1kyle

Hi there --great Idea. I actually had one of these gizmos but never new what it was. It still was in the original package. Works fine (with software upgrade) --thanks. Note I only tried it on Windows XP -- I haven't got round (thankfully) to VISTA yet. Cheers -K

Using the MP3 conversion tool to convert ATRAC Advanced Lossless to 320 kbs MP3 works OK ==mp3 files stored in a test directory not in the SS library. Playback works via Windows Media player and Nero Show time. The same file played with Nero showtime seems to sound MUCH better than using the built in Windows Media player. Thisi to me is strange it should sound the same given identical hardware. Now if I try to play the file with SS 4.3 it just hangs ??. I have to re-boot to kill the SS application. So here we have a SONY program used to convert an ATRAC file to MP3 and yet the same file can't be played by SS. (It works if I FIRST import the MP3 file into the library but that makes NO SENSE as it will DOUBLE the size of the Library. Since a Library can't span multiple disks this is a HUGE waste of space and restricts the usability of the Library. I'm not sure what sort of I.T they have at SONY --but obviously they didn't try out a lot of this stuff first. I like a lot of Sony products --but Oh dear why does the USER INTERFACE HAVE TO BE SUCH A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE. Cheers -k

I'm not privy to Sony's sales details but I do often walk down London's Tottenham Court Road where there are very many electronics stores. These often have a few RH1 Units in them. While walking down the street to compare prices (this is still one London Street where you can "Haggle Prices" with the individual shops) you will find that by the time you've gone back to the first one or two shops the units have all been sold. The store owners usually say also that their next consignment is 90% sold out as well. OK this is a bit "empirical" but these shops DO sell loads of this type of stuff and I have no reason to believe these guys are lying. Perhaps Sony itself has been a bit surprised how well a device everybody thought had had its day is still doing so well and won't release the sales figures to avoid embarassing its own management. Cheers -K

For Non DRM'ed music --Never buy it anyway --why pay through the nose for "compressed" inferior quality music (by inferior quality I mean the quality of the sound recording --not the merits or otherwise of the particular songs --everbody has thier own taste in music) you can restore your library TO AS MANY COMPUTERS AS YOU LIKE. You need to 1) backup the music library using the Backup tool. 2) Connect to the Internet 3) Restore your Library. Note that restoring the library will DELETE ANY PRE-EXISTING LIBRARY ON THE TARGET HARD DISK. I've actually got a USB disc library which I can just plug in to any computer done this way. Note if you do want a "Shared Library"on a USB disk you need to ensure the volume ID is the same on all the computers you share the library on i.e if it's VOL F on computer A it also needs to be volume F on Computer B. If you SHARE a library don't upload any songs to it as these will only be recognized on the computer you uploaded the songs from ( Yo can re-build the libray again via backup and restore). I tend to have a working library on one computer and every so often back it up and restore to my "shared" USB disk. This method doesn't work of course for "DRM'ed" music. If you "re-install" Windows every so often you can actually copy the music Backup file to an archive disk -- use something like GHOSDT, Acronis backup (http://www.acronis.com) . After you've re-installed Windows restore your library backup and then run the SONIC STAGE RESTORE. Cheers -K

Hi all I still LOVE using a MDS JB980 deck. I have several MD's ripped into SP (I've got a couple of the older decks that can copy CD===>MD digitally although it takes a while as the copy is done at 2X the CD normal time). One of the problems is to get titling / track info on to the MD. I've done it a few times Manually -- vis SS to get the CD info and then cut and paste the song titles etc over to the MD but this takes a LONG time. Is there anyway to automate this process. (The JB980 deck played through a decent amp with good speakers is still one of the most enjoyable music experiences you can get -- as far as possible removed from highly compressed MP3's played on "Ipods" or similar and listened to on tiny bud earphones). Don't get me wrong -- for music on the move the portable player is probably OK but if you've never experienced music away from either a portable music device or a computer with fairly "Boomy" type sound systems you ahve really missed something). Cheers -K

Just wondering if Sony will surprise us all with an "RH1" type device that will work WITHOUT using SS (but will also be compatable with SS). I.e tracks can be loaded via SS or by any other program such as Windows Explorer etc. The RH1 is still selling suprisingly well -- I was hoping to get another unit cheaply -- I assumed that people wouldn't buy an RH1 anymore with the demise of ATRAC but it seems people are snapping these up while they still have the chance. Blank MD's (74 / 80 min) are also reasonably still available --but in the unlikeliest of places such as often in Supermarkets (Morrison's) etc. Maybe there's "still life in the old dog yet". Cheers -K

With the impending demise of Atrac Has anybody got any suggesstions for doing a LARGE Mass conversion to another format MAINTAINING Album, Artist and Track Titles. I've around 1000 CD's ripped which I certainly don't want to re-rip again. Currently (in spite of the criticisms) I'm using Sonic Stage 4.3 and actually don't have any problems with it. (I don'y download music etc ==I just rip from CD's -- never been a problem with DRM and that other Crud. The latest Sony Flash players will also play ATRAC (Still) and you vam plug them into the USB unit on the front of the latest sony car radios --works a trear. I'm still going to be using MD even if it's the fina; end of the format for a long time yet so Atrac Advanced Lossless at least can be converted (losslessly) into other formats such as WAV etc. I think the main conversion issue is not per se the actual mechanics of transforming one codec into another but in maintaining all the track, artist, album etc info without a bit of hassle. Any suggestions on ATRAC (AL_ ===>WAV===>other decent codec Preferably GUI based , must keep the "Tag" info and can run with "selections" i.e you can select what albums to convert each run. Thanks guys -K

Hi sparky -- That's the WHOLE POINT. You are using filetree --OK --it's still an INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM. You've applied an ID3 filetag to the tracks so you can retrieve them. My whole point here was to say that once you get beyond a certain number of tracks you DO need some type of search algorithm to find / organise the tracks. Windows explorer etc just won't cut it anymore. Your post here just amplifies exactly what I've been saying. It doesn't mean you have to use commercial software but you have just shown that you DO need some type of system to manage the music tracks. Cheers -K

Actually whether the data is held in a flat file or some sophisticated data base system people will STILL want some logical way of retrieving the data. You might want particular tracks or types of tracks. I can assure you it's not easy searching through ANY large filing system without some decent search criteria / indexing. Music management software doesn't have to imply DRM restrictions in any way whatsoever. DRM is a property thta's applied to the DATA - not to the search engine used to find the track(s). Even if you have a decent memory managing say up to 30 albums (on average around 300 tracks) can be done manually --but over that it becomes incresingly more difficult unless you choose the same tracks over and over again. Once you get into the 150 plus albums (>1500 tracks) then most people will have a problem with manual retriecal -- that's why they use playlists etc --these are a basic "music management system" albeit rather manual. Newer systems would automate this process more.. Cheers -K

Actually I don't believe this --if you just want a cheap music player there are enough suitable alternatives to the MD out there now. (And I'm saying this as a guy who'se been using MD's since they first came out a long time ago). For just music playing even the Sony cigar like NW-S706F should keep most of the "Ipod generation" happy. Most people buying an RH1 aren't really the "Low end" consumers . A cheap and more "plasticy" version of the RH1 would be a TOTAL WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY both from the manufacturing and consumers points of view. Just look at the problems that beset the RH10 --potentially a great play back device even if it was a bit thick. Great screen and navigation facilities --but let down by a really shoddy construction --obviously designed by people who've never used a music device in a crowded and hectic place like the London undergound system. --And the stupid Battery latch which would invariably break the 2nd time you attempted to remove the battery. Dropping the price of an RH1 sounds nice (doesn't everybody always want to get products really cheaply anyway) but it wouldn't necessarily generate more revenues for SONY. There probably will be a final MD unit released --most likely based on the RH1 but with total drag 'n drop. Don't hold your breath however for any new decks to be released. -- Actually this is a shame as I dislike intensely the idea that all your home entertainment / multi-media has to be done via a PC. What's wrong with a nice separate room for Audio, and another for film / dvd watching etc. To me a laptop is "Work" and when I'm at home I really don't even want to LOOK at a computer. The RH1 currently is still a great selling device --- you won't find many on ebay which says immediately that owners of this device are MORE thyan happy with it. Cheers -K

Actually I think a lot of people have tried cracking the ATRAC DRM encryption algorithms but without much success. The Engineers at Sony should have been put in charge of sites protecting against "Identity Theft" etc. Note here I'm discussing cracking the CD ripping algorithm as this is not restricted by patented technology and "normal CD's" still don't have DRM applied to them. I'm not suggesting that you should try and break i_choones etc. Most systems have been hacked one way or another but MD ATRAC still is as hard a nut to crack as was until recently Fermat's last theorem ( for any Integer > 2 there is NO solution to the equation X to the power n +plus Y to the power n = Z to the power n. Solved a few years ago by an English Mathematician Wiles using techniques that didn't exist in Fermat's time). I think also that people will still want some type of Music Management software -- just drag and drop won't manage your music decently when you get a few thousand tracks. I'm a Pro photographer and have a similar problem managing databases of 100'000's of photos. However I still love my MD units and theres years of life left in them yet. Cheers -K

Actually the Drag 'n drop idea was about to happen anyway since Walmart and others started allowing (finally) downloadable DRM free music (although I believe this is still compressed so you won't get CD / WAV quality). It will eventually happen that we will be able to get downloadable uncompressed DRM free music --till then the CD will still be around --an even older piece of gear than the (potentially) superior MD. This little snippet from the BBC basically comes up with the intense irritation that consumers get when they have purchased something and find that they can't really use it in the way they want to. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6949607.stm Dropping ATRAC is perhaps a bad idea -- they don't actually have to do that to provide drag 'n drop -- in fact with the really fast chipsets available these days a built in atrac<=====>mp3 de / transcoder could actually work as well. I don't think this per se signals the death knell for the MD format. The RH1 is still selling for around 220 GBP / 310 EUR in the UK and is still very popular. A real drag 'n drop MD 4th generation recorder would be fantastic if SONY could do it --also un-restricting the Net MD stuff which really crippled the format. Cheers -K

I'm also not a Vista fan --however it's almost impossible to get a new computer without VISTA being installed (also you don't get the Windows install disks anymore). However I'm running XP Pro as a VM under VISTA using VMWARE. MD works fine in this case as does SS 4.3 -- no probs installing it on the XP VM apart from the slow response from the SONY server. Cheers -K

I'm afrrid I've given up on waiting for a Sony HI-MD car radio. However this unit works fine with a lot of USB devices (unfortunately not MD) and also has a front AUX in so you can play your HD's quite easily. Will play all sorts of USB music players and anything else just use the front AUX in. It will also play ATRAC and MP3 CD's , WMA (ugh) and AAC. quite a decent radio as well. My old MD kenwood radio finally packed up so I had to get a new one. This one does the job perfectly. (It will drive an MD changer or a CD changer as well if you can be bothered hunking around that sort of stuff in the boot of your car). I really think we aren't going to get a car Hi-MD radio so I'd suggest looking around for decent alternatives . This Radio is around 102 GBP in Halfords in the UK tax paid and I'm quite impressed with it. Cheers -K

The problem with this type of gear is 1) You are out in the field --say Iraq or wherever --what do you do when the internal unit is full and you need to record some more. 2) How do you copy the stuff off the unit for archival purposes. 3) You've got a quick little assignment without Internet access. You need to copy your recording on to some media and Fed X it somewhere. Whilst the korg is a great recording device it doesn't get over the fact that you often will want to copy the stuff off the hard disk on to other media. MD is PERFECT for this stuff (if only SONY could realize it). Cheers -K

The Motorola RAZR V3 phone charger (mains) charges the RH1 -- no probs.. It doesn't work the other way around (i.e the SONY RH1 charger doesn't charge the RAZR phone). I'd suspect that if you can find an external battery pack that is compatable with the Motorola RAZR phone it would probably work. The Car adapter for this phone also works in charging the RH1 --so you could probably make a 12 V adapter by hacking off the cigarette lighter end of the car phone charger and connecting this to 9 X 1.5 batteries in a box or whatever. Anybody willing to try this. Cheers -K

Just replying to those who've asked about SB on Vista. It's not "Officially" supported on Vista (Wrong OS). However you can often get "legacy" programs to work by using the little publicized VISTA feature -- run program in COMPATABILITY mode. You get several choices here including XP compatability mode. Some programs will run fine as the XP compatability mode will "poodlefake" the application to think it's running on XP (or whatever compatability mode) you chose. This will force the application as well to load the XP drivers instead of the Vista one's. I haven't had time to try this for SB but it in theory should work. Note you will also have to run the installer itself in "Compatability Mode" otherwise the program won't install. As for the arguments "To Vista or not to Vista" -- this is really a discussion for another forum as is how to get 32 bit legacy applications to run on 64 bit versions of Vista. My main gripe is that any new (PC type) computer you get these days whether laptop or desktop seems to come already with VISTA installed even if you'd rather stick with XP. Cheers -K

1) Disk storage these days (even for impecunious students) is incredibly cheap. For example in PC WORLD in the UK (not either the cheapest place on the planet to buy stuff, nor the cheapest store) a 300 GB disk costs less than 60 GBP (90 EUR) INCLUDING VAT. 2 of these drives will probably store more music than you are ever likely to have on MD collections. 2) Use any LOSSLESS format --it really doesn't matter as you can convert the lossless format to any "playable" format you care to name. Most computers now are fast enough to do the conversions without a problem and without taking a lot of time. 3) enjoy. (OT -- however at the current time DVD-RAM storage is definitely the most reliable of current DVD-Read /Write formats. -- Blu-Ray is still too new and expensive to play around with at the moment). DVD+RW / DVD-RW have too many "Unpredictable Errors" to reliably use these media for many read / write cycles. The Spec specifies around 1,000 but usually will be much less. DVD-RAM is guaranteed to have more than 250,000 REad Write Cycles and is guaranteed to have a life of around 200 years --although not being that type of Engineer I've no idea of how they test this stuff, - Google on DVD-RAM will give you a host of info, Cheers -K

I think you DO have to load the drivers for Vista I think these are on the download section. Another get around *might* be to install SS and run in XP compatability mode (32 bit system). I know Simple Burner can work on Vista when run like this. Cheers -K

Hi there --some versions of VISTA will allow you to run Simple Burner. If you try and install "As IS" you'll get "Unsupported Operating system". However if you can get Administrator access you can force Vista to run Simple Burner in "Compatability Mode" where the program is "Poodle Faked" (anybody who's ever restored antique furniture will know where this expression came from) into thinking it's running on XP. (Not sure if this works on the 64 bit version of Vista but it's fine on some 32 bit versions. Open an Explorer window and navigate to the .EXE file for the program. Then... Right click on the program file (the .EXE or .COM file). Select Properties from the menu that pops up. Select the Compatibility Tab in the dialog. Cheers -K

I've got over 700 CD's of classical music collected over the years. MD will last probably longer than CD-R's or other "Consumer" type media. I'm not so sure about the advice given here to convert everything to MP3's. There's no problem in having a library of ATRAC Lossless -- this will be compatable with your current MD system and you can then also convert the Atrac lossless to any other format you care to name (eitherdirectly if the format is supported or by creating WAV and then choosing your format. If like me you've got a decent shelf MD unit and not totally dependent on Hi-MD portable units you can reasonable expect YEARS and YEARS of use out of the gear. There is obviously the question of whether you are happy usin g a proprietary format for storing your music --but as it's LOSSLESS you won't have any problems doing conversions later on (and current sony flash players etc will play atrac lossless directly as will your computer). We can probably argue till the cows come home over what' s the best format / codec for classical music. MP3 @ 320 IMO is not the best option. For Classical music I still think ATRAC offers the best listening experience however only your own ears will be the real judge. Forget even THINKING about 128 kbs mp3's for classical music. I know I'll gert slagged off here but so long as you store your music on your computer in a LOSSLESS format you can always convert it to whatever format future algorithms and techniques come out. Hard disk storage is CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAP now. Even in "Rip Off Britain" you can find 320 GB external USB disks for as little as 69 GBP (inc VAT) and those can be found in places such as PC WORLD (not usually the cheapest source of gear). Don't worry about storage costs or space these days. My only real gripe with the SS library storage system is that it currently doesn't seem to be able to span multiple disks. Cheers -K

I've asked this a few times but never got a single answer --however it's been some time so I thought I'll have another go - especially now a lot of you will have much larger music collections now. Is there any way of spanning the Music Library over more than one Volume. If say I'm using Atrac lossless at 352 kbs then on average I'm probably compressing a typical CD down to around 200 MP. So I'd get 5 CD's approx per 1 GB. (256 kbs gives around 7 CD's per 1GB but I prefer storing the music in a lossless format). So a 250 GB disk would hold around 1250 CD's. Now this might seem large but it's not an impossibly large number if you've been buying CD's for over 20 years. What I'd love to know is there any way of splitting this data base over several different volumes or disks. Currently what I do at the moment is have 2 or 3 different Windows VM (Virtual Machines) each one having their own music library. A bit messy but it works. It would be nice if the music DB could span several disks. I can't believe I'm the only one who'se run into this limitation. Cheers -K

Hi all SS 4.3 seems to have a lot more choices now when importing / ripping music from devices including AAC which is good (although protected data won't work --doesn't bother me as I don't ever buy "DRM'ed" music anyway). Here are the options ATRAC ATRAC Lossless WAV MP3 (up to 320 kbs) WMA (not protected content as far as I know) AAC (non protected content AFAIK) HE-AAC. As far as I can see from the library the MP3 files aren't specifically encrypted so if you want to transfer to a "Drag and Drop" non Sony device it *should* work provided you go to the actual files themseleves rather than use the library. Just click on your music library directory and find the actual MP3 album. I don't have any Non Sony devices currently. I did have a Lexar flash player but it gave up the ghost when I spilt some hot coffee over it so I can't actually try this out yet. You can also transfer to Sony flash players (those nice little Cigarette lighter shaped one's NW-706F for example. Taken years and years but finally Sony seems to have fixed SS to an almost decent product. Cheers -K

I've had no probs running SS 4.3 on a 32 bit Vista premium edition. I've also run this successfully on a Vista VM machine (again 32 bit) running as a GUEST OS under VMWARE running SUSE 10.2 (32 bit again) as the HOST OS. I haven't tried the 64 bit version s yet but the 32 bit works fine. I'm a bit disappointed about the end of Simple Burner as with Simple Burner you can burn to MD directly 4.3 without loading to the library first which is quite a useful feature when ripping CD's. With SS you have to import into the library first (an extra step). I wish SS 4.3 would have had the Transfer / burn to MD (or other walkman device) directly without having to import into a library first. However if you DO have to import from a music library It seems to be "snazzier" or "zippier" than previous versions of SS --even with the "bloatware" overhead of Vista. Haven't tried this on XP yet but I'll have a go running on a Windows XP VM as I can test this quite easily later. BTW MD simple burner DOES actually work on Vista 32 bit currently - download the drivers as well for Net MD etc. Cheers -K

I've got a 2GB LEXAR unit that I got Free with a set of Bose Cans I bought recently so this should work too. I was hoping that the MD recorder would just plug straight in being a SONY product. It DOES have a rear AUX in -- why on earth are these AUX IN's always invariably at the rear. It can be attached to a MD changer (according to the spec) so it still seems strange that it wouldn't play MD via a USB - especially being SONY gear. However probably being SONY the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. OT however. OK it's around 2,000 GBP but the new Sony Laptop with Blu Ray dvd writer and HDMI output is Magnificent and does GENUINE 1080p as well. SKY HD is only good currently at 720p (still infintely superior to current TV standars). Gotta have one --now my 6 numbers had better come up this week as that's the only way I'm going to be able to snag one of these --Sony still ocasionally produce world beating products. Cheers -K