mmp64

Agreed. The uploading thing is maddening and counterproductive (and I'm an amateur musician so that issue is important to me). But in terms of recording "commercially available" music - the restrictions are mostly gone - or at least are no more restrictive than other solutions.

"...Also, Sony has exceeded the boundaries of their insane DRMing of the last innovation to MD (NetMD) and have grown even more idiotic, if that is at all possible. ' In what way... other than the uploading issue (which is something that did not exist in any form with NetMD).

If you, for example, convert a high-quality 256K MP3 to Hi-SP (256K ATRAC3Plus) - you probably won't notice much, if any difference. But the only reasons that I think you'd want to do that (as opposed to just getting an MP3 player) is because you either like the concept of using very cheap removeable media, (as opposed to say, an SD card) - or you also use your MD for other things (for example, I record the audio from movies and TV shows to MD).

Does the improvement in Hi-LP you observed in SS 2.1 carry over to Simple Burner as well?

Well, to this mud-eared idiot, ATRAC/ATRAC3+ played on my NetMD and Hi-MD players DO sound better than MP3s played on my MP3 players (Nomad Zen Xtra and RCA Lyra) And I'm talking matching bitrates - comparing LP2 to 128 MP3, Hi-LP to 64K MP3, and Hi-SP to 256 MP3.

Yes - please tell us what bitrate you used - Hi-LP, Hi-SP, LP2, LP4 - whatever. To many people, Hi-SP is equal to or better than MP3 256K. Hi-LP sounds somewhere between 64K and 128K MP3 - I'd say it sounds like 90K MP3, if there was such a thing.

For what it's worth, Sony has said that they will make a separate utility available "in the Fall" that will enable users to export anything they've uploaded from their Hi-MD as a Wav, or MP3, or whatever. There are a couple of posts about it here.

The 800, yes. But I ordered the 900.

According to the site from which I pre-ordered my 900, they are delayed AGAIN - this time until "late August."

Yes - I have both a PC and a Mac, and have used Virtual PC on the Mac. Basically - it runs the Windows OS inside a Mac Window. However, I would think performance, particularly for something like SonicStage, would suck. Your basic Office apps are OK, and I've even done Photoshop - but audio encoding is pretty intense.

"(1) As others have pointed out, no OTHER manufacturer seems to be prohibiting this for home recording act reasons ~ for example, the iRiver HP series WAV/MP3 harddrive recorders! " I believe this is because MP3 player/recorders are not technically classified as "music devices," while MDs are. MP3 players are considered computer devices. Or something like that.

I stand corrected - on both counts.

1) Yes, you can directly MP3 directly into ATRAC using SonicStage. You don't have to burn them to a CD first. This functionality has existed for several years. 2) If indeed you can record something in Hi-SP, upload it to your PC, and rip to a CD in .wav format (not ATRAC) format, then they will have given us essentially what we wanted. Since the ability to record in PCM on a MD unit did not exist prior to the introduction of Hi-MD, what most people were doing was recording in SP - and what they wanted was the ability to quickly upload these SP recordings to PC to burn to audio CD. But I think we're all just going to have to wait until the units ship before we really find out. 3) SonicStage 2.0 seems to have no ability to "edit" files - like 1.5 did (by editing, I mean divide, combine, etc.) A previous poster compared this ability to a playlist - not sure what in the world that has to do with a playlist. The purpose of this fuctionality is to trim unwanted stuff out of a track, or combine multiple tracks into one. This is very useful for musicians, reporters, and other associated audio geeks (i.e., people who may, for example, record TV shows or audio books to MD, and would like to edit out commercials, etc.) Of course, all of this can still be done directly on the unit.

"...can only be transferred back to computer for editing. " What does that mean? What kind of editing can you do to Hi-SP files in SonicStage? Also - does this or does this not mean that you can burn those uploaded Hi-SP tracks to Audio CD?

This is probably a stupid question - but since it is possible to record in PCM mode on the unit - and Hi-MDs are seen as a USB mass storage device by Windows - couldn't we just copy a PCM file from the MD to PC via Explorer, then burn a CD of that PCM file using the software of our choice... (as opposed to SonicStage). Or is there some DRM stuff going on that I don't understand... Of course, it would be nice to record at Hi-LP mode, because of recording time.

I thought I read here somewhere that ripping uploaded files to a CD in .wav format (CD audio) will be possible with SonicStage 2.1... or at least I thought that was a rumour I read here...

Well, if you care about such things, a MD player like the 900 lets you record from a variety of sources, such as a mic, or anything with an audio output. You can then edit the file on the MD - meaning you can chop it into multiple files, edit bits out, merge two files together, etc. etc. To some degree, you will be able to upload what you recorded on the unit to a PC. Further, MDs are re-recordable - which means more than just wiping them and recording over. You can move tracks around on the disc, delete individual tracks, etc. ATRAC also does not suffer from the annoying gap between tracks present in most MP3 players.

"Rest assured that the components you'll find in an iPod will be of a much higher standard with respect to "hi-fi" compared to what you get in a MD portable." Can you give some more detail on this statement... say, w/ respect to a higher end MD, like the upcoming 900.

Finally got my discs today - even though, according to the "Order Update" on Sony's site they were "Out of Stock" with no ship date in site. I tried to order another 3-pack, but the site says that the product is "no longer available." So I ordered 4 separately.

After doing a lot more testing, I've decided to go w/ Hi-SP for most of my stuff - or, at least the stuff that warrants it (newer recordings, remastered recordings, etc.) LP2 is very good - but Hi-SP has an intangible "feel" to it that makes it sound fuller - wider - whatever. (not surprising, given it is 256K). So the way I look at it now - Hi-MD (at least using 80 min discs) lets you get SP quality at NetMD LP2 quantity, more or less.

As the originator of this post, I am highly offended that I have yet to receive my discs :-) In fact, if I look at the status of my order, it says that they are out of stock and there is no estimated ship date.

To my ears, absolutely - ATRAC3Plus 64 (Hi-LP) has artifacts. I believe it is superior to the old LP4 - but still not good enough. I'm sticking w/ LP2.

Actually, when I first got it - I couldn't figure out how it worked. Then when I did figure it out, I thought it sucked, so I never used it again.

I never use the scroll wheel - I use the buttons to select the nav mode, and then the button, or whatever it is, in the center of the scroll wheel. I actually forgot about the scroll wheel until I saw your post.

Right. The 600D. I am, unfortunately, not patient, so I bought that as soon as it came out. Also have the 900 pre-ordered.