Hi everyone...new to the forum but not new to MD. Six months ago I switched from an old Sharp MD player/recorder to the Sony MZ-N420D. I loved the idea of transferring tracks from my PC instead of recording them manually. But ever since I bought this thing I have a terrible time with transferring songs, no matter what I use. I've tried every version of SonicStage that's come along, I've tried using RealPlayer...yet every time it's the same thing. The problem is that there are gaps in a lot of songs that transfer. I would call it stuttering, but that's not totally accurate. The songs don't lose a beat, but for brief (less than a second usually) moment they go silent. It's like you have a bad connection on your headphone, but this can't be fixed by jiggling the plug! I've tried this on different PCs, all running P4s, over 1Ghz w/512MB of RAM, Windows XP (service pack 2). I don't run any other programs during transfers. I don't use a USB hub--it's a direct connection. I've tried every compression option possible. I'm about to chuck this thing for an ipod, unless you can help me understand what's going on. Any ideas? Thanks for your time, J. Brown