MAVickers

It's hard to tell from your picture, but is the "B" end of that cable the same as what I've attached here? In any event, I've recently purchased one of these and have been pretty happy with it. I'm pretty mobile so it's nice to have little trinkets like that. Michael

The process described actually works the same. You drag a handful of your MP3's into SonicStage, view all tracks, sort by codec or import date, select the files, right click, and convert. It doesn't store them on the unit during this process, it just creates the ATRAC file from the MP3 file. If you need the resulting ATRAC files residing ultimately on your wireless SAN device, you can copy the files over, remove the reference from your SonicStage library, and then readd the references by dragging them into SS. Michael

How many tracks in your DB? Michael

Ah, yes, that would be problematic. Do you know how to program? I spent an afternoon figuring out the structure of the database because I was thinking of writing a utility that would actually do the opposite of what you are doing. I archive my collection in mp3 format and save them on DVD, and have been doing batch conversions and then deleting the mp3 files off the HD (by hand). I've only made it to the letter "D" in my CD collection. With enough motivation I'll write the utility to clear out the mp3 files in the db and hd. Michael

Have you tried this? Michael

Hey there. Does it still do that even if you turn off "Delete the converted files from the hard disk after transferring" ? It's in Tools | Options | Transfer | Advanced. [attachmentid=500] Michael

Make sure that you have auto-insert notification turned on for the drive. The easiest way to do that is by downloading Microsoft's TweakUI from their PowerToys collection (this is the XP version... I believe there are others). Michael

I doubt FAT is the reason as all the tracks seemed to be jammed into one file on the disc. Michael

That looks sweet. Is the inside big enough to hold a set of earbuds, such as these? I love them but they give you a pretty worthless thing to transport them with. Do you have a link where they can be purchased online?

I've been having remarkable success with transcoding MP3 files with 3.1. Prior versions used to fail on files quite regularly, or produce a converted file that played back silently. I'm upwards into the several thousands of converted files and have had maybe one or two hiccups. Michael

Not necessarily true. In my made-up dreamworld there would be enough RAM to cover the capacity of the disc. If you uploaded a gig worth of material to the device and uplugged it to start playing, it could play back from the RAM while still writing to the device in the background. The write operation could be indicated on the LED and prevent you from turning the unit off or ejecting the disc until it completes (much like it does now). It's already doing this somewhat as I'm pretty sure MD devices carry a little bit of cache memory with them. I just propose putting enough cache memory in to cover the capacity of the media.

Because you either can't swap media with a flash recorder or the flash media is too expensive to carry 10 or 20 of them with you. I wouldn't use flash memory, either, but regular RAM (although I'm not sure how much it would soak the battery). RAM would work much faster and allow you to achieve faster writes when uploading from the PC to the device. You could upload a whole gig of stuff within a minute and then the device could take it's time writing to the media.

I say cram a gig worth of memory in the unit and let all the writing be cached. The memory could be used as cache for playback as well.

Indeed. I tried it out today and it did not work.

← Off the top of my head, stability and some of the database operations seems to work a little faster. It takes a bit of getting used to the different way it handles playlists vs. records (I accidentally deleted some music files off my drive starting out), but once you get the hang of it, it seems to make a little more sense Sounds a little fishy to me! When you used SimpleBurner were you burning straight from a CD or from a mounted CD image that you created from MP3/WMA files? That is correct, you can not download audio from SimpleBurner to the HiMD device and then upload that same audio from the HiMD device to SonicStage. The upload function only works for live recordings that you've created using the line-in or mic inputs on a HiMD device in HiMD mode. If you can pick out sound degradation @ 256kbps then you must have a great set of ears. Michael

Hmm, I did not know that little trick. I'll give it a try this weekend... my recordings are typically about 35 - 50 minutes. If this works correctly, I should only have one track instead of many? I'm using an NHF800, btw.

Try this article on for size. Michael

I would also be all over that. I recently purchased a new head unit for my truck (just something cheap to replace the factory AM/FM unit) and briefly considered this model. It's not MiniDisc, but it would provide some capatibility with SonicStage. I ended up buying a unit with aux input and plugging my MD unit into it. Michael

Wow, this just gets better and better. Where are these keys stored?

It can convert to MP3 as well as play the MP3s you already have, and it plays them natively on the unit now without having to convert them into ATRAC.

Not really. It would have cost more money to cripple it than to leave it the same as the other models.

Ugh, are you serious? If I use other backup software to just backup the OMG files, and then reimport them into a blank SS database (on the same computer)... is it going to choke on the DRM?

It's quite easy to understand the contents of the SS database, actually. I just don't think there is anything worth securing in it.

Typically a backup application will backup your files and then either remember what it backed up in a database (which the software will do a comparison against on future backups) or turn off the archive bit on the file (which will be turned back on by the OS when the file is modified). I just backed up my music database using the SS backup tool, and for kicks I ran it immediately again to see if it keeps track using either method. It doesn't, apparently. After "calculating disk space" it tells me that it needs the same amount of disk space as it did the first time around. That is dumb, dumb, dumb. Is mine just not working properly, or is that the way it is? If that is the way it is, I'll be looking at something else to back all the files up (along with the database). Does anybody have any experience using a different backup tool for OMG files, and did SonicStage throw a fit when you restored the files? Just curious.

Sounds like par for the course to me. Last night I set up about 1.2 GB of MP3s to convert and it took somewhere north of an hour. I started it and went and watched NUMB3RS on tv. It's not exactly apples-to-apples (my MP3 varied from 160kbps to 320kbps, and I was converting to 132kbps ATRAC), but I guess the operative word when converting from one format to another is patience. Short of buying a faster computer, I don't know what else you would do.