Jadeclaw

In SS4.0, this question never arises, as SonicStage refuses to import any HE-AAC file. Even if it is at or above 80kBit. I guess, you are threading on a very thin wire here... MP3Pro has been designed to be fully backward compatible with MP3. If played back with a standard MP3-Device or decoder, the SBR-part is ignored just as it is not there. However, a HE-AAC-stream/file is completely different compared to the standard LC-AAC. A pure LC-AAC-decoder/device is not capable of playing back HE-AAC-encoded files. So infact, you have to treat the two variants as two different formats. They realised it. To the full extend. Remember that SonicStage got new codecs as soon as the accompanying device could handle it. It was the case with Atrac3+(HiMD), it was the case with LC-AAC(the soap-box-HD-players). So I guess, the players, where this version was included can playback HE-AAC. It won't. As the device is older than SS4.1.

Me. HE-AAC nearly doubles the available space, compared to Atrac3+. HE-AAC@64kBit can be compared to Atrac3+@128kBit. HE-AAC@48kBit comes very close to Atrac3+@96kBit. That is, if the Codec included with SS4.1CP is comparable to the NeroDigitalCodec available here: Nero Digital Audio because that's what I used for comparison. Oh, and Winamp 5.1 and up plays it too (Non-DRM). That should not happen. Could it be, that the sheer number of supported devices takes its toll? Knowing that Unicode text has to be handled on a completely different way than single byte charset based text, it is no wonder. Every bit of code, that handles text has to be rewritten from the ground up, which I guess is two thirds of the whole application. So, personally I expect a Unicode-capable SonicStage at Version 6 or 7 as the earliest. Or a completely different application under a completely different name that replaces SonicStage. I expect no less from a Sony player...

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My take on this: If I had to head the IT-department of a corporation, I would have banned ALL private datacarriers. Including any Audio-CD. If employees want to listen to music(where appropriate), they have to bring their own playback devices. Company property is not for personal entertainment. If someone still manages to install one of those rootkits, it means trouble for that person. Actually - No. Microsoft has to play nice to the content industry. Reasons: Microsoft wants to get his Videocodec to be included into the DVD-successor. And they want the content industry to abandon the use of Java for the Menu- and GUI-control on these discs. That is the reason, why it took so long and that there was no official PR-Release about this. Instead it was leaked through a company-owned blog. This is so american. Luckily, this EULA is invalid in Germany, as it must be presented before purchase. However, that doesn't mean, that german law doesn't have its own traps. That's a good one. Because many people don't see the difference between Sony Electronics and Sony Music/BMG. So in short: Sony Music/BMG == Evil Sony Electronics == Good guys. And I'm pretty sure, that the people at Sony Electronics are not happy with the stunts, that Sony Music/BMG pulled off. My advice to Sony: Get rid of the music and movie business and do what you are best at: Producing great video and audio equipment.

One question remains: Do all of these super-duper-mega-bling-color-photo-video-whatever-players have the same sound quality? That's one of the main reasons, why I'm sticking with MD. And the main focus of the A3000 could be more on sound quality than on the bling factor. Plus, the lifetime of OLEDs is still limited, especially on color screens. As I recall correctly, it is less than 10 000 hours continuous on, based on 50% of the original brightness. That may be also the reason, why the A3000 has no continuous on setting for the display.

A440 tried the online uninstaller, doesn't work, it crashed halfway through the process. See here: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=12897 Post #23 Further down in the thread, some new developments.

Update (crossposted on MDCF as well): Ok, time to push this thread up again. First, there is more to this than previously known. The included player software phones home everytime the CD is played. Plus, the deinstaller patch can BSOD your MS-Windows session, resulting in possible loss of data. Windows doesn't like it, when a piece of code is pulled out, while the CPU jumps into it. Russinovich's update on this: http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/11/m...decloaking.html Found in the comments: I smell a class action lawsuit in the making. See here: http://www.classcounsel.com/ Look under Consumer Protection. One of the First4Internet programmers asked for help on an open source programmers mailing list, in exactly the area, which is finally covered by the rootkit: http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:hDmbqX.../showThread.cfm Do we need another proof of their incompetence? Addendum: MDCFs Disso founds another one: http://www.osronline.com/lists_archive/ntfsd/thread2716.html

History repeating? So we're going through the same bugfests again, that we had with SonicStage 2.0 and earlier? I feared that and it looks, I had reason to be sceptical. In other words: Wake me up, when Connect player 3.0 comes out --> somewhere in 2009. Until then, I'll stay with SonicStage. Thanks for the report.

@pato: 352k is better, but you will hear the difference only, when using good headphones or when connecting the player to a decent home system. Converting from AtracLossless to 352k is pointless, see my previous post. You have to go via PCM. The skipping might indicate, that the processor inside the VAIO-player doesn't have enough processing power to do the user interface and decoding 352k at the same time. I guess, staying at 256k might be the best option here.

Looks like that not everything is clear about the new Bitrates/Codec-variants offered by SS3.3. Since possibly not everyone has read the sister thread over at minidisc.org, some notes from that: Atrac Lossless: It contains actually two parts, one lossy file, one lossless. Comparisons/calculations made by Rombuster revealed it, a WMA lossless + a WMA@64k file together roughly equal an AtracLossless file tagged with 64k in size, having the same cd-track as source. See: here, Post #106. Plus, when converting/transferring, only the lossy part is used. So using AtracLossless as a source for 352k is rather pointless. See Post #34, same thread. Best quality from 352k: Import the CD as WAV( PCM ), then go into the album, mark all tracks, do a rightclick on one of the tracks, select Convert Format, select Atrac3Plus and 352k from that dropdown. Make sure, that the 'Add Copyprotection after Convert'-Checkbox is unchecked. Click on Convert. When that is done, remove the WAV-file in the properties-dialogue of each track to recover the disc space. I know, it is a bit tedious, but is currently the only way to make full use of the 352k without filling the HDD with PCM-files(10MByte/min). I hope, we'll see a SS3.4, where 352k is offered on CD-Import and the lossless part is used for conversion, when AtracLossless is used as a source. I hope, that clears it up a bit.