Kryztof

Indeed you have mentioned an important point: The mp3 has to be converted to wav (44.1 kHz) before it can be burnt on CD. On the basis of further testing I found out that the cause of the poor sound quality is the sample rate of the original mp3 file which is 48 kHz. Although Sonic Stage should be able to convert mp3 with a sampling rate of 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz or 96 kHz and a bit rate between 32 and 320 kbps, I get a bad result converting 48 kHz-mp3 files. Everything is fine with 44.1 kHz. Can anyone confirm this finding?

In dependence of the software (MD Simple Burner vs. Sonic Stage) transferring files from PC to Hi-MD leads to different results regarding the sound quality. Of course the original file is the same (mp3, 320 kBit/s) in both cases. Using MD Simple Burner causes no problems, e.g. the file has the expected quality. Against this the quality is poor if Sonic Stage (2.3.00.11120, German version) is used, i.e. the file sounds like being coded with 64 or 48 kBit/s. In both cases the properties of the files are displayed as ATRAC3plus 256 kBit/s. There is a minimal difference in the file sizes on the disc: 5,980,160 Bytes (transferred with MD Simple Burner) vs. 5,963,776 Bytes (transferred with Sonic Stage). Has anybody made the same observation? I am grateful for every suggestion.