important feature on it…now the intelli shuffel by year is cool tho. e.g. u can get a decent year of indie i.e.1994/95 or a year of classic rock like the zep, queen and sabbath. is handy to mix things up!
I asked a while ago on here where is best to get the soft case and for a change, it seems sony have done something to benefit us! on amazon, after p&p the case hits about ten or eleven quid, same most places on kelkoo but in the sony stores its £7.99
January 27th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
maybe it was supposed to say ‘looks’ rather than ‘liiks’ like a mirror!
January 27th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
the purple one is rather shiny, although im not cool enough to pull it off so went with black! haha!
January 27th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
thats a shame… might have to go black too… the purple one looks so cool in the pictures though…
January 27th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
I got the silver one, which looks really nice, unlike the cheap looking grey that all the sites show!!
January 27th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
but isnt it like… TOO shiny?
January 27th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
i prefer the silcon case you occasionaly find on ebay then it keeps the looks of the play.
January 27th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
Battery Update. Just done a test, 800 MP3′s 192 bitrate 44.1 Khz, VOl set to 20 (after volume hack) , played continuously. Lasted EXACTLY 24 Hours! almost to the minute. Atrac 133 at lower volume would probably give you the quoted 30 – 35 hours sony quote. That’ll do me nicely!
January 27th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
Just to add, I got the silver one and its rather nice! Told my wife to get me the silver one for crimbo then i knew she’d have to get me the 20 gig model, just incase she was tempted to scrimp! upstairs for thinking, downstairs for dancing!
January 27th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
Sorry guys!
didnt mean to start a fight about the colours! just makes a nice change from bitchin bout connect huh! and anyway, once u get over the software (and lets not forget that once your backlogue of songs are on there, u only need to use it to add new ones as u get them) its an amazing piece of kit, no matter the colour!
At least we dont have I pods!
January 27th, 2006 at 9:57 pm
wahey just downloaded arctic mokeys album
luvin the player and not havin 2 many problems with any of the software at the moment….
January 28th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
I have a Sony Vaio and have been using Sonic Stage 2.1 which I really like! Can anyone tell me if I would be able to use this version to get tracks onto the Walkman or would I have to download Sonic Stage 3.3 you are all talking about. Like Katie, I have a lot of stuff on Sonic Stage 2.1 which I don’t want to lose and fear downloading 3.3 would overwrite this version and all my tracks would be lost.
Secondly, while I would really like to get the NWA3000, I’m tempted to wait a bit until things are more sorted, so is there a cheap player anyone could recommend just to tide me over so to speak? (Also, got quite a few Nectar points which I could use in Argos, but they only seem to do the NWA3000 in Silver or Purple and I would want a black one!!!) Thanks in advance for any help.
January 28th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
Steve,
i would like to convert to ATRAC. Mine appears to have arrived with just 18 GB memory instead of 20 – is that normal!?
January 28th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
JoJo
it is normal to have least than sated space, if you go check post 318 it explains it all.
January 28th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
Got my NW A-1000 a short time ago. The difference to the a3000 is just the harddisk (6GB instead of 20).
The player is easy to use even with one hand. Its control reminds of a mobile phone.
The Connect software works. It’s slow, but it does its job. Still, does ANYONE know if there is a trick how you can copy music with the windows-explorer? Would be even better. The problem is that some special functions of the player need the Software…
January 29th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
am gettin a purple one
January 29th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Could anyone please help with this…
can you not charge the player to the maximum with only the cradle ? Ive been reading alot about ‘quick charge’ and am confused [ as i only have the player by itself, and am intending on buying the cradle soon,and cant dind the ac charger anywhere]?
January 29th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
can you not charge it without a cradle?
January 29th, 2006 at 11:02 pm
you get the normal wall charger its a odd devcie you plug the same usb cable that you use on your pc in to the adaptor for the mains if you get what i mean
January 30th, 2006 at 2:26 am
Ah Brian, I think it’s safe to say no one knows. I’ve come to the conclusion that sonicstage 2.1 just won’t work with the NW – 3000. Pity really, because that’s the only reason I bought this player. Even if you burn altrac Cds it still won’t read them. That’s all I can tell you I’m afraid.
January 30th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
one day before i go on holiday, nwa 300 empty and sonic stage playing up not allowing me to transefer songs
January 30th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
Jojo, I’d suggest converting to WMA instead of Atrack personally, you have to update you player though if you havn’t already.
Sounds like we’re all now loving the player itself, so I think we should all congratulate ourselves for not joining the rest of the sheep that all bought I Pods!!! They’re all moaning because the screens keep splitting in the Nano’s and the battery’s keep going dead!! Long live Sony!!!!
PS – I dont’ find my sliver one too shiney, except for all the fingerprints!! LOL!
Steve
January 30th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
am so desperate for one its unbelievable! MUST HAVE THE PURPLE ONE!!!!!!!
January 31st, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Hi everyone really finging this a useful site and have already managed to solve many of my queries regrarding my new nwa 3000 mp3 player. i have given up completely with connect and am now using sonic stage 3.3 – only prob is (and tho it was mentioned earlier i haven’t yet solved it!) when i click to get cd info – i go through the gracenotes registration but then get”internal error- cddb server can’t be found” Please help!!!!!!!
January 31st, 2006 at 9:48 pm
sounds silly but are you on the net when you do this
February 1st, 2006 at 1:05 am
Hi Everyone, first time i left a post but jus thought i had too. i’ve jus purchased a silver nw-a3000. what a piece of kit. the volume hack is spot on. ad a ipod 20gig previously, had this for 18 months, this was used 5 to six days a wk 7 hrs at a time, nearing the end of the 18 months the battery was shot only getting around 3 1/2 hrs from it, thought about getting the battery replaced but seen the stunning design of the sone and the awesome battery life and decided to go for that. ive had it about a week now the software’s not the best but u can easily work around it. i think its that good i’ve got a couple of my mates to get one already.
Thanks NGreen
February 1st, 2006 at 1:06 am
Sony Even….
February 1st, 2006 at 11:00 am
NGreen, I’m with you – I also got the Silver one and it’s the best.
Everyone around me at work are IPod sheep and one by one, they are breaking etc.
All power to Sony!
February 1st, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Rory – yep i was online and it still wouldn’t recognise it! everytime i put a disc in it askes me if i want to register gracenotes – i am click yes and go through all the stages – when i click done it shows the error message.
Any ideas anyone????
February 1st, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Hi all
This will be my last post for a while as I’m off to Australia for a month today. Hopefully my Sony Walkman will behave while I am out there. Good luck with the software issues etc… maybe by the time I get back Sony might have pulled their finger out and developed something that works!
February 1st, 2006 at 2:12 pm
See ya Rory, have a great time
Thanks for all your help on here.
Steve
February 1st, 2006 at 9:59 pm
oh dear…My artist link button has got stuck + i can’t press it…Any ideas?
February 2nd, 2006 at 3:51 pm
i suck… i bought an ipod… am jeus.
February 2nd, 2006 at 3:51 pm
has anyone on here actually got the Artist button to work?? If so, how?!
February 2nd, 2006 at 3:52 pm
NOOOOOOOOO Not an Ipod!!!!!!
Give it 2 months and you’ll be sending it back to Holland because the battery is playing up or the screen’s split!
February 2nd, 2006 at 7:32 pm
Got the silver NW-A3000 at xmas and have recently noticed what looks like specks of dust or lint under the casing near the buttons. Looks like it could be easily wiped off but cant be cos im sure its inside. The thing is I have hardly used it since i bought it and its been stored in the box.
Anyone else noticed the same thing? Do you think it warrants a replacement from Sony?
February 2nd, 2006 at 10:21 pm
that word was meant to be jelus… n i cant send it back… got it off ebay… anyway, HOPE nothing will go wrong!
February 3rd, 2006 at 11:31 am
Oooh Sheep, should have come on here first!!
Hope nothing does go wrong with it.
February 3rd, 2006 at 1:46 pm
Hey it’s me again – i still can’t get the gracenotes registration to work, and am consequently still having to type in all the artist details. I don’t know what: internal error “CDDE server cannot be found” means!! please can someone help!!!!
February 3rd, 2006 at 2:05 pm
Daisy, Try another program to rip your cd’s
I always use audiograbber, it connect to freedb for artist information
http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/
February 3rd, 2006 at 2:22 pm
Try ripping your cd’s through Windows Media player, thats what I do. Much easier and quicker.
Also, providing you have the upgrade, you can rip to WMA as well which is much better.
February 3rd, 2006 at 6:39 pm
my artist link button just says “cannot find linked artists” why is dis?
February 3rd, 2006 at 7:21 pm
I have exactly the same problem Josh and it sounds like loads of other people have too. Any suggestions anyone?
February 5th, 2006 at 11:05 am
I have downloaded the latest version of connect and now find the artist link on the a3000 works.
February 5th, 2006 at 11:46 pm
I find the latest version of connect still brings my PC to a standstill – so am stuck with sonic stage.
February 7th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
I know this is a daft question, but I’ll ask anyway! I’ve only had one mp3 player before and was able to use various websites to download tracks on to it. Can you still do this with the NWA 1000 or do you have to use the sony website, paying for each individual track? Also, is it easy enough to transfer tracks from CD’s. I’m really torn between this and the ipod Nano. Pleeeease help!
February 7th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
Ive jus fully charged a second hand nw-a3000 and ive only been playin it for half a day-a couple hours if dat,n now theres only a bar left…
is this normal-considering brightness is on full and if it was playn da loudest?.
February 8th, 2006 at 1:10 am
anyone found a site where u can purchase a usb cable?
any help wud be appreciated ,cheers
February 8th, 2006 at 10:07 am
Alison, you can upload any track (no matter if downloaded for free / purchased, ripped from a cd etc.) using the software the sony is providing (connect or sonicstage).
February 8th, 2006 at 10:39 am
Hi Alson
I wouldn’t touch an Ipod with a barge pole, they are having masses of problmes at the moment, so I’d get one of these. I’ve had no problems with mine at all, including the software.
I got the NWA1000 and only need to charge mine maybe once or twice a week, and I listen to mine about 5-6 hours a day.
I think it’s a superb bit of kit.
Steve
February 8th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
Thanks Martin and Steve!
Thats made my mind up. Getting one of these!
February 8th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Alison
I find that ripping through Windows Media player and exporting into Connect works much better. Also, once you upgrade your player to accept WMA files, you can get much more music on at a fraction of the bitrate too.
Steve
February 8th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
I am looking for about 20 – 30 GB player with no need for video, and you people all seem very informed about all these players, I was wondering why noone has really mentioned the creative zen/ zen sleek 20GB’s as an ipod alternative. Because I’ve read some pretty positive reviews with no mention of any software problems. Any advice would be greatfully recieved. Thankyou
February 8th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
Hi James
We know that you said that you weren’t really that bothered about the picture/video option but the Creative Zen Sleek that we reviewed in November has lots of great features. There aren’t many mp3 players out there with such a large storage capacity though.
Techlounge
February 8th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
Anyone help, whilst downloading tracks onto my NW-A1000 my PC froze and deleted the DATA files contained on the Walkman. Does anyone have any idea how to replace them -
February 9th, 2006 at 10:14 am
476: The awnser is, due to using sonic stage not all the features work ie top 10, artist link and stuff like that as they are only supported by connect but i do like the cool orange like it gives you.
489: If you go to my computer and right click on the player does it seem like a lot of the space on the hdd is available or does it seem like it is missing. If it seems like it is missing try and put 1/2 albums on your player off another pc. i had problems my my home pc reconizing my player it knew it was there but would never load the driver for it so i took it to work and transfered a few albums over and bingo when i got home it worked fine. also try the reset button on the bottom of the player
February 9th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Rory, I havn’t used Soic Stage and only use Connect – well, I rip mu music through Windows media player and import into connect, but my artist button still doesn’t work.
Any ideas?
February 9th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Hey people seems to me you all know what your doing so please can you help?? It took me ages to choose the NWA-1000 Silver player and didnt want to be disappointed!! I’ve only had it a few days and dont know if its me being stupid, BUT i read some reviews that said dont bother installing connect just use sonic stage so i have, all my songs are in WMA format and jus used the import function on the file menu to get my albums into sonic stage, however i transferred some over to my player no problems however i’ve been looking and now it says I have just 134 songs on the player and only 2gb left on it??? i thought it could take 4,000 songs?? and i thought it mite be cos i haven’t converted to ATRAC, but then it says you cant convert WMA to this format can you??? I dunno well confused someone help be4 i have to join the annoying IPOD craze,
Thanks!!! Ry
February 9th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
sorry I forgot to mention on my last message that also on my sonicstage memory I only have 1.8 gb left on my hard drive when before i started transferring songs over on to it i had at least 4gb? does it copy them somehow cos i know itunes does something like that and if so where are they i cant find anything, its really annoying me now!!!!
cheers
Ry
February 9th, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Hi Ryan
I had the same problem. However, I don’t use Sonic Stage, I use Connect, but rip my music through windows media player.
I personally wouldn’t bother with ATRAC, but it’s each to their own.
The only downside to this player (I also have the silver NW-A1000) is that apparently, it uses almost 2 gig of internal memory just on software, so you’re only really getting just over 4 gig of memory.
Now, once you’ve updated your player to allow it to accept WMA files, this seems to be the best way to go.
I did a lot of research and found out that WMA files are much better quality that MP3 for a fraction of the bitrate. I then did a lot of experiments, with various bitrates and found that by lowering to 64k WMA bitrate, it’s much better quality that 128k MP3, but a fraction of the space.
I am now up to 925 tracks and still have 2 gig left on mine (well just under).
Other people on this site have said I may notice the differance in sound quality if you then convert the WMA files onto CD or connect it to my stereo, neither of which I plan to do, and I find the sound perfect.
Hope this helps.
Steve
February 9th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
Additional – PLEASE dont’ buy an IPOD!! They’re falling apart!
I sit with a silent smile on my face at work as one by one, the IPOD sheep start to moan because of battery problems, or screens cracking etc!!
February 9th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
hey mate cheers for your input but im still very confused!!! I thought I mite try and delete the music i’ve already transferred and try again by using the suitcase looking button which supposedly converts whilst you transfer but when i deleted and after restarting my computer it still says that I only have 2.5 gb free when i blatently have no music on it at all!!! what is goin on with this thing???? I dunno what to do and i dont know how to convert bitrates of my wma’s anyway so I’m completely lost and already at the end of my patience and its only the second day!!!! any more advice??
cheers
February 10th, 2006 at 10:12 am
Know its a pain but i converted some of my music over to atrac3 and it seems ok battery life still seems poor but when i get home i’m just going to let it play continusaly. i think you might have to rip the cd’s in connect then and it will then allow you to use the artist button (not been at home makes it difficult to prove) i found that you can still overload sonic stage if you ask it to transfere to many albums over to the player which is a pain becuase i could just import loads of songs at let it go will i was at work as i knew it would give up as soon as i went lol. i am still not massivly impressed with the volume i have a decent set of panasonic head phones that are great on my pc but put them on the player an well before i know it i am on 30
February 11th, 2006 at 12:07 am
Got one of these yesterday, what a swish little machine! Really very chuffed about it. Software not the most intuative or speedy, but I eventually got there.
Anyway, I was really really chuffed when I found out about the free album offer you get through an email when you register it. And if you take a while to look around the Connect site you can find some decent albums, some triple albums (three albums in one download) and some real (expensive!) rarities. I got the Dylan bootlegs vol. 1-3 (normally £25 on the site), there was a more pricey Bruce Springsteen album, it’s worth hunting around if you want the best value for money.
I’d be interested to find out the most expensive album available on there (I found it a bit difficult to navigate, there’s no ‘Order By Price’ button, so I ended up putting words like “Anthology” and “Complete Collection” into the search engine).
February 13th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
I got the 6GB MP3 Walkman today and have to agree that it is a thing of beauty. No problems yet with the software (touch wood). The only disappointment was the lack of a soft case to keep the player scratch free. I must also say a big thanks to this site for providing me with the volume hack. Now I can listen to my Korn albums the way they were intended.
February 14th, 2006 at 1:57 am
499, go on to ebay and when i last lookd there was a few cases for the 1000 series
February 14th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
hee hee! 500!
February 15th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
Hi Everyone, Im Lovin My Sony NWA 3000. Got about 6 others To purchase these where i work. pc world are doin a good deal over the net, £175.33 then you can choose a store near u to collect it. if you’re anything like me you won’t be able to wait.
February 16th, 2006 at 10:40 am
Top Tip
If your player crashes and you can’t use it hold down the option button for 5 seconds and it will turn off
February 16th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
Still having difficulties converting my MP3′s into WMA on connect – surely there’s a way?
February 16th, 2006 at 11:49 pm
Hi, just bought the portable dab radio sony xdr-m1. Great FM reception but have not yet received any digitial signal despite having no problem receiving a digital broadcast on a mains dab radio. Anyone had the same problem. Have tried to contact sony but they say they are very busy!! Don’t think I’m doing anything wrong, have tried to receive a digital signal between cornwall and the midlands – nothing!!
February 18th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
Hi guys, had a mare last week, had to reformat my hard drive and lost 20gigs worth of tunes from sonic stage. Does anyone know what will happen when i reconnect my nwa3000 to sonic stage, or even better, can i get my music off the unit back onto my laptop and back onto sonic stage?
Cheers!
February 18th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
hopefully it should copy to the default folder on your c: drive but to be sure i’d copy all your folders on your mp3 player. that might not work as the mp3′s are’nt on your hdd but worth a go.
I have never had to do this before but i know itunes will wipe your mp3′s hdd if you plugin to antoher pc unlike the sony.
I’d recomend buying a external hdd or partitioning your current hdd into 2, then you shouldn’t lose your music, i have a seagate 300GB external drive which i think techlounge have reviewed, its great to keep my music on.
rory
February 20th, 2006 at 10:37 am
Hi
For those interested in getting extra storage backup as Rory mentioned here is the link to the review on the Seagate External Hard Drive
Techlounge
February 20th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
Hi JoJo
You may have to re – rip your cd’s through Windowe Media player and import them into Connect.
Thats what I did, takes a little while but well worth it.
February 20th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
Hey guys!
Two questions:
1. On my first transfer of MP3s, I put 500ish tracks in the library and copied them to my player. I’ve put some new tracks in the library now but they’ve got all mixed in with the tracks I’ve already copied – making it quite annoying as I have to scroll through the long list to find the songs I haven’t yet copied! Is there any way to put new tracks in a separate list?
2. Has anybody downloaded their free album yet? What’s the most tracks you’ve managed to get?
I wanted to get Mariah Carey’s Greatest Hits (29 songs for free = great value) but it’s not on there! Surely it should be?! It’s very popular so I’m very disappointed that I can’t get it. And a few of her other albums appeared but instead of a price had the words “not available” – WHEN will they be available?! How come they’ve stopped being available, I mean, it’s not like MP3s go out of stock :S *confused*
February 20th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
How do you get your free album?
I registered the player as per the instructions but I never got the email with the gift code like it said I should have.
February 20th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
I have recently become the owner of an nwa 3000. The main bit is ok, but the software is a challege. Don’t know if anyone can help, but having managed to get some songs onto it, it seems to have mixed all the albums up, so that even in normal play mode i cannot persuade it to play from song one progressively through the albums to the last one. Is it me? Can anyone help? Please!!!
February 21st, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Hi Garry
Comment 375 has a link which shows you how to get your free album from Sony. I did it and got mine!
Lewis
February 21st, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Hi, I hope someone can help me out here. PLEASE!!!!
I’m stuck away from home and i’ve managed to delete my HD on my NW-A3000
And i still got 7 weeks to go!
I have recovered the files but have no idea how the directory structure was layed out. I don’t have my connect 1.0 CD, and no previous install on my laptop.
Can someone tell me what the structure is or can i download a full copy of connect v1.o from somewhere.
Many thanks!
February 21st, 2006 at 8:28 pm
Well guess what just happened to me…I got a new NWA3000, because my previous one broke. And now when i try to reload my music it says that i dont have ANY space available – SCREWED!
February 22nd, 2006 at 11:03 am
Christian,
You should be able to download connect from here
http://www.sonydigital-link.com/DNA/ConnectPlayer/connectplayer.asp?l=en
February 22nd, 2006 at 11:12 pm
I got a NWA1000 for Xmas and use SS3.4. I have just bought my wife the same player. Does anybody know if I can set up two libraries in SS3.4 so we can keep our songs seperate. If not is there any work around. I don’t want her 2006 stuff and she doesn’t want my 1970′s stuff.
Cheers
February 24th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Thanks for that Lewis…
Still won’t work though, for some reason every time I click on the ‘not registered yet’ button, it just takes me back to the home page.
February 26th, 2006 at 12:24 am
Is anyone elses shuffle function pretty appalling + always repeats the same songs?
February 28th, 2006 at 2:35 am
Ok having had a nightmare with NW-HD1 when it broke and my pc broke with all my music on it. I don’t want burned again. I am going to rip all my cds onto an external drive as 196kbps WMA files. If I import these over they go over as WMA files – but I want to convert them to ATRAC3 files and bring these into the player – how do I do this?
Thanks Steve
February 28th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
JoJo,
I don’t have this shuffle problem. From what I understand the only way this would occur is if you have changed the ratings on songs to give some songs a higher weighting than others. This would make the player play them more oftern.
February 28th, 2006 at 9:06 pm
Hi again – see 520.
If I have ripped a load of high quality WMA files for storage on an external drive and then want to convert them to a lower quality ATRAC format so I can fit more on to the player – how can I do this using Connect (I do not want to use Sonic Stage). It just seems to bring them over as WMA files and I can find nowhere in Connect to convert them to ATRAC.
Your help would be much appreciated.
Or…….. if I decide to rip everything in Connect and so create ATRAC tracks is there a way of saving these to an external drive so it does not take up any space on my laptop?
Again your help would be much appreciated before I rip a load of cds that I’ll need to do again if I do it wrong.
Thanks
Steve
March 1st, 2006 at 3:57 pm
JoJo,
Yeah, I have the same problem with the shuffle. It’s quite annoying, but I have a friend with an I-Pod and hers does the same thing so I guess it’s not just Sony!
Instead of using shuffle, I set the songs to play in alphabetical order – that way I get different songs every time I use it.
March 2nd, 2006 at 6:21 pm
522
you need to keep checking the file conversion bit in ss, i know you don’t want want to use s/s but i did and it work 99%
March 3rd, 2006 at 1:10 am
Hi Rory
I worked out how to do it in Connect. It imports and rips them to Atrac at the same time…sweet.
One thing – can I get this player to play albums one after another like in the old NW-HD units. On the NW-HD I could play right through all my Led Zeppelin albums then it would keep on playing the artists that came next until I turned the player off. It seems that it only plays one album at a time then stops or if you choose the Led Zeppelin play all function it plays the tracks in alphabetical order and not in album order which is annoying.
Also it is a REAL shame that there is no function to disable the player completely when it is turned off – as it is easy to knock the buttons on again without knowing.
The sound however is great!
Steve
March 3rd, 2006 at 10:26 am
as to the album thing i think if you youe the artist link button it might do it, but if you go to the to the browse>artist>Led Zeppelin>All Led Zeppelin
then you can play all of them.
March 7th, 2006 at 11:09 am
Anybody know if devices like an I-Trip work on the Sony NW-A3000, they say that they work on ALL MP3 players but just wondering if anyone had any experience of this ?
March 7th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
personally i can’t see an i trip working.
March 9th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
Techy Help required. All was well with NWA3000 & acceptable with Connect then my laptop bluescreened due to virus & had to be rebooted. Have reinstalled Connect but when NWA was plugged into USB for 1st time ‘Found New Hardware’ wizard launched and since then Connect does not recognise that the player is connected.
I think that the system is not using the driver installed from the CD but am not sure and don’t know how to look and fix this.
My fella has 2000 songs loaded on the NWA (many CDs borrowed and no longer available) so we are keen not to initialise the player and wipe it.
Anyone willing to throw some technical instructions at me would be considered a hero!!
Dawn
March 11th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
No longer need Techy help. I fixed it myself. If anyone gets a similar problem, when you reinstall Connect, choose to install it to a slightly different location to the default (I created a new folder called ‘Connect Player 2′). This way it doesn’t seem to pick up any of the original debris left behind when you uninstall.
March 14th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Hi
Only got my NWA3000 two weeks ago, have had loads problems, connect freezing, player losing library, now connect will not even load up, have removed software and have tried reloading but only loads half way then freezes, got fed up last night and gave up! Will try again tonight!
Is it possible to transfer music files direct from Windows Media player? I use this to put Cds on my computer and find it easy to use.
Thanks
March 14th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
no you need to use the crap sony software but try just using sonic stage, don’t transfere to much with that either cos that locks up to
March 16th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
I load all my CDs into Windows Media player, creating .wma files. I then use connect, and import these .wma files. All the music I have on my NWA3000 was done this way, and I’ve never had any issues with it
March 16th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
yeah but but still using connect to put on to the player where as other just want to use w/m
March 17th, 2006 at 12:09 am
hi , i dont know if its just me but even having used the volume hack i still find my nwa 3000 a bit on the quiet side even on full volume , can anyone recommend some better quality earphones that give you better vol and sound, many thanx.
March 17th, 2006 at 10:24 am
hey steve, i have some old cheapo panasonic headphones maybe 30/40 quid and i can’t listen on full volume unless i work my way up slowly to maybe 28, but i have still found that using the custom 1 equaliser setting and then shifting all the sliders to the top which is a little better
March 19th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
thanx rory ill give it a try
March 20th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
no problems i found that the custom setting helped alot more than the hack
March 22nd, 2006 at 10:06 am
Hey Hey,
I left my NWA3000 in the car last night apparently the temp dropped to -5 degrees C. turned my NWA on this morning and it claimed it was to cold to operate the Hard Disk Drive and promptly locked up. i had to do a reset on the player
March 22nd, 2006 at 11:21 am
Hi
Just thought I would thank everybody for all the above posts – I have been checking them out for the past month whilst deciding between an i-pod or the Sony, I eventually settled on the Sony NWA3000 which arrived on Saturday (all black and shiny!)
Also (surprisingly) I have had no problems with Connect – it is damned slow but I am up to 1500 songs and so far all my artist links etc are working fine. (I am ripping tracks into windows media player and then importing them to connect).
March 22nd, 2006 at 12:32 pm
glad you got the sony they are good players but do also a have tehre down falls like mine this morning
March 24th, 2006 at 11:04 am
Check out the new music gadget from Sony. This is theSony MZ RH1 Mini Disc Walkman that will be coming out in May.
Techlounge
March 26th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
hi guys. ive had the nwa3000 for a while now but need a way of taking it to the gym without it getting in the way. do they make an arm cradle type thing for the sony or does anyone have any other suggestions. keep up the good work on the site!
March 27th, 2006 at 9:16 am
Hi Al
There are various skins and armbands available that you can get for your Sony NWA3000, like these at i-nique.
Techlounge
March 27th, 2006 at 9:21 am
do a search in ebay for this item number 5877784820. if you look through the screen bit and look at the back you can see where you’d be able to put a armband through. although it has been mentioned above that someone had problems after a visit to the gym due to the virations.
March 27th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
cheers rory and techlounge, i think i’ll give the one on i-nique a try….I just dont want to have to resort to wearing a bum bag in the gym! cheers again, al
March 28th, 2006 at 9:26 am
Anyone had any joy with getting information on number of times a track has been played by the player? In connect, I can see how many times I have played a track on my PC from the library, but I can’t get information on how many times a track has been played on the NWA-3000.
Anyonw know how to do this?
March 28th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
i ain’t sure if you can actually do it in the player, but i know you can view the top 100
March 28th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
It’s odd. I’ve seen my friends itunes, and it tells him exactly how many times each song has been played on his ipod. But when I attach my NWA3000 to my PC, and examine it on Connect, I can’t get the same information. I’m convinced I am getting the same songs on shuffle, and never hearing others. I’d like to see the numbers to proove it
March 28th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
connect hardly works well at the best of times so have great features will be the last thing on there mind
March 28th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
I have just got an NWA3000 and finally got the software (Sonicstage) working BUT it is telling me there is only 1.2GB free – there should surely be 20GB!! It is letting me download around 500 songs then reading as full! HELP – does anyone have any ideas why this is?
March 28th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Mt new NWA3000 has arrived but is showing (through sonicstage) it only has 1.2GB of storgae space free (17GB used) although there are currently NO songs on it. Any idea why this is or what I can do to upload more than 500 songs onto it! I haven’t put anything onto it yet!
March 29th, 2006 at 9:09 am
go to tools and format the hdd then see what happens
March 29th, 2006 at 10:37 am
iPod is screwed so looking to replace with the sony walkman.
however, major concern not yet answered is if it will play in my car. this has been asked in these comments, but no reply came…
for my ipod, i bought specific alpine kit (£££) to allow a digital connection to the head unit. do sony walkman’s have the same options? if not, are there other ways to get around this? for example, to use the aux port on my head unit?
regards,
dan
March 29th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Dan, if you have an adapter kit with the phono socket that can also be used for cd players etc…then it’ll plug straight into the headphone socket. If you want anything more fancy, I’m not the one to answer I’m afraid!
My brother is going travelling at the end of April and I want to buy him a small capacity mp3 player to take with him. Does anyone have any suggestions about what to get ? I’m a student so I think £50 will be about my limit! Any help gratefully appreciated,
al
March 29th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
well i dropped my nwa the other day and its proper f*cked the black cover has smashed ove the cover under that also, and it landed face down and the screen is no more, i am sad well acutaly i ain’t bothered because it wasn’t massivly great, i am gonna get shot down here but i’m going to get an ipod i think
March 29th, 2006 at 10:30 pm
Hi Rory
Thanks for your reply but you say to go to tools and format to HDD? I have no idea what that means. The only tools menu I can see is in sonicstage and that has no option to format anything that I can see. My NWA3000 is still saying it has 1.2KB of free space whatever I seem to do to it so I am really stuck here
Caroline
March 30th, 2006 at 9:21 am
sorrt i ment on the player go to the icon in the bottom left hand corner then its call disk inislization or some thing and do that it just format your drive
March 30th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Thanks Rory – that worked. Appreciate the help!
March 30th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
no problems
April 3rd, 2006 at 11:47 pm
hey guys
well im new to this mp3 gig and i’m actually comtemplating wheater to get the Phillips 30gd jukebox or the A-3000.
can someone tell me if it will work wid the itunes software and if not which software it works best with plz?
tanx guyz
xXx
April 4th, 2006 at 9:08 am
neither will work with itunes, the sonic stage software isn’t bad but it isn’t great either. i have no experience with ituens or samsung
April 4th, 2006 at 11:34 am
Hy there!
Such a great thing found this site, I’m really not the one in trouble!
Anyway I can’t fix my Nw-1000. It stop transfer my songs, the tinyhttp.exe error as usual, but then I’ve tried everything. Reinstall the software, update, install SonicStage, format.. but it don’t works. When I try he still got the tinyhttp.exe and on the Walkman appears “No database found. Please, connect compliant software” do you know what that means??! Any ideas? thanks anyway!
Ashja
April 4th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
try transfering a few siny from another pc if you can
April 4th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
thanks for reply! But I don’t know what are “siny” !?
April 4th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Songs … I think that is meant to say! LOL
April 4th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
songs i did mean well done Techlounge for translating
April 9th, 2006 at 12:09 am
can any one help , bought a new laptop , installed the connect software and tried to ‘sync’ device to copy all the music from nwa3000 to new laptop , it transfers some of the tracks but for the rest it just displays error message. also the files it did transfer are now in .oma format so i can’t use them with media centre , can they be converted ??/ ,
April 9th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
The sony RM-MC38EL remote control works with the nwa 1000, shows battery, sound setting, track number (upto 999 as display does not go higher) play mode, stop, ff/rew and hold. Got mine for £12 off a well known auction site.
April 10th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
O.K. so converted the files i managed to recover from nwa3000 , but still can’t get rest of tracks , does anybody know how to download the rest of MY MUSIC back from MY device??
April 11th, 2006 at 9:15 am
all i know is that you use sonic stage and instead of puting data onto the device you put it on to your pc, apart from that i don’t know if there is any other way to do it
April 13th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
hi there, i wil have my a3000 tomorrow normally, but i have just 1 question: is either the sonicstage or the connect software compatible with win xp x64 edition? the philips gogear i have for the moment works through media player, but the program to update the firmware etc is impossible to install on 64bit operating system
anyone has experience using the software on 64bit?
April 19th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
lookin at gettin this mp3 player but software seems to be a prob, is it still a prob???
April 19th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
I purchased a Sony Net MD mini disc player model MZN510 type S
some time ago and have built up a considerable amount of music on mini disc.
I now have one of the new generation of Sony mp3 players
(model NW-A3000)
I am trying to get the music that is on my discs now onto my Mp3 player as well, but I cannot seem to find a way of transferring the music from mini disc to Mp3 or even to the computer.
I have both Sonic Stage Version 3.4.01.13062 and Connect Player Version 1.0.03.13130 installed
Connect Player sees the Mp3 player as a drive but does not detect the Net MD player
Sonic Stage sees both the MP3 player and the Mini disc player
The computer sees the MP3 player as a drive but not the mini disc player. So I cannot drag or copy files from one player to the other.
When I attempt to transfer the music back into sonic stage from the Mini Disc player I get a message telling me that “ Tracks that do not exist in my library are selected. Cannot transfer the tracks deleted from my library to the computer” “
Can anyone tell me how I can get around this problem.
I would appreciate any assistance you can offer.
Thanks Tom Paton
April 21st, 2006 at 1:17 pm
I have just gotten a NW3000, after much messing around with software I found Sonic Stage to work as long as I did not transfer too much. Now however when I turn on the walkman it shows the startup screen, the hard disk icon comes on for 20 seconds or so and then the walkman turns off. I am assuming it is broken but has anyone else come across this?
April 21st, 2006 at 5:07 pm
have you tried the reset button underneath the player
April 25th, 2006 at 10:53 am
Yes with no change
April 25th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
i’d take it back to where you purchased it from it sounds like the battery is not holding charge maybe ??
May 4th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
i need some advice…
sony nwa3000 or phillips 30gb gogear? i dont know which is better, sony i trust but phillips looks and sounds soo good
help!
May 5th, 2006 at 11:18 am
try the phillips because i woudn’t get another sony mp3 player after having this when i took it away for 1 month it just did my head in plus transfering music was a complete pain as you could only do 2/3 albums at one time otherwise the software would crash.
May 6th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
Anyone downloaded any wallpapers yet, if so tell me how to do it please. Downloaded them when I registerd the A3000 & doesnt seem to mention in the instructions or online how to do it ???
Have to say seems typical of Sony
FYI – or anyone vaguely interested:
Also have a A680 & both work fine although loading is a bit painful, it is not half as bad as the ipod running out of powere after about 3 hrs play.
My son has a Cowon I audio X5 30 gb & would recommend this over any other MP3 player I have used to date!!! Wht did I get the A680, because of the radio & the A3000 as it was cheaper & an alternative to would I again make that choic? NO but I cannot fault the A3000 just isnt as good
May 6th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
How are people finding the Connect software these days? I started out with it, but gave it up as a bad job and went back to Sonic Stage. Is the latest update of Connect any better?
May 6th, 2006 at 7:16 pm
Personally not found it a problems, a bit tedious but no glitchy for me!
Have not tried sonic stage so cannot compare directly but havent felt the need to try it!
May 6th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
One thing that annoys me about the player is when you are shuffling songs it sometimes repeats songs that you have already listened to (my iPod never used to do that). Maybe I just haven’t read the manual properly, but is there a way to stop it doing that?
May 7th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Its been a while since I checked in here, and still see a lot of complaints about connect.
I have had my NWA3000 since christmas now and have had no problems at all..Nada.. not with the player or connect software.
I feel a lot of people write in to sites like this only when they have a problem, so dont be put off, this is a great piece of kit which has worked 100% for me.
My artist link even works!!
May 8th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Does anyone know about the Sony NWA3000′s ripping/burning rates – that is to say, the sound quality levels when downloading from CD’s. I bought my NWA3000 primarily as a way to replace my CD player. I wanted to match the sound quality of the actual CD’s as cloesly as possible so I’ve started ripping some of my CD collection as WAV files which I understand offer best sound as are least compressed type of files. However, after doing about 20 CDs like this, my PC is moaning that disk space is very low (admittedly, I have a 5-year old laptop). Anyonw know what setting rip/burn setting is which is a good compromise between sound quality/space usage? Thx
May 9th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
i’d use 128 kbps or the no more than 192
May 13th, 2006 at 2:51 am
I like the new Connect update. The only problem I STILL have is that I can’t burn audio cds. It’s says it can’t find the interface. I have no problem burning wiht Rela Player. Suggestions? Thanks again
May 14th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Wow, what a great website, really helpful as I am about to buy an MP3 player and didn’t know which one to choose (had heard so much about the nanos being crap I decided against an ipod). In the end, I have opted for a Sony NWA1000, despite everything I have heard about the software i thought I’d give it a go. Hopefully you won’t see lots of posts from me having lots of problems!
May 16th, 2006 at 9:54 am
Hi,
After months of problems with connect, I’ve downloaded sonicstage which seemed to be a lot better. I spent ages transferring songs to my player (it says on the computer screen that there;s about 14gb left…But…when i switch on the player it says ‘no songs, connect compliant software and transfer songs”! Does anyone know what i can do?
Thanks!
May 16th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
try the soft reset button at the bottom of the page
May 17th, 2006 at 10:50 am
SORTED
Finally solved all my problems with the connect software, but there’s a catch (and an expensive one at that). The latest version is downloaded, starts up in seconds, I can now rip whole albums straight onto the NWA-3000 in less than ten minutes, use other programmes at the same time, and move stuff about the player at will. The solution to my previous problems was simple, if costly. I bought a new computer, mesh 4200 amd athlon thing. Could it be that SONY in their infinite wisdom have made Connect too damn greedy on the computer’s resources that older computers just can’t handle its demands
Regards
a relatively happy bunny
May 21st, 2006 at 1:45 pm
On impulse I bought an NWA-1000 yesterday from a Sony shop. I’d never even heard of the product before and its my first MP3 (you know what I mean) player. All my songs were on my laptop, all copied from my CDs and in WMA format. The Connect software worked a treat. Transferred all 1269 tracks with ease (they do fill up 5 of the 6GB memory, so maybe I should have opted for the bigger NWA-3000). I fell asleep in bed listening on my NWA and I’ve just found it at the bottom of my bed 14 hours later still playing away to itself. RECOMMENDED now I’m gonna buy the speaker docking station too. WELL DONE SONY
May 22nd, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Does anyone know of a device that works in conjunction with the NWA 3000 that works like the i-trip? I.e. plugs in and tunes in to a radio frequency so you can listen in the car?
Cheers,
John.
May 23rd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Hi John,
We have just done, especially for you, a review on an Digital FM transmitter that we found that would work with your NWA3000. There are a few around nowadays as people have started making this type of technology more widespread and it’s now not all iPod’s and iTrips.
Techlounge
May 24th, 2006 at 10:47 am
Purchased NWA-3000V for wife at Christmas and have not been able to do anything with software or player on the PC @ home (although I do meet the minimum requirements). Been able to use the player and software on a borrowed labtop.
However, had another go this week with the updated Connect software and to my amazement now works no problem. No PC hang ups or crashing. MP3s transferred into Connect library no problem.
But I still have a problem when connecting the player to my PC.
The PC doesn’t see the player as an external USB device but as an internal hard drive so I cannot safely remove the device. Connect software doesn’t even see the device! Tried mucking around with the drivers but another more serious issue occurs -
ThePC more often than not completely powers off when the player is connected!!!!!!!
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
May 24th, 2006 at 10:51 am
maybe try a different pc because it seems to work on the laptop you borrowed
May 24th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Hello all.
Recently purchased an NWA3000.
I’ve loaded just over a thousand songs onto my laptop via Connect absolutely no problems…the whole bit of kit runs like a dream, I love it.
Something’s worrying me though…
I’ll be updating my PC soon…can I transfer all the songs I’ve loaded into Connect from my OLD Laptop to my NEW one easily, or will I have to rip them all in again? I think I read somewhere you can’t transfer them…
I bloody hope note – it’s taken me ages…
May 27th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Hi
My brill NW-HD5 is no more after being stood on, screen is completely broken and the player is bent. I have ordered a NWA3000B from amazon to replace it. Having read the bad reviews of the connect software I am wondering if I will be able to continue using my current Sonic Stage V.3 (works fine never had any problems) software for my new player.
Any advice will be greatly appreciated ………
May 29th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
It will work, but upgrading to 4.0 is highly recommended! Also upgrade firmware to 3.0.
May 29th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
can anyone tell me how to make musicmatch place music on my a3000
May 30th, 2006 at 9:57 am
Can anybody comment on the brightness of the NWA3000 display, I can barely see it on normal daylight, even although it is set at MAX brightness. The unit is fully charged.
May 30th, 2006 at 11:48 am
601. i don’t think you can use music match to place music on it
602 its not the greatest in normal daylight i found you have to tilt the player..
May 30th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
In response to Jim’s comment above I have upgraded to Sonic stage 4 (or Sonic Stage CP) and guess what? – back to the old days of snails pace transfers and hung computers – brings back painful memories of Connect software just after I bought this NWA3000. Sonic stage 3.4 worked fine for me. Sonic stage 4 tries to move a step closer to Connect in functionality – and, unfortunately it succeeds. I would suggest those who haven’t upgraded yet hang back and wait for more comments on this list.
May 31st, 2006 at 11:14 pm
NWA3000 arrived yesterday, I did as Jim suggested, everything working fine and a lot faster than the old Sonic Stage v3. Just downloaded 800+ tracks onto the unit without a hiccup. All functions working on the NWA3000 as they should be, I am more than pleased, Incidentally I loaded all the software before I connected the NWA3000 to the computer.
June 1st, 2006 at 11:12 pm
An update on Sonic Stage 4 (CP) as promised. Despite my initial negative impressions am actually impressed now. The initial delays were while it updated track info on what seemed like my entire music collection. After that tranfer to the NWA 3000 was quite quick and the programme seems to work very slickly – linking well into the connect store and also now with a working artist link function.
None of this will be of interest to those who managed to get Connect to work but for those who like me spent hours trying to nurse their computers back to life after installing Connect, Sonic Stage CP at last gives you the chance to use some of the more advanced functions of the NWA3000.
By the way I am using XP prof with Firefox rather than Explorer.
June 5th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
SonicStage CP 4.0, the replacement for Connect and Sonicstage 3.4 is vastly better in terms of use and experience.
Glad I ditched the iPods now… and glad Sony made my new NWA’s worthwhile with the software upgrade.
June 6th, 2006 at 6:49 am
Hi – has anyone else experienced their music library on the nw-a3000 player getting totally jumbled up?? Half of it’s in alphabetical order, and half is now just sitting in ‘Etc’. It was fine for months, but I just tried adding a few new CDs to it using sonicstage (connect?) CP version 4.0….
Any ideas would be a great help! Now if I try listening to ‘All’ of any artist, I actually get all of a totally unrelated artist instead…!
Aaaaarrrggh!!
Thanks
Gavin
June 10th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Hi, i have been thinkin about gettin an NW-A3000, i like the looks and like the fact that you can take the restricter off. a few things im not sure about is the comments i have read on the software and the trouble people are having with importing tunes. with sonic stage, will this software convert songs in to its own file format? thanks in advance, mike
June 12th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Hi Mike
Sonic Stage Will only convert your music files to a different format, if you change the default settings in the confirguration menu.
Be careful though as sometime when the program freezes the settings go back to default and you don’t want to convert and transfer 300+ Atrac files before you find out
June 17th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
I need help. Connect player seems to be working fine but it doesn’t recognise a device installed. When I first plug in my player. The install hardware wizard runs and comes up with cannot instell this hardware….the data is invalid.
Anyone know whats happening???
June 22nd, 2006 at 8:54 am
Hi everyone
It took me a while to get the player and CONNECT up and running, but apart from a crash and loss of the music library a few months ago, it has been great (although it took me about 3 weeks to get it sorted out when I brought it). I have a question which I am hoping someone can answer – the walkman shuts down after a few seconds after pausing. I was wondering if anyone knew if this function can be turned off or the automatic shutdown delayed as I find it very annoying!
Thanks for listening!
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:31 am
does anyone know how to unlock the volume limiter as sony say it limited to 100db due to EU regs, but wont tell me how to do it.
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:43 am
Hi JK
If you see the post on the Volume Limiter Hack that Techlounge has then it will take you step by step through this process.
Techlounge
June 26th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
Hurrah!! At last my walkman is the wonderful bit of kit that it always could have been. All thanks to the most recent software/firmware updates. Albums now take seconds rather than hours (really!!) to go from cd to Walkman.
I laugh at the ipod sheep on the train with their silly white headphones! Mine are shiny and purple! and I can now be proud that the device they are attached to actually works.
Good work Sony fellas.
June 28th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Please can anyone help? I got the NWA-3000 yesterday and it won’t connect to my PC at all
It says that HArdware not recognised – any ideas?
June 28th, 2006 at 11:21 am
Try and connect it to a different pc and then put 1 album on it.
June 28th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Thanks Tech Lounge. Will that mean it should register on my home PC after doing that or will I need to transfer my music files to the Laptop?
June 29th, 2006 at 11:50 am
I agree with 608. After installing the 4.0 Sonicstage / Connect software my Top 100 has completely messed up, loads of songs that I don’t listen to at all occupying the top 10 spots, gutted !!
June 29th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
618 i had this problem and once i had transfered one album the nwa was normally ok back on the PC
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:54 am
Hey kev, i’ve had a similar problem. After getting a new computer i’ve struggled with connect player, so got sonicstage CP instead. However after transferring my first batch of songs it’s messed up all the ordering on the player completely ie for Title lists, instead of having individual groups A,B,C it’s now just gone A-M,N-Z,etc.,0-9 with bwt 500 songs in each catigory! plus it’s lost is alphabetical order!
How do i rectify this problem?!?!?!
July 6th, 2006 at 9:17 am
Hi,
I love my NW-A3000 and have had no problems transferring music etc using the tips given on this site. However after connecting to Connect last night to empty my trash bin my computer crashed. Re-booted and reconnected etc and everything appeared fine.
On the way to work this morning switched on and I am getting the error message “No database found please connect compliance software”. It shows no songs at all.
Once at work I connected to Sonic Stage (which is the only thing I have loaded on my work computer) and it shows all music is still there however when disconnecting the error message still comes up on the player and I still cannot use it. What advice can you give me please???
I dread the long journey home without my music.
July 7th, 2006 at 8:52 am
Hi,
Just to say that I have solved the problem. Once at home I re-connected my player to Connect and then shut it down correctly and the library has re-built itself and it is now working perfectly again.
I must say that I have the 20gb purple one which I love and I think the sound quality is brilliant and apart from the software issues (which I have solved thanks to your site) I am so pleased with this player. I have had various other players including Samsung and I have found the quality of this player to be the best one I have had so far.
July 13th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Thomas
I had the same problem and have kind of solved it. It seems that the Sonicstage CP doesn’t recognise artist names if the data was transfered to your player using a previous version of Sonicstage .I never used Connect so don’t know if the same thing applies
Once you have Sonic Stage CP open and have connected your player simply:
- right click on the names of the artists that appeat in the ‘etc.’ section when you search by initial on the player
- select Re-name and type the name in again
The database will update itself and hey presto your Artists will appear in the A-Z directory on the player. Unfortunaltely the player recognises only the first letter of the entry so David Bowie will appear under D, The Who will appear under T etc. unless you rename entering surnames first or miss The from group names.
July 13th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
Just got an nw-a3000. Amazing bit of kit…..BUT
It powers up when you touch any button, so I am finding it switches on when in a bag/pocket or even if you pick it up and accidentally touch a button.
Sony tech support reckon there’s no way to stop it.
This is a fundamental design flaw, which is unusual for Sony.
Ideas anyone ?
July 13th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
Just got an nw-a3000. Amazing bit of kit…..BUT
It powers up when you touch any button, so I am finding it switches on when in a bag/pocket or even if you pick it up and accidentally touch a button.
Sony tech support reckon there’s no way to stop it.
This is a fundamental design flaw, which is unusual for Sony.
Ideas anyone ?
(Sorry for the repeat…..my email address was wrong)
July 13th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Hiya
Just to say I solved the problem – thanks to those who helped!
Tommy, try using the hold button at the top when finnished playing!
hth
L
July 14th, 2006 at 10:47 am
Hi,
RE: Hold button
The hold function does not stop the unit powering up – it only seems to stop any other functions from operating. As far as I can see there is no way to top the unit turning on any time a button is pressed. A mechanical hold switch would have been a better idea.
July 14th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
I’ve just bought a NW-A300 second hand, everything seemed to be working fine, there were already tracks loaded onto it, they played fine etc. I transfered my tracks over using sonic stage and there weren’t any problems.
But now i’ve disconnected the player from my PC it’s crashed and stuck on the “connecting” screen, but the message telling me not to disconnect wasn’t showing when i disconnected, I don’t know what’s wrong and what I’m supposed to do now.
Any help?
July 14th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Okay, I’ve sorted it, the reset button, at least it doesn’t alter any settings or lose any files. I’m happy again, this is an absolutely superb player, now I just need to take all the old music off and convert it ATRAC instead of MP3 so I can store even more on it.
And as for it turning itself on all the time if you get a case like this http://www.i-nique.co.uk/showdetails.asp?id=352 it should help, it has an aluminium plate in the front so you can’t press through it and press the buttons, plus it stops it from getting scratched.
July 17th, 2006 at 10:19 am
the reset button solves alot of problems with the player, i found that converting my songs to atrac saved loads of space on the player just be sure to use the 133KBPs setting
July 17th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Hi
Just got my nwa3000 and well chuffed!!
Is there anyway of getting rid of the ‘bookmark playlists’, perhaps it’s just my lack of reading the instruction manual but I’m getting sick of scrolling through them to get to my own.
Thanks
Rob
July 17th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
there quite handy though are the bookmark playlists. i don’t think you can remove them just edit them to your own songs
July 17th, 2006 at 11:30 pm
the battery on my nwa – 1000 onli lasts bwt 5hrs max, n e 1 elses playewr gt a short battery life? i gt it of amazon, n e ideas n e 1?
July 18th, 2006 at 10:39 am
what bit rate are you using and is your volume at full all the time
July 18th, 2006 at 11:16 am
Hi guys,
I bought yesterday my nwa3000, it looks great but so far I have not been able to download on the players the song I bought and downloaded from MSN Music, which are protected.
Any chance to put them on my NWA 3000 ?
July 18th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
Have you applied the update for the actual player its self, i don’t know if that enables it to play protected files. If not i am sure you might be able to find the mp3 somewhere else. nudge nudge wink wink
July 18th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
Rory,
thanks for the suggestion, but I would avoid downloading somewhere else nealy 300 songs, having paid for the licence of using them……
Anyhow I will try and download the new version of the firmware, let’s see….
July 18th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
RORY : my bitrate is 128 n volume is pretty much full all time!
July 19th, 2006 at 11:24 am
try converting the files to atrac 133 bitrate, also you can get a thing called a boosteroo which i suppose would save the battery life on the player che out the link
July 31st, 2006 at 10:58 am
I’ve got a problem with my player, it is extremely slow.
It takes about 4-5 minutes just to turn on and off, and there’s not even 5 gb on the player itself.
At the moment i’m copying over the files from the player so i can blank it totally.
Has anyone got a link to the latest firmware for the player.
I will install that and see how i get on from scratch.
HAS ANYONE GOT ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS? I need to get this working properly urgently and Sony support are useless, just keep telling me to use sonicstage, which doesn’t fix the problem.
Cheers
Nick
July 31st, 2006 at 3:34 pm
google “sony nwa 3000 firmware” AND YOU CAN FIND LINKS THERE
August 2nd, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Have had the player a few months now, but swapped my computer, as I wanted all my files on my new computer too I had to import them from the player on to my hard drive.
since I have had to reclassify some of the old stuff which involved removing all the files from the player and transfering them across again, all the new files transfered ok but the ones that were imported from the player initially won’t transfer across.
Has anyone any ideas how to get around this without loading them all up from cds again?
I’m using Sonicstage cp 4.0 and all the files play fine on the computer, I’ve tried converting them to a different file type before transfering them but that doesn’t work either
August 8th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Another change is that perviously all the groups I had listed with “The” infront appeared under the first letter of the band name rather than under T for The (eg The Beatles appeared under B) but since I had to move everything back They now all appear under “The”
Does anyone know how to change this back as I was impressed that it knew to ignore the word “the” infront, and I don’t really want to mess about with more trasfers unless I have to
August 9th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Hey guys just one quick question. Will I loose all of my songs on my sony nwa3000 if I update the firmware?
August 9th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Suzanne, you will not lose any of your songs.
August 9th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
Hi! I’m hoping you guys can help me as I’m tearing my hair out.
I’ve only had my Sony Walkman since yesterday. The CONNECT Player installed fine & I had no problems transferring my 1,500 tracks from the comp to the Walkman. However now when I start the CONNECT player on my computer, after it has finished updating what has changed with the play & I get the ‘powered by Gracenote’ little thing in the corner, I get a message saying ‘CONNECT Player has encountered a problem and needs to close’, or it just randomly closes itself! This is incredibly frustrating as obviously I do not have time to do anything.
Do you think removing & re-installing the player will do any good??
Please help!
August 13th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
help having major problems with the software for my sony nw-a3000 the connect won’t install on to my second disk from sony shop and have tried to install sonic stage but the message error 000053e30 keeps coming up does anyone have any ideas before i start having phoning sony and screaming down the phone.
August 14th, 2006 at 1:21 am
does anyone please know where i can get cheap connections for a sony nw-a3000 (usb cable, charger etc) as i was given this mp3 player by my brother who lost them! called sony but they are asking stupid money.
thanks
oh n by the way that volume hack was gr8
August 18th, 2006 at 7:16 pm
I bought a Motorola Sliver . It came with the data cable and phone tool software. Can you tell me how to convert my .wma files to MIDI files so that I can transfer them to my phone?
August 24th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
Hi, I am very tempted to buy this player, having read the first hundred or so comments above, I wondered whether the software issues have all been resolved?
And does this work with windows 98? as atm I have half my music on a laptop with XP but with no working cd drive, and half on a pc with windows 98!
What do you say? my partner is all for the ipod, but I think it looks awful!
Thanks!
August 28th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Hey indoor,
Cool post. Thanks!
August 29th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
hi,
Bought an NW A3000, connect software sucks! In the end I had to delete the
C:\ partition and install windows XP al over again.
The software recognizes the player again and everything works …. for now…
I have some doubts about installing the firmware upgrade V3.00 esspecially because the upgrade is not the right size (6,387 kB instead of 6,032 kB)
The download instructions on the sony site say that you have to try again if the upgrade is not the right size but ive tried a few times and setting the same result???????????
I dont want to crash the software and/or the player again so any suggestions??
August 31st, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Put the firmware upgrade on, i felt that it was of major benefit.
To be honest i’d be more worried if the file size was smaller, due to coding been lost.
September 1st, 2006 at 7:07 pm
I’ve been really interested in purchasing a Sony NWA3000 Walkman since their release. I think they look sylish, and the large capacity is definately a winning feature for me. However, on reading review after review, and from speaking to people I know who own this MP3 player, the software seems to be a big problem. Could someone please let me know if they find this the case, and explain the situation. I would not like to spend so much money to find the software had let me down! Much appreciated!
Becky
PS. My operating system is Windows XP Home Edition, and my computer is almost brand-new, if this affects anything! Thanks!
September 8th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
This blog is fantastic…..have read nearly all the posts – how sad am I – and can report that after having the same impossible time with CONNECT, I am now extremely happy with my NWA-1000, using SonicStage…..so far I have managed to get over 1,300 classical (uses more space than pop) tracks onto the player at 96kbps. The only thing I miss about CONNECT is that I used to be able to rip 2 CD’s at the same time.
September 16th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Becky – I have now had my NWA3000 for about 9 months and I love it now. I haven’t always felt this way – (if you can be bothered to read some of my earlier postings you will see that!). I am one of the people who just could not get the bundled Connect software to work – I spent many stressful days trying. Sonic Stage however has always worked smoothly for me and Version 4 (CP) which you can download free from Sony allows you to use the more advanced Artist Link and shuffle features of this player.
You could always try downloading Sonic Stage 4 before you buy the NWA3000 – play with the software for a while and see what you think. I think the player itself is really well built and looks and sounds great. If you do decide to get the player make sure you download and install the latest firmware upgrades which allow you to playback a wide range of file types.
October 4th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Help needed, have a Sony NWA3000 connect loaded ok, ripping cd’s to the
player went ok.
Unfortunately next day, tried to load another album and the whole lot was
ripped out!
I don’t understand how this happened and i didn’t do anything to promt this
action.
Any ideas?
October 4th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
Hiya, I’ve had my NWA-3000 for a while now but I’ve only just discovered the ‘artist link’ button, how do u get that to work and does anyone no how to get the top 100 favourites working and when i bought it i heard that u could have special shuffle modes like ‘rock shuffle’ or ‘pop shuffle’ does anyone no anymore about those? plz reply
Thanks x
October 5th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Still need some advice
October 6th, 2006 at 11:42 am
sammy
try updating your connect software
October 13th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
for artist link to work which is pretyt great function u need to connect to the internet when connect player is on, it takes so damn long to get every artists’ link but tis worth it. im a month in by the way of getting artist links.
CONNECT PLAYER IS RUBBISH.
oh and can anyone have same problem as me.. my artist link button is jammed. was that my fault or is that covered by the warranty?
October 13th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
for artist link to work which is pretyt great function u need to connect to the internet when connect player is on, it takes so damn long to get every artists’ link but tis worth it. im a month in by the way of getting artist links.
October 14th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
OK so i just spent £179 on the sony walkman 20GB NW-A3000 and have been using it for a couple of months now but for some reason i just turned it on today and it says “no library found please connect compliant software” so im like what the hell is going on so i connected it to the computer and loaded up the connect player software only to find that when it trys to retrieve the info from the device it comes up with this error:
ERROR Code 000066D6
“Cannot use intelligent features because the connected ATRAC audio device does not have the updated database. Disconnect and connect the device again to update the datebase or change the settings to do not use intelligent features”
So of cource i tried reconnecting and it made no difference so then i look for the disable intelligent features which of course there is non so i’m like “ok wtf do i do now thats £179 down the drain”.
I have checked on “my computer” as it sits on there as a “portable device” and it says i have used 18.2GB of the 20GB available so the music is blatently on there but just doesnt want to show me it.
Can anyone help at all?
October 19th, 2006 at 3:41 am
Im having the same problem, have you managed to resolve it yet?
If so please help!!!!!
October 20th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
Does anyone know a way to connect this walkman to a cigarette lighter for power? Is there something I can use?
October 23rd, 2006 at 8:28 pm
Ian, just hit the reset button.
October 28th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
The player is good but I have just realised that Sony is the Japanese meaning ‘absolutely rubbish software’ and I will definitely be looking elsewhere for future purchases.
October 30th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
ne14coffee: If you are using Connect Player, I recommend switching to Sonicstage 4.0
November 2nd, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Jim: thanks, I did try it a while ago but it wasn’t very good either. I’ve updated the firmware and software for connect and it does work but it is so slow it is unbelievable and my computers is of good spec. The old sonic stage v3 is fast as I still use that for a 1 gig flash player.
November 6th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
I do have my complaints about sonicstage but for me the difference between Connect Player and Sonicstage 4.0 is huge and I would never subject myself to the agony that is Connect Player.
November 27th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
A couple of questions.
1. My iPod has died but I have 25Gb of music stored in iTunes – can this be transferred to the Sony system easlily?
2. Before my iPod gave up the ghost completely, the battery was shagged and because the battery could not be replaced, I could only use it with a power source (nice one Apple, a product with a 2.5 year life!). Can the Sony battery be replaced?
Replies gratefully received, ta
December 11th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
Connect seems to be working fine now. Once the player as updated itself which can take a few minutes for some reason, the transfer of music is fast. Hope I’m not tempting fate now by actually commending connect!
Much appreciation to the guys behind this site as it has been very useful and informative. Many thanks.
December 13th, 2006 at 4:14 am
Hope someone can help!
Had my NWA 3000 now for a year and I love it! No problems downloading onto it & quality is fab!
Just a query tho, currently got 2079 tracks on there but only got 7GB left. How do you convert to ATRAC and will it allow the full capacity to be loaded?
Any help appreciated. Thanks
December 14th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
I have had my nwa3000 for a year too. I’ve got about 2800 songs on using sonicstage 3.4. Still have 12Gb left. There is a settings button on sonicstage 3.4 to convert to ATRAC or it might have even done it automatically.
December 18th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
I’ve had my NW-A 3000 since august and the other day I hit the next button and it flashed a error msg and froze. It shut off after a few min and then when I tried to turn it on it just stayed at the welcome screen and then shut down after a few min. I didn’t get a chance to read the error msg and it hasn’t showed up since. Any one else with this problem or a fix?
January 2nd, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Yes I have a NW-A3000 and mine froze. I went to the Sony shop and the put a pin in the hole to restore factory settings, it wass OK until Christmas – then I lost all my songs.
While it looks a smart bit of equipment I shall be buying an Ipod – unless Sony reply to my query and sort it out.
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Hi all, I was really happy with my nw-a3000 until the “please connect compliant software” error started showing up. Currently I can listen to songs but I can’t use functions like intelligent time shuffle, rating..etc which I had really gotten used to using. This problem would have ideally ocurred if I disconnected the player when it said “do not disconnect” but I always waited until it was ok to disconnect. The troubleshooting says I should connect the player to the pc and connect player, but nothing changes. I’m aware that many people have had the same problem, but what can I do?
I’ve updated the firmware to version 3.00, and I have the connect player updated. People say try Sonicstage. If I install that, would it crash with connect player installed? What will happen to my 2600 songs? If I were to reset the player with a needle would it bring back the lost functions? Any help with any of my questions will be highly appreciated.
January 4th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
just tried installing SonicStage 4.2 and all my features came back. Anyone with a similar problem to mine should try SonicStage 4.2..
January 4th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Cheers for that mehmet… i was having similar problems to you and have just installed Sonicstage 4.2 and it seems ok so far. Hopefully this will be problem cured
January 7th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Hi – I have a NWA1000 – but lost the data cable. Sony want to sell me one for over £65 – any idea where I can get one more reasonable.
January 18th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Hello to all Sony NW-A3000 owners!
Since im totally dissappointed cause of Sonys original software(and i have found out that a LOT of others too), i want to share this information with you.
I am using Winamp as an managing music on my player – only thing you need to do is download tiny little *.dll file and put it in correct place in your harddisk. After that your mp3 device is part of WinAmp music library and you can just drag-and-drop your ripped mp3-files in and out.
READ INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY, here is link for a needed file and help file:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mlsony
Hope you find this useful, i did!
Greetings from freezing finland to everyone,
Mika
January 27th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
hello does anyone know how i can change the format of about 2000 songs already on my nwa3000 to atrac 128kpbs other than mp3 128kbps, without having to delete them of the player and re do them becuase this will take forever, any ideas?
January 29th, 2007 at 6:26 am
aljohn,
have you tried Ebay for a data cable?
worth a look !
February 2nd, 2007 at 10:01 am
when NWA 3000 is connected to PC and trying to update it stops at 13% and an error message is displayed- the NWA3000 will not initliase so can not be used.
So there are no tracks on my player-
how can i solve this? is it the player, USB cable , or program – thanks
February 5th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
rob I had the same thing on my mind. i guess the only way is to do it manually, deleting them and transferring them once more. it looks like it’ll be a long process. muchos coffee
but once more sony has bothered me for now sonicstage does not recognize my nw a3000. i think it’s a similar problem to brendan’s.
i found a solution for this problem but have not comprehended exactly what to do.
Device Detection Issue – WALKMAN device not detected by SonicStage CP, although it is detected by the computer.
Ensure that the WALKMAN device in question was not formatted via the computer; rather a format should be conducted via the software or the menu of the WALKMAN. If your WALKMAN was formatted with Windows Explorer it will not be detected by SonicStage. To resolve the device detection issue try the following:
you will need to initialize the WALKMAN. To do so, please refer to the user manual of your WALKMAN.
or
ensure that you are not employing a USB hub. If so, please try and connect your Walkman to another USB port.
or
Restart in ‘SAFE Mode’, press ‘start’ –> press ‘run’ –> type ‘regedit’ and press enter –> locate: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\SERVICES\sptd –> set start value of DWORD to 4 (disable, set to 0 to enable it again) –> restart PC
Note: Method 3 is especially useful if Deamon tools not working properly – the driver (SPTD) for the virtual CD-ROM resulted in misallocation of drive letters.
p.s. i still don’t understand how when I haven’t even touched the program it suddenly stops recognizing my mp3 player. is this the technological revolution against humanity ?!?
Anyways, if this helps, please advise as I will do so..
February 14th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Hey, I’m planning to sell my NW-A3000 on eBay and wondered if anyone knew a way to completely reset the player (delete all the tracks, restore the default settings, etc) to return it to how it was when new?
Thanks for any help.
Hannah
February 25th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Hannah, I think in order to reset the player you have to stick a needle in the hole in the bottom of the player. It actually says, “reset”. There should be instructions on this in the manual.
March 1st, 2007 at 7:11 pm
My NWA3000 got liquid contamination and cant be fixed so I need a new one.
However i’m having a hard time finding somewhere thats sells them new (dont want 2nd hand). Any help for any UK websites selling NWA3000s?
March 2nd, 2007 at 6:28 pm
if i change all my songs to sony’s format will i not be able to play them on iTunes anymore?
because itunes is better and i would rather keep my songs as mp3 if thats the case..
also to solve the error code 000066d6 problem go into settings and initialize disk. should solve it
March 4th, 2007 at 1:03 am
FYI, I solved my problem by simply initializing the disk of my mp3 player. Now Sonic Stage recognizes the player and I can transfer songs on to it.
March 4th, 2007 at 9:18 am
HI, just got new NWA3000 (on great special). Can anyone tell me re storage please. If I understand correctly, if I transfer MP3 tracks from Windows Media Player to the NWA, they are stored as MP3, but are converted to ATRAC on the fly when playing. How are they stored if I import direct from CD, and is there a benefit in terms of NWA storage to import v trasnfer?
March 27th, 2007 at 4:36 am
David C,
Have you tried Amazon? Got mine from them over a year ago, cheap and prompt delivery! Argos sell em too!
April 11th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
They have the 20gb version on Play.com for 99.99!
May 12th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Hi, i’ve had the nwa3000 for a while now and recently i have been having major issues with the download software. it started off being incredibly slow and just crashing all the time. then it stopped transfering the files over to the nwa3000 altogether…just saying “transfer failed” to everything. i finally deleted it off my computer and then installed it again and now it just says “skipping track blah blah” when i try and transfer the files over. i’m useless with stuff like this anyway but i really have no idea what to do with it….i’m close to just getting rid of it cos it’s driving me so crazy. can anyone help me out with this?
May 14th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
I have had my A3000 for a year now. Never bothered with connect software. Have used SonicStage 3.4. It works fine and have over 3000 songs on player. Only the aditional features dont work but not that bothered about them as long as my player works1
June 24th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Hello everybody!
Does anybody can help me? I have had some bugs in Connect player and i decided to initialize and formate disk in my NW-A3000. And then i have deleted player from connect player ( in this window, where is connect store, library a.o.). Since that time my player connecting to PC, but it doesn’t show in Connect player, just opening the window of removable disk and there is no files. Sorry for my bad english. Help me please! I’m sick without my music!
July 12th, 2007 at 12:14 am
Hello all, well, my 3000 is now full with 3976 MP3 songs.. how on earth do I convert to allow full capacity on it?
in simple english please cos i’m just a fick nurse!!!
August 14th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Hi,
Have been using SonicStage 4.3 for ages now and have had no problems. However I downloaded some music from Connect and when I connected my NW-A3000 to transfer the new music I got the following error message.
“Omgjbox.exe Application Error. The instruction at “Ox7c168f1d” referenced memory at “0x0000001c”. The memory could not be read.
What on earth does that all mean! I know it is not a problem with my player as when I use the same programme on another computer then it connects perfectly ok. But I downloaded the music on my computer at work and this is where I get the error message and then the programme just shuts down. I have tried uninstalling Sonic and re-installing it but the problem just reoccurs.
Help advice needed please.
September 12th, 2007 at 7:56 am
Is there anyway of increasing the speed at which you can search through the music library of my NW-A3000. I have used IPods and Creative Zen players in the past and they are light years ahead regarding music library access.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Hi. My sister just bought me my first ever original MP3 player, the Sony NWA3000. It’s 5 in the morning and I’m already up transferring songs on to my player. It was sort of a blessing in disguise for me since my sister lost the installer CD installer that came with the player, so I had to download the latest Sonic Stage (V 4.03) from the web, or else I’d have experienced the same horrors many have written in this thread.
So far, the player’s been with me for more or less 24 hours, and no problems yet, except for the 35-hour battery life which was actually just about half of that.
I tried working on a Pentium 4 system with 300+MB RAM, and the Sonic Stage didn’t work. Fortunately, I was able to save the installer in to the player itself and installed it into a Pentium D system with 1GB RAM. Now it’s working flawlessly, but not as fast as I’m used to.
This player won’t work with the Sync feature in WMP or Winamp.
January 13th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Hey, I’ve had the Sony NWA3000 for a year now but I think theres a problem with charging. When I connect the cable from the mp3 to my PC the red light appears and then goes again and the mp3 player then appears not to charge. I left it once for a whole night and the next day I played it for 10 minutes and it said Low Battery – Please Charge. Can someone help!
February 25th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
@ Sam: Don’t you have the 220V charger? Are you sure there is enough power in USB-port on you PC? You need 5V. If you’re using a USB-hub, than try connecting the device to you PC directly.
June 16th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
can anyone point me to a site that i can use, now that sony connect has ceased
July 16th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Error Code: 000066d6
Initialize disk! it works.
Didnt use it for monthes because i couldnt be arsed to find out how to fix it, then found this site and someone said to try it, and it sorted it.
SO DO THAT!
July 11th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
does anyone have a link to download the connect software i keep gettin the message no data base found on my nwa 1000 wat should i do
July 31st, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Try Sonic Stage 4.0