iyareu

Like some others I use 48kbps sometimes and used it a lot when I know I am going to be using 1 disc all day in a noisy environment like on the train or on a plane journey. I find it is fine for my needs. I use closed Sennheiser HD-270 headphones and even then it sounds fine. I listen to Soul, Funky house and UK and US garage as well as classical and find that I get a reasonable result. If I was going to be listening to music of any kind at about 1am and in a quiet room through a good stereo then I would use something much higher. I usually use 64kbps as a standard and this is fine too. Hmmmmmmm

I agree. The issue though is that HDD players have teken over. I have an MZ-NH900 and love it and wouldn't be parted from it but I use a VGF-Ap1 (VAIO Pocket) 40 GB HDD player to listen to music I have 9000+ tracks with me at any one time. For recording however the MD can't be beat. I miss that sometimes. If I am going to do some recording I generally have to have 2 machines with me. re: Japan - It was always gonna happen. Itunes is easy - if sonicstage was 1 tenth as easy to use the slide could have been curbed. Sony = Superior hardware + very inferior software. Apple = Improving (but still inferior) hardware + superior software. Apple has to win!! They almost have no choice yet they market perfectly.

You are correct - The posting was a response to a comment on what would be in a firmware upgrade of the AP1 HDD. To add to that - When selecting an artist I want to just listen to tracks by that artist - like when I do it on my mindisc player (MZ-nh900). Not as is the case on the AP1 at the moment -you get the joy of listening to all the tracks on all the albums that this artist is featured on. Madness - especially if like me you have many compilation albums. Truth be told SS is not as bad as it used to be but could do much better. There is so much potential - there is no reason that superior hardware should be tied with less than superior software.

If they did that - it would be nice. Maybe they could also ... 1. Allow us to delete files whilst using the player. 2. Add initials search as on the HD5 3. show the file type that is playeing with the info on the screen. 4. Allow grid style viewing of personal pictures as is available for the jacket pics. Strange that they could do it for jacket pics and not for uploaded pics. What do you think?

Hi All, The things that would be great from my point of view would be : 1. Ability to transfer playlists to HDD players (I have vgf-ap1 40GB) without re-transferring the tracks. 2. More speed. 3. Better colours - Blue and grey - not the most appealing. 4. The ability to search for track lists even if the CD is not in the PC. WMP allows this which is really useful if the selection that tries forst gets it wrong. 5. When you change the artist of an album SS changes the artists for all the tracks - if it asked before doing this life would be easier. 6. Allowing us to sort display of info on the HDD so that we can see if we have downloaded an album/track more than once. 7. Real synchronisation and for minidisc users (I have the old Hi-Md MZ-NH900) some sort of synchronisation that allows 1 GB of random tracks to be dumped on a disc making the use of MD's that much more fun!! Those are mine for now - What do you think?

Hi there chaps, I have an AP1 Pocket Vaio. and am using SS3.1. I have 9000 tracks on it. When I create a playlist on the PC in SS and transfer it - SS re-transfers the tracks onto the player. Is there a way to create a playlist than just uses the tags and doesn't re-transfer the tracks to the player? Thanks for any help.

You are so right. SS has real issues with multiple drives. I did have 2 drives working in the PC before but there is only one now. I used to rip with one. When that one gave the error I would change Ss so that it ripped from the other. Switch the CD and continue and when that one had the same problem switch back and get a few more tracks out. Nonesense!! Why is it that the hardware can be so superior to the ipod but the software is so incredibly far behind itunes. For all itunes failings - and there are many - it is leaps and bounds better than SS. SS has such potential though - it could really be the better software package if only they sorted out the speed and reliability. having Atrac3+ as a format is such a big bonus and if you have a mindisc recorder you can save the recordings in the same general area as all your other music type stuff - Really nice. SS lets the whole package down so badly!!

That's what I thouht. I have upgraded and have re-installed 5+ times. Thanks for the suggestion though. I think it is something to do with the software that SS uses to access the Cd player. It must get stuck or something. (Very technical explanation as you can tell no doubt) I had a strange thing happen this week - I was importing a CD and it came up with the error message just before reading the last track. I did nothing just sent it to do the read again and it worked. That is the first time this has happened. I have tried retrying before, many times, to no avail so was very surprised when it just worked . Granted it was only one track so but it DID stopp and produce the error message and then DID just re-read the CD and create the Atrac3+ file and it sounds fine. I would love to find some sort od solution though as it is annoying when I have to read half a Cd in using Atrac and half using bulky mp3 format.

If you've been able to rip the CD tracks using WM10 have you tried importing those files into Sonic Stage's library ? I Have imported ripped mp3 files into SS. I've also found that iTunes is able to rip CD tracks that Sonic Stage cannot, such as those remastered DavidBowie albums and even CopyControlCDs. Then Transferred those files into SS's library and then moved them onto a Minidisc. Also have you tried using SimpleBurner to transfer the CD tracks straight onto your MDs ? Yes I have transferred these ripped tracks to my minidisc and vaio pocket. The prolem Iahve it that SS says it cannot read the CD when there is obviously nothing wrong with the CD. I think that maybe the ripping process in itunes and Windows Media player (10) are more ressilliant and can cope with errors on what is read than SS. Whether that is the case or not - we have a problem as SS is not allowing us to encode all CDs. I would love to find a way to get round this. I much prefer ATRAC to mp3 encoded files and I save much more space using ATRAC. Any thouhts .......

Hi there, I had a similar problem. Do you know where these DRM license files are held as I DID backup my files (about 20GB) and it still wouldln't play them as it said I didn't have the license. (I had changed HDD's and re-installed) In addition when I try and re-restore I get a messafge telling me to de-authorise my PC - I can't find anything in Ss to let me do that. Any thoughts would be gratefully received!! Iyare.

I get them from AskDirect.co.uk. They have a shop on Tottenham Court Rd (London) and if you show them a print out of their website they will sell them for the same price. (They cost more without the printout) They are £5.00 each. (Link below) AskDirect UK

When it is charging it says 'Charging' on the display. It doesn't say it when the machine is in use so I assume it is not charing when it is being used to play back tracks.

I use my NH900 the same way. The remote is essential for me. I didn't think so till I had a CD player with a remote and it changed me completely. I can't understand why people would have a music player without an LCD remote now. I 'wear ' it like I do my coat. It clips onto the collar fine (sometimes I have to change the clip direction depending on the coat I am wearing - Brownie points to Sony for thinking of this). The main unit goes in a pocket and I do everything on the remote. I use Sennheiser headphones which have a 3metre cable so sometimes I put the unit in my cargo pants pocket, clip the remote to the cover of the -pocket and have the long cable from my phones - Awesome!! Remotes rule. (Am saving up for a 40ELK)

Hi forum, Have looked through and not found this problem elsewhere so far so here goes: When importing CD's SS does get the details of the CD and start importing tracks - but then stops with a message on screen saying "Error reading Disc" I initially thought this was a problem with the disc or the CD player. I have 2 CD players in the PC (DVD and CDRW) and it happens with both. I recently upgraded to SS3.0 and had the same problem (seems more prevalent) As a test tried to rip the tracks to Mp3 using WM10 - worked fine without errors meaning the disc is fine and the CD players are fine. The problem must be with SS. Any thoughts would be appreciated MUCHLY!! Thanks in advance for any help - I am at my wits end on this. (Still trying to get hold of someone at SS)

Thanks for that. You are right - SS is really sensitive. I think I have found out why it sometimes does this though. If there are tracks in the format I am writing to MD in already it transfers those without converting. While it is doing that it finds tracks that need conversion and this starts. It only seems to work if the first album I am transferring is in a format that doesn't need conversion - It then starts converting the second album whilst transferring the first album. Maybe it is an anomaly of SS. Thanks again!!

Hi chaps and chapesses, I have recently got a MZ-NH900 and I ahve about 40GB of music in SS. I was transferring some tracks the other day and I noticed that SS was converting one group whilst transferring another group direct. This was a real boon and cut the total transfer time. I don't however know how to MAKE this happen. I have been transferring about 48 albums onto a 1GB disk today and am timing it. With 5 albums to go it has been going for 6 hours and 5 minutes. This is mostly convert timew. Transfer time is about 6 or seven seconds per track. Any thoughts on how I can get it to convert some tracks whilst transfering others ? Thanks in advance!!