tekdroid

Recording to ATRAC lossless. Do u know something we don't?

If there was, you'd probably see it here, and people would be either very disappointed or very relieved, and the thread would balloon to stratospheric proportions I doubt you'd miss it. There have been rumours Sony is continuing, and personally, whether the rumours are true or not, I believe it to be true by just looking at what makes sense for Sony and the void that would be left if they decided to can the Hi-MD project so soon. It wouldn't make business sense. Personally, I'm 100% positive they'll continue making Hi-MD. They just dropped DAT, and it would make no sense for them to drop MD (unless they were bringing out a whole bunch of new affordable flash recorders we don't know about). Sony would do nothing radical like that (and if they did, these recorders wouldn't be so affordable when having to run off Sony's MemoryStick flash formats, ifyaknowwhattamean. Their ultra-expensive flash recorder is a deliberate attempt at positioning flash media and recorders at a premium, but who knows how long that will last? 'Cause flash is going down in price fast, and the potential to create cheap units should be here and now. Anyhooo, they seem to be leaving MDs for the more affordable market. There's always a market segment demands quality portable recording for a not-too-expensive price and that will continue to be satisfied by Hi-MD for at least the near-term, IMO. They will milk what they can out of it before dropping it. After all their investment in the format is greater than anyone's. And of course Sony know this, too. Sidenote: I wish the no DRM meant we could upload tracks with the write-protect switch on MDs on, so SonicStage could write NOTHING to the discs at all. If you accidentally upload a track that's in your library already, Sony deletes the track on your MD. Not nice to be treated like that. This incosistent and annoying and unexpected behaviour has to go, too - to be truly called no DRM (actually drag and drop with no 'hiding' of data would be...) Sidenote of sidenote: A SonicStage GUI overhaul with Quality slider for bitrates and far more intuitive controls to avoid clicking multiple dialogues in SonicStage would be very welcome while we're at it. I really should stop dreaming aloud, but personally I'm not worried about them canning Hi-MD There's a greater chance to be struck by lightning than that happening (IMO)

I won't argue with you here, but we are talking about the same corporation that only took off the 1-upload limit for user-made line-in/mic recordings in SonicStage 3.2, right? And that still requires your MD to not be write-protected to transfer tracks from unit to PC? And that can, under certain reproducible circumstances, delete tracks off MD without so much as a warning? I see so many things they've done as more serious than this (even if it is a bug). IMO, they are worthy of contempt and a good dose of cynicism, regardless of whether this in fact is a bug or not. I don't think the backlash for this would be any greater than some other stuff they've done (and continue to do). I guess all I'm trying to get across is that they're not the nicest guys in the playground

We are talking about Sony here, the rootkit CD people? Just checking This is mild action from this corporation, and goes unnoticed by many. Most will just decide "atrac is so much better" and not think about it again. Which is their intent. The last thing they want is frequency response plots on dedicated sites exposing their shenanigans (which is just my opinion of what this is: Sony shenanigans). Hard to 'corrupt' data this way unless it was an intentional 'feature', IMO.

Record it. Upload it.

Exactly. Distributors is the right word. What you said was spot-on, IMO. SonicStage 3.4 One thing I noticed: Import track from CD (it's in your library now). Transfer to MD. Try to transfer back to your library (again, as a duplicate). What happens? If the track you are trying to transfer is already in your library, it deletes the track on the disc (without warning). Not sure if this has been around for ages or not (all I do is save mic recordings to wav most of the time), but just thought I'd mention it. Also, messages like the following should probably be killed now, to avoid mass confusion (since the limitation no longer applies if you delete files from your library) Edit: Also, right-click and go Properties on a MIC recording and you will get the proper rights info (ie. unlimited). But right-click and get Properties on a digital recording transferred from CD to MD and you still get: Little things like this make SonicStage a pain and just add to the confusion since they no longer apply in this release (you can upload to a different computer / OS install). Maybe we'll see these things changed in SonicStage 3.5?

Yes, because we all know DRM in SonicStage was stopping so much piracy from occuring. Chaos and the end of the world will follow shortly. Seriously... No company is worried about what will happen when they face irrelevance in a particular market. Especially not since piracy can occur far more easily in other products from countless competitors. Many offering far better ease-of-use. All Sony needs to worry about is people not buying from them. That's it. People buy (and recommend) things when they see value in them, and always will. DRM only pisses people off, but is still a wet dream for content-creators who still don't get it.

It's clear as crystal. Sony might be stupid in some areas, but they aren't stupid enough to throw away 1.9 million MD-related units a year. Or throw away their investment in Hi-MD and Hi-MD production so soon. From SonicStage 3.2 onwards, it was clear to me that Sony wanted to start to revive the market. They react when they see results (or lack of) in the financials. They react when they see competition beating them silly. They react when they see virtual upstarts (Cowon, etc) adding FLAC and gaining ground. They react to flexibility of bitrates in other formats like mp3 and Ogg Vorbis. They react to easier use and less restrictions of most of their competition. They react to not making money I still don't see much logic in backing out of certain markets like Australia (especially now that Hi-MD is allowed to breathe and perform as most people would expect of a multipurpose, flexible player/ recorder), but maybe some clarity will return on that front at some point...

4 Hi-MD 15 MD Will probably stop at 10 Hi-MD discs. Should keep me satisfied until the Next Big Thing.

Actually it's not hard at all, which is why Sony units like the MZ-NH700 let you charge the AA that comes with it. All that's needed is some 'smart' charge logic built into the units. That said, I haven't tried to charge 2500mAh batteries in the unit, only their supplied 700mAh one. It would probably work but take some time, depending on the logic they have in the units; whether or not it is built like the more advanced 'smart' chargers charging the batteries fully and monitoring voltage, temp, battery type, etc.

like hobgoblin said, iTunes is as proprietary as it gets. Their DRM is proprietary, too. It's just less restrictive than Sony's and iTunes is what one might call 'tested' before going to market and 'reasonably easy to use' But try taking songs off an iPod to copy it somewhere and see it's not so easy. You need a third-party (freeware) app to do it for you. Apple doesn't do it. Much like Sony doesn't. But Sony has more restrictions and hellish usability. Drag-n-drop (copy/paste) - whatever you want to call it - like hobgoblin said, makes far more sense to me, too, if you just wanna put songs on without a music management app, that is. Anyone used to using any modern (and not-so-modern) operating system can do that, and I think portables should just be an extension of what we're used to on the OS. Had a friend's 1GB LG USB audio thingy over a few weeks ago. Drag-n-drop. A miracle of usability next to SonicStage or iTunes (to me). Of course iTunes can rip discs and manage your collection but you can't beat copy/paste (drag-n-drop) if you ask me.

Give SpyWareBlaster a go. It never runs in the background, so don't worry about bloatware. Just update to latest definitions and "Enable All" protection. Instant *prevention* of the most low-life tracking cookies and scum on the net without watching your back constantly. In Firefox 1.5, for instance, you'll see a whole bunch of exempted sites in: Tools > Options > Privacy > Cookies > Exceptions... Does the same for Opera and IE.

Ah! Bummer.

Ah of course! Cheers. Seems like watt-hours would be a far more sensible measurement, btw. Makes me wonder why they standardised on just the current flow rather than actual power.

Gotta love Sony's lovely abbreviations like OMG and SSAAD So apt If you try a start-up program like Sysinternals Autoruns, and click the Everything tab, under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in that list you should see SsAAD.exe there and be able to disable it by unchecking the box, so next time Windows starts up, it won't load. Not quite sure what its purpose is yet, but seems to named the SonicStage Atrac Hard Disk Monitor. Hmmm.

Excellent linkage. They gotta do what they gotta do. It would be great to see pics or something of the last stuff rolling off the line. All their higher-end stuff was Made In Japan and that label itself tends to be synonomous with quality. I guess the new motto is save some yen

I hope they're not faking the Li-Ion LIP-4WM, 'cause I was planning on getting a spare from ebay. What has me more curious about capacities is seeing mobile phone batteries like the Sony Ericsson BST-35 Li-Polymer battery only have a capacity of 700mAh (original Made in China, btw) These things are far larger than gumsticks and supposedly have better chemistry than Ni-MH.

Sygate Personal Firewall is still available: http://www.simtel.com/product.download.mirrors.php?id=53687 Bought by the most craptastic company Symantec recently, who have stated they will kill it. Makes sense since quality would compete with their craptastic products. I agree that a software firewall is a needed thing to stop outgoing connection attempts from trojans, phone-home programs and what-have-you. For browsing Opera and Firefox, nuff said. Ever tried to make standards-based websites with IE? Please, let's not go there. For the love of all that is good, stop using IE, people. I dislike all antivirus programs, it's just a case of which one I dislike the least. For many they are a necessary evil, though.

My gut instict tells me one of your background apps (such as antivirus or firewall) might be to blame. Another possibility is general Windows infection / instability. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and see what's eating up your cpu in your Processes tab by clicking on the CPU column once or twice (until the cpu-eating things are at the top). Start SonicStage and observe. If you haven't already done so, disable (preferably uninstall) antivirus temporarily, as a test. You can also try temporarily (or permanently) replacing ZoneAlarm for Sygate Personal Firewall (after exporting your settings in ZoneAlarm, should you want to re-install it). Another thing to try is a spyware/ malware scan of your system with Spybot Search & Destroy and/or Ad-Aware. In any case, the key is to isolate the background process that's causing these problems. PS. codec packs and non-standard skins (I think) have been known to conflict with SonicStage, too.

When uninstalling, did you follow steps 1 to 4 under How to properly reinstall NetMD/Hi-MD here? You should never get a message telling you that something is installed already if you properly followed the instructions there. It pretty much kills the install and starts with a clean slate. As stated here, it's important to get rid of ALL of the listings in Add/Remove Programs as well as doing the nitty gritty registry and directory deleting work listed in those 4 steps.

You're not alone. Did you by chance install with the SonicStage 3.3 offline installer available here? I had problems with the 3.2 SonicStage offline installer in that it would never detect the Hi-MD device in SonicStage, but Sony's web installer and another method I tried (also a derivative of the web installation routine, but with a twist) would work just fine. It would show up in windows explorer just fine, though...so it was connected & working fine. I repeated, cleaned system of all files, repeated, cleaned system of all files, etc...just to see what was causing it and nailed it down to the offline installer. For more info, see this recent post: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=84388 I've also searched on these forums and found a few other people with the same "not detected" problems in SonicStage. Perhaps the offline installer is your problem like it was with me.

It was a joke alluding to my faulty typing, but come to think of it, this model did have a firmware issue and I could have caused some confusion there I was actually referring to my brain getting a firmware upgrade, though. Sorry for the confusion.

That's the one. Weird thing is I was looking at the post thinking..."hmm, no, something's not right...oh well.." Getting a firmware update tomorrow

OK, so far I've read about button problems on the MZ-RH900, and MZ-RH10. Just keeping score

Hope he means recorder, too It has to be a Hi-MD device since it would be suicide for Sony to continue the old lines, I think. I wonder if this means the recorders will be metal themselves, or just the internals he is buying metal for. As long as no silver paint is being sourced for the plastics, things should be fine Nice leakage! So many more popular products (like mobile phones) get juicy bits of info leaken out before release. We need more of this stuff for MD.