ksandbergfl

I am wrong. There isn't a single Sony device on the list of supported portable audio devices. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...alldevices.aspx WMP will play OMG/OMA files however..... not that it's much help.

It is my understanding the with WMP 10, the Sony HiMD unit should appear as a "portable playback device". I haven't tried but in theory you should be able to export your playlists to your HiMD from WMP. You still have to install SonicStage on your PC, so that Sony's OMG digital rights management is on your PC. I really hate to download WMP10 on my PC, but maybe I'll give a try sometime and post my results.

Are you playing back the songs from the HiMD, or from SonicStage, or from Windows Media player? Sony's OMG DRM does not like it if you delete or move the original source file outside of SonicStage. If you take MP3's or WMA's, import them into SS, copy them to a HiMD, and then delete the original MP3/WMA using Windows Explorer, you can have problems. You need to delete the original MP3/WMA from SonicStage, so that SonicStage adjusts its database and the OMG file's key appropriately (SS's database and the OMG file have to be in sync). If you can get these WMA files again (not new ones made from the same songs), and put them back in the same place on your harddrive, you might have success. If you have the WMA files still on your PC, try playing them with Windows Media Player. If they play, try recording your "Wave mix out" with Total Recorder or Wavepad. Save the output to WAV files, then import the WAV's again into SonicStage. SonicStage will generate new OMG files with the proper keys and you won't have problems.

Yes, it's quite easy. Take a blank MD (or one already formatted to NetMD) and put it in your HiMD player. Using SonicStage, transfer the songs over using LP2 or LP4 ATRAC. The disc will play in any NetMD player. you've probably already figured this out by now ;-)

128Kbps MP3 and 132K ATRAC (LP2) would be roughly the same file sizes. I think the calculation is 15 hours of LP2 on a 1GB HiMD.

the data storage "extra" is exactly why I bought a HiMD. Portable USB 300MB storage for $1.50 per disk? You can't beat that. Let me know when flash memory is down to that price (half a cent per megabyte), then you'll have a better argument. I use my HiMD to back up programs and files from work. Also, whenever I download something from the internet, the ZIP's go straight to my HiMD. Being a programmer, I even have a HiMD disk with a runtime deployment of my programs on it -- I plug my HiMD into any Windows computer and run my code! Yes, the same thing can be done with USB pen drives or CD-RW disks.... but 10 USB pen drives would cost hundreds of dollars and 10 CD-RW's are less convenient to carry around than 10 minidiscs (not to mention far more prone to data errors). The only downside, to me, of HiMD is the relatively slow USB 1.1 data transfer rate. On the audio side, my main usage is to record streaming audio from various internet radio sites. It's hard to listen during the day at work, so I'll just tune into a station and click "record" (using Wavepad or Total Recorder). At the end of the day, I'll go thru the WAV file with a file splitter and then drop the songs onto my HiMD, so I can listen to commercial free radio in my car on the way home.

I think i will sit this round out. Having native MP3 support just isn't that important to me. I can get all my MP3's on my NH600 now, using SonicStage. Sure ,it converts them to ATRAC first but on my 2.2GHz Celeron the wait time is barely noticeable. So.. the current HiMD suits my needs just fine. The only thing that will get me to buy a new HiMD unit is if Sony can increase the through-put. The USB 1.1 interface (500K per second) is inconvenient, especially when I'm trying to backup a bunch of files from work. However, it is my understanding that the magneto-optical disks have a max write rate of about 500K per second? It may not be possible to write faster than that unless they use a completely different media.

This is another way of saying -- if the ATRAC file was not created on your PC, MarcNet's app cannot convert it for you. You can't plug your HiMD into someone else's computer and use MarcNet's app to copy the files to MP3's or WAV's. Which, in a philosophical sense, means that you can't convert an ATRAC file back to WAV unless you had the original WAV in the first place. ;-)

To answer your first question, Sony has a MP3-to-ATRAC conversion utility here: http://esupport.sony.com/perl/news-item.pl?news_id=61 You need to have SonicStage installed for it to work. Keep in mind that on a 266MHz machine, each MP3 will probably take 1-2 minutes to convert. As far as "burning" onto a HiMD - Simple Burner and SonicStage are the only two I know about. When I got my HiMD a year ago, I was still using a 400MHz computer. I got myself a 2.2GHz Dell Inspiron 1000 for $600 at Christmas, and let me tell you ---- my HiMD experience has greatly improved.

Exactly.. that's the only way they can get MP3's to play on the HiMD thru the ATRAC codec. I would bet $1 that we'll still need SonicStage to put MP3's on... the only difference will be that SS won't have to "convert" MP3-to-ATRAC first. It doesn't matter much to me... I keep all my music in MP3 and will continue to do so. I regularly delete my ATRAC database and OMA files. I don't mid re-encoding again if I want to put a song on another minidisc. On my 2.2GHz laptop, the encoding time is minimal. I'd be much happier if Sony could find some way to speed up the data transfer. I understand there are physical limitations writing to magneto-optical disks, but RAM is cheap and Sony could buffer up an entire HiMD's worth of data inside the HiMD unit. The HiMD could continue to write to the disc while it's in your pocket, while you're walking out to your car.

It's actually quite easy, and I've done it myself. Installing SS from the ZIP files onto a new PC only takes a few minutes. I have a MD with the SonicStage v2.2 installation on it that I carry with me. More troublesome, however, is removing it from the PC when you're done. The UNInstall does not remove any of the registry stuff.... and SS uses a LOT of registry keys.

I like this idea... would it be feasible to make a "minidisc reader", along the lines of the USB multi-card readers that read SmartMedia, CompactFlash, etc? It could be an external USB drive that accepts minidiscs and allows fast USB2.0 transfers of data between the PC and the disc. Kinda like a Zip drive only with USB 2.0 and HiMD-formatted minidiscs. However, I thought I read (in another forum here) that the physics behind reading/writing to a minidisc prevents I/O speeds much faster than USB1.1? And that's why Sony only put a USB1.1 interface in the HiMD, instead of a USB2.0.... is that accurate?

no, that's not my question. I know about the different ATRAC flavors. The post to which I replied implied that I could take an old minidisc from a MDLP unit (pre-NetMD), put it in a HiMD unit and record to it with SonicStage. Is this true? I have no old minidiscs (I have only owned a minidisc player for a year, I started with a NetMD NZ-510) so I have no experience with them. If not with SonicStage... can you put on old MDLP disc in a HiMD recorder, and record to it (in 132K or 66K ATRAC, of course) using the audio/optical ins? Or do you have to reformat the disc to NetMD first? NetMD discs will play on older minidisc players, right? I was under the impression that you can only play old minidiscs in a HiMD unit... not record too!

The firmware on the HiMD units would have to be update-able... so that the MP3 decoder software could be added. I haven't seen any posts from anyone who knows if Sony had enough foresight to build an updateable firmware into HiMD. I also doubt that Sony will bring MP3 over to the MD world, anyway. The profit margin on a solid-state or HDD unit (built from cheap, easily available parts) will surely be higher than on the low-volume HiMD (how many HiMD's have been sold so far... 10,000? Sony isn't even mass-producing 1GB media for it yet). I don't see how Sony would benefit financially from moving MP3 to HiMD. If they did it, it would be basically as a favor to their loyal MD community. Do any of you feel that "loved" and "respected" by Sony? ;-) One more observation -- notice (in the press releases) that you still need SonicStage to put an MP3 on a Sony device. You will not be able to use Windows Explorer to "drag-and-drop" an MP3 file onto the "USB Mass Storage" portion of a HiMD and have it play, like the iPod or any other standard MP3 player. Sony will surely wrap the MP3 file with their DRM keys to prevent file sharing, just like they inexplicibly wrap LPCM songs that you record yourself from the audio in! On a HiMD, the MP3 file will get parsed and inserted into the HMA files, same as the ATRAC songs. Certainly you won't be able to upload the MP3 to any other PC, either. Just my two cents...

I'm not at home, so I can't verify -- but I believe that if you search in the directory where SimpleBurner is installed, you'll see a CDDB subfolder which will have the names/tracks of everything that's gone thru SimpleBurner to date. I would think you could just copy this to your new PC (after SimpleBurner was installed, of course). Take a look and see

In SonicStage, go to "My Library". Right-click on a song... select "Properties->File Info". If you see the original, pre-ATRAC audio file there (WAV, MP3, etc.), SS should re-sample that everytime it converts to a new ATRAC format. If only the Hi-SP ATRAC3 file is there, then SS will resample that instead, when going to ATRAC 132.

you phreak, you. red boxing, indeed. I haven't heard that term for 20 years. actually, with a 1/10th second WAV file as the source (about 4K bytes), Hi-SP, Hi-LP, and 48Kbps OMA files are all about the same size, and eat up the same amount of space on the HIMD.

Nope. The HiMD's firmware also writes key information to a "hidden" sector on the disk, so that if the Windows-accessible files and the hidden sector are out-of-sync, the disk will not play. Basically, you are stuck using SonicStage if you want to manage music on your HiMD.

Since I carry my HiMD Walkman with me everywhere, I thought to myself "Wouldn't it be nice to put phone numbers/addresses on it, so I could have them with me in case I needed them?" Well, I played around and this is what I came up with-- * Using your favorite WAV editing tool, create a small WAV audio file (I used 1/10th of a second). * Import the WAV file into Sonic Stage. * Using Sonic Stage, go to "My Library" and rename the Title of the track to a name and phone number, like "Hardy, Oliver - (321)555-1212". You could put the address, or other info in the Artist field, if you wish. * Create a Group on your HiMD called "Names and Numbers". Transfer your track onto the HiMD, into this Group. * Back in Sonic Stage, right-click on the file and select "Properties->File Info->OMA". Delete your OMA file.... leave the original WAV in your SonicStage library. (You need to do this, so that SonicStage creates a new OMA file for your next phone number when it transfers). * Go to "My Library" and rename the track to your next phone number, like "Laurel, Stanley - (407)555-1212". Transfer to your HiMD. Repeat the last two steps as needed. Now, if you need a phone number, you can whip out your HiMD and go to your "Name and Numbers" group, and the phone number will scroll across the LCD display for you. PS: I have an NH-600D. I don't know if this will work on the other HiMD units.

no, he has a WAV file on his PC. He wants to transfer it to his HiMD in LPCM, not Hi-SP or Hi-LP. Apparently, SonicStage does not give the option to "convert" tracks to LPCM?

the way people trash Sonic Stage around here, I thought some might be interested to know that there are alternatives. You certainly don't need SonicStage to play/organize the OMA music (Windows Media Player does it just fine), and you might not even need SonicStage to "rip" the songs to OMA either. I don't have MusicMatch either, so I can't test it myself.

As I mentioned in another post, OpenMG comes with DRM keys for four different software "players" -- SonicStage, Microsoft's Windows Media Player, Liquid Audio, and IBM EMMS. The newest MusicMatch (9.0) apparently incorporates IBM's EMMS rights-management, and should be able to play OMA files (as long as Sony's OpenMG is installed, of course). Can anyone confirm this? MusicMatch fans would surely love to organize their OMA songs using MM, instead of SonicStage. Also -- MusicMatch has a list of supported "portable audio devices" to which it can "burn/rip" music to.... is HiMD on this list yet? Someone with MusicMatch needs to connect their HiMD while MM is running, and report what happens.

Your speed problem is because your PC is busy converting MP3 to Sony's ATRAC format, before it transfers the songs to your NetMD unit. If your songs were already converted to ATRAC, your transfer time would be minimal. Try it -- convert a song first (don't transfer). Then, using the Transfer function, transfer the song to NetMD. See the difference? The transfer rate between any PC, regardless of CPU, and HiMD is USB1.1, or 500Kbytes/sec. You can transfer 1GB of data onto a 1GB HiMD disk in about 30 minutes.

I recently discovered WavePad. It's pretty good for a free app. I've sent emails to the authors too, and they've responded... nice to know that someone is listening to you. You have all the usual audio functions (including Normalize), and you can save to MP3 (via Lame, which they politely include). Once they add the ability to automatically split/save the incoming audio stream into separate WAV's when "silence" is detected (needed when one is recording old vinyl LP's and wants each song saved separately), then WavePad will probably become my main audio tool. http://nch.com.au/wavepad/index.html