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I find that the audio I am getting from Type-S playback of LP2 is good out of all proportion from what I might expect from 132kbps. I don't have a HiMD deck, so I cannot comment on HiMD playback at all, since we all know that portables are subject to rigging of the output, hence all the volume hacks etc. The only thing I use PCM for is live recording. It's very helpful to have a greater dynamic range when you cannot guess or adjust the incoming sound to fill the data bits. (maybe some tech expert will explode this remark, but I think it might be correct).

I am now the proud owner of an MXD-D400. This amazing piece of equipment has many interesting characteristics, some of them downright odd, but the two most important and positive ones (and good reason for anyone who can snap one up to get one) are as follows: 1. The ability to record direct from CD to MDLP (pick SP, LP2 or LP4) at "high" (4x) speed without using a computer 2. The ability (along with only about 3 other deck models ever made) to playback LP2 using Type-S decoding which makes LP2 actually worth listening to on a decent stereo system. As mentioned elsewhere the encoding doesn't have to be done by the machine that has Type-S, just playback. I'm sure that some of the oddities**** will come up one of these days, but for now I would just like to find a way around this technical problem. What I would like to do is to find a way to title such an MD without doing it by hand either with keyboard (the machine doesn't have a PS/2 keyboard socket, but that's no problem, any MD deck that does titling via Keyboard can be used to title LP2 and LP4 even if they cannot play the music tracks), or by SonicStage. It occurs to me that SS or SB can do just what I want by going to CDDB and looking it up. The reason I prefer the deck for the transfer (especially to SP) is that I may want the best quality, which we all know doesn't exist in SS->MD because of codec restrictions (from Dolby) that end up putting "Fake SP" on the target minidisc. But how to get them to title a minidisc? TOC cloning somehow? Has anyone thought of a way? Please, experts, post your thoughts. I know someone here has TWO of these thingies...... Stephen **** the biggest oddity is that one cannot erase a SS-created disk.

Hi Chris. In general the new server (when it is working) is much more responsive than the old. Seamless transition too.... except for the down time. Is there anyone who would like to receive immediate email with information about outage, or perhaps is there some monitoring system that checks to see if that web server is there, that would notify whoever is able to restart the server? Also I see atraclife.org still in your signature. Has it died, or is it just comatose, awaiting a DNS entry? Thanks again for all your behind the scenes work. Stephen

Suppresses emissions from the cable (interference). Very thorough of Sony, many comparable device manufacturers don't bother, I think.

Actually I am sure this was the original battery. As to the LIP-4WM, just like everyone else, mine was identical physically, and a minor variant (one of the ones seen in the other big thread) in the recycling marking. So I still concur with all those who bought one of these, that at least mine is genuine but excess stock.

Interesting. I just had a battery swell on me... for the first time. I have 3 NiMH 14WM gumstick batteries. One came with the MZ-R91, and worked fine for the last 6 months. The other two were from Australia made by a company called Vapex. Guess what? The Sony one was the one which suddenly swelled up during charging today. I got it out no problem, guess I was lucky. Go figure. The Vapex ones were 1/4 of the cost of the Sony one. They work great.

On the contrary, I have bought other obvious fakes (not battery, admittedly) and they didn't work. This one looks and acts like the real thing.

I bought one of the cheap ones, and it looks and acts perfectly fine, to me. I think if a battery has the right characteristics, you can tell. If you can get the right amount of charge out of it, and there is no sign of swelling or discolouration (heating is probably normal) then I wouldn't worry about it. Yeah, the "clone" was very slightly differently marked, looked like different recycling regulations, so intended for a different market. My guess is a lot of these parts are seeping out as excess stock from the real factory where Sony has them made. Sony would probably like to be like De Beers with diamonds, and make sure that no "excess" ever gets out, but I think that is what happens. I just swapped the "clone" battery in after leaving it out for 24 hours, and no problems. Neither it nor the original seems to display any "deviant" behaviour, so if the definition is that they behave to spec, then it is just as genuine as the one that came with the machine.

thanks, I know about that one, was hoping there was a way to clear up "at will" rather than automatically. Stephen

Hoorah! That means someone should probably sticky one of these several threads! Moderators, are you watching?!?!?!? Cheers

Yes, we believe it is fixed now. Try runAs administrator. If it works you may want to change (or create anew) your shortcut.

Yes once I cleaned up the DB it seemed to work. Annoying that when you leave the wave files there, it doesn't show both WAV and AAL in the file info in properties, like it does for other compressions. Where is the setting to have SS delete optimized files please?

I may have been barking up the wrong tree. I thought I couldn't get a MD machine easily into my Chrysler minivan. So I was looking at a changer that has an RF output, the MDX-66XLPRF. But I just peeked and there is all kind of stuff under the two front seats of the car. Maybe I can make an ordinary MD changer connect to this somehow? (I have the standard Radio/CD player with 5 channel buttons) Does anyone have experience of this please? adTHANKSvance

I found some really weird behaviour of SS because I had deleted **all** "optimized files". However the db thinks they are still there and gives me errors because it tries to take one of the optimized ones and they are gone. This is quite bizarre because it was picking LP2 over 256k (Hi-SP). I observed this behaviour just trying to make CD from files in SS. It's my guess that something like this was happening when I tried to do the AAL compression. The interesting thing is that SS may try to pick the "wrong" compression file at times. I got at least one file to compress properly along the lines of what you describe, I may reattempt more later.

Interesting. Odd that ATRAC discs were never playable in any component (as opposed to portable). The MP3 playback is (for me) a revolution - stuff that doesn't matter much for fidelity I can get 14 hrs on a CD.

Thanks 1. Tracks are not readonly 2. Tracks are not ripped 3. Disk is nowhere near full That leaves funny file names. I'll investigate further. Interestingly the only time it worked I was doing a direct import from CD. Right now I have gone really retro, since I got a MXD-D400 which has Type-S and can rip 2 CD's direct onto a single 80 disk. This totally avoids filling up my HD with the tracks from canned CD's. Type-S is amazingly good both in headphones and into stereo system, I am happy to report. A Sony HiMD deck would be amazing but I wont spend the money on onkyo which doesnt even have digital out. The point of all this is trying to pare my HD down to a minimum and keep it that way so I can use it for other things. Especially after I discovered how desperately fragile the whole thing is with respect to System Restore. Thanks.

I agree that later imports were quicker.

You can pick up a Dn430 for $20 on ebay any day. Maybe you need a friend in the US but other than that they are cheap. Do you get any message, or just blank screen? Are you sure the battery/power is all ok? Check the battery contacts for green slime/deposit - clean with isopropanol and a cotton swab (Qtip).

Sure. but then another whole layer of technology I don't particularly want. I checked, and AAL is supposed to work.

Well.. I tried out AAL and it churns around for a minute or so then tells me it cannot process any of the tracks. All the tracks I tried to convert are wave files, NOT produced by SS, but imported into SS. When I right click a single one I get a title to the error box of Sonic Stage (00000908-6482) but an error of (00000000) whatever those numbers mean. The error box says "cannot convert the specified track. Possible reasons may include" and lists SS does not support the format.... copyright files missing Ideas please.

uh... I was running 4.3, and although it seemed to speed up a bit later, the first 10 files or so I imported took on average 1 minute each - I could hear the database grinding away on the HD, no idea what it could possibly have been doing. Perhaps I was just unlucky - or SS has to do major "road construction" when you start to play with MP3 files - I would be prepared to believe that. But it was pretty slow. The other problem I noted was that the track title gets encoded in the file (I guess the MP3 folks know this), so renaming it had no effect - bad titles before the rename showed up when looking at the file on my MP3-compatible CD player.

Yeah, did that. What a pain, won't be trying that voluntarily again. SS tied itself in knots to import each file, it seemed. Luckily I never actually started with any MP3 files. Was just trying out to see that I could store a whole bunch of (mainly) speech files on mp3 CD and recover them if necessary. So I thought I would check it out whilst I was doing that. I came away with the distinct impression that noone ever really wanted us to work with MP3. Just my $0.02

What is the purpose of Atrac Advanced Lossless format? I noticed that the loss of OMA keys did not affect files in this format, which I had used to import some CD's. Does this mean that it is independent of the machine on which the files are generated? Is there any device that will play this format?

Sorry, late to this party. I am interested in transferring MP3 files to HiMD without conversion. 1. Which units will play them back? 2. Do I still have to use SonicStage? Thanks

The NH600 doesn't have a microphone input, is the short answer. You can look here for designs for preamplifiers that will convert your microphone input into Line In levels (which are much much higher). Look in the Live Recording section here. Or you can buy a model (eg NH700) that have the mic input built in. Microphone inputs have a red socket (as opposed to the Line In, which is white) and a tactile dot (I guess it's for finding it in the dark, or in your pocket). Welcome to MDCF!