JustAnUnCoolCat

Whilst i'm not particularly familiar with the album mentioned as being tested, i am familiar with Mark Knopfler's solo stuff.. and agreed, it's a good testbed for encoding due to the inherently clean and beautiful blend in the mix of instruments and the pristine mastering. Since i haven't heard the particular album, can't qualify or support the ATRACPlus 352K sounding best bit (but that's highly personal, so the odds are i'd not hear it that way anyhow) - but what is pretty solid and set in stone with me is :- 1) If it's very acoustic, and not a real mish mash 'load of noise' mastering - whilst there is a definate gain to go with higher rates, you dont lose a huge amount with medium rates either (just a bit of definition usually, or soundstage prescence). 2) I'd stake, based on my restorations of lots of olde world recordings (aka anything that predates CD and digital audio), that whilst the audio definately dictates (for sheer quality purposes) the limits of what is a clean encoding bit-rate and sample-rate wise, there is often room for halving the bitrate vs what would seem to be optimal. 3) The cleaner and more pronounced the audio, aka the more of a sense of hearing every lil sound in the recording.. coughs and all and the more pristine the mastering, you will find that it's higher rates when quality counts. 4) However, apart from the 'the music dicates the limits' bit (which is pretty much set in stone for purrfectionists), all the above is totally disregardable if you simply encode to suit practical purposes. The original HQ LP modes (ATRAC3 105/132) still make really good nominal choices even with really detailed and rich demanding audio.. as long as the mastering and blend in the source is decent to start with. My reference is pristine clean sourced 78's and 45's usually, restored using my own highly demanding (and very time consuming forensic grade process), but when i do encode live session CD's such Joe Brown's 'A Showbusiness Lifetime' album and many others like it, i would have to join NavSimpson in terms of what works best for sheer quality, but when it comes to practical encode to suit all post-SP ATRAC kit, i'd go with 132/105 rates. But i also will agree with a sentiment also mentioned from somoene else, that ATRAC itself now does possess a pretty solid rate of rates and variants... that pretty much provides filesize and quality orientated output to suit most purposes. And given AAC (ok, only later ATRAC kit supports that) adds in additional options to fill in the gaps re ATRAC rates/combos, whilst i find AAC is definately not all it's cracked up to be, it's precense in support is useful.. and sometimes, will give someone the size/quality ratio outcome they need for a given track that is otherwise too compromised or too bulkly in another supported format. 'Tom Kat'

Have zero idea of the current breed of Sony hifi's mind but some thoughts.. that could relate to this topic.. :- If those items represent modern examples of the mega-flashy 'high power' mini-systems that Sony produced for bedroom/small room use or simply where compactness was required... 1. You'll see a big improvement if you use alternative speakers. 'big improvement' should be read as relative, as i recall well one or two Sony mini setups i auditioned (was not impressed.. made a better impression when i lashed them up to some full size speakers left over from a full-sized Sony setup - but then they showed up how the mini unit was heavily tailored to the supplied speakers, but there was an improvement still .. to my tired old ears anyway). 2. No matter what glitz and glamour hype you read, don't expect the minis to sound as lively as their full-sized or midi seps style counterparts. If you can keep those things in mind, and respect the limits, then i guess those ATRAC CD based units will probably sound ok. Mind you, personally, i'd play safe and find a decent compact amp and speakers.., dig out a tuner and lash in a portable ATRAC unit (or two, say put an ATRAC CD and Hi-MD unit in place, using the Hi-MD as a compressed and uncompressed audio rec/play source and the CD unit as the CD/ATRAC/MP3 playback source). That way, given you mix and match well regarding the amp and speakers, you avoid some of the inherent colouring of audio that sometimes occurs when say recording from source to recorder via the amp in some mini/midi's (show me a mini or midi combined setup, out of the box, that aint got some 'make it sound more than it is' colouring.. and i'll probably die from shock). Just remember, there aint no harm in going for what you are asking about - but with a bit of thought, you could easily break even on seps.. or get a bit better on a seps combo without it taking over your room As for Sony complete systems that are mostly seps by design, usually they are pretty sound items and at most may benefit from some better speakers (that said, in fairness, the stock stuff is usually pretty good vs most stock speakers supplied with many systems). Guess it depends on what you want, me.. i'd get paws dirty and get it the way i want it.. rather than go with pre-boxed kits 'Tom Kat'

As a quick add to the subject.. There is a third burn option.. This i recall as it's useful for those who have high-speed burning issues with ATRAC CD via SonicStage, but generally useful anyway. You can always burn the ATRAC CD to CD-RW, remember to stick to decent media, and then you can extract the image of the CD for later reuse via Nero or any other Data CD/CD-ROM duplicating soft. Now if you happen to be a fan of mega-speed burning, going for broke and ramping your burning apps to use melt-down burning speeds.. which is not always the best choice for generating portable deck oriented discs, then the burn slow to CD-RW, rip the data image from CD-RW, burn image to CD-R using nero or similar approach is also a more reliable way of getting first-time/every-time discs that ATRAC CD decks down spit out and reject. My generating kit is simply SonicStage outputing to CD-RW, rip the ISO image from the CD-RW via ISOBUSTER, burn the CDR from the ISO via Nero. It's a round about method, but when times demand the need to burn fast and furiously, it's worth the long-winded method (just remember to archive them CD images). And intermediate burn tests using RW's is a good way to discover what speed settings to select for SS when generating ATRAC CD's.. since SS may support ultra-speed units (burners) but it's not exactly known for it's lack-of-coasters performance when you use the higher speed burning. Still got to get around to ATRAC CD making using SS 4.0 CP (my prev comments refer to SS 2.0-3.3), so what i said about SS's burning performance may be redundant these days. 'Tom Kat'

Very limited options here.. The simple options for getting content off an ATRAC CD are a whole sum of one :- Play them back on an ATRAC CD supporting deck - take either the optical or analogue line out from the deck to a PC or portable uncompressed recorder. Optical link up is preferable, but if using analogue - definately ensure you use Line Out not Phones output. ATK files are either a discrete ATRAC in a wrapper format files or encrypted ATRAC in a wrapper format files, i can't remember exactly which now (but either equates to the same basic end result) that the decode of was only implemented in ATRAC CD equipment (the few car decks, few indoor hifi setups, a couple of boombox hifi's and the more frequent ATRAC CD Walkmans). Bearing in mind that if you were (outside of this forum anyway) to get advise about what is essentially analogue-loop type transcoding conversion/capture, you could expect much slapping of the virtual paws and being crapped on from on high over demuxing lossy audio. But having (using an optical link to both a PC and an Hi-MD and using uncompressed or lossless encoding to record with) recovered content from some old ATRAC CD's (they were burnt using 132K ATRAC3 encodings), there is definately scope to get audio back and reencoded to whatever usable lossy format or to simply capture and make Audio CD's from accordingly. At the end of the day, how well the captured audio translates into reused audio in a diff format, is really governed by the source.. so dont go expecting say 64K ATRAC3Plus files of an ATRAC CD to be captured and reencoded back to lossy and sound great.. that's gonna somewhat stretch the limits of sanity and creditability if the destination is another hi-ratio compressed output file. Remember, quality output is governed by tailoring the encoding to suit the content for maximum reproduction - good perceptible quality is really defined as making a good usable output that suits the practical storage and use. 'Tom Kat'

I'd agree with the AACPlus/HE-AAC comments - it would indeed be interesting to see a deck appear with this really compact AAC variant natively supported from the outset. I made a lot of use of MP3PRO before moving back to ATRAC, and the use of SBR that when with it certainly did make a huge diff when it came to retaining some quality and going for compactness broke for encoding. Hell, anything that can allow 200 files (various 2:50 - 5:30 mins) at Q100 intensive quality encoding and sound pretty damn clean (in generic mp3 terms anyway) to a 700Mb disc is a friend to those without big HDD's So SBR encodeded AAC certainly will eek out storage capacity use - and using PE/SBR combined would just about whack the cherry on the cake. Would also be interested to see ATRAC evolve into VBR encoding - that's about the only thing lacking and would make the whole encoding decisions easier (mind you, the downside being.. a future VBR encoding in ATRAC would be compromised and not strictly usable on older kit that cannot be firmware or otherwise modded to suit) Indeed ATRAC is an underestimated codec - bearing in mind that MP3 was still way hidden deep in obscure availability hell when ATRAC was evolving past it's initial first-gen form (aka SP), you gotta respect that something that lasts this long and still is being used still is worth recognising and not dismissing out of hand. Many a community radio station and restricted service licenses broadcast operation used ATRAC and MD heavily for their digital audio content storage and playback. Apart from the fact that in such circles, you could always beg/borrow/steal a few decks and some MD's.. it was also the only cost-effective compact DA form in town (remember, MP3 was obscure back then). Whilst i highly doubt Sony would free ATRAC3/ATRAC3Plus to allow outsiders to exploit and fully let it get more widespread (hell, anyone old enough to remember Betamax will remember Sony aint got a track record in to opening of arms department), it would be nice to see ATRAC come out of it's quasi obscurity (it's not totally obscure, as it's easy to get ATRAC kit thanks to good retailers, but on the other hand, it's obscure relative to say mp3/wma). But really, if Sony stopped playing this hedging of bets game (which really does get the 'ATRAC is doomed' tongues wagging often) - they could easily make the decision to go for broke - enough people buy Sony kit to ensure that one bad decision will not kill the company. Can't say i personally use ATRAC3Plus 64K out of preference, it's simply way too much of a compromise that tends to turn the music i listen to into pretty awful noise, but hey... if you have the content that can go to 64K and sounds ok, then 64K is a fine choice to use (and low-mid rates are definately flash player friendly) - for most general purposes, 105/132 ATRAC3 is more usable... but accordingly to particular decks and what they support, there's a fair few ATRAC3Plus combos that work equally as well in compact audio terms. I tend to prefer 48K and 64K (ATRAC3PLUs) for talk radio and mostly speech oriented content and audio books type use - if HE-AAC/AACPlus ever got implemented, then that kinda bit-rate use would be definately more exploited here at the virtual cat basket. 'Tom Kat'

Well, you tend know well about the fact that using sane and rational tried and tested methods/media and writer kit (or simply playing safe and being patient not obsessively out for getting the max done in the min time) and overall setup, works out the best ) Never took too much interest in whose's dye is used in the media i use, as i tend to stick to what i know is tried and tested (by me) and simply don't touch what aint broken. But the important thing is, you will clearly have a strategy for getting it right - so go with it, as that's the assessment any sane and rational person would give I might read into that study if i really find myself that desperate for reading material No disrespect intend to the folks who did the study, but i respect the findings of people who pay for their mistakes from calling it wrong way more that academic (or non academic) 'lab coat' definitive findings. I treat science and scientfic findings a bit like the diff between Physics in the textbook and in the real world. 'If it don't work, it's Physics' (referring to how the outcome in the real world rarely fits the straight line model of consistency and pattern perfection of science in the lab). Be Cool Always 'Tom Kat'

It's all worthy experience :oD And i'm sure you do indeed have an pretty good idea of what works. So keep the faith, and just do what works..., and if you find ways to improve on things and methods you hear about - damn well have the dangly bits to go out there and show what you discover. Never feel that standing out.. or seeming to rebel against the perceptions of the audiophiles and self-elected 'audio experts' is a bad thing. That's my advice, regarding your insight and experience. Noone's got a purrfect handle on it all, and subsequently, noone is qualified to condem you for a lack of insight or experience. If you get by with what you know and feel.., but are open to ideas, that's all you need to exist in the audio world. Be Cool Always.. 'Tom Kat' *turns himself in, to face the jury re the crime of gross sidetracking and off-topicness of recent replys* :op

I guess it's a factor of what you were used to beforehand, Ascariss. Personally, i had used far better and more neutral (but very responsive) earpieces on radio kit that were easily walkman hifi grade (a case of mixing and matching parts to make good crappy OEM items). The only thing i consider good, tentatively as calling anything 'good' in EX71 terms is hard for me to do, about the 71's is the audio isolation of the things - if someone matched a decent driver with the 71's sealing and isolation quality, then that would indeed be a good design. But as i said somewhere else, maybe it's a issue that afflicts canal phones.. that maybe it's damn hard to make em neutal and smooth sounding on a mass production basis. 'Tom Kat'

Hi Pata.. Yeah, god knows.. they sure did make a hell of a mess on the customer relations front there. In fact, i'd say the only reason us peeps who were doing the frontline part on an outreach basis didn't condem the firm royally, was the sheer disgust over the situation. Well, i admit, i did indeed (when i could stand no more) write a particularly damning piece about it all on their forum (and suprisingly, they didn't not remove it til about a year later when they revamped the forum and site content totally - mind you, i didn't expect a company response.. it's a natual custom over there to be non-confrontational). The only real (and sadly materialistic) gain i got out of being involved was getting a free iFP-390 to test (never considerred it a gift/promo.. just considered it a loaner) - and really, i would have much preferred to have been treated with a little respect and not being left hangin out for the forum vultures and sacrifice 'toy' gifts. In fact, the MisticRiver site was a direct result of the grief that ensued.. when some people literally had enough and effectively decided to let the official forum sink into it's own collective tight hole... (to be polite about it). I knew there would be a few ex-iRiver people here, particularly on the PCDP front (since the company threw quality away after the iMP-550 escapade.. the last 'quality' one they made.. just about) - god knows, it was making the choice between a media-intolerent 'flashy features as sin' iMP-550 to replace an aging abused 250 model or go with a D-NE series. I sacrificed 'flashy features' and went the D-NE route instead (better option it worked out) - and i was truely the traitor indeed for that move, in the iRiver community after being a long term commited iMP fan. So i aint been a victim of Sony's customer relations, and to be honest, had no need to talk to Sony people at all outside of a time i was fixing someone's Vaio Picturebook - so i cannot vouch for any aggro people may have faced over dealing with Sony's people - but for sure, after the later iRiver experience, i'd give Sony support the benefit of the doubt. As for Apple, well - when i used to work with Macs (for a few years.. the last two when i was in the IT business - aka early mac days), they treated customers like royalty (and at the money invested on a commericial buy number about 50 units then, not unexpected). But that sure walked into the sunset the day iMac (the first really affordable everyman mac on the scene) was being pushed and sold by the bucket load. Sadly, it's a trend that persists and happens time and time again. Leaves a bad taste in the mouth, when you are at the customer end of the deal - and when you are more formally involved, kinda makes you wanna hang your head in shame for reasons that were nothing like your fault as an associate or employee. Gonna quit on this, bring back too much bad memories.. and bringing the bad blood back to the surface.... 'Tom Kat'

Ok, first of all... Check to see if the player is recognised as a UMS device, it should be if you are getting this far. Then, literally, use search in windows or manually find all the .oma files (which is what your device-stored files are kept as on the internal HDD) - then copy em back to your main HDD and try importing them into SS (and see if it imports them ok). If that works, then try wiping out the content of the NWA, you can literelly either use the player's format util on board it's software or wipe the content manually via drive access. Then try transferring the content (the recovered content) back to your deck. If the usual methods of recovering don't work, this has a pretty good chance of working. Aint used it in the scenario you describe, but if it works for getting content off the drive after losing the SS library copies as it does for me, i'm sure you have a fighting chance here also with the method. Well, you got nothing to lose by trying. and everything to gain ) Be Cool Always 'Tom Kat'

Oh i wish, Stuge, no sadly it was iRiver... On reflection, i wished i had taken up the offer i got from iAudio/Cowon instead... 'Tom Kat'

Dead right there, Dinko.. Airing thoughts re ATRAC and supporting decks over on an iP*d related forum/community, is asking to be slow roasted over blazing brimestone ;o) Been there, not just on ATRAC matters, and yep.. thank god the virtual fur is almost fireproof :oP 'Tom Kat'

Having been involved (as an advisor and also on the support side) for a certain Korean brand (beginning with an 'i') - i'd definately agree with the sentiments of 'as they get bigger and more prominent and get a bigger market share' that the mere innocent loyal customer gets the sh*t end of recognition. And when they do get big, and put out a crappy product or somehow otherwise get on the wrong side of the irrational 'free the source code' advocates - it's often the enthusiastic loyal customers who dare to try to calm the waters that get the ass-kicking from both company and whoever is giving the grief. It says a lot about the company when they formally bring in their choice of their biggest supporters to be their outreach representation worldwide (there were about twenty of us, myself being in that category.. as well as having a formal contract with the company too) get kicked up the backside and left to face the music when the company decide to close ranks and start to disregard the flaming rows. It's those of us on the outside looking in, helping to keep it rational and be fair to all, who get hurt the worse. So, you could say, i've seen exactly what happens when the 'we are big, we are excellent, we are cool' mentality starts to drive a company. My philosophy nowadays, ferk em... if they want supportive comments and backup from users.., be sure to support the supporters.. or go bury thy head in the sand. Usually burying head in the sand is the firm's chosen method... Be Cool Always 'Tom Kat'

And as an additional hint... If you ever encode to mp3 and want use mp3's .. my sane and rational advice is to use a simple 32-320 VBR encoding range where the encoder is set to MAX out for encoding effort - but in such a way as to let the encoder decide what's needed on a track by track basis. This really does, even if the accepted mp3 community wisdom refused to acknowledge it, generate good audio that's also quite power-efficient on playback - as the audio is often 'lower bit rate' than most wisdom says you need for transparency, but it's still pretty good results.. and maxes out the running time on one charge on most Sony decks. Clearly, ATRAC is the route to go with for best use of Sony/Awia ATRAC units for many reasons, but if mp3's are encoded right.. you don't lose much on running time with mp3. With my oldest ATRAC CD deck, using mp3 under the described encoding strategy, i equalled Sony's best case ATRAC running time figures using the less-efficient (technically) format when it comes to running time. Go figure ...?? ) Be Cool Always 'Tom Kat'

The best answer to the question of 'is ATRAC3Plus 256K on par with...xxxx' is simple. Rip your sample audio (pick a good selection that covers the range of your listening.. and definately include some stuff that's technically very audio complex in it's mix.. and stuff with very very distinctive acoustic instrument inclusions - def include something with a 12-string guitar involved). Rip it multiple times, at ALL available sample rate/codec combos within ATRAC, and listen to the results. You'll see then it's not a question of comparing ATRAC combos with say MP3 and MP3 combo's and asking is xxx on par with yyy. It's more a question of discovering what is the best ATRAC combo to suit a given track vs how much space what sounds best to you takes up out of the storage space. If you ever experience or got into the habit of mp3 encoding using the classic VBR encoding method (setting a variable range of 32-320, highest possible effort made by encoder, parameters) - aka setting the tone as being 'as HQ as the music required', then you'd have realised that often any individual instance of an audio track can bear a suprising low bit-rate in a lot of cases.. definately lower than is often indicated in the mp3 community as being 'optimal'. At the end of the day, giving due consideration that massive great files eats up your storage and blanket fashion mega-low encoding creates compact files that aint always 'beautiful' (like i said before, the music defines what works) - there is almost certainly an ATRAC combo that makes ANY piece of music sound good, i aint found one yet that has failed to go to ATRAC at all (where 'failed' means, sounds bloody awful no matter what combo is used). I tend to work with the mid combos (ATRAC3 105/132K), as they are universally good for any Net-MD gen or later ATRAC deck (support wise) and often is a good 'generic' choice to start with. But when all is said and done, if the audio needs a mega combo.. it gets it, if it works fine with ATRAC3Plus 64K , then that's noted and kept in case i need a super compact example. 48K (ATRAC3PLus) is really a bit like MDLP4 in MD terms, best kept for audiobooks & speech. Sorry if that all sounds a bit audio-obsessive/audiophile toned, as an answer - but there is really no such thing as an 'xxx codec @ yyy bitrate = aaa codec @ bbb bitrate' equivlence table, so to speak, that's not totally open to personal pref and much disagreement (pointlessly often). It's a bit like asking, is a diesel powered Ford car = A Peugot diesel car in terms of bombproofness and build quality. In the motor analogy - both would have bombproof motors if they were both Peugueot items (Ford usually used one-gen older Peugot units), but for overall build qual.., I'd say there is no direct equiv.. and likewise it's much the same with audio encoding (lots of codec use basically the same 'analyse and discriminate' method/theory, but when they differ a lot like ATRAC does to most MPEG encoders, it's a bit unfair to expect direct equivilency on what is not a fair test). Be Cool Always 'Tom Kat'

Well, as it goes.. I started out in the IT business, audio technology being a kinda hobby (aka i was doing audio restoration and A/D transfer back when there were no decent tools.. just a damn good attention to detail and being able to use basic filters and noise profiling with scapel precision being about the best method around then). After a big meltdown at work, i took time out and kinda got involved in broadcasting at a community radio level (someone 'volunteered' me for being available to help sort out their audio library and transfers - this was still in the early Digital Audio days) - so between what i had read and learnt over time and put into serious time-served practise at the station (and other stations over time) and in my hobby, the basics really fell into place. And generally over time, i got involved with various stations doing much the same (being the insane nutter who'd do 20 hour shifts doing transfers and library maintenance.. and the occassion 'get us out of trouble' incident when another more front line role was needing filled) - and over time, of course, techniques got better and so did the software and tools ) Also did a bit of music production work too, but strictly at the 'doing a favour for mates and local musicians' level, so there sealed picking up the fine art of tailoring audio to suit listening environments and most importantly, making audio mixdowns that were universally good sounding across anything from a cheapo transistor radio to mega-bucks AP kit Apart from some occassional serious work in the audio field (usually related to netcasting), i'm pretty much out of the game now (you gotta know when you are getting past it) - as for the DAP related side, *hangs head in shame*, that's a legacy of being involved under contract with iRiver and also for a now very defunct UK retailer of DAP's (and they deserve to be defunct) on a technical and user support level. Whether that qualifies as being fairly involved in audio and DA and related stuff, i guess that's for each to judge. I know what you mean about 'money no object' testing, likewise if i had those means, i'd be messing with testing lots of amps and speaker combos to draw up a shortlist of recommended 'affordable' indoor setups to suit DAP's as well as the usual analog/digital sources. Well, as for the 'ending up EQiing', i guess that kinda was not unexpected - still, i bet the amount of EQing you ended up doing was more subtle adj than say.. for EX71's ) As i said somewhere else, you got a solution you are happy with - that's THE most important thing at the end of the day ... as long as the inner cat spirit is purring, it's money well spent.. Was listening to some good old acoustic blues whilst writing this, using my fav 'toy' cans.. the Medusa items in 2-channel mode (aka so they act as four-driver per channel cans). Be Cool Always 'Tom Kat' BTW - if you ever want a good crash course in the fine art of 'tuning' audio to sound good over narrow band routes, such as squeezing HQ audio over limited bandwidth and also through fixed filtering (elements which are worth understanding when it comes to practical netcasting), get into radio communications as a hobby That's also my other time-consuming passion

Well, i sure aint no fan of EX71's - but that's well known :oP Definately, (apart from a long list of other things), i indeed found the EX71's unbalanced.. mostly over bassy (guess that's fine for the D&B lovers out), and overall suffering the more common of the 'bud' syndrome (low and highs out of balance with the mids.. which is kinda wearing to someone used to hearing all three ranges in some kinda neutral balance) - however, they do improve on the usual grade of OEM 'buds' often packaged with many DAP's (if the usual OEM stuff aint as lifeless as a brick, they usually suffer the highs overbalance). Guess it's a matter of taste - but give me something with lows , mids and highs in balance (in relative proportion, basically monitor type neutal) and then you have something that really carries the music 'as it was supposed to be heard' - after all, you can always EQ to compensate if your tastes go that way. If you can stretch to, or basically justify Shure's then it's a sound move to go that direction, but as also mentioned, Senheisser also produce some nicely worthy items too that are not 'monitor neutral', but far more in balance than the EXxx series by a good few miles ... I guess the important thing is, if you have found what works for you, fair play .. enjoy ) All i know for sure, personal pref wise, is it kills the music i listen to when you play the tracks through your average bud type phones - i go with the stuff that feels (audio wise) closer to the three/four driver speaker repro .. but that's really heading well into decent proper phones territory ;o) Be Cool Always 'Tom Kat'

Well, i have had a 'little' bit of experience with this kinda stuff :oP Basically 4.8-5.5V Regulated DC output means essentially that any fixed voltage (voltage regulated) within that range (where 5.0 is the nominal average of the range) will be suitable in almost any instance that i can think of. Regulated can be worked out, any PSU or DC/DC convertor cable should be specced as being regulated or unregulated - always go, for safety, with regulated types. Unregulated types always output the indicated voltage as rated when you have sufficient load on them (aka enough current is being drawn by attached device/equipment), but when the current being drawn goes low.. up goes the supply voltage, and on say a 1.5-12V DC unregulated supply (240V AC input) on a seriously low current load situation, 12V can appear on a 1.5V setting and i have seen them shoot up to 24V DC output before. So go for a regulated supply option always :oD Polarity simply refers to where the postive and negative connections lie on the connecting cable/plug. If you see something like :- ' - ----- ( +)-------- ' refers to postive to tip or centre (tip for a conventional jack plug, centre for the other kind). Most equipment these days is postive to tip/centre wired when it takes a jack plug input. Take a look at the supply that came with the unit, it should indicate it's polarity regardless of the plug type it terminates in to feed the equipment. You cannot do harm by putting too low a voltage input to a piece of kit (the worst that can happen, is the equipment is unstable or shuts down from a low supply situation). The supply voltage from the OEM supply, is either a centre nominal voltage (aka 5V DC for a piece of equipment using a range of 4.8V -> 6V DC like most 4xAA powered stuff) or it's the max voltage the unit is designed to work with. Usually, it's the nominal .. unless the unit it built to work with a common supply voltage and internally regulates the supply input to feed a much lower voltage rated cell setup. Put it this way, when it comes to the 4xAA setup substitution (aka substituting DC from a mains/12VDC converted), the 4.8V - 6V DC range with sufficient available current and regulated output (fixed voltage output within 4.8 - 6V DC range) , is a winner solution after you get the polarity right. I modifed that to 4.8-5.5V DC potential range, in the instance of the Vaio and others (non AA powered stuff) as they often use a cell pack that's more like 3.5V - 5V, so i suggested a slightly diff supply range to suit (remember what i said, too low a voltage supply is not a hazard, too much can be). For almost certain in most cases, taking a look at the label on the OEM PSU, tells you almost everything you need to know for substituting an alternative supply. If you happen to know the specs for the battery supply too, then there is no mystery.. just a bit of figuring out - but definately no mystery. In fact, it's almost more the case that where unusual plug/socket combos are used (aka not jack plug/socket or similar) that what will generate more head scratching is working out what is wired where on the reference plug/socketry you are using as a reference (aka the OEM PSU's DC output cable and plug). I aint smoked my S7000 camera yet (one of upwards of 500 pieces of personal kit i have subsituted power supplies for) , in fact the only time i smoked a device through a bad supply choice was the time i smoked a calculator by using a cheap unregulated PSU. In that instance, the smoked calc one, that was where i learnt about the 'the lower the current demand, the higher the voltage rises' trait of unregulated supplies - well, it was a cheapo 2A supply and when you consider the calc's current consumption was less than a tenth of that, an older and wiser soul would have figured it to be a recipe for disaster. In my defence, i was 12 at the time..., and at 37 with too many years of being older and wiser and more cautious, i still cringe when i think of that incident of smoking the poor calc (they were damned expensive back then....., dunno which i feared more... justifying the mistake or explaining it to my father who bought it for me). In the flush of youth, even the cat ferked up now and then..., and still does now and then.. but not often :oP There was the time, again as a kiddie, i mistakenly stuffed 500V DC up a low-voltage device... - the less said about that one.. the better :oP 'Tom Kat' *Loves the smell of tortured souls being roasted over virtual brimestone, and the sound of popping capacitors in the morning * :oP

Tx = transmitter, TxCr = Transceiver (receiver and transmitter used in simplex config), TxRx = Transmitter/Receiver combination where the two exist as independent electronic entities and can be set and used independently, but can be slaved (if set up to do so) to keep both Tx and RX relatively or exactly tracking to a common frequency or band/freq split for duplex and cross band duplex operation. Well, the basis of the prob comes down to... 1. If it's got a radio transmitter on board (aka the (as often mistermed) 'FM Transmitter', then it really should be used in transmitter disabled mode when on an aircraft (this equates to either a total shutdown of the Tx side) or where permitted.. use it's flight mode to enable Tx suppression/attentuation. 2. At the end of the day, regardless of law, if the airline operator sets out a no audio players etc policy for whatever reason, it's a no-win situation to argue freedom and law vs their policy - after all, when you fly with them... it's at their discretion all the way that you are permitted to fly with aircraft under their lease/ownership or charter. There was never an issue about radio-equipped equipment being air-shipped commercially for distribution - after all, the equipment is not 'active' during shipping so technically if it's got an embedded TX.. it's either disabled when the equipment is in it's 'off' mode... or heavily supressed sufficiently that the field strength is probably not of any notable level much past a foot or two distance from the kit. If the player in question has no Tx onboard, just a receiver, then there is legally (in most cases) no compliancy issues to worry about. It then comes down to any regs in place over hand luggage and what you are permitted to carry on your person when on a commercial airliners (like over here, recently, when a high threat potential cropped up.. laptops and cellphones got banned for hand luggage and personal carried possession when flying). And like i said before, there is the discretion factor with the airline operators too - after all, if they do ban (as policy) DAPs and suchlike personal entertainment kit..., it's probably in their interest to force you to use the in-flight entertainment they provide (and i often find that's a contradiction in terms, what they provide). When i go abroad, i often take a handheld VHF radio transceiver as well as one of my DAP's and a digital recorder and a laptop - the laptop is 802.11x and BT equipped as is the digital recorder. The radio has a BT facility to allow wireless audio and remote vox operation link on it too. As that all equates to a laptop bag sized bit of luggage (all fits into a substantial laptop bag with the associated chargers etc), i simply take out all battery packs and separate them into a sep bag (each individually wrapped and sealed and labelled for ID). This ensures that no piece of kit can come to lift or be triggered to an active state when it's in transit. That works sufficiently for me, works well for hand luggage aspect storage too - subject to security and policy issues, but as has proven at times, i'm usually way ahead of the game in respect of security and policy restrictions. The only time i'd want a DAP to listen to, in flight, would be a medium to long haul flight (six hours or more), otherwise.. i'm happy to take a good book with me 'Tom Kat'

Well, thanks - i do try to keep an intelligent tone and intent to my posts most of the time (except maybe on the odd irrational day when my posts go a touch... insane). We are, it seems, a minority - those of us who go with the preferred no-EQ setting on playback - but then again, so few mention their no-EQ pref that it's hard to know how much of a minority we actually are I know, sadly, that it's almost inevitable to end up EQing canal phones - despite the fact i used and subsequently had to scrap a set of MDR-EX71's (scrapped to a majoring tolerence issue - aka they tended to give me migranes.. and since i already suffer them badly, the 71's had to be dumped) i noticed the inevitable EQing to be necessary when using them. I'm not sure whether it's a case of being too-hard to make a set of canal phones that are neutral or near-neutral (hell, a pair of canals that were 'monitors' of the earphone would would be a good place to get to) or that to sell them easily, they end up pandering to the tastes of those who listen to 'boombox' orientated music. Then again, it could simply be that when it comes to what is almost DI (direct injection) equiv (to nick a fuelling term from motor circles) then maybe it's harder to get a generic even perception of being neutral when pump audio out so near directly. Never really took enough interest at that level, to be honest - pretty much quit the 'how it works at the hearing stage' theory much after the basic audio theory and anatomy crossover that goes with audio tech/production training. Maybe i should take more interest in the hows and whys in a more refined way regarding the discrete bits that make canal transmission work effectively... I'm sure the E2C's are indeed quality items, it seems they are getting popular despite cost - usually when something on the high price side starts to gain popularity despite there being cheaper alternatives, it says something about the product that seems to be chosen. I never confirmed it either way, but i seem to recall someone built a hybrid canal phone/mic set and was selling them a while ago. I think it was a set of Shure canals for phones, and a matching set (built into Shure casings) of discrete mics that you used whichever set was needed - designed for stereo discrete recording if i recall. 'Tom Kat'

Sounds a little suspiciously like SS CP is starting to act a bit like the old 1.0AE edition did re makin ATRAC CD's. For ref, 1.0AE was the first edition shipped with the first-gen ATRAC CD Walkmans - it was, in fact, SonicStage Simple Burner 1.0AE which was effectively the ATRAC CD equiv of MD Simple Burner. The later release software that came with the second gen and third-gen ATRAC CD walkmans, SonicStage 2.x (i think it was 2.0 for second gen, 2.3 with the third gen units) was a much more tolerent and stable beast compared to 1.0AE (and a damn sight more useful). Guess i'll have to prep some audio for ATRAC CD and see what the current state is with ATRAC CD production with the current soft. 'Tom Kat'

Call me crazy, maybe i expect a little too much from a piece of user orientated music management software like SS, but here goes.. This morning, i was preparing a batch of audio to go with an audio topic i was preparing for this forum (and MDCF ... not that my ideas go down well there...). The immediate and maybe previously unrealised issue comes with SS's lovely native bloody lossless compression encoding.. or rather the handling of. *feels the urge to introduce sharpened virtual claws to people at Sony....* Not a huge demand i was making of SS, in fact it was something MD users are used to being able to .. aka combine/split audio, and with SS, this can be done within files in the library (which is what i was intending). I merely wished to make a batch of ATRAC Lossless encodings from WAV's i had already processed elsewhere (44Khz 16-bit final mix downs, nowt unusual in terms of format etc) - this bit goes well. Now all i wanted to do was simply combine groups of encodings, encoded by now to ATRAC Lossless, and do some fine tuning to where the transitions between tracks lay - so it was going to be a case of combine and divide. No hassles, in the past, doing this with ATRAC (handy, actually, when editing out bits that were unwanted out of radio log recordings etc) in the lossy variety. But can it be done with the LSL variety...?? Like hell can it... Oh well, guess i'll have to manually go through all them WAV's, join em into some massive ferking huge files and resplit/edit according to needs using something far more overkill for what was a simple task that a bit of foresight on the part of the designers could have solved (yes, i cannot be the only person out there who might like to be able to do simple combine/divide functions on ATRAC LSL's... now that SS has a bloody native supported archival grade format...). What really p*ssed me off about this was, the sheer lack of foresight shown at the design stage and mostly that a simple job is gonna become long winded and all the massive list of files i had already encoded.. goes to scrap. We all know that SS is not a fast encoding util by any means (dark ages of encoding speed, it more resembles), but after waiting for a few thousand wavs ranging from running times of around 2 mins to 2 hours a piece to encode to ATRAC LSL, to then discover the bit i wanted to do to save employing yet another app, is not possible when it could so easily have been the case.. And between that oversight.. lack of foresight.. call it what you will, and Sony regularly dumping crap like the old CP soft on the world, is it any wonder we get a whole lot of anti-SS/anti-Sony crap hitting the forums..?? I like, outside of this 'problem', SS as it's finally got to after way way too much time - but there are times i wonder how much research people at Sony ever do before they decide to implement eye candy type functions and forget that there is lots of scope for more useful edit implementations with the native bloody lossless codec handling. Hey, sorry about the rant... to all you ATRACLIFE folks, just totally ferking p*ssed off after wasting god knows how long to have to start stages 2 - 4 of the processing and editing all over again. 'Tom Kat' *sighs, opens up a bottle of Old Satan's Special reserve.., and looks for an iP*d owner to go harass* ;o)

Preferably, and in practise, you should NEVER use unauthorised transmitters in an aircraft. If i was to own a device with a VHF FM transmitter (it's not an FM transmitter, it's an FM mode VHF transmitter .. FM is a modulation method.. not a transmission band or frequency allocation), and was to use one on an aircraft... Since i am a radio operator, i would respect the safety and EMC compliancy safeguards and not use the Tx equipped device on an aircraft unless i was 100% certain that the 'Tx off/disabled' mode (dunno how they refer to it on the equipment in the original post) literally did shut the TX off (aka no output, no ERP, literally switched off.. no output and hence no Tx emission creating an additional EM field beyond any basic fundemental one the player itself generates if any). Regulations vary around the world, clearly, but regardless of regs (i always abide by legislative regs with Tx equipped devices whereever i am) - even if the regs allow for 'flight mode' use (that's where a Tx is permitted to be active in an ultra-low output mode.. we are talking an output in RF terms a bit like luminous paint is to visable light emmision) - i still think of others first and not use the TX. Remember this... When on board a ship or aircraft, ANY use of radio equipment is subject to the discretion of the master of the vessel (to use a maritime term) - aka the captain of the aircraft or captain/skipper of the martime vessel. Technically, and this predates any legislative regs over radio equipment, to bring anything on board is permissable according to the skipper's discretion or tolerence.. as ultimately, they carry the blame and responsibility if anything goes wrong. If they give permission for the use and passage of a piece of equipment that later proves to contribute to a contributory issue in the event of an accident.. guess who carries the can when the dung get slung.. Not you, not the airline/operators of the vessel, just the poor b*stard in charge aka the captain/skipper. Sorry to get all detailed like that - but when you can see some insight into why the regs exist, you can start to appreciate any prohibitions or restrictions that may get put into place. Dunno about anywhere else in the world, but after the Dunblaine incident and more recently 9/11, the restrictions and prohibtions that existed became a heck of a lot more enforced in the UK over boarding an aircraft with electronic kit.. especially those with Tx's on board/embedded. However, to those of us who are radio ops and generally in the know, we tended to play safe... noone can take you to task legally where you acted with the interest of public safety by abiding to legislation and regs.. 'Tom Kat'

re - The poor review. I found the high-end D-NE's to be pretty ok as it goes. Hell, i've owned two (D-NE1 from the original ATRAC CD walkman series, D-NE20 from the third gen series). Having never had a file playback prob such as the reviewer indicated, can't comment on that. But yes, there is something to be said about media tolerence (it's really a tolerence thing, not 'compatability'). All i'll say is.. when you use good or high-grade media, or plain and simply good grade unbranded if that's your thing, the D-NE's have proven damn stable for me re media tolerence. Two thing to note about media mind, and this is both a trait i noticed with the D-NE series, and also the later iRiver IMP series (particularly those built from and including the 550 model) - 1) Try to use media that's extremely opaque on it's top-side (aka label/print side). 2) Stick to conventional recordable media colours re the record side colour. The more opaque the top side is (hold it up to a strong light, top side facing the light so you look at the record side) - if you are getting a lovely corona effect where light is passing on the outside, but little or no perceptable light is leaking through or illuminating the disc itself, then your odds of good tolerence are high.. very high For some reason, the D-NE's definately seem to work better with the conventional media colours re the record side colour. For me, and i use mostly RW's mind, combine a really opague disc with silver colouring (most RW's are very silver or near silver colour) and the tolerence of the media is almost bombproof. Sure, it tails off as the disc gets damaged over time.. but show me a disc that don't get hard to read when it gets progressively ferked up...?? For CD-R's, and CD-RW's, i always suggest sticking to the plain cooking versions of a known good media. Fancy stuff can be troublesome.. and if you get persistent probs, fancy ultra cool brands and types can simply be money down the drain. I stick to TDK and Maxell's (subsitute other brands here, where you know the same media is repacked under other names) - the kind that are often used for media distribution. As it goes, harking right back to analog recording days, i found that good commercial grade distribution grade tapes were also very reliable and hard-wearing. It's a combination of that experience (from analog days) and also from working a lot with CD mastering, that i give the advice given. A last factor to mention.. Recording/Burning speeds - whilst it's so tempting to go for broke and whack in your mega meltdown hi-speed media into a burner and set it to hypergalatic warpdrive burn speeds, mega speed burning on mega speed grade media is not a guaranteed security that you burn really discs that almost anything capable of reading the disc will be tolerent of. 1. Reduce the CPU load on the machine burning. 2. Use a good reference burner soft to do a simulation burn using your intended media.., from this you can find out what the real stable reliable max burn speed is in your particular setup. Nero is damn good for deciding this, so grab a demo copy for reference use. 3. Knowing whether you can, time and time again with very very few (preferably zero) fails - discounting faulty media instances, burn at a given speed... apply a further caution and set a burn rate half of the determined max. So that translates to, in SS and disc burning, if the media is ultra-speed rated and your drive can handle it, pick the medium speed option. You can try the ultra speed high speed option, but the odds are way better if you employ patience and opt for the lower burn rate. After all, is the time you think you will save by mega speed burning really time saved, if you end up with a poor or unreadable disc and end up reburning it time and time again til you get a good one.. or even then opt for playing safe..?? Better to play safe and employ patience. Hope this all helps.. 'Tom Kat'

Personally, i dont touch the EQ or even use it. Ok, using canal phones or inner-ear types, you may find the need to EQ to compensate, but for any half-way decent kinda headphones (walkman type lightweights or full-on hifi/dj stuff) if the response is there on the cans and they are pretty neutral (aka they reproduce what's put in fairly transparently) then there is rarely a need really to EQ except for personal pref tastes. Ok, it's a one-cats-viewpoint (and often very unpopular POV), but it's precisely how i always worked with phones and amps and speakers and to this day, the only time i EQ anything is at the mastering/restoration stage of audio production.. at playback (end-user and auditioning mixdowns), playback-invoked EQing is never used in my arena.. Why..?? No point, i happen to like to hear the audio as the producers intended it to be heard, and since there's no need with my setup to compensate for unusal extreme or major deficiencies or colour on the speakers and phones used, i see no point in masking what usually sounds great in neutral/bypass. That said, clearly if the audio was mastered (as some 'dance' tracks i have heard recently... *shames himself to admit listening to them*) with kinda ultra extremes of EQing at the mastering stage (the kinda time when you make the audio go thud thud thud.. pandering to subwoofer-freaks taste) and you phones/speakers have the response that makes this kinda trickery sound totally overkill, sure.. EQ to cut it back for sure..., then you may start actually hearing the audio as it was supposed be heard. As already suggested, previously in a reply, if you wanna toy with EQing, just play away - getting EQ related advice and suggestions is kinda a minefield, as there are as many personal opinions as there are people out there who EQ stuff to death making it kinda hard to get sane advice. All due respect given, mind, to those who do try to offer advice on such things intelligently 'Tom Kat'