Getting started with SonicStage for a Sony MP3 player

Euan Semple noted that lots of people seem to have been given iPods for Christmas. My experience certainly backs that up, with my Fiona’s sister receving an iPod nano, and Fiona’s mum getting a Sony ‘Walkman’-branded flash-memory based MP3 player. Both were delighted, but come Boxing Day, their first questions to me were asking whether I could help them load some music on.

Whilst the iPod was easy – I hooked it up with my Macbook (more of which later) – the Sony device was more of a new experience. Fiona’s parents have a computer in their spare room, so armed with the installation CD, a box-full of installation bumpf and a pile of music CDs, I worked my way through the process of installing ‘SonicStage’, the software require to put music onto the player.

Step one was to find the English instruction manual, and with six different language versions, differentiated only by how they spelt the words ‘Quick Start Guide’ in small print on the bottom right of the cover, that took a few seconds longer than it ought to have (see picture).

Glancing through the guide, I was amused to read that the list of ‘non-supported environments’ included ‘OSs other than Windows’ (fair enough), ‘Macintosh’ (isn’t that already covered), ‘multi-boot’ and ‘multi-monitor’ environments (hmm okay, so nothing complicated then), ‘personally constructed PCs’ (they obviously really don’t trust people) and finally ‘environments that are an upgrade of the original manufacturer-installed operating system’ (which pretty much rules out anyone who has ever let Windows Update do its thing). So, ignoring all that, I pressed on…

…And then had a cup of tea, whilst waiting for the ten minute installation process to do it’s thing (maybe I’m exaggerating, but not by much). The only thing of note during this was the amusing line of “SonicStage is an integrated software to enjoy music”.

Once installed, ripping the CDs and transfering the music onto the player was fairly straightforward. Before I did that, though, I went through the various options menus, and made sure to switch from Sony’s ATRAC format to the more standard MP3 format. As well as wanting to avoid the evils of DRM, I wanted to know that, should Fiona’s parents ever upgrade to a new and different type of player, I could just move the files across rather than ripping all the CDs again from scratch (which takes longer than you might imagine).

The SonicStage software did integrate with some kind of online iTunes-type store, but I couldn’t see that being used at all, so didn’t bother to investigate.

The iPod was a lot more straightforward, as I already had iTunes installed on the Mac. I made sure Fiona’s sister knew that, if we transferred the music onto it from my computer, it wouldn’t be easy to switch to another computer at a later date (which involved a ten minute explanation about DRM), and then imported the CDs one by one. The only downside with this is that iTunes doesn’t recognise that it might be used by more than one person, so I had to change the synchronisation settings to stop the new Take That album appearing on my own iPod. Additionally, the play counts from all the iPods (mine, Fiona’s and her sisters) are all added together within iTunes, which makes some of the auto-playlists a bit more of a random mix. Lucky too that I’m not sending my listening data to Last.fm via Audioscrobbler…

Both new recipients of their MP3 players were happy with them, once their music was loaded, but I wonder whether other bloggers have experiences of having to help their parents/grandparents out with these must-have musical devices? I’m surprised that I now know a few people who have the players, but don’t have computers.

Update:

Currybet has written a lengthy response to this post over on his own blog, which is also worth reading.

Comments

1. Tomas says:

   January 14, 2007 at 2:58 am

   I need your help,I recently purchased a MP3 player from sony-model#nw2002F and I can’t download music onto it. I keep geeting a No Data message from the MP3 player.Please, email me at tomas2315@hotmail with your suggestion to my query.
   Thanks,
   Tomas
2. Joe Park says:

   February 10, 2007 at 1:10 pm

   Can anyone tell me how to delete any unwanted tracks or complete albums from my MP3 player model number NW-ED05 .Thanks.
3. Mel says:

   March 22, 2007 at 1:59 am

   Hey, I have recently bought a Sony walkman NW-E003F model which wont allow me to download any music. All the software is installed, it reconizes that there is an mp3 there, but if you try to put any music on it, it says there is no device and please install sound disk!!!! I’ve tried different computers and windows with no change. Any ideas? The hardware isn’t faulty, had that checked already, works fine in the shop and they did nothing different to what I did.