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.
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’
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.
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:
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!
