ROMBUSTERS

You can! just drop the MP3 files to your MD/USB drive and hope the mac doesnt crash... oh wait you want to actually listen to them on the player hmm... Sony has not released a version of SS for the mac and probably wont unless MD gains mass acceptance. SS is integral to the transfer of music as it communicates directly with the device and provides the encrypt/decrypting necessary for the data to go from the computer to the MD. maybe if Real licenses Sonys HiMD tech, and they get it to run on mac it could work but untill then its probably impossible, unless using the way you described

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i believe it does this by default although ive never thought to try it. just run a test, it'll be the same with MD units. if the transfer format is set to Standard and the file you are transferring is a MP3 it'll ask you which bitrate to convert with

no no no sorry maybe i wasnt very clear my *main* question was will there be a huge noticable difference when transcoding between LP2 and LP4 (i.e. downsampling) as opposed to going straight to LP4. let me put it into story form lol Little Jimmy wanted to record a lot of music (we'll call it Song A) on his new MD player. He chose LP4. Little Sally wanted to record music (again Song A) at a good bit rate but then found she didnt have enough room to fit it all in, so she took her already LP2 encoded Song A and reencoded it into LP4. Both played it on their equiptment. How would Song A in Jimmy's case (straight to LP4) sound compared to Sally's Song A (LP2 to LP4)? lol hope that helps

food for thought All of the A3 modes include extra bits to allow for 'backwards' compatibility with non-MDLP players, telling them it wont work or playing back scilence. Wouldn't be safe to assume the 132-128 = 4 bits is wut is used for this reason? I noticed the same thing with LP4 66 and HiLP 64 (although I know they changed the way it encodes so this is kind of different)

is the HMDHIFI folder wut contains the music? and is the reason u just cant copy because its missing the TOC? isnt there a way to clone the TOC?

Hey I also live in Canada and will be recieving a HiMD this christmas. Actually the 700. I'm not 100% if Canada even has the 800 or at least the futureshop i went to did not carry it. Many remotes that worked with older MD units are compatible with the HiMD as well and beyond the one for the 900 im not sure if any other HiMD models' remotes have backlights. So you're probably better off getting an older one but dont quote me on this talk to other people on the forum, they know better. They are the same unit, as you pointed out, so no differences and its not fat at all as Ive held it in my hands, seems smaller actully then my old MDLP MZ-N505 but that could just be me. All the HiMD's will perform the same as they have the same inner components.

Ok ordinarily I would know the answer to this question however I am unfamiliar with the Atrac technology, and your opinions also help. My questions is: would there be a noticeable difference between the two methods mentioned below: 1) RAW CD > LP4 2) RAW CD > LP2 > LP4 Now im sure on a waveform basis option 1 is better however audio was (especially when going all the way to a low bitrate like LP4) will it make a difference?

Hi. Is there a way for sonic stage to display the amount of time remaining in MB instead of time? For example right now it says I have 17min of SP time remaining but that means nothing to me when my recordings are in LP2. Any suggestions?

sony pretty much tried to lock this ability to down to stop you form copying music from the disc as well. One mans backup is another mans piracy

haha and you cant reall call him an (insert bad adjective) with him being your boss and all can you? that sucks. i hope he at least gave u a bonus

i know they have indeed upgraded, altered and generally improved all verisons of Atrac and Atrac3 although I personally cant say for sure if this happened between version 1.5 and 2.1 but it is possible

and this improvements would be on the encoder side right? so that as long as I still do everything through SS it'll sound better and better ?(because obviously i cant upgrade the encoder chip - which they should have allowed via firmware updates)

There should be a version of SS for you no matter where you are. If your looking for the Japanese version then all I can suggest is to navigate their website. wrong. as long as you have the format in either WAV,ATRAC or MP3 and in some cases WMA it'll work. But u need SonicStage to do it. open SS and it'll convert them to ATRAC for you (and your netMD) not sure, ive never done optical recordings before but maybe your PC is not set up to send sound out of that channel and that would be a more soundblaster related question that an MD one. Personally it depends on how much storage you want on one disc. For example using your netMD i think you can get something like 5 hours LP4 on one disc. well using the same disc reformatted in HiMD mode you can get many many more hours same file same quality. Atrac3+ is a mixed bag though. HiMD can also do digital recordings via optical in or again downloading through USB. Its all up to personal choice wether you take it back or not but i remember my MZ-N505 (oldie) netMD and it got something like 56hours of playback for one battery versus the HiMDs 20-something in best case senarios

burning MP3 encoded files to a CD just to rerip them to SS doesnt make sense. when you burn a cd from any compressed file it effectivly uncompresses it to wave form (i.e. a wav file) and then burns it as that is what CD players play. However this uncompressed wave form will still be missing the pieces the MP3 encoder dropped as it compressed it in the first place. Therefore dont waste your blank CDs burning them to get the same results plus transcoding them from your harddrive to your harddrive is much faster due to the fact that data can be taken form the HDD much much faster then it can from the CD. although again this doesnt really come into play due to the fact that the ATRAC encoding process is limited by how fast your processor that even a dcent CDROM drive should be more than enough to keep the data full.

the reason they dont offer you more bit rate choices is because the middle ground it already covered by the ATRAC3 codec. It offers 132kbps/105kbps/66kbps a nice middle ground between the major HiSP/LP modes

Just did a quick 1 song test and noticed that while 105 sounded decent it lost a lot of base and definition that 132 has anyways i noticed something really weird about SonicStage, not that, thats a surprise to anyone on this forum... anyways i have 2 CD-ROM drives in my computer. One DVD-ROM drive made by Toshiba One DVD+-DLRW drive made by BenQ when i place a CD into the benQ drive it reads it at a very high speed, i can hear the drives motor going pretty well however when placed into my toshiba drive its locked at a very slow rate of transfer and drive speed. both drives are set up the same with the only difference being the audio cables are attached to the toshiba any ideas any1?

There seems to be a lot going against MD in general in this world. Bad software coupled with old failures and rediculous stricness on Sony's part have all hindered the formats growth as a potential major player. However even on these boards, where complaints are many, it is obvious that there are a lot of things going for the MD format and its sucessor Hi-MD. Therefore I dedicate this little place of virtual space for those who love MD and use it in various ways to the fullest of its ability as well as those casual music listeners who were initial drawn to the format by the small design, interchangable discs, and with the advent of MDLP 5 hours of music per disc. Please post why you love MD and what brought you to the format as well as your best experiences and cool things you've done! Show the world that MD is well loved :happy:

so is this like a middle ground bit rate between 66/64kpbs and 132?

sorry i think u misunderstood me. i was refering to the difference between 132kbps and 105kbps

thanx in all of your people's oppinions is there any noticable difference between the two? I mean i know it sounds rediculous with the only difference being 27kBits but that can add up to a 65 song or 4.34 hours difference in the long run (average 4min per songon a 1GB disc)

wut exactly is ATRAC3 105kbps equivelent to in terms of MDLP modes or is it new?

I.e. hardware wise? is the disc physically the same? could u format the same disc data and audio (obviously not at the same time)? Or are they different?

I assume you mean that the data is seperated from the audio files via partitions (just like HDD). However this just means that there is a set amount of the overall data granted to each, not where each is placed. Therefore it is possible (although it would take numerous edits to get this bad) for a few kilobytes of an audio file to be located near the center of the disc while the next chunk is located on the outside, requiring seek time to get there. I understand your point about puttin excess work on the optical head however wouldnt it be nice for SS to create a temp copy of the disc contents, format it (by effectivly erasing its registry) and then start writing (in order) back to the disc?

Since MDs use a 'mock-up' FAT file system is it at all possible to have the recorder defrag this disc? Personally i think it would make sense because after a while of editing discs there info scattered everywhere and although the memory buffer makes it possible to play without inturuptions i find the seek noise slightly annoying.this problem would be *mostly* solved if the data on the disc could be placed (physically) in order. Anyone know or is it just not something anyone cares about lol.