zerodB

That little bag sure is cute! And the white 33EL is nice too!

When you dub at more than 1x speed, the quality of sound decreases. At real time, the unit uses ATRAC Type-R. At high speed, the unit reverts back to an older ATRAC codec (4.5?). In anycase, Type-R is a dual-pass process. My unit can read CD-Text info straight off the disc and copy it to MD. It's limited to the first 20 tracks though, and it cuts off lengthy titles. But it works. Most of the time, I just do it manually with the remote.

The standard digital amp adds no real benifit to the sound. The HD amp is different - it alters the charcter of the sound. The main difference to my ears is a substantially lower sound floor. (ie no hiss).

That's actually a great idea. Especially now that we have ATRAC Lossless. Some sony CD players, and a huge range of PCDP/Car Audio/DVD/Home Stereo System will only support MP3 on CD-Data discs.

Go on... I DARE YOU!

Well, dubbing CD to MD on my bookshelf (realtime digital) does indeed have a louder volume than when I copy the same track using the units NetMD features. I recall than when using my old N510 NetMD, NetMD recordings would only ever peak at 4 out of 6 of the level indicators, whereas recording from a DVD player using optical (at the unit's auto/default recording level) would peak at 5 out of 6 - the optimal level according to the unit's manual. I got better output by doing realtime. Don't know if this applies to HiMD, would be interesting if someone could confirm.

If the disc was orginally in NetMD mode, than you've lost the songs for good. Only HiMD can upload to PC. See our FAQs for more information.

Great idea... Waits in anticipation.

Recording using real-time optical will yield louder volume than downloading the music to your unit with SonicStage. It's a limitation with all NetMD units, AFAIK. Try recording in real-time (if not already).

Yep, that's what I was trying to say. WAV (or compressed lossless) file that better resembles the original CD data = more accurate.

Yes, lossless is lossless. But EAC can rip your CDs into the lossless format of your choice more accuratley, compensating for read errors and other glitches that happen in the process.

AFAIK, there are technical limitations within the hardware itself that prevent PC uploading with NetMD. It's not possible, and NetMD was not ever designed with this in mind. Obviously there was demand for it at the time, hence HiMD today. No Sony aren't big meanies, but their short-sightedness has provided some frustration with many users.

I thought this thread was meant to be about software. Sorry if I'm sounding a tad tight here, but obvously dex's input has some merit - Sony do read these forums and will implement changes that are possible and also worthwhile for them to do. With the efforts they are putting into their new CONNECT player, feedback of this sourt could be valuable.

Full article - http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060215-6190.html Enjoy.

Yep, old-skool MD was designed as a replacement for the cassette tape. That's what I still use it (MD) for - recording shows off the radio, and making mixtapes, etc. There's a bit of an effort to ressurect MD swapping through these forums. I personally don't have the energy for it at the moment, but I might take the plunge in the future. Old-skool MD seems to well and truly be in decay by now.

Yep, a few. This page should help: http://bertrik.sikken.nl/netmd/mdhack.html

Yep, that's correct.

You mean "rehearsal mode"? Don't know any portables that do it on the top of my head.

* Downloading/Transcoding/Encoding: Reinstate LP4 and LP3 CD ripping for NetMD users. I know Sony are focusing their energy on HiMD/ATRAC3plus but there's no reason at all to remove a useful feature from the software as it has been done in the latest versions. Perhaps the software engineers at Sony will retort that too many ATRAC bitrates available to the user will cause confusion as to which bitrates are compatible with their respective devices. This, however, leads me to my next suggestion: * Interface: In the encoding options dialog box, seperate ATRAC3 and ATRAC3plus bitrates as done in previous versions. This will help alleviate confusion as to the compatibility of the various bitrates with the devices. Or better yet, seperate Hi-MD compatible from NetMD compatible codecs. Another option would be to allow SonicStage to only show ATRAC bitrates compatible with the users device. (ie if you own a NetMD or older generation ATRAC CD Walkman - then only show bitrates that can be downloaded to your device). Another suggestion: * DRM/Encryption: For those who choose to copy their music with DRM, or for music downloaded with CONNECT or other online services, allow the option to backup security tokens/keys rather than having to go through the whole hassle of backing up all the music library itself. This is available in Windows Media Player, so why not SonicStage? That way, users can append to their music library backups as necessary, and only need to worry about restoring the licences themselves.

The quality of MD Simleburner and SonicStage should be identical, since the use the same encoder. As for your first question, I'm not sure whether this is a difference at all between PC encoding and encoding on the unit. Certainly this was claimed about NetMD units in the past, but I'm not so sure about HiMD. I don't believe it personally. If anything, I would speculate that the PC encoding would be better, since the software codecs can be updated, while the hardware encoder on your unit is fixed.

That 11EL is certainly a nice remote control - had one for a little while.

You've missed the point - the reason it's called "lossless" is because no information or sound quality is lossed during compression. You won't be able to detect a difference between the orignal CD. The reason you can select a bitrate is because the "lossless" file actually contains a "lossy" track within the data at your selected bitrate. When transferring to MD, it transfers the lossy component of the track, but when you listen to the track on your computer, you're hearing the lossless version. It's a bit confusing, but this page auto clear things up: http://www.sony.net/Products/ATRAC3/tech/aal.html

I always hold down the SHIFT key when inserting CCCDs. In any case, EMI gives you the option of whether to install their components, and an uninstaller is included on the disc. I don't think there is really any fancy technology here, just an encrypted TOC, and a DRM-locked lo-fi WMA version of the music on the data sector of the disc. All it is really doing, is installing a small front-end player application. But to be honest I don't really care about playing my music on my PC - what I want is to be able to copy from CD to MD without any hassles. SCMS is just plain silly.

To be honest I am getting quite sick and tired of CD companies trying to prohibit their users making legal copies of their discs. Especially with EMI, who seem unsure themselves on the best way to achieve this. Most of their discs will play fine on my computer, using their own software to play an extremley-compressed, encrypted Lo-Fi Windows Media Audio version of the music on from the data section on the disc. More often than not, Nero (and other software too) seems to recognise the audio portion of the disc - thus rendering the copy-protection useless- so much for the TOC encryption. One of my discs, however, is so badly encrypted, that my computer will refuse to recognise either data or audio on the disc. But SCMS is going way to far - I've only encountered this on a disc once before. I chucked a new CD into my 333NT to copy to MD, and my unit duly informs me that I can't copy the disc due to SCMS. This is ridiculous, since the MD adds SCMS to the disc anyway to prevent further digital copies. No mention of SCMS was made on the CD. Fortunatley, I used Nero to re-burn the CD without all the SCMS and copy-control garbage - I've lost a CDR in the process though. I think this is an absolute infringement on users rights. I can understand why CD manufacturers would be keen to limit the use of their CDs with PCs, but to disallow me from making a copy on to MD using my own bookshelf unit (ie NOT MY PC) is just ridiculous. And to top it off, some of their CDs have SCMS, some don't. I wish they would wake up and stick with something consistent. I think I should complain to EMI. This is not fair.

I thought ClearType was a system-wide setting. Obviously not.