jmetal88

Well, I've evaluated the players a little more and it seems the MZ-NH600D is really the only one that's in my price range at the moment, so I'll probably go for that one once I get around to getting a new player. For now, my MZ-NE410 will hold me over.

Update: Well, it seems as long as I keep the player tilted in that odd manner, I don't have to worry about transfer errors or gaps appearing in the music. I find this to be odd, but I can live with it until I can afford a better player.

Thanks for the suggestion. Here's something interesting: I've figured out I get the most transfer errors when I leave the unit sitting flat on its back. When I hold it on it's edge with the USB port tilted forward, I get much more reliable transfers. Weird.

I might later, I'm trying to see if I can get my VM working right now. Trust me when I say the speakers aren't using any bandwidth, all I did was solder a USB lead to the battery terminals. Actually I just transferred my track 12 from the VM and it's on here without any gaps now. Interesting. I had to try twice though before the device would accept more than 10% of the song. I'll have to try a full CD next and see if I can get the same result.

There aren't any hubs, and the only other thing I have plugged in to the computer's USB ports is a set of speakers that only draw 5v and don't actually communicate. SonicStage 4.3 crashes after I transfer about 10 songs, I mentioned this in my first post. I do not have a copy of XP available for use. Also, the missing chunks of audio, for some reason, only occur in the last track of the CD I'm trying to copy, it copies the first 11 without any trouble, but the recording skips in track 12. Other CDs have the skips recorded more randomly. I've also tried it on multiple Minidiscs with the same result, so I don't think the discs are the problem, like I've read on here, unless the box of Minidiscs I bought were all defective. About the only thing I can think to try is a different USB cable, but as I seem to only have an outright USB failure when using Sonic Stage and not Simple Burner, I'm not sure that's the problem either. I've been trying Windows 98 under VMWare Player in Linux, but the reliability is worse so far than on the old hardware I tossed together running Windows 98 natively. I don't have access to a copy of XP so that's out of the question. Well I finally got my Windows 98 VM to transfer a song using Sonic Stage 4.3, although it took two tries before it got past 10%. I'll give it a listen and see if it still has those gaps.

Back in '04 I bought a NetMD MZ-NE410 and used it over one vacation. After that I kind of tossed it in a box somewhere and forgot about it. When I found it again recently, I had forgotten why I stopped using it, although as soon as I tried uploading some songs to it, I remembered. The first problem I encountered was the CD that came with it wouldn't install on Vista. I thought I could fix the problem by downloading Sonic Stage 4.3. Unfortunately, this version would just crash after I had uploaded about 10 songs. So, I gathered some spare computer parts I had laying around and cobbled together a Windows 98 box. Once I had Sonic Stage 1.5 and Simple Burner 1.1 installed on there, I could upload songs to my Minidisc player again. Simple Burner usually finished the upload without any problems, but when I tried Sonic Stage, it looked like the USB kept cutting out or something, as every once in a while PC->MD would disappear off the display and it would complain about a failed upload. This behavior was happening when the player was new, as well. Now comes the annoying bit, the songs uploaded successfully with Simple Burner will be perfectly OK most of the time, but occasionally the last tracks will have gaps in the audio. I don't mean between the songs, I was impressed by how seamless the song transitions were, but I mean just randomly placed gaps in the audio, and usually in a different place every time I re-recorded the track. Sometimes I got lucky though. Anyway now I'm using Sonic Stage 3.4 with Simple Burner 2, and Simple Burner 2 seems to be more reliable than Simple Burner 1.1, but Sonic Stage still won't finish its uploads. I really like the concept of the Minidisc, so I don't really want to give up on it. I'd like you guys to recommend a player that produces reliable uploads every time, and that I could preferably record to from Linux (weren't there some Hi-MD players open source programmers have been able to make drivers for?). Thanks!