Batman

Bob, actually, this is what I was eventually looking for... but every time I try to transfer a song I get an error from SS, complaining about: a) song (file) not found (FALSE!) song copyright protected (FALSE!) c) cannot convert (???) So, could you please instruct me step-by-step on how to put some songs (which I have in WAV PCM at the moment) to a normal disc (not Hi-MD, of course) using the NH900, to be listened with my R91? Thank you a lot, A.

Yo, after a looong time, I took my pretty, old Mz-R91 out of its box, just because I relly love its look and feel... Thou, after some time with an NH900, now I was wondering if there is the possibility to create disks for this device (the R91) with SonicStage, or if the only chance is to record them on the device via the soundcard. Sorry if this has been asked before, but couldn't find any hint around. Cheers, A.

Now, this actually makes sense. I thought the units were able to play any type or version of ATRAC, including this lossless. This tells why the files were different. Yes, this I know, of course... Thank you very much for the explanation. Cheers, A.

This (as I said) may be called lossless, but it's not the very same as the original, which in my own knowledge is not acceptable, as a concept. If I want cheap audio, then I'll go through MP3s, that's it. I do agree with you here, but I'm pretty much considering portable audio, since I do own the original CDs, I don't even need to burn them again; I just want to hear to some high quality thing, which could be worth listening to with my fabulous (and reasonably quite expensive, allow me...) Shure SE-420. All the other stuff doesn't fall in my perception, nor in my interest. If I cannot be sure of converting and getting the same sound quality (again, using "compressed", no matter how, audio, in the range of lossless, anyway i.e. FLAC) without any stupid, arbitrary mute-gap at either the beginning or at the end of a song (why should the encoder decide itself that there is the need to add some "silence" to let you realize the song is over???) When I say lossless I mean listening to the original CD, or the converted, ATRAC lossless file, should make no difference at all; first in sound quality (and may my ears accept even lower quality, I should be happy as well) and second in, at least, leaving the song as long as the original was, without compromising (yes, it's compromising, or even worst, ruining) the result as a whole. If you have any clue, or explanation, or suggestion to better make things in order to achieve what I am looking for (same quality, same gapless) you are more than welcome, otherwise i do appreciate having had a chat with you, but remain in my frustration... ;-) I will be reading you all in the next days, and really would like to get more skilled about the whole thing; I know there are some guys here with valuable experience about the formats, who I would love to hear something from. Cheers, A.

Actually, if it was only an issue of byte-differences, I could have skipped it (not too much, thou'...) but the additional gap is something I really don't like... How can you listen to a suite (and no matter if it is from Marillion, Pink Floyd or Bach) with even only half-a-second gap between the movements??? Just as a comparison, how can you call it lossless if the original -> compressed -> decompressed aren't the same (I am not talking about the sensations listening to the two files)? If I FLAC a WAV, and then WAV it back, the two files are _exactly_ the bloo*y same, and this should be, as it _is_ a lossless codec. So this allows me to think that the so called ATRAC Lossless, may be called lossless in the compression stage, but absolutely not in the decompression one... Just like LZH _is_ lossless for binary files. This was my point. Anyway, thank you for taking your time. Cheers, A.

Yo, yesterday, just for fun, I tried to send a WAV (PCM) file to my unit (MZ-NH900), using ATRAC Lossless format. So far so good, the unit got it. Then I deleted it from the computer, and reimported _as_ WAV. Then , of course, I went through checking whether the files were equal. I mean, an _exact_ copy, and with great frustration I discovered they were not. First, the file uploaded from the MD was longer than the original, and this makes me guess that SS arbitrarily adds a silent gap, then, also brutally removing the gap (I assumed it was at the end...) by cutting it with a hex editor, the files comparison was not different only at the very beginning (the few bytes in the header, I mean). Ok, I could be wrong assuming the extra space was added only at the end, as it could have been split half at the beginning as well, but... if it is called LOSSLESS, why the hell does it get modified??? I also thought that perhaps my unit was not able to accept the ATRAC Lossless format, but out of my knowledge (little, thou') I know that the ATRAC decoder may not be aware of new encoders, and always decode the data properly, no matter what level of compression and/or other funny stuff was used to generate the ATRAC file. Anyone like to shed some light on this? I am considering buying a Sony PCM-D50 or, even better, any unit than can play FLAC files gplassly (there are a few out there, but the D50 unfortunately isn't among them) but the thing is that I love too much the media feeling... a memory card is not the same as a Minidisk... but if I cannot be sure of getting true lossless quality out of my unit, I really shall move over to a different product (the D50 doesn't play FLAC, but offers at least 4GB internal and 4GB on the MemoryStick, which with a bunch of, nowadays cheap, 4GB sticks may suffice my needs). Thank you, a MD nostalgic... ;-)

mmm, I'm afraid not. And since you don't want to go through any "hardware virtualization" (not emulation) you have no choice. I indeed run Linux, but for the MD stuff I have an XP running in a SUN VirtualBox (that's free) and it's as good as the real thing, nothing to notice. I welcome anybody who can tell the contrary, as I would like to use it natively too... Just my 2c for it. good luck. Cheers, A.

it could be. I always remove optimized files, thou' through SS itself... mmm, this might have something to do with the way SS deal with converions... there are some checkboxes you may want to look at, regarding whether SS will automatically transform to a predefined (default) format, or just ask you every time what should it convert the original to, before transferring. I cannot tell you what my settings are straight away, but surely, poking here and there you should, sooner or later, be able to convert your WAVs to AAL. All the best, A.

Ditto. Quality is one. A.

How would you play it on the MiniDisc...? this is very wierd, as I do exactly the same thing: I rip the tracks with my Linux box (and store them as FLAC, to save space); then whenever I need to transfer something to the MD, I just "inflate" the traks back to WAV, import them in SS and throw them into the MD using AAL. Although I don't really know whether SS is storing them as AAL or AT3 @ 352 on the MiniDisc -I would like someone can shed some light on this one- (I own a MZ-NH900), thou' the resulting sound is amazing anyway. I know for sure that SS refuses to create AAL files from sources other than WAV files and/or direct CD ripping; and since WAV doesn't contain any DRM thingy, it's really strange what is happening to you... Hard disk full, perhaps? Weird track names? Read-only WAVs? I don't know, just saying everything that comes to my mind... Cheers, A.

40 here... got my first unit (MZ-R91 blue) by the time this thread was started, and few years later got me a MZ-NH900 (black), both of which I still use, with a brand new pair of Shure SE420. Cheers, A.

ok, since I didn't rip the CD from SB or SS, probably I was lucky, and encoding from WAV did not introduce gaps... I'm trying to do the procedure again with different albums where gapless is mandatory, in order to see if this behavior is consistent and can be reproduced. Probably (well, I hope, now) WAVs aren't involved in any further conversion and behave just like the real rip. It would be very annoying if I had to take the CDs out every time I need one of those to be transferred, as I always rip the CD with Linux, whether in WAV or FLAC. Ok, I can always create a CD image, mount it, burn it as an audio CD, mount the image in the virtual machine, and then tell SS to rip that CD... but if it can be achieved directly from the WAVs I'd be very happy. I mentioned the iPod just because I read somewhere here-or-there that it added extremely big gaps (arbitrarily, 2 or 3 seconds), not that I've experienced on my own, as don't own any. If now this is not true anymore, let's just ignore my comment. Thanks anyway for clearing this out for me a little more. Cheers, A.

Ok, this all makes sense, I mean, in the past... as I cannot say "how" I did import The Wall in SS, nor how I transferred it to the MD... But this time I know for sure that I first ripped all the tracks into WAVs from the Linux box, then sent to the MD at default (or forced on the fly) baudrate. But no other conversion took place, e.g. from WAV to any ATRAC, and then from those ATRACs to any other ATRAC. Anyway, if this is the way to follow, I will. I mean, if just this little effort needs to be done in order to avoid the more-than-one-second-gap you can get with an iPod... well, I'm for it. Thank you all guys for the answares, and happy MD-ing ;-) Cheers, A.

I see a lot of people had a look at this, but nobody replied, maybe because I didn't sound like I needed an answer... Well, the thing is: Is it true that now MDs play gapless where the original songs on the CD have no gap, or is it just me that cannot perceive it any more? You know, maybe my 40s are playing tricks to my ears, and what few years ago was horrible to hear today is just acceptable... Or maybe I should try it with the albums I used to notice the gaps (e.g. The Wall), as could be that, luckily, in the ones I'm listening to now, for some reason the gap doesn't get involved in the music frame generation. Thanks for any comment. Cheers, A.

Yo, looong time lurker... ;-) I'm a proud owner of a R91 and (recently, but it's still past...) MZ-NH900. I've used these 2 jewels a lot, but in the past years I forgot about them, till I had to go to Greece, and since a 5 hours bus trip seemed a lot to me, I decided to load my NH900 with some music, on an ordinary 80min disc. Ok, long story short, last thing I remember was that listening to the Pink Floyd's The Wall, ripped and transferred with SS, there were gaps between the songs, where indeed there shouldn't be any. Now, few days ago, I uploaded another suite, gapless album, such as Fish's Raingods With Zippos, and to my surprise, listening to it I found no gap, nor tick between the songs (using the NH900, BTW). Is this the new (and not bad, really!!!) behavior of SS (using 4.2 ATM)? Ah, one more thing. The album wasn't ripped with SS, but extracted to .wav with a Linux box, and then converted by SS while transferring. Just want to know. I simply prefer MDs over the many solid-state/hard-disk MP stuff, because they remind me of the old cassette-time, I simply like having to play around with medias... being just more reliable and fast-loadable, and now with this ATRAC lossless format, I found myself in love once again ;-) Cheers, A.