doctorfrog

Well, shuffling 2-3 CDs on a NetMD minidisc ain't as fun as being able to generate a shuffle from among the 200 CDs in my collection. ;-) I suspect that I'm not the only one who feels this way. And, KrazyIvan, check out epitonic.com and comfortstand.com for some decent free music, and lots of it.

Hi all. I recently purchased a used NetMD player on ebay, and was a bit disappointed with the inflexibility of SonicStage in comparison to other music managers/players like Winamp, iTunes, and Musikcube. I tend to listen to a random selection of music, and don't really enjoy manually picking songs to transfer to my player. So, I found a simple way to put random music onto a Minidisc using a fuller-featured program, iTunes. Though bloated and a bit kludgy, iTunes is a great music manager. The steps involved are pretty simple: 1. Create a random playlist of appropriate size using iTunes. 2. Drag-n-drop the tracks from the iTunes playlist into a new playlist in SonicStage. 3. Transfer the new random tracks to your Minidisc, and enjoy! I wrote up a more detailed article on this method on my blog. You can read it here. And if you visit my blog, please leave a comment and let me know what you think! Thanks, frog note: The blog is hosted by blogsome.com. I wrote this article for fun and receive no money for the ads that blogsome hosts along with my blog.

An interesting contrast. My girlfriend just bought me an iPod mini, and though I like it, I'm afraid of damaging or losing it because of the rumors of its delicacy in terms of battery life and the earphone jack. It's just so... *nice.* Though I was resistant to installing iTunes, I can see just how much love Apple lavishes on their users. It is a seriously friendly and polite bit of software, and gives just a sliver of what creates the fanaticism one sees in Mac users. By contrast, Sony's MD products have, in my experience, tended to be rock solid. I've never thought anything of dropping a MD into my pocket and running off. However, the attitude that their policies and software exude display a kind of contempt and distrust of their customers. Even more interesting is the level of fanaticism both companies manage to inspire in their customers, in spite of their different tactics.

A few other things to add: SS 2.3 takes up a whopping 58 MB of RAM on my current machine, and I haven't even asked it to *do* anything yet. By comparison, iTunes, no lightweight herself, weighs in at 38 MB. The Connect store appears to be an unconditional part of SS 2.3, and loads automatically upon startup, using the security-risk-prone Internet Explorer engine to render the Connect opening page, which is filled with no less than 8 different flash animations. I am considering purchasing a cheap Net-MD to knock around, and I'm wondering if it will be as easy as plugging it into my machine after installing SS 2.3, or if I will have to load software drivers as well. Or, should I just stick with 2.2, as it seems from a few posts in here it does not contain mandatory launching of the Connect store?

I've installed the US version and 'captured' the files it downloaded and put them into a .zip file. I can upload this ~72MB zip file somewhere on minidisc.org if wanted. You can also 'capture' the downloaded files yourself in your XP/2K's profile Local Settings/Temp/ folder. It'll take a bit of searching. I'm installing SS 2.3 to determine whether I can tolerate it on my own system. Based on this, I may or may not buy a MD unit. Further warning: this is a brutal installation that installs a multitude of packages on your system, in an automated button-clicking fashion. Afterwards, it warns, not *asks* that it will restart your system without your permission. It may have also said something insulting about my mother before restarting.

I'll take a look on ebay, but there are a number of things I don't like about it. I really doubt I'll find any worthwhile deals there.

I'll definitely be looking at a few stores for clearance stuff, but the selection of Minidisc players is so low there isn't much to pick from. I could kick myself for not buying the 510 when I had a chance a few years ago, since I figured that Sony would always have a cheaper portable that takes line-in. Turns out they did quite a few things with Minidisc that didn't make sense to me.

Thanks for the reply! I'm considering the $100 orange Psyc unit. Seems to be the default cheapie. Since I already have a bunch of Minidiscs, it works out ok. Since Sonicstage converts on the fly, can I tell it where I want the ATRAC files to be stored? Can I tell it to keep the ATRAC's of certain mp3's, and get rid of others? Also, is it possible to just tell Sonicstage to fill a minidisc full of random mp3's, or ones I haven't listened to, or other 'intelligent' features? The unit I am interested in is here. Any thoughts on it? It is actually a bit thicker than my older MZR-500, and looks kind of cheap. That doesn't bother me too much, but I was wondering if maybe the amp on it was weak or if there were any other complaints.

I recently lost my iriver flash player, and am now in the market for a new music player. I see that NetMD units can be had for $100 up, which is what I want to spend. I currently have an MZR-500 which I love, but the volume doesn't get very high and I'm concerned I might lose it as well. Seeing as how Sony no longer offers Minidisc recorders that take digital or analog line in for a low price anymore, this device is rather valuable to me. Are there any advantages a new low-end NetMD unit has over my MZR-500, other than fast transfer and track titling? I'm a pretty patient guy and don't really mind recording in real-time, but it would be nice to transfer at high speeds. Probably the biggest obstacle to my getting NetMD is the Sonicstage software. I know it has to convert mp3's to ATRAC in order to get them on the minidisc. Does convert mp3's on the fly, then transfer them? Or does it insist on duplicating my entire mp3 collection and storing them on my hard drive? If it does, can I delete the ATRAC files, and still have Sonicstage 'remember' where my mp3's are so I don't have to reintroduce them to the program? As an aside: That iriver flash player really spoiled me. I could use it as a portable hard drive, it had a radio, a fantastic amplifier, 5 band EQ, and voice and radio recorder. All this for $100. I'd get a new one, but want to move beyond its paltry 128MB capacity without spending more. For those still clinging to Minidisc, there is definitely life after Minidisc! Also, though it has surely been said time and again, damn Sony for what they did to a great format. I feel worst for the engineers who designed such great machines only to see them strangled by corporate paranoia.