atreyu

Maybe this will make it into the FAQ's... I recently had to reinstall my OS (WindowsXP SP2), and apps (ouch!)... and to my chagrin I found that when I installed SonicStage 3.1 and restored from my database backup I couldn't get SS to recognize my MZ-NH1! The really frustrating thing was that something was working... it showed up as a drive on my computer (allowing me to browse the HMDHIFI directory, etc.) and Simple Burner worked like a charm... but no amount of refreshes or unplug / replug / uninstall / reinstall cycles would cause SS to recognise it. I suddenly had a brain-flash... I realized that for some reason XP had selected a drive letter for the NH1 that was previously one of my network drives, and wondered if that was having an impact. So I changed the drive letter to an unused one, and immediately SonicStage detected the drive! Here's how to change a drive letter under Windows XP: 1) With the MD connected, right click on "My Computer" and choose "Manage" 2) Choose "Disk Management" under "Storage" 3) Scroll down on the lower rh pane until you see your MD ("Removable 965MB") 4) Right click on the MD's info bar and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths." 5) Select an unused drive letter.

An annoyance: when you right-click a track to send it to a playlist, there's no "browse" option to select anything other than the last few edited playlists that pop down. To add tracks to any other playlist you must open the "Create/Edit Playlist" window and manually scroll down to the playlist you want to add to.

See... that's what I used to do, but I like this method better. For the ImageDrive/SB trick to work you need *every* track on the CD archived (including crappy songs and even throwaway tracks and loooong tracks with a hidden song at the end). Otherwise Gracenote doesn't recognize the disc and I'm stuck with no tag info again. That's wasted space... I only want to archive songs I like, and if there's a hidden song on a track after 9 minutes of silence I'd rather rip it to WAV, edit it into two tracks and store those two tracks separately. Plus I'm not clogging my system... as I said in my initial post I'm deleting the WMA after I do the initial conversion to my format of choice (Hi-SP). Then the tracks are ready to transfer immediately, no conversion required. With the ID/SB trick I have to hunt down the right archive DVD, load it, fire up Nero, burn the image, mount the image, convert it realtime as I tranfer (slooow), delete the image, and then the next time I want to load up that album I have to go through that all over again.

I don't know if folks have discussed this much, but since (with one exception) SS is fully compatible with WMA 9, it also supports the WMA Lossless format. Anyway, I got to thinking today about how this makes it possible to get files of any format (OGG, FLAC, MPC, whatever) into SS reasonably-easily, tags & all. Please, no flames re: transcoding degradation... in my case I'm converting from either FLAC or high-bitrate MusePack. Besides, some people just don't care as much. In the past I've imported incompatible formats by using the excellent (and did I mention FREE?) dBpowerAMP Music Converter to convert the file into a stereo .WAV file, which I then imported into SS. The big problem was the fact that in doing this I lost all my tag information, and was forced to re-enter the info manually. Well, what I do now is convert my files into WMA Lossless, then import them into SS! No added deterioration introduced by going, say, FLAC->MP3->Atrac3plus, since going FLAC->WMA Lossless->Atrac3plus is exactly the same as going FLAC->Atrac3plus. And best of all.. all the tags (minus track#) are preserved!

Just found another bug... track number data on WMA files does not transfer to SS. No matter what the track number is on a WMA it is imported to SS as track 0. By the way, can anyone else confirm any of these bugs? Preferably on other equipment (mine is an NH-1) and/or other OS's (I primarily use SS on Win2k Pro).

Guess I can just list a few genres/artists I have available for swapping (i.e. I'd be interested in similar genres). Interested parties: post samples of what you have in trade and what you're interested in. Cross-genre ok (ex. "I have a ton of jazz to offer, but want country in return") Samples from my library: Jazz Vocals: Diana Krall, Jane Monheit, Madeleine Peyroux, Norah Jones... Alternative Pop: Barenaked Ladies, Keane, Sarah McLachlan... Contemporary Country: Rascal Flatts, Brad Paisley, Sara Evans, Matina McBride, SHeDAISY, LeeAnn Womack, Shania Twain, Faith Hill... Latin Pop / Latin Rock: Luis Miguel, Maná, Los Lonely Boys Contemporary Bluegrass: Alison Krauss & Union Station Quebecois: Natasha St-Pier Rock: Edwin McCain, Mark Knopfler Pop Vocals / Swing: Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, Frank Sinatra Christian Rock: Third Day, Jeremy Camp, David Crowder, MercyMe, Jennifer Knapp... Christian Pop: Wes King, Kristy Starling, Crystal Lewis

95% sure it was a problem for me under 2.3. Sample MP3 for me: Mono Length (m:ss): 113:08 Size: 13,260 KB Bitrate: 16kbps Frequency: 16kHz Lame 3.9 Encoder

A post in the Hi-MD area reminded me of another bug I've noticed: When mono MP3s (in my case long, low-bitrate mono mp3's of talk radio programs) are added to a playlist and transferred to MD they play back at faster-than-normal speed. I'm forced to work around the issue by using the excellent (and free) dBpowerAMP Music Converter to convert the mp3 to a mono WAV file, add the WAV to a SS playlist, then convert it to Atrac3plus 48kbps and delete the WAV file (via the converted track's properties dialog).

I've had the same problem... specifically with long, low-bitrate mono mp3's of talk radio programs. I just threw in the towel on the issue... I use the excellent (and free) dBpowerAMP Music Converter to convert the mp3 to a mono WAV file, add the WAV to a SS playlist, then convert it to Atrac3plus 48kbps and delete the WAV file (via the converted track's properties dialog). It's a drag, but it works and doesn't take *that* much longer than doing it automatically... you're basically just doing what SS would do anyway (internally it's trying to go MP3->PCM->Atrac, only SS's MP3->PCM step is failing).

Sorry, guess I didn't make myself clear. What I'm talking about is dragging an MP3 not already in SS into a playlist with tracks in it. For example, if I've got 10 new MP3's in an Explorer window, and an open, empty playlist... I can highlight the first 3 and drag them in... normal behavior... they're songs 1-3. But if I drag MP3 4 in, it'll wind up as song 1, even if it has an ID tag identifying it as track 4. And if I I then drag tracks 6-10 in, it's anybody's guess where they'll wind up in the order of things. 2.3 had behavior I consider correct... track 4 would go in the last spot, and 6-10 would be appended to the end, in order. As for the other issue, it only happened once, when I tried importing probably a couple of thousand "unregistered" .oma files (I'd done a "complete" install of 3.0, blowing away my library, and I was trying that before resorting to a 2-day old backup restore). But I noticed another poster's having what I suppose is the same problem. I'm not sure what format you're importing in... MP3?

I thought this happened to me on one mass import... but then on the 2nd or 3rd attempt I noticed that even though it seemed hung it was still using some processor power. So I just let it sit there for a good hour or longer, and suddenly it finished... i.e. it wasn't hung, it was just "chewing." I'll have to add that to my list of annoyances, though... there really should be some sort of progress bar.

I mostly like SS 3.0 (and overall prefer it to 2.3), but I wanted to vent about some of its bugs & annoyances, hoping Sony's monitoring this forum. Please add your own if you've got 'em! (I *have* done a full SS 3.0 reinstallation as per the FAQ.) I'm running Windows 2k Pro, but have seen most of this behavior on my less-used WinXP Pro laptop. 1 - (Bug) Deleting an album from an MD often deletes all the tracks in the album but leaves an empty album at the bottom of the list, which must be deleted again. 2 - (Bug) When you drag a new mp3 or wav (one not currently in SS) into a playlist with tracks in it, it shows up at the *top* of the playlist, instead of the bottom. Dragging multiple new mp3's/wav's into a playlist causes bizarre placement... tracks wind up scattered between the top & the middle. 3 - (Annoyance) In 2.3, transfers were flexible even after they'd started: if I didn't have enough space for the next album I wanted I could delete another album while the transfer was running. The deletion would complete before the remaining tracks/albums were tranferred, and the extra space would be useable immediately, so I could queue up the replacement album and walk away. In 3.0 the album isn't deleted until all the tracks are transferred, so queueing a replacement album brings up an insufficient space dialog. This really stinks when doing a huge transfer, as you must wait for the transfer to finish, or else cancel the transfer, delete the album you don't want, and requeue everything to get stuff to fit. 4 - (Bug related to #3) Deleting albums while a tranfer is in progress sometimes causes SS to hang at the end of the current album transfer. The only way to recover is to manually end the omgjbox process with Task Manager. When you restart SS & check the MD, that last album is missing. 5 - (Annoyance) Adding cover art to a CD (before you rip it) applies the art to each imported track, not just to the album itself as in 2.3. It also puts duplicate copies of the source .jpg into the album's folder... one copy for EACH song! I'd prefer to see a confirmation dialog like the one you get when you try to apply cover art to an existing album (ex. "The cover art has been applied to this disc. Would you like to apply it to every track you import from this disc?"). 6 - (Bug related to #5) Deleting unwanted cover art from each track in an album reduces the size of the .oma files, but does not remove the multiple, duplicate source .jpg's from the album's folder. 7 - (Bug related to #6) Manually deleting the jpegs left over from #6 causes the next database optimization to crash SS, and causes annoying warnings the next time you back up your library. I tried replacing the jpegs with 0 byte fake jpegs, but the result was the same. 8 - (Annoyance) When setting multiple properties for a playlist, if you set the Title, Artist, Artist's Initial and Genre fields and then drag over new cover art, all the other properties are cleared and you must set them again. 9 - (Related annoyance) The Artist's Initial field in the playlist properties is not automatically filled in with the artist's Initial, no matter how many times you've entered an initial for that artist. This should only have to be set when you first add an artist. 10 - (Annoyance) When doing a mass import of audio files, SS appears to be hung (not responding to mouse events, etc.). However it is using some CPU resources, and will eventually complete the import if you leave it alone for an hour or two. There really should be a progress bar to let you know it's really doing something. That's all I can think of for now.

Yeah... basically you *can't* just move songs from one album to another... you have to change the album name on the tracks you want moved, and they'll move over automatically (with a warning the first time you do it). Playlists are the only entities that still act pretty much like albums&playlists acted pre-3.0. I basically emulated a pre-3.0 setup by creating a playlist for every album that has all the tracks in that album, then setting my views to "playlists only." Then if I want to move tracks around like before I just do it.

Well... because that's slower, and a hassle. For one, I have the CDs at home, but sometimes want to transfer music at work. But even at home I don't want to wade through my CDs to pull out the ones I want, then spend a half hour swapping and re-filing CDs. The whole point (to me) of having them in digital form is not having to do that. I just scroll through a concise list of my albums, select a few, hit transfer and do something else while it takes care of the rest. Another thing: I love that when I'm listening to an MD and hear a song that sucks I can just delete it. Then, before I tranfer an album off my player I compare the album on the player to the album on SS and delete the rejects from SS. So the next time I want a given album I automatically get only the non-sucky songs... leaving more space for good stuff!

Overall I've been very pleased with SonicStage 2.3, but I'm running into a major frustration. My need seems super-simple (to me)... I want to be able to control what bitrate I use to send my music to my Hi-MD. First I ripped my entire CD collection to my HD in Hi-SP. Then I went to the first track of the first album, right clicked on it and selected "Convert Format...". I figured I could create a Hi-LP version of every track in my database, so I could choose which format I wanted to send to the player. My thought was that I could use Hi-SP for select albums on 1GB media and keep a number of Hi-LP mixes on standard media for road trips or other times I wouldn't mind the lower bitrate. Well... I immediately discovered that I couldn't convert from one ATRAC3+ bitrate to another (wtf?!?) -- I was forced to choose an ATRAC3 bitrate instead. Annoyed but determined, I selected ATRAC3 132kbps instead. Everything looked great... the "File Info" tab of the song's properties now showed 2 registered files for that track, one ATRAC3, one ATRAC3plus. But here's the rub... I can't figure out how the heck to send the 132kbps file to my Hi-MD! Even if I click on "Transfer Mode," hit the "Details..." button and choose ATRAC3 132kbps in the "Convert Automatically and Transfer..." dropdown the file still gets transferred as Hi-SP. It seems that the only alternative I have is the "Minimum bit rate transfer mode" -- but what if I don't *want* 48kbps? Plus, with this option I have to convert on a per-transfer basis, instead of running one mass conversion in the background for quick transfers later... since I can't convert from 256 to 48. Seemes there are two other pain-in-the-butt options... both involving re-ripping every CD in my collection at Hi-LP. <sigh> Option one: add the ripped tracks to the existing album, which means I can't transfer a whole album in one click any more... I have to open each album, choose the set of tracks in the right bitrate, and transfer those. Oh yeah, and manually create a group for the album. Screw that! Option two is somewhat more palatable but still B.S.: add the tracks to new albums named "Album Name - Hi-LP". So now I have TWO !@#$% listings for every CD in my collection. Am I missing some nuance of the SS interface, or are these really my only options? This is so ridiculous... there needs to be a "force bitrate" option to replace the "Minimum bit rate" option.