MP3 -> Cell Phone
October 23, 2004
I think my first update after the previous will be one of benefit to the entire world. If you, like me, just bought yourself a nice Sony Ericsson SO506ic cell phone (see Docomo, or Sony Ericsson for more information), then congratulations! You’ve just got a neat little phone with a fairly decent camera for stills and videos, nice resolution screen, a nice springy flip, fun spinning dial control, and the best of all – the ability to listen to music on the go.
I had no trouble getting used to the control, layout, and navigation. Typing English can be a bit of a pain since it will display capitals first and you have to press * to change it to a lower case letter each time. Other than that, the controls are fairly intuitive.
I was quite excited about having a device to listen to music ever since my MD has been screwy and good MP3 players are fairly costly. I bought myself a 128 Memory Stick Duo and a memory stick card reader. Going over the manual, you’ll notice that the phone only takes ATRAC3 song formats. My first attempt was to download Sonicstage for Connect – the software that allows you to download songs from Sony’s online music store. That litttle program has an MP3 to ATRAC3 converter. I’ll save you the headache – it doesn’t work (I tried ATRAC3 on all bit rates, then ATRAC3 plus – no avail). To be fair, I only found the “Move” file function – I couldn’t “Check out” to the memory stick.
Looking deeper into the Sony page, I noticed they recommended the Sony brand card reader – at first I thought it was for profit reasons but then I noticed they package SonicStage 1.5 along with the reader. THIS is what you need.
I returned my generic reader and got the Sony one instead. Got home, installed the software, imported my music library – you’ll need to convert your files into ATRAC3 132 bit rate. Once this is done, go to “Record”, plug in your memory stick into the reader, select your songs, and “Check Out”.
Just plug in the memory stick into your phone and go to the music panel (press the camera shutter button as a shortcut) – the phone will read the card and display the first song. Press play!
Might I suggest Love Psychedelico? They’re the best Japanese band I’ve ever heard. Kumi the singer seductively sounds very much like a cool Sheryl Crow and the songs have a fused country, blues, pop influence. Very awesome.
