bemax

dex Otaku, Thanks for the suggestion about the DEP but it was already turned off for everything except essential Windows programs. Others, The CPU usage after a clean boot is < 1% with nothing running and it pretty flat as you might imagine. Interestingly enough, when I start SS, it gets settled into a regular pattern of 4 sec quiet (< 6%) and then 2 sec at 25-30% and back to quiet. This pattern is the same whether it is playing music or just sitting there. The skipping occurs when it jumps to 25-30% and goes away when it drops below 10%. I've never seen this kind of behavior in another program. I tried turning off all internet activity with ZoneAlarm but it had no effect. I will experiment some more. Any ideas? By the way, I regularly scan my system for viruses, spyware etc using AVG, spybot ad-aware and other utilities. My system is pretty clean. Certainly, Sonicstage is doing something weird. I'll post back as I learn more.

My computer is a AMD Athlon XP 1700+ on a Soltek SL75DRV4 mobo with 1 Gig ram and running XP SP2. Nothing fancy and a little out of date. My soundcard is an old SB 16 PCI with the latest drivers. The system works with all of the software I have used including video editing using Ulead VideoStudio 8 and wave editing using Cakewalks wave editor. Playback of mp3s, cds and mpegs are all great. SS 2.3, though stutters like a dirty CD on every track it imports whether the source is a CD, an mp3 or a wav file copied from a CD (to show that it is not the CD drive causing the problem). The stuttering is only on playback within SS 2.3. If I download to the MD player, it sounds fine, actually quite good. It is a bothersome nuisance to have to trust the tracks without being able to hear them but I'll live with it. One other thing. I used SS 2.1 on this same hardware under win2K with no problems. This problem started when I wiped my HDs and installed WinXP SP2 Home and reinstalled the software. When I went to install SS, I downloaded 2.3 because it seemed to be the best choice. I'm not interested in uninstalling and trying an older version. I just live with this. When my MD player dies, I'll get an HD based mp3 player. The MD thing is cool but the Sony monopoly has spoiled it for me. Thanks for all the comments.

Thanks again for the info. I will look into it when I have time. It is also something I would like to have since it is disconcerting to have all these files sound terrible on my PC but sound OK on my MD unit. Anyway, if I find a fix, I'll post it.

SlowMo, Thanks for the tip. I downloaded (uploaded?) the songs to the MD player and they are fine. It is just SonicStage can't play the files back. How strange is that? Well, thanks. Now at least I can put songs on disks which is what I wanted.

I hadn't thought of that. I guess it's possible that the skipping stuttering is just in playback. Very strange though. I can play the CDs back through WinAmp or other players fine, it seems to be just SonicStage having trouble. I'll give your suggestion a shot. Thanks,

I recently upgraded my computer to WinXP SP2 Home. I reloaded all software from scratch (newly formated drives, etc). I did not install any Sony MD software until I downloaded SS 2.3 and installed clean. I have not even connected my MZ-N505 yet. I was just trying to import some music off of CDs into my Library to see how things work. Every song imported contains stuttering or skips. I tried 10 different commercial CDs all with the same result. I tried importing MP3s with the same result. Has anyone had this problem? Is there a fix? As things stand now, I have no way of getting quality music onto my MD player. Please post if you have ideas.

:smile: Turning on the CD insertion detection in the registry did the trick. Thanks for the help. Now I can see if I like SS better than the SB + Nero method. By the way, I just installed Iceeedtea's SS 2.0 on top of my SB + Nero setup and it worked fine, no problems. Don't know if that will work for everyone but I got tired of uninstalling and reinstalling 3 or 4 times a week and just tried it. Again, thanks to everyone for the help.

Thank you for the info. I uninstalled all of the Sony software before I installed the Iceeedtea version of SS 2.0. I even cleared the Sony registry keys. I was wondering about the autorun feature so I'll try that. Thanks for the replies. I'll post back if I solve the problem.

I have just installed Sonic Stage 2.0 using Iceeedtea's installer. *Thanks* And it seems to work but I am still having a few problems. When I go to import a couple of CDs into the database, it imports the first one fine but when I insert the next CD it doesn't recognize that a new CD has been inserted and CDDB info returns the info for the first CD. Is there a way to force Sonic Stage to recognize the insertion of a new CD? I have found that if I use the eject button on the display of Sonic Stage, it sometimes will get it right but then it will only show the number of tracks present on the previous CD (for example, if CD #1 had 7 tracks and I finally get it to recognize CD #2 which has 9 tracks, it will only show the first 7 tracks in the Source window. Has anyone else had this problem? I guess I can go back to M3U2SB but I like the convenience of Sonic Stage Any and all help appreciated in advance. Great board by the way.