[Veggie_Musician]

I got a Sony NW-S705 for £49 the other day from Currys and think its great. I got it as a spare for my Zen Vision M when I didnt want to have bulk of carrying it about. In Fact I think its got much better sound quality than my ZVM.

I just think Sony Players sound right! It took me ages to get an EQ I liked on my ZVM - but it took 2 mins on the S705. It just feels more musicial and fun to listen to. I will give a full review later.

But on to SonicStage... I do not know why people slate it soo much. Its fine to use... At first I thought eekk what on earth is this!!!! However, its simple to use.

Basicly, all you do to get an album on your player is first select which folder you like Sonicstage to scan for music... then you get a screen with 2 windows...

The window on the left displys what albums and songs you got on your pc... the right window is whats on your MP3 player.

You click on the album you want then click a button to transfer it to your mp3 player... then the album appears on the right box to show its been transfered to your player.... thats all.


Whats all the fuss about...

PS the S705 plays lossless and is gapless in atrac and acc formats.

 

[pata2001]

Sure, Sonicstage is fine if you just have a small to medium size library, and just use it to transfer songs. Try using Sonicstage to manage large music library, playlists, etc, and it will frustrate you. Also, it's not unicode, so you won't be able to display Japanese/Chinese/Korean titles all at once. And then there's stability issues, slow downs, etc.

Another note, it's AAC, not ACC, and the S705 can only play AAC gaplessly if they're ripped via sonicstage (3gp container). Tracks encoded with iTunes (m4a) will import, but you loose tags and gapless.

People are liking the S705 mainly because now the street prices of those seem to be very competitive. Would you have bought it and got the same positive impression if you had paid the original MSRP?

 

[h-man]

Also, try making a quick playlist with sonicstage...not good.

 

[Veggie_Musician]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pata2001 /img/forum/go_quote.gif People are liking the S705 mainly because now the street prices of those seem to be very competitive. Would you have bought it and got the same positive impression if you had paid the original MSRP?

No because I feel Sony Players are a bit over priced... but they are better hardware - so you get what you pay for really.

Also you not stuck with Sonicstage now - there are a few MP3 managers that sit in the root of your device and you drag n drop mp3s into it. Works with both PCs and Macs. Theres the WinAmp Plug-in and Vaio Mp3 transfer programme thatd drag n drop too!

 

[Mono101]

I use Sonic Stage with a big library almost every day. The trick is that i don't let the software scan my library but only drag and drop the folders that i want in it. Once i got all the album in i transfer and delete the "temporary" playlist! Just make sure you don't check on deleting the actual file!

I agree that Sonic Stage is not ideal but i've seen worse.

 

[appophylite]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mono101 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I use Sonic Stage with a big library almost every day. The trick is that i don't let the software scan my library but only drag and drop the folders that i want in it. Once i got all the album in i transfer and delete the "temporary" playlist! Just make sure you don't check on deleting the actual file! I agree that Sonic Stage is not ideal but i've seen worse.

Bingo! Certainly the majority of other programs (ITunes, WMP, MPC, etc) are better with their superior interfaces, SonicStage is perfectly useable if you figure out how to work around what may peeve you.

 

[kikkomang]

My sister recently got a sony player from woot, and she's always complaining about how sonicstage is the worst thing she's ever used.

 

[rockin_amigo14]

i imagine it's not the worst thing in the world. people said the Zune Marketplace was awful. I personally think it's fine for what it does. Just don't use it as my normal library. Mediamonkey is much better for that

 

[IpaqMan]

I have been using SonicStage since I got my Hi-MD recorder. It works fine for me but it is on the slow side when adding a lot of tracks at once.

I have a new S705F also. I love the combination of small 2GB metal player with noise cancellation and with earphones designed like the EX90. I had purchased a NW-E005 and really liked it, so when I heard about the WOOT.com sale of the NW-S705F I had to have one.

I have the Java mp3 manager (NW-E00X_MP3_File_Manager-0.12.jar) from Sourceforge on both my E005 and S705F. It offers an alternative when I need to transfer music from a non-SonicStage PC. However, it uses a different database so I cannot play music from SS and from NW..jar at the same time.

 

[EsJee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mono101 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I use Sonic Stage with a big library almost every day. The trick is that i don't let the software scan my library but only drag and drop the folders that i want in it. Once i got all the album in i transfer and delete the "temporary" playlist! Just make sure you don't check on deleting the actual file! I agree that Sonic Stage is not ideal but i've seen worse.

Thats exactly what I've been doing too since i got my Mz-Rh1... and the thing about sonicstage was that i believe the older versions were a pain in the ass but the most recent version of sonicstage seems pretty stable as far as i know. On a side note tho....I love the quality of the Mz-RH1... its just so beautiful... both in sound and looks

 

[appophylite]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EsJee /img/forum/go_quote.gif Thats exactly what I've been doing too since i got my Mz-Rh1... and the thing about sonicstage was that i believe the older versions were a pain in the ass but the most recent version of sonicstage seems pretty stable as far as i know. On a side note tho....I love the quality of the Mz-RH1... its just so beautiful... both in sound and looks

The original iteration of SonicStage was a horrendous drag and drop system that wouldn't even properly read WMA files. Everything had to be either .mp3 or .omg

Not sure about the current iteration, but I've been using v3.1 for about 2 years and have been very happy with it. I still don't use it as my primary program, but I still don't have major gripes about it.

 

[Aevum]

sonicstage is the Audio managment software equivalent of a sexualy transmited diesiese, the only thing i regret with my nw-HD5

 

[thedon]

haha, yeah sonicstage is pretty much the worst program i've ever used. i had major issues with it back when i had an MD and now its even worst. i can't get the program to work at all. nothing gets added to my library so i can't transfer any music. even if i could, everytime i plug in my hd5 it crashes. i've tried uninstalling it and deleting all the reg files and stuff like that, and then installing a different version and it doesn't seem to help.

the program seems to work ok on my sisters computer except that is crashes when you try to close it.

i've resorted to using mp3 file manager but now i can't use any playlist at all.