SonicStage In Its Death Throes, Replaced By New x-app Software (Japan Only)

tombstone

As most of us here in the USA and Europe know, development within Sony on the SonicStage music application has generally ended at this point. All Sony portable music players are drag and drop. Most of us remember the entire Sonicstage/Connect successes and stumbles clearly. Regardless, because Sony loves to cater to their home country, Sonicstage and ATRAC was still going along in Japan and Sony supported the application to v5.2. It was made for Japanese consumers and wasn’t released elsewhere, but we figured out how to install it anyways.

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Sony Japan has officially announced that the successor to Sonicstage 5 is now called x-app. Sonicstage, after first appearing in 2001 installed on VAIO PC’s in Japan, and whose malfunctions sparked hundreds of thousands of forum topics across the Internet, is officially dead. Download the successor to Sonicstage 5, the Japanese-only x-app software here. Please leave a comment if you know how to circumvent the language problem and allow it to be installed. We are assuming you can use the same methods found here. If anyone is interested in making an English version let me know – we could even pay for it.

x-app supports the same Walkman devices Sonicstage 5 did:

  • NW-X1060/X1050 X-Series
  • NW-A91x/A84x/A82x/A80x Series
  • NW-S74x/S74xK/S64x/S64xK/S73xF/S73xFK/S63xF/S63xFK/S71x/S61x/S70x/S60x/S20x Series
  • NW-E04x/E02x/E01x/E00x Series
  • NWD-W202 W-Series
  • COM-2, COM-1 ‘Mylo’
  • SEP-50BT/SEP-10BT ‘Rolly’

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However, its feature set is far more advanced than any previous Sonicstage version. x-app is now a general multimedia management program, with the ability to handle and manage audio (including podcasts), photo, and video.

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It has access to Mora. It is compatible with Windows XP/Vista/7 and weighs in at a respectable 120MB. It is just like Sonicstage 5 in terms of appearance, but streamlined. New features include autodiscovery of cover photos, automatic software updates, and compatibility with x-Pict Story, x-ScrapBook, and x-Chronology. 12 tone analysis technology is back, which classifies music by melody and rhythm and provides automatic playlists such as “Emotional”, “Nostalgia”, “Electronic”, “Morning”, “Run” based on your music. Pita lyrics is included, which adds lyrics to your songs automatically, of course, if you live in Japan. This will work in conjunction with the new “NW-A840″ and NW-S640/S740 Series Walkman that have lyric support but are also exclusive to Japan. Amusingly enough, I’m reading that the Walkman lyric service is subscription based? Ouch.

The great news for Sonicstage 5 owners is that your existing Sonicstage installation will be deleted and everything will be converted into x-app automatically. Nice. Here is the codec support:

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Sometimes I wonder why Sony doesn’t mirror this offering in the States and Europe. An optional music management program for those who want it. I understand the Walkman is drag and drop, but this looks slick. Bring x-app to those of us who speak English as soon as possible, Sony. Please!

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12
Oct 2009
POSTED BY Christopher MacManus
POSTED IN

Audio, Hardware, Software

DISCUSSION 22 Comments
  • gmsne

    I want this in English.

  • lala

    “Bring x-app to those of us who speak English as soon as possible, Sony. Please!”

    It's called media-go. It's exactly the same.

  • Anthony

    Is it EXACTLY the same? Does it support the same devices? Unfortunately I am stuck with SS 4.3 for my NW MS7 and NW HD1. It really annoys me that unsupported software will make perfectly good hardware totally redundant.

  • yuunanase

    Yes, the english hacks works exactly the same. In fact, it uses exactly the same “SonicStage V launcher script”

  • touchmybodyla

    1.Download the file as pointed to.
    2.When download is completed, do not open it. Instead, right click the installer and select 'Extract Here' (Make sure you have WinRar installed). You will see a couple of file and folders being extracted.
    3. One of them being 'SetupXAPP' (notepad). Open it. One of the lines will be 'supportoslang =Japanese'. CHANGE 'Japanese' to English. Then SAVE the file.
    4. Next click the 'SetupXAPP' bearing the cute blue logo!
    5. Install and enjoy!!!

    • Orozumba

      you are a god.

  • Joe Edwards

    I just installed in on my English Windows XP Home system (simple hack..I figured it out from prior experience installing SS 5.x, so anyone should find it easy to install.

    The menu system is all Japanese…my two years of Japanese classes have helped a little bit, but…wow.

    I was able to get the program to find my music and pics. The software will NOT recognize my Sony NWZ-A818. Typical Sony. I guess the NW- models will be recognized. Can anyone confirm that? Thanks.

  • Joe Edwards

    NO, Media Go is NOT at all the same program.

  • touchmybodyla

    It does recognize my old nw-507 atrac player! The volume was disabled on mine, and clicking on the volume button did not help to unmute it. Did you face this problem? (BTW I'm running on Vista).

  • David Lee

    I installed the Japanese version over Sonicstage 5.2. I live in Japan and my Japanese reading comprehension is pretty good.

    I really like this new program. It's essentially a slicker version of 5.2 that manages your pics and videos. When you import videos and transfer them to your walkman it converts them on the fly. This is by far and away the most useful feature I've discovered.

  • seowner

    NO, IT'S NOT THE SAME!

    Media Go is CRAP and it's meant for the SE phones and the PSP NOT the mp3 players!
    It's terrible but not surprising as it's from SONY!

    The company REFUSES to invest any time or money to create a NON-Japanese media software and it shows!
    Sony can NOT make media software for its devices to save the company! Period!

  • seowner

    What good is drag n drop if you DON'T already have media files for the mp3 players? The players then become expensive paperweights!

    DAMN Sony refuses to create software for their hardware, at least outside of Japan and wants people to use WMP!
    Who the F*** uses WMP for their media software?!

    Now everyone has to figure which media software is available to rip music, edit files, create playlists, tag album art,etc… There's so many of them that it's utterly ridiculous AND some of them cost money which ADDS to the TOTAL cost of buying/owning a Sony mp3 player.

    Yes, the Sony players look good and sounds good but that's the hardware. It's USELESS without software including the music files!!

    DAMN SONY!

  • treehome

    Merci pour cette infos, je ne demande même pas une version française, mais j'attends avec impatience une version anglaise. Pour une installation sur un OS grenouille supportoslang=French. La DLL à traduire est Japenese.dll.

  • Alx

    I downloaded SonicStage V and looks great, then i found a way to start translating the program to English. (I do not Speak or Write Japanese, but using common sense anyone can do it.) Now i decided to download the newest version and i'm done translating the Data, looks and works fantastic.

  • Anthony

    You wouldn't like to share the translated program by any chance Alx.?

  • LG

    Did you “translate” the entire program to english? Rly? Can you share it?

  • Facebook User

    Hello, this is Christopher from Sony Insider. Can you please send me the package so I can distribute this to others?

  • crispinw

    LOL Alx – what a load of bs.

    In the All UsersApplication DataSony CorporationSonicStage VDataXML folder there is a lang.dtd file that you can alter to change some of the screen data but….

    I cant get at the menu data or the form captions or text in PE Explorer, or Procmon. And there dont seem to be any other string resource dlls hanging around.

    I'll poke around a bit more but atm im a bit stuck – but whatever the case I can telly ou now that you'll need to patch the exe to change the rest of the data, i'll look at that when ive got time……

  • http://twitter.com/jlhm7 jose luis herrero

    LO QUIERO EN ESPAÑOL!!!!!!

  • kevio

    English please please please….

  • kevio

    English please please please….

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