<> Well, I inherited this MD player from my son, who had used it for several years, before he got an iPod. I told him that SonicStage insisted on converting MP3s, and he disagreed emphatically, showed me that a standard transfer could be performed without conversion and played the MP3s back from the MD. Something changed very recently. I was really hoping not to have to convert, both because the audio quality would deteriorate and because it takes a long time.