The Kaputniks

Use Sony NW-A3000 without SonicStage Software and hack its Volume Limiter!

After a long time I wanted to use my Sony NW-A3000 then I remembered why I rarely use it: Its goddamn awful piece of garbage software called “SonicStage”. SonicStage for Sony’s Walkman is like the iTunes for the iPod.

Without it you can’t transfer your songs to your Sony NW-A3000 player,…or so I thought until yesterday! There are a few ways to transfer your songs to the player, let’s start with the easier one, shall we?

JSymphonic, an open source application (1 file!) written in Java, thus making it platform independent. It’s not fancy, it hasn’t the functionality of SonicStage, but that’s exactly what I did not want.

The biggest plus? JSymphonic supports up to Generation 7 of Sony’s portable music players!

You can transfer your songs from/to the player, delete them, erase the whole HDD, that’s it. You want more? Well, get SonicStage then. Since the whole application resembles only 1 file, you can easily place it inside the player thus being able to transfer songs from/to any computer anywhere anytime.

Note: In order to run JSymphonic you need to have Java Runtimes installed.

Now, the not so easy method!

  1. Plugin your mp3-player
  2. Backup your files by renaming your directory “OMGAUDIO” to something else like “OMGAUDIObackup” or copy them onto your HDD…
  3. Create a new directory “OMGAUDIO”
  4. If you have any mp3-player that is not protected: create a file named “nocode.txt”  inside the OMGAUDIO directory
  5. If you have a protected mp3-player make sure you have at least ONE of the following:
    • MP3FM correctly installed with a MP3FM/DvId.dat file: see the official Sony page about MP3 File Manager
    • Make sure you have the decodeKey.dat from the keywizard in the directory “GYM” (Grab Your Music): more info at:
  6. Download and copy ml_sony to your WinAMP-plugin folder

That’s it. Now run your WinAMP and start copying to/from your Sony’s mp3-player. I know a lot more work than JSymphonic, but there are folks out there using WinAMP.

Now least not last the Volume Limiter Hack!

Sony’s portable music players have, by standard, a volume limiter enabled to protect you from hearing impairment. Some of you couldn’t care less I presume or the normal volume is too low for you, so here’s how to hack it..

Enter the test mode, but ignore step 3:

NW-A3000 Volume Hack #1

Proceed to alter the settings according to

NW-A3000 Volume Hack #2

After that turn off the mp3-player, and voilá u hasz got moar volumez!