pata2001

Sounds to me you got a player only model. Well, if it cannot record, then you're screwed. Hunt for a cheap NH600D/DH710 online or ebay.

Japanese silver RH1 here, and I have iPods too.

In short: Out of the box, only first gen HiMD units WITH optical-in and the RH1 can record in legacy SP on legacy MD. Any NetMD compatible units can transfer fake SP from Sonicstage.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Sonicstage never has SP capability (read/encode/decode,etc), which is why we have fake SP. 1. This is just an open source attempt to create an Atrac3 DEcoder. Note, only to DEcode, not ENcode. 2. So, none of the atrac tracks encoded by Sonicstage will work, only those encoded by the old real media player version of atrac. Sony execs would probably rather kill themselves than actually making Atrac open source. Still, way to go for open source! With time (might take a really long time), maybe someday we can play Atrac files without resorting to Sony software/products. That is if Sony doesn't launch its lawyers.

You know, you can just buy some more AA batteries/rechargables.

For CD media: Anything that Made in Japan (highly likely to be Taiyo Yuden) DVD media: Verbatim (regardless of country of origin, preferably Made in Japan/Singapore)

Not another one? Again, MD is magneto optical, MO. Bluray is optical. Both are completely different technology, so whatever you're dreaming is not going to happen.

Nope, it wouldn't. The only way around it is to burn the WMA into audioCD, then re-rip the AudioCD to MP3/Atrac. Or, you can but the tracks from connect, which is in Atrac (LP2) format, and compatible with HiMD.

I've been able to rip CCCDs since the beginning. Sure, some drives are really slow in ripping CCCDs, but in the end, they are all rippable. EAC is your friend.

You probably have to go to some professional data resotration services to really fully restore the data, and they are really expensive. It all boils down to how important the data is to you. If you have another PC, you can try plugging the affected hard-drive(s) to the other PC, and try using many of the "undelete/unformat" utilities, and maybe recover some partial data, but most of the times they are not that useful. Free solutions? They are probably even more useless. The fact that you have the hard-drives as Raid 0 pretty much reduce any chance of recovery. Whatever you do next, don't format/write to the affected hard-drive(s). If you're savvy enough, you can boot up from a linux boot CD, and try to use linux to access/recover the data. I'm no expert on linux, so I can't tell you anthing more. I've been in your position many times, mainly because of hard-drive failures. Sometimes I just had to suck it up, and re-download/re-rip whatever data I need. Another important point for making backups regularly, and not to use Raid 0 without Raid 1/redundancy.

How about a 2G nano? Current iPods (except maybe the 2G shuffle) have great SQ, definitely better than the mini. It's probably easier and cheaper to find an iPod + accessories then an RH1 these days. As for recording, there are plenty of 3rd party attachments to record on an iPod.

Sony Music execs look at Atrac for the DRM, highly unlikely for any "sound quality." Also consider connect store still uses the outdated LP2. With more and more support for AAC and HE-AAC, I can see that is the direction Sony is going (DRM compliant, highly supported in many devices like cellphones, and good quality at low bitrate provided by HE-AAC).

Nope, not natively. Sonicstage will convert WMA to Atrac.

I don't think there are any advantages.

You can wait forever till somebody develop that kind of program, or get the RH1(or any MP3 players that can play MP3s properly) and start enjoying your music.

-most (if not any) US artists -Rap artists from any country (except certain artists that only use a bit of rap in their music)

The worst windows version according to the masses is Windows ME (which I beg to differ also). Windows NT is a good OS, still being used by many companies today. Without NT, we won't see 2000 nor XP. Sure, before win2k, winNT lacks directX and plug-n-play, but it was geared towards business anyway, not mass consumer OS.

Use MP3, simple.

I don't know how many times this been said, but MD/HiMD is Magneto optical techonology. Blu-ray (and CD/DVD/HD-DVD, etc) are optical. They are not the same technology.

Here's a suggestion. 1. Create a playlist containing all the tracks from that album. 2. View the playlist, and select all tracks. 3. Right click on them, click properties. 4. Check the box that says "Tracks in compilation album." SS then should gorup those tracks under 1 group, not under the different artists. The same "problem" exists with any jukebox software utilizing ID3 tags. Same thing with iTunes, which also provides the same solution by putting an option to indicate those tracks are a compilation.

Probably not. The only way to transfer tracks to MD without SS is via simpleburner, but it has to be from an audioCD. You can setup a RAID system with multiple hard-drives, and as long as they're assigned 1 drive letter, SS can probably use them (the spanning is handled by the OS, not SS).

Dunno. I know Lite-on drives tend to rip pretty quickly, even their DVD-ROM drives, compared to other brands like Pioneer/NEC DVD-writer drives. It's just probably the design (most manufactures probably don't focus too much on the ripping speed of their optical drives). Well, just use whichever drive that's faster. In the past (during 8X CD-RW drives era), CD-RW drives tend to rip better than plain CD/DVD-ROM drives. However, most optical drives today can rip AudioCD just fine. The only problem comes in when you have a copy protected CD. I wouldn't worry about the CD smoothing option. If your optical drive can rip the AudioCD properly, there is no need for that. You can try installing EAC, and see which drives has the better features (eg. C2 error retrival capability), or try ripping using EAC, and see which drives rip with less error (probably using a scratched audioCD).

I wonder the time spent uploading from the RH1 and re-transfer/transcode the tracks is any faster than re-ripping the CDs, unless you don't have access to the CDs anymore. I would think it's faster to just re-rip the CDs, plus you will get better quality than transcoding and you don't have to spent more money to buy the RH1.

I use EAC. In general, DVD/CD writer usually rips better/faster than DVD/CD-ROM drives, plus DVD/CD writers tend to recognize and rip Copy protected CDs better than regular DVD/CD-ROM drives. I know my DVD-ROM drive rips much slower than my various DVD/CD writers.

In general, transcoding form a lossy to lossy ocmpression (like what you're doing) is bad, and not recommended. Technically you can only get a reduction in quality. Whether the reduciton of quality is noticable by you or not is another story.