zxon

Hi everyone (long time no see) I didn't know there was a SP1 out for Vista... or are you testing it before release?

I use my HiMD player for everything it can support: Storing music in MP3/OMG formatStoring my University workRecording University lecturesBacking up my Uni Lecture recordings (on old 74min MDs formatted to FAT)Thats the thing about HiMD - its an iPod, dictaphone and flash drive all in one!

I was reading your review and became quite concerned when you said the price between the DH10P and RH10 were now very similar, because I only got mine a few months ago... ...until you said it can't record, nor does it charge via the USB port! Plus anyway I have a camera on my phone with a 1Gb MMC card in it. I think I made the right choice.

FIXED! I've managed to solve the problem on my PC with the "broken" MP3s that causes SS to crash! What I did is copied the suspect MP3s into one folder and then changed the ID3 tag on each of them in one way, shape or form. For example, I removed comments, genres, corrected spelling, even added a "0" to the track number if there was no track number. After doing this I could happily import them back into SS without the program even whinging! I couldn't find any conneciton between all of them though, other than that they were all the most recently encoded MP3s in my collection (Encoded in the same way that I have done for a couple of years now, I might add). Many were from the NME Essential Bands album, but two of them were mixes that I'd done as well, so they certainly weren't part of any double CD compilation. What I also find strange is that all of these MP3s were happily accepted by SS3.2 before I installed SS3.4 Anyway, anyone who has this problem should try the solution I've laid out above. To make things easier, use ID3 Tag-It to batch-edit your ID3 tags.

I experience this sometimes as well. What I do is hold the eject slider down so if you were to close the RH10 it will never lock and pring right up again... then just close/open/close/open the unit quickly until the MD pops out. This always works for me. If you have to do the close/open cycle any more than ten times in a row then I would imagine it won't work. I only say this because I don't want you breaking your RH10 from repetitive stress

I thought it was. When you import a CD using SS, I thought there was an option not only to put it into the Library but also burn straight onto MD (??).

Just a quick update. I've now reinstalled SonicStage 3.4 and it appears to be stable. Also as well, I have noticed that I can import MP3s that I've previously transferred to the MD back into SS, even though they had originated from what SS now considers faulty MP3s. I've done this for as many of the missing MP3s as I could but I still have about 30 left over. I'm going to analyse the "faulty" MP3s anyway and see if there is any definate connection between them all (e.g. same bitrate, same length, all from the 2nd disc of a doubleCD compilation etc). That way I might have a proper explination for what's happening and have a bug report prepared

Actually I've come to a similar conclusion. I've found that through the process below, I have noticed that the problems are with MP3s from my NME Essential Bands compilation (Double disc!). I tried restoring the computer back to an earlier point in time with System Restore. Before I uninstalled SS, I had a look and sure enough I had about a month's worth of restore points, so I went ahead and uninstalled. Upon uninstallation and a reboot, I went back to system restore and they were all gone!!! Instead what I've done today is something a little time consuming but it seems to be working so far... First, I performed a search in my MP3s folder on my computer so that I had one great big list of MP3s, all in alphabetical order. I then drag/drop about 50 at a time into SS. If it showed the import window in SS then I know it worked. However if the program crashes in any way then I know there's an MP3 it doesn't like in my batch of 50 at the time. I would then try 25, then 15, then 5 etc until I determined which file it was that was causing the problem. After finding it, I then carried on as normal, repeating the process where necessary. I have managed to import all but 38 of my MP3s (out of a collection of 3000+) and am now in the process of backing up my library (17GB!!!! What the hell!?). Now since I've got SS3.2 installed at the moment, what I'm gonna do is uninstall it after backing up my library, then reboot, then install SS3.4 again and see if it is stable. If so, then I just need to re-encode these 38 MP3s and I'm back to normal again

I agree. I believe it to be something wrong with SS3.4, because I never had any problems with my PC too until I installed that. I too am obsessive with system maintenance. All of my MP3 files worked perfectly fine with SS3.2, but then I decided to upgrade to SS3.4 - I completely uninstalled SS3.2, rebooted, then installed SS3.4, and I'm now having exactly the same problem. I figured what I could do is uninstall SS3.4 and go back to 3.2. I did so, and now the same is happening in that one too. It's obviously something that SS3.4 installs or does on installation that totally knacks it up.

I'm glad someone else is having slow SP transferral issues. I've been thinking of just lending my mate my old MZ-R70(S) so he can record his own CDs onto SP MD himself via his HiFi, because at the moment he has to rely on me to sort out all of this songs * However we've found how to attach an external device onto the stereo and use that instead (I was thinking my RH10). Less fuss * You're probably asking "why's he gone for MD if he has to rely on you to sort the MDs out?". The reasons are two-fold... (1) His CDs are miraculously getting scratched to hell in his glovebox, even when they're in the leather case holder. He likes the MD format because they're protected all the time. (2) So his ex-girlfriend (who is the mother of his child, so he's stuck with her) can't put her crap music on the stereo without his (and my) explicit permission. Sneaky, eh? :)

Aye, I know that that SS3.2 doesn't write SP in it's proper encoding. I just figured that it would be faster with a PC rather than through my hifi. Although my PC isn't the fastest on the market (by quite a bit), it can still pull a little weight: P3 1.2Ghz - 1.12Gb RAM. Still doesn't make any sense how my MZ-N1 could link up with the PC and write in "SP" encoding faster than my RH10 on a slower USB connection and on a slower PC than I have now. The stereo, I'm afraid, doesn't support LP at all, otherwise I would've considered that. I'd figure that it would take just a long to fill an MD if I put LP2 tracks on it; I'd just be able to fit twice as many on instead. The head unit was made back in 1998 (Pioneer MEH-P5000R) - probably the reason why my mate got it for nothing.

A friend of mine has just got himself a Pioneer MD head unit for his car for £0 (That's right, FREE!). He has never used the MD format before so he came to me because I've got four of them so he knew I could help out. Unfortunately it only plays SP MDs so I set off to make a few for him using my spare 74min MDs. I can understand having to convert the MP3s over to ATRAC3-SP format first, before copying them onto the MD, but it takes forever to transfer the songs. It seems to send the song at 1x speed (a 3min song will take 3mins to transfer etc). My MZ-N1 never took this long* when I was using that to transfer songs only a year or two ago... with a slower PC and slower USB connection, might I add. Tonight I had to resort to burning the mp3s onto cd and then record the tracks using my sony hifi onto MD instead at 2x speed (which proved much faster!). I'm using SS3.2 and an RH-10 over a USB2.0 connection. Any reason why the transfer would take so long? * I'm not referring to the Net.MD's capability (at the time) to tranfer songs at 32x speed, because we all know that only ever applied to LP4 tracks.

I didnt know you could enter trackmarks in recordings using sonicstage...

How about plugging in the original remote (RM-MC35ELK) back into the RH10 and changing the backlight setting on the remote to "on" (Hold "display" on remote --> Option --> Backlight --> On), then plugging in the 40ELK again? ...unless thats already been tried.

I meant by default, of course Ive got DVDRegionX but its such a faff on!