SonicStage hints and tips

HMHB

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Post any hints and tips on SonicStage usage here so we can build up a useful help thread please. Please feel free to copy and paste any of your own previous posts into this thread.
 
SS2.3 & HD3

First, you may not realise that the 'Albums' view in the player is created from what is labelled in the 'track > Proprties' under 'Source' which if loaded from a CD will be the Album name.

The 'Group' view on the Player is driven by the Album name is SS but is not the same as the album view when on the player.

Provided your 'Source' field is correctly updated for all tracks as the album name you can make a play list.



When connected to SS. Go to the group menu, create new group. title it whatever you like, "Playlist1" Now simply drag and drop whatever songs you want into this group folder.

Disocnnect your player. When you enter the group view you can play all the drag/dropped file in the Playlist1 group together. Howerver in 'Album' or Artist view the tracks are still listed correctly. This does not duplicate tracks for storage purposes on the player.


In my view although not as good as actual play lists this is a useful alternative.
 
not really a tip but a bit of information that people get confused by, when putting tracks onto a hd1/3/5 using ss it changes the file type to oma. This isnt a true conversion, the file is still atrac or mp3 just with a new wrapper on it from sony digital rights management to stop sharing.
 
Okay, here's my recent pearl of wisdom:

You can split (and therefore chop bit's off) tracks in SS as long as they are in the ATRAC format - highlight your track, click edit and select divide... up pops a little box where you can choose the moment in the track where you wish to divide and press the button to divide it.
 
right click for shortcuts. Hold down CTRL to select multiple songs not next to each other in libary, to edit
 
as requested a copy and paste of my itunes thread

Hi everyone,

I've perfected a good way to integrate itunes with a nw hd5. To those who are new to mp3, itunes is the software that apple developed for the ipod. The ipod has been criticzed recently because of its sound quality and battery life, but it is generally agreed that itunes is a intuitive and very powerful software and is very easy to use. The NW HD5 on the other hands seems to win hardware wise, but the software is a bit awkward to use.

So how can you get the best of both worlds?

Well, i recently discovered that it is a simple case of drag and drop to get the two pieces of software to talk to each other. The idea is that you can create, rip, edit, name and sort your music using itunes, then transfer the resultant organised files over to the sonicstage 'My Library'. Heres how I do it.

1. Download itunes from the apple website. Its totally free. You will also be offerd free updates every few months but usually these are just minor updates to ipod drivers, functions and bugs.
2. Import any existing mp3 files you have into itunes. In the preferences menu, you can get Itunes to organise neatly all your files into artist and album folders which look really good on your hard disk. Also you can ask itunes to update these folder and file names when you make changes to names etc. Very smooth. The final thing you can do is when you import a file, it will automatically create a copy of that file and add it to the itunes library, so they are all in one place. You can delete the original file if you wish especially if you have music files scattered all over your hdd.
3. Before ripping cds, you need to go to preferences>importing/ripping and select the encoding you want. You should select mp3 or wav. aac is NOT supported by the hd5. A standard bitrate for most is 128kbps. I use 192 for a bit of extra quality, but it depends on how many cds you have and hard disk space. NEVER go below 128k. it sounds awful.
4. You can use various organisaton features to catalogue your music. Have a play and see what works for you.
5. Now the clever bits. Open sonicstage while itunes is also open. Select all your mp3s on itunes so they are highlighted in blue. Then, point at the highlighted songs and, HOLDING THE LEFT BUTTON DOWN, drag the mouse pointer slowly over to sonicstage's 'My Library' space. The computer will now update sonicstage with all your songs. it may take a moment.
6. Go back to itunes. It would be a good idea to keep track of the songs that have been xported to ss, so now you need to put some kind of label on all those tracks. So, with all the tracks still highlighted, press ctrl i. This is the get info command. A box will pop up with information about the track. select the page with the info about name, album, etc. DO NOT write anything in the artist, track name or album boxes...it will label all your tracks with that if u do. Simply go to the 'comments' box and type something like 'added to sonicstage 19/6/05'. Click ok. It will now label the tracks highlighted (a hence the tracks exported) with added to sonicstage.
7. Your now covered if you subsequently added tracks to itunes, because you can keep track of anything not added yet. Heres another clever tip. Go to FILE menu and 'create smart playlist'. It will then come up with selectable criteria and if any tracks satisfy the criteria they will appear in the playlist. The smart list will also update itself as files change. So if you enter 'Comments do not contain the word sonicstage' and keep live updating ticked, itunes will constantly maintain a list of all the tracks that are not on sonicstage. So as you add tracks with the comment box still blank it will queue them up on the smart list. Then you just need to drap and drop from the playlist to ss, and then label them up as exported, and they will disappear from the list.
8. With your songs in ss, you can then choose to transfer as mp3, or convert to atrac3. In the settings menu of ss, choose 'as is' transfer to have the mp3s directly on the hd5. To convert to atrac, go to advanced setting, and select 'always convert'. select your required bit rate, and tell ss if you want the shadow atrac3 files on your computer as well. its a good idea but if you need the space, you can ask it to keep just the file on your walkman. If you are converting to atrac3, its a good idea to keep the quality of the original file as high as possible. as said before, i use 192kbps with good results.

i hope this all makes sense. any q's please ask.

and paste of my itunes thread
 
EDIT - The method below doesn't work without the extra instructions.

Importing Double albums.

I use SS3.1. Any double albums can be imported to remain as such.

Import first disc. Put second disc in drive and give it the same title and artist as the first disc. A window will pop up explaining that you already have an album by that name and will give you two options one of which will be to add the second disc tracks to the end of the first discs tracks.

All the tracks should have the correct numbering and will follow one album (disc) after the other.

Correction
After importing the album as described above open the albums folder in My Library. Note the "CD track#" will match the number at the extreme left ("No.") for disc 1 and then reset to 1 again for the second disc. Double click (Slow double click) on disc 2's CD track# 1, it will highlight and can be edited. Change the value so that it matches the albums track number ("No.") and press tab (not enter). Repeat until all disc 2's tracks have been renumbered.
Once completed each number in the columns labelled "No." & "CD track#" should be the same. When the album is NOW transferred to the DAP the tracks will play in the correct order.
Credit to ak47wong for this amendment.
 
Hmm, is this still the place to post SonicStage tips? There's been nothing added here for months. Anyway, I'll try to do the right thing and add to this thread instead of starting a new one :)

Classical music the easy way

Here's a simple way of organising classical music that I use. Basically, the composer is the artist and each composition is a separate album. The advantages are minimal track renaming and ease of finding compositions by composer. The disadvantage is there is no provision for showing the conductor, orchestra, soloist, etc.

Here's the tag structure:

Genre: "Classical" or you can categorize your collection however you like, for example by type of composition ("Concertos", "Symphonies", "Choral Works", etc.), by period ("Baroque", "Romantic", "20th Century"), or whatever categorization works for you.

Artist: Name of the composer as you would look it up (e.g. "Bach" or "Bach, J.S." but not "J.S. Bach").

Album: Name of the composition (e.g. "Symphony No. 1" or "Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21"). You need to be able to identify it from the first 16 characters, so you may need to abbreviate it (e.g. "Violn Conc No. 5 in A Major, K.219").

Track: Doesn't really matter as long the "CD Track" field is correct relative to the other tracks in the same composition. I prefer to name each track something like "1. Allegro con brio".

After you've tagged your music this way, you can use either the "Genre" or "Artist" search categories to find the composer, and then go down a level to see the compositions ("albums"). You can't use the "Album" or "Track" categories with this system because you might have a dozen albums called "Symphony No. X" and a dozen tracks all called "Andante", but I've never found this to be a problem.

Andrew
 
Editing fields in place and using TAB

It isn't obvious, but you can edit most of the information in the SonicStage views using in-place editing, by simply clicking on them twice slowly. Pressing TAB after editing the field usually takes you to the same field on the next line.

For example, to re-number the tracks in an album, click twice on the "CD Track" field in the album view, type in the new number, and press TAB to move to the same field on the next track.

This is especially useful in the Transfer screen. For example, if you want to change the name of an album, the easiest way is to click on the album name twice and edit it in place, rather than trying to use the dialog box. If you want to change the genre of an album, click twice on the genre of the first track, edit it, press TAB, and repeat for the other tracks.

Andrew
 
Consolidating double albums

For double CDs, many people have suggested appending "(Disc n)" to the end of the album title to prevent tracks from being mixed up between the two discs. That's fine, but I prefer to consolidate the two discs into one album so that I don't have to navigate between two "albums" for what is really a single musical work. Here's how:

1. Rip the two CDs to two separate albums with "(Disc n)" on the end the titles as usual, e.g. "Quadophenia (Disc 1)" and "Quadrophenia (Disc 2)"

2. Take note of the number of tracks in the first album (10 in this case)

3. Edit the second album and renumber the "CD Track" field for each track so that they follow on from the first album - in this case, renumbering from 1-7 to 11-17 (see tip on "Editing fields in place")

4. Remove the "(Disc n)" from the name of the second album

5. Remove the "(Disc n)" from the name of the first album

You should now have one album with the tracks in the correct order (from 1-17 in this case). If they're out of order, click on the "CD Track" column heading to sort the view by track number.

Watch out for the "Compilation" check box
Sometimes the "compilation" flag gets turned on for one disc and not the other. Tracks marked as "Track in a compilation album" will be put in a separate album from tracks without this flag, so make sure the same setting applies to all the tracks in an album.

Andrew
 
Order of tracks in an album

In "My Library", you can drag-and-drop tracks in an album to change the order, but when you transfer the album to the HD5, the "CD Track" field overrides the drag-and-drop ordering. As an example, suppose you use drag-and-drop to get the following order of tracks in "My Library":

001 First Track (CD Track=2)
002 Second Track (CD Track=2)
003 Third Track (CD Track=4)
004 Fourth Track (CD Track=2)
005 Fifth Track (CD Track=1)​
After transferring to the HD5, this will be order of tracks:

001 Fifth Track (CD Track=1)
002 First Track (CD Track=2)
003 Second Track (CD Track=2)
004 Fourth Track (CD Track=2)
005 Third Track (CD Track=4)​
If you want to keep the order of tracks as you arranged them, change the CD Track fields before transferring the album (see tip on "Editing fields in place").

Andrew
 
Hi guys, Im not really sure if I can request help in this post about hints and tips but its the only one I found :oops:
Anyway, I had SonicStage ver 1.3 with my netmd a long time ago, now I've just got a great nw-hd3 but Im using SonicStage 3.2, and I can't find the cut/combine tools, do sony get rid of them ?? also, when I try to import a japanese CD the titles were all like ????????9???? and so....

Can somebody help me ? The tools were great and the japanese text I like a lot. Also is there some way to improve volume on atrac3plus files ? I have some songs of McCartney firsts and they are soooo quiet.... thanks a lot to you all.
 
The ???? of the japanese should display properly once you transfer them to the HD5, they dont show in sonicstage.

I don't think there are any volume boosting programs for Atrac files.
 
In't it easier to use JB5's method of importing double albums (a couple of posts above yours) than this method, which requires tedious manual renumbering of every track?


ak47wong said:
Consolidating double albums

For double CDs, many people have suggested appending "(Disc n)" to the end of the album title to prevent tracks from being mixed up between the two discs. That's fine, but I prefer to consolidate the two discs into one album so that I don't have to navigate between two "albums" for what is really a single musical work. Here's how:

1. Rip the two CDs to two separate albums with "(Disc n)" on the end the titles as usual, e.g. "Quadophenia (Disc 1)" and "Quadrophenia (Disc 2)"

2. Take note of the number of tracks in the first album (10 in this case)

3. Edit the second album and renumber the "CD Track" field for each track so that they follow on from the first album - in this case, renumbering from 1-7 to 11-17 (see tip on "Editing fields in place")

4. Remove the "(Disc n)" from the name of the second album

5. Remove the "(Disc n)" from the name of the first album

You should now have one album with the tracks in the correct order (from 1-17 in this case). If they're out of order, click on the "CD Track" column heading to sort the view by track number.

Watch out for the "Compilation" check box
Sometimes the "compilation" flag gets turned on for one disc and not the other. Tracks marked as "Track in a compilation album" will be put in a separate album from tracks without this flag, so make sure the same setting applies to all the tracks in an album.

Andrew
 
Sasso said:
The ???? of the japanese should display properly once you transfer them to the HD5, they dont show in sonicstage.

I don't think there are any volume boosting programs for Atrac files.

I have the HD3... not HD5 thanks. I tried installing de overseas soundstage 2.3 the combine/cut tools are there, I put a japanese cd and the ?????? characters again appear I tried to transfer to hd3 to see if the characters would appear but IT WONT LET ME TRANSFER!!!! it says that the song it's in the wrong format, help please.
 
drmoze said:
In't it easier to use JB5's method of importing double albums (a couple of posts above yours) than this method, which requires tedious manual renumbering of every track?
Yes, it is easier, but it also doesn't work.

Here's what happens if you use JB5's method. Suppose you import a double album with three tracks on Disc 1 and four tracks on Disc 2. In SonicStage, you'll see the album listed as follows:

001 Disc 1, Track 1 (CD Track=1)
002 Disc 1, Track 2 (CD Track=2)
003 Disc 1, Track 3 (CD Track=3)
004 Disc 2, Track 1 (CD Track=1)
005 Disc 2, Track 2 (CD Track=2)
006 Disc 2, Track 3 (CD Track=3)
007 Disc 2, Track 4 (CD Track=4)​
Looks fine so far, right? However, transfer this album to the HD5, and the tracks will be in this order:

001 Disc 1, Track 1 (CD Track=1)
002 Disc 2, Track 1 (CD Track=1)
003 Disc 1, Track 2 (CD Track=2)
004 Disc 2, Track 2 (CD Track=2)
005 Disc 1, Track 3 (CD Track=3)
006 Disc 2, Track 3 (CD Track=3)
007 Disc 2, Track 4 (CD Track=4)​
To get the tracks in the correct order, you have to do "tedious manual renumbering" of the tracks on the second disc.

This is the same principle I described in the post Order of tracks in an album above.

Andrew
 
ak47wong said:
Yes, it is easier, but it also doesn't work.

Ahem, Ermm - ak47 is correct it doesn't work. :blush:

The files show up in the correct order in SS for both the PC and DAP databases (DB).
Disconnect the DAP from the PC and during the process of creating the DAP DB the files get jumbled up, as described above.

The freaky thing is that reconnecting the DAP to the PC and viewing the album folder on the DAP in SS shows the correct file ordering again! i.e. d1 T1-6 followed by d2 T1-6.

I will edit my previous post.
 
I may well be stupid but why can't I sort by artist in the device view in SS 3.1? The current order is the order in which I added the tracks to my HD3.

Cheers
 
JB5 said:
Ahem, Ermm - ak47 is correct it doesn't work. :blush:
Yeah, i tried it but the message I got with disc 2 didn't have an option to add tracks following those of disk 1. There were 2 other options instead. Looks like 'tedious' renumbering may be the only option.

I decided to keep my compilation CDs as separate discs rather than one huge titled compilation. (7-disc set each of the 60's and 80's).

Not that I can actually get SonicStage to work........ (STILL!)
 
A lot has been said SS 3.2 allowing to disable DRM while transferring files. I haven't ripped any CD's yet using SS but have transferred existing MP3's from PC to HD5. But during transfer, I could see spot an option to disable DRM. So how can I find if the files which have been transferred to HD5 have DRM enabled/disabled on them? How do I transfer songs from my HD5 to a different PC?

When I try to explore HD5 as a removable USB drive from My Computer, theres only a single OMG folder, with loads of files having gibberish names. Whats that?
 
i just got my HD1, and it came already updated to the mp3 thing.

it came with 2.3, and i want to convert my mp3's(for the longer battery life, and use of EQ) when i convert them, it converts them, but it doesnt add them to the My Library.

how do i get them on my player ?
 
The converted ATTRAC track doesn't appear in Library like you would sensibly think it would. With mine I have to delete the MP3 from SS and then inport the new version.

On my Sony Vaio it puts the ATTRAC version in a folder called Optimised Files within the usual SonicStage folder on my D drive.

Hope that helps.
 

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