b.e.wilson

I'm sure most of you got this email today: -------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Future of CONNECT Music Service To Our Valued Sony CONNECT Music Customers: Today Sony announced its intent to move to a Windows Media Technology platform for Walkman® products in the United States, Canada and Europe. We strongly believe that the decision to embrace a more open platform for these devices will enable us to provide you with a better overall experience. As a result of this change, we will be phasing out the CONNECT™ Music Service based on Sony's ATRAC audio format in North America and Europe. Specific timing will vary by region depending on market demand, but will not be before March 2008. We are fully committed to helping you through this important transition away from the CONNECT Music Service and providing you with the best possible guidance on how to successfully transfer your music library to an MP3 or Windows Media-compatible format, should you wish to do so. We recommend that you use any outstanding promotional codes, account credits or gift certificates available in your music account prior to March 2008, but even after the store closes you will continue to be able to play, manage, and transfer the music in your SonicStage library and on your existing ATRAC devices. If you obtain a new device, all of Sony’s new Walkman music and video players will support MP3 or Windows Media Audio format. In the coming months we will keep you informed of the status of the CONNECT Music Service phase out in your region. Periodic updates will be posted on the CONNECT music store and on the Sony Electronics customer service site, http://esupport.sony.com/EN/news/article215. Please note that the CONNECT e-book service for the Reader in the U.S. will not be affected. Thank you for your business and for your continued support as we work to complete this transition with as little disruption to you as possible. Sincerely, Sony CONNECT Music Team ------------------------------------------------------------- From the link it appears that the Soundstage software will be downloadable until March 2008, but no promises after that.

1. Recording. 2. Removable and durable media. I lost about 30 GB of recordings from my Marantz 670 once when a hard drive failed before I did the big backup. With removable (and fairly cheap media) I can keep the original around just in case.

I googled up a link at Sony that says ATRAC3+ uses block sizes twice what ATRAC3 uses, but I'm still looking for variable block size info. Here's the link: http://www.sony.net/Products/ATRAC3/tech/atrac3plus/

To what paper do you refer? According to the FAQ on this site (http://www.minidisc.org/mdlpfaq.html#_q61) ATRAC3+ uses a block size four times longer than ATRAC3.

"Udderly strangle"? I'm having a bit of a time picturing that. Not that I disagree with the sentiment, mind you, I'm just trying to figure the relationship of the neck with the udder.

I tried the Mora link. The installer failed to update my english installation of v2.2 with an error: "??????Windows?????????????".

It does. Only with Hi-MD you can spend 1.5 hours to move a whole GByte to the disc. We really do need the mp3 support.

Ah, another ironic use of the work "open" to make us think it's available to everyone. Like Open Music Gate (OMG), Sony's DRM continues to be the most closed and restrictive DRM method released in a consumer product.

If you've already got Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed on your computer, you don't need this hotfix.

I must confess I also am loking about for a better option. The Rio Carbon looks attractive....

Okay, I've been doing research all morning. It seems that OpenMG (Open Magic Gate), is the most closed and restrictive of all the popular DRM systems (Fairplay [Apple], Helix [Real], and Windows Media [Microsoft] included).

I did find this essay just now: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cmusings/2004/03/18

It occured to me today in the shower (where I do all of my best thinking; too bad I spend only a couple minutes a day in there) that OpenMG has the name presumably because it's open source. But at www.openmg.com I can only download a gnu-licenced mp3 id3 tag-editing .dll code. There is no hint there nor information about OpenMG itself. The website declares it's being rebuilt. My question is, has anyone got the OpenMG source code? Was it once available and currently it's not due to website reconstruction, or is OpenMG a marketing term used because it sounds better than ProprietaryMG? http://openmginfo.com/ offers only a fluffy overview of OpenMG, no technical information whatever.

Now that I've tested it, it's useless. Does exactly what it would do if you added the files in SonicStage. Useful, I suppose, if you wanted to convert files while doing something else in SonicStage.

I presume it's the method Sony will employ to retain DRM when mp3's are supported in the future.

I'm not home, so I can't test it myself yet. Is this transcoding the .mp3 onto ATRAC just as SonicStage does it, or is this wrapping the .mp3 stream in OpenMG (with the .mga extension)? Transcoding should be a slow as SonicStage, but wrapping should be pretty quick. If it's just another way to transcode the mp3s then I can see on edecided advantage to someone who has many mp3's already. Currently if you ass mp3s to SonicStage then transfer them the .mga file goes into your Optimized Files folder, taking more space. If you then want to go back and delete the mga files you must do it in SonicStage one file at a time. But if you could make the mga files separately, you could add them to SonicStage, transfer them, then delete the mga's from SonicStage and your hard disk, keeping the only mp3's on the hard drive if you need to transcode them again. You won't be able to move the mga's from your minidisc to the hard drive and back to a second minidisc, but you can transcode them again.

ATRAC, ATRAC3, and ATRAC3plus have no DRM built into the format. All DRM funtionality comes from OpenMG, a DRM container that can incorporate (presumably) any audio file format. I say 'presumably' because no one has used OpenMG to handle DRM just for fun. Only Sony, for ATRAC. And maybe .mp3 in the future. Other DRM containers: Helix and Harmony for Real audio and media, Windows Media, CSS (for DVD's), ebooks .pdf's [Adobe] and .lit [microsoft], FairPlay used by Apple for both .acc audio and Quicktime multimedia, etc.

Is SonicStage known to have difficulty with variable bitrate .mp3's? I just imported some 90 minute-long variable-bitrate audiobook files and they all appear to be about 23 minutes long in SS. I supose I'll need to convert these to a constant bitrate version first.

You know what, a lot of the artifacts are present in the original .mp3 files. I transferred the .mp3's to a cdrom and played them in a cd player, and they sound a lot worse through earphones than they did through the PC speakers. The 48kbps ATRAC files did sound worse, but not that much worse. Thanks for you help everyone. I can live with a little bit worse for audiobooks. I'll make a point to doing the original encode better in the future.

The original .mp3's were 64kbps/22kHz. I have an NHF800.

I've been moving .mp3 audiobooks and old-time radio shows over to 48kbps ATRAC3plus. The audio in the converted files has pre-and post-echo, and has a metallic sheen over the voice. Is there anything I can do to unpack and process the .mp3 to help eliminate the artifacts, or do I sell the Hi-MD and get a microdisc .mp3 player?

I inserted a Hi-MD disc made using v2.1 this morning and plugged in my NHF800. SonicStage v2.2 reported that the disc was made using an incompatible program and I needed to re-initialize the disc. I'm certain this can't be normal behavior, as the database was converted from v2.1 when I first ran v2.2. Has my disc become corrupted somhow to cause this bahavior? I may need to reinitialize and lose one 'copy' of each of the 7 CD's I had loaded on the disc.

Two comments: Has Sony ever released a minidisc player with upgradable firmware? I've not heard of one. To upgrade the firmware (via USB or by file on the minidisc) there is some extra silicon required (a high-level but dumb controller to handle the EEPROM programming, and an EEPROM instead of a ROM). I doubt any recorder sold is upgradable. I'd bet money that the .mp3 files must be wrapped in an OpenMG container to keep rights management intact. I can't see Sony holding so tight to DRM just to abandon it now. Instead of transcoding the .mp3 to ATRAC, the PC could quickly encode the.mp3 into the .omg container and transfer it to the player. *EEPROM: Electronically Erasable, Programmable Read-Only Memeory *Media Containers: a file-based method of storing streaming media for playback. ATRAC and mp3 are codecs, which compress a digital media stream into a more compact format. Containers, like .omg and .avi, hold the compressed stream in such a way that the data can be read out of the file in an organized way, and provides for skipping to specific points of the playback. And in omg's case, provide for decrypting the encrypted streams during playback.

There must be a trick to it, one that I haven't figured out. Sometimes when I plug the charging power source in, the "charging" display comes on and it charges. Other times I plug in and nothing happens and it charges. Other times I plug in and nothing happens and it doesn't charge. What simple thing have I missed?

I was playing with the bookmark function, and you're right, it's just a list of selected tracks, which can them be played in the same order they are on the disc. Guess I'll need to plan my listening a bit more than I anticipated. I have a Riovolt mp3-cd player that's perfect for audiobook listening, it's just a lot bigger and heavier than a MD player.