Sony Walkman Wishlist
So then, the Sony Walkman NW-A3000. It’s a lovely machine in many ways. It’s beautifully made as you would expect from Sony. The sound quality is fantastic too, once you’ve purchased some decent earphones. The supplied ones really aren’t too hot.
Unfortunately, a few things let it down, so I’ve put together a wishlist of things I’d like to see improved:
The Software
- The Connect Player is unusably slow and it’s TinyHTTP.exe process is very resource hungry and unstable. Sort it out, please.
- The alternative, SonicStage, is better, but only in so far as it’s usable. It’s not altogether stable itself, and when compared with it’s biggest competition (iTunes), it’s not a very good music player / manager at all.
- Support for compilation / various-artists albums definitely needs improvement. Specifically, when viewing my music, it should give me the option to separate compilation albums out from the rest of the music. The option to separate artists that only appear on compilations from the rest of the artist listing would be great, too. The same complaints apply to the player itself.
- It would be nice if it could do the same with Podcasts. Some sort of poscast aggregation built into the software would be very nice, too.
- Make the whole playlists experience nicer to use. If they were sorted out on this side, i’d use them a lot more on the player itself.
- The ability to import playlists from other software – iTunes and WinAMP in particular – would be a very nice feature.
- Support for the Mac and other alternative platforms would be lovely, thanks. In fact, just documenting the disc format you use and releasing it into the public domain would be a huge help. You wouldn’t have to do the work then, would you? The folks over at Songbird would quite likely do it for you.
The Hardware
To be honest, there isn’t a great deal wrong with the Walkman itself. The majority of the problems lie in the software that sits on your PC. I do have a few bugbears though:
- It can be so very very slow at times. It’s usually when navigating through the music library while music is playing, but quite often it grinds to a halt and shows the “accessing” screen for ages while nothing else is happening. This is very frustrating. More speed please Sony.
- Support for compilation albums isn’t brilliant on the player either. Separating them out from the rest of the library would be nice. The same would be nice for Podcasts.
- Um… it’d be nice if you could squeeze in a bigger hard disc. 20gb simply isn’t enough for me anymore.
- You know deep down, what I really want, is to be able to just drag and drop folders of music straight on there as if it was an external hard drive. Not going to happen, is it? No, I didn’t think so.
I’m converted to creative again now, I love my zen. The only thing I would like is gapless playback (sony players have that option with certain files).
I never had any issues with sonicstage, I guess I was just lucky. The main thing I wanted on sony was an on the go playlist. Doubt I would have changed if it had included that.
Hmm, iPod and iTunes anyone.
(I love stirring)
*glares at Owen*
DRM filled and low quality, high battery sucking music anyone?
What, like the stuff they sell on the Sony Connect and various “PlaysforSure” WMA stores, Si?
Nope, I honestly believe the hardware/software combo of iPod and iTunes is the best there is. There is better hardware out there and probably better software – but they aren’t available together.
when i first got my sony walkman i was loving it, now im not really feeling it! im on to my second walkman as my first broke down and now the same has happened to my second. i was thinking that it must be me doing something to it which made it break but now i reckon it sony and that they’re just shit. apparently im not the only one whs had problems with the mp3. What the f*** does Error 82040008 mean anyway. Im seriously comtemplating an iPod.
also i had a slight prblem with connect player but after re0-installing it, it was fine. I dont like that Sonicstage!
what does error 82040008 mean?!?! i have it as well and it is really starting to annoy me! is there even any other software that you can use for a sony other then connect? i love sony and HATE ipod but i do have to say that connect is complete rubbish!
Why do you hate the iPod?
No idea what 82040008 means – reminds me of the Guru Meditation errors I’d get on my Amiga from time to time :) The only offical alternative to Connect is SonicStage, or there’s the ml_sony plugin for Winamp – http://sourceforge.net/projects/mlsony
I have the same bloody error code! I’ve seriously had nothing but problems with this damned excuse for a mp3 player since the day I got it. If there is anyway someone can save me from retransferring over 2000 music files please tell me how to fix this piece of shit!
Basically, you need to remove all trace of Connect Player from your system, then get the latest version of SonicStage from the Sony website.
Sony came to their senses and realised Connect was rubbish and reverted back to SonicStage… which is rubbish too, but less so.
I’ve recently bought a Sony Walkman for my sister for xmas, but only after getting it home have I found out about the forced software. I do not buy products that impose restrictions (any form of DRM), so this player will be returned for a full refund.
I urge people to do this if they are not happy with the software that comes with hardware they buy. If customers accept crap software, rather than the obvious way of putting music on a player which is to copy it onto the player, then companies will continue to turf out this crap. And by making the hardware reliant on the software, the hardware can face planned obselecence on the same schedule as the software.
Ipods suck sony ftw they have best sound / bat life / they have playlists now which i cant get to work >.> so i just make folders
I think that says it all really.
What’s more, the battery life on my Nano is loads better than it was on my old NW-A3000. I might have to concede the sound quality, but that might be because I was using nicer earphones with the Sony (right up until they broke).