My wife recently obtained a Sony NW-E002 digital music player. It's a nifty little thing - but to get music on to it, they only supply a Windows-only program which converts your music into Sony's ATRAC format. But what if you don't use Windows? Or what if you do use Windows, but don't like Sony's provided software?
There are 5 steps - skip down to the first you that you need help for!
I am using Fedora Core (Linux) - but you will be able to use these instructions to help you with Ubuntu, Mandrake, FreeBSD or Mac OS X or whatever, providing you use your head!
For Linux, I downloaded the self-extracing RPM, which can be obtained from this page: http://www.java.com/en/download/linux_manual.jsp
Having downloaded the relevant file for my computer, I needed to run it with administrative permissions. From a terminal, I ran this command (Ubuntu users may need to use "sudo" instead of "su") (note that when I did this, Java 5 was the version to use; now Patrick recommends Java 6):
% su -c "sh jre-1_5_0_10-linux-i586-rpm.bin"
"NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager" uses FFMPEG to convert tracks to Sony's format. As a Fedora Core user, the simplest way to get FFMPEG is to use the Livna repository. First you need to install the repository, then install FFMPEG from it. For me, the two commands were (replace '6' with your version of Fedora):
% rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm % yum install ffmpeg
If you are using another distribution, there will be an equivalent way of doing this. Windows users can download suitable files from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=174319 (under "Optionals"). Note that you may not be legally entitled to run FFMPEG because of patent restrictions in your jurisdiction - you should make your own enquiries about this first.
Now it's time to get Patrick's "NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager" software. It doesn't need "installing" - just downloading. The latest version is 0.13 which requires Java 6.
Download it from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=174319. You're looking for the latest version of "nwe00xmp3man".
Don't run it yet - you're player isn't set up. Remember that you alone are responsible for everything you're doing here!
Your player should now have the .jar file and the copied OMGAUDIO folder on it.
You're now ready to go. Launch "NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager" by running it from the Walkman. You may be able to double-click on the .jar file; I had to run it from the command line (note that I was usin a version which is now superceded):
% cd /media/SonyPlayer/ % /usr/java/jre1.5.0_10/bin/java -jar NW-E00X_MP3_File_Manager-0.12.jarThe first time you run, a file "playersize.txt" will be created on your walkman. You should edit the first line to show the correct number for your model (it cannot be automatically detected).
If you see "OMGAUDIO???" in the window that (eventually) appears, then this means that the folder created in the previous step couldn't be found. Either it's not there, or you haven't moved to the walkman folder before running the .jar file (see the "cd" command above).
I'd like to thank Patrick and others for producing this software.
If you'd like to thank me, please consider purchasing something from one of my advertisers.
Feedback / E-mail / Anything I forgot to mention?: sonynwe-feedback@dw-perspective.org.uk. (Most queries to me have the same answer: the reason you see "OMGAUDIO???" is because you forgot to change your current directory to the base of the music player before running the NWEManager software).