drmoze

YO! You can buy the NW-S706 brand new, right now, for only $95 shipped from buy.com. (Some of us are better at finding deals, I guess. I'm only posting this because I already picked up a couple for myself, to update my old NW-E107's. Here's the link: http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=...&adid=17662

Just curious--have you also tweaked the NW-S700 to get the best sound? I have not yet gotten my hands on an NW-A800, but I was wondering if it sounds that much better than an NW-S700, which to my ears sounds very clear ad detailed. (I was using an HD5 and an NW-E107 before, with various headphones.) The NW-S player does have a lot of complementary tweaks--ClearBass, eq, VPT (Virtual *Phone* Technology??!?!??), dynamic normalization.... I still play with them a bit, based on the source material (which is all over the map for me), but the sound is clearer to me than any player I've listened to, even the earlier SOny models.

Not a big problem here because, as you may note, yours is the *only* large graphic sig (but not HUGE like some I've seen!) on this thread. There are very few in the forum. But that is what the other poster was referring to, I believe. I peruse other sites where it is almost impossible to read the actual threaded discussion because of huge, animated sigs everywhere. BTW, sorta related but I was checking out the S-703 that I got my gf, and the normalizer does help with the classical music she listens to. You may lose some dynamic range from the original recording, but it's more "listenable" when walking around, as soft passages are still audible.

Maybe because large animated graphical sigs are annoying? If everyone was so rude as to have them, it would require a lot of scrolling and examination to find the actual messages. I've browsed many 'juvenile' forums where this was a major issue--a couple of lines of text with a half-page of sig junk. ANd it will stretch a thread to many unnecessary pages. For example, my post shows up on page 2 of this thread already. Without your sig, it would still be on page 1, along with another post or 2. BTW, check out the other posts in this thread. Not one has a large graphical sig attached. Much easier to read. Because you asked.

Clearly not. Are you really a EE? :^O DC power through the contacts??? You should know better. The NW-S7xx nc phones have 5 contacts. A ground, a lead for L and R ear drivers, and a lead for the L and R mics. No "dc power" at all. The mics pick up ambient sound and send it to the NW-S through the 2 "extra" contacts. The NW-S processes the signal in its nc circuitry, and adds a "counter-signal" (aka "anti-noise" or whatever you want to call it) to the headphone output to provide some nc effect. The headphone plug has a stub at the base to prevent it from being used in normal headphone jacks. Adapting these earphones for use in normal jacks would be simple. (No active nc, though.) Just connect the 2 driver leads and the ground to a regular headphone plug. Ignore the 2 mic leads. Best done on a spare extension cord, though, so the phones themselves can still do nc. I have engineering degrees, but none electrical. I'm surprised an actual EE wouldn't know this stuff by the end of freshman year.

I have a few folders with mp3 files that I imported into SS (4.0). I also transferred them to my DAP in Atrac format (using the transfer preferences). No problem. But, I want to save a copy of the Atrac version of these music files to my HD. Can I do this asily? I could ot find any such files on my HD. I'd also like to save the Atrac versions with their original filenames, organization, etc. Would creating an Atrac CD from the mp3 files and then copying the CDR back to the HD work? Any way to do this without using a CDR?

Hey Stuge, I honestly must have missed your earlier advice on upgrading SS from the same site. Not sure where I upgraded to 3.3 from (my players came with 3.1), but I made sure to note that the reinstalled 3.4 upgrade was from the official US site. And I did 'solve' the problem by restoring y backup. (Yes, I DO periodically back up my library on an external HD.) I learned *that* much, at least, from my experiences with Sony software and DRM!! As for other posts: although helpful suggestions are always welcome, it would be even more helpful to read the request. (Yes, I did go to the trouble of providing all pertinent details.) So: GYM software is not an option because, as I noted, I use only ATRAC3+ encoding. GYM only works with MP3's. If I was satisfied with the gaps in mp3's and the poor sound quality at high compression, I would probably be using a non-Sony DAP. (Isn't this site called 'Atrac Life' anyway? ) Going back to the Connect store to reload tracks may be helpful for some people. As for me, I noted above that ALL of my music comes directly from my own CD collection, ripped into ATRAC3+ format. And again, ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR LIBRARY *is* good advice!!!

In a nutshell: * Was using SS3.3 with no problems for my HD5 and NWE107. * Upgraded to SS3.4 about a month ago. Seemed to go fine. * My music collection is ALL directly ripped from CD (in SS3.3), Atrac3+/64 kbps, NO copy protection * I just tried to transfer tracks to my NWE107 using SS3.4 for the first time. * SS3.4 said it couldn't transfer to my NWE107 and I had to format or erase the HD * I formatted the NWE107, erasing all tracks * I try to transfer an album to the NWE107 * The tracks appear in the right-hand window. The transfer display (with % transfered) appears in the upper right of the SS window. * After a few seconds, the transfer info disappears. A window appears entitled "Error". In the window is a message saying "the following tracks could not be transferred:" followed by a list of the tracks I tried to transfer. * Tried a different album. Same ^$&^#^%@%$@^%$#*&#$ HELP! WHY can't I transfer my own *%*@%$@%$@* music to my own DAP????? I'm leaving on a business trip early in the a.m. and don't have time to even deal with this. Which means I'm gonna be music-less. THANKS SONY! (N*O*T*!!!!) Any ideas? I even tried file conversion tool, and was told no conversion was needed. I give up............

"cheap" as in it's FAKE leather. The headphone winder attachment is a good idea, but the style doesn't do it for me. Looks pedestrian IMO.

Geee, I actually bought my DAP (an HD5) to listen to it. I don't spend any time at all *looking* at it. Appearance should be a minor consideration IMO. It's about playing music, really. In fact, my HD5 (which looks nice IMO) spends almost all the time in my pocket, as I use a 35ELK remote for it. (And I also bough thte remote for its functionality, not for its 'looks'!)

Not checking the copy protection allows you to copy files between pc's and transfer them to DAPs. As far as I can gather, copying from a player to a pc is still a no-no in Sonyland.

I don't think the new Sony HDD players offer anything more, other than bulkier size, nicer display, much higher price, and a couple of extra playlist/search options. As for the remote, you can get the MC35ELK remote very cheaply on eBay. I picked one up for US$30 shipped and you can probably do better than that. It's a very handy clip-on remote the size of half a pencil, with backlit one-line display and most of the controls you need: volume, sound mode, forward/back/play/pause, unit (folder) +/-, and playback mode (shuffle/reg). As for recharging, I listen to m yHD5 almost daily, sometimes a lot and sometimes less, and don't need to charge it for at least a week--in fact, I haven't come close to running it down yet in less than a week's time.

Yes. Before doing more ripping, you should read up on DRM and its limitations. The manual is a bit misleading on this. It does seem to suggest that you can transfer files back from the HD5 to the pc that originally ripped them. I don't think DRM allows this, and your experience supports that.

No, you can't copy fiom the HD5 back to a pc. When you ripped your collection, you had to rip it to a pc and THEN transfer it to the HD5. You can't rip directly to the HD5. So, you need to go back to thaat pc that has the ripped songs and make playlists using SS

...which the HD5 can do with the screen orientation feature!!

Yup. And I have enough CDs that I'm happy just to digitize my personal music collection; no DRM hassles to deal with! I did meet all of the system requirements for SS, and even tried different HD drivers for the external USB hd. SS didn't seem to like that option, at all. On the bright side, after several a/b listening tests, I think I will begin over and rerip my CDs at 64 kbps. The sound is not noticeably different to my ears than 192, using several of my headphones. I'll use it mostly on the go and want quantity over a (to me) barely perceptible difference in quality. SO, I should be able to fit all of my files onto the laptop hd, and do a full backup onto the external drive. (I can always rip CDs at higher bitrates if I ever want to, say, for playing stuff over a real stereo.) Thx for the info.

Actually, this is (I think) one of the issues that mucked up my SS completely. I started out originally doing exactly as described. SS would freeze for quite aa while after every click (album title, menu header, etc.) and the importing was frozen a lot too. So now I've begun ripping many CDs directly onto the internal HD. I think I will just copy over the files manually, and reimport them when needed. hmmm

I am trying to cut down on my HD5 menu size by creating a playlist for each multi-CD set I own that has all the tracks but just one title. I then transferred only the playlists to my HD5. However, the menu screen shows not only the playlist titles, but each individual album title that went into the playlists! Is there a way to avoid this? I only want a single title for each collection (e.g. "SRV 1-3" instead of "SRV Disc 1," "SRV Disc 2," and "SRV Disc 3.") I also have regular single-CD albums on the player as well. If I can't do this, can I remove the Playlist titles from the HD5 (as being extraneous) and still have the albums/files remain? I only transferred the playlist titles, and each had the entire trasck list of the contained albums. Thx....

Can one do ongoing partial backups with SS, or is it truly "all or nothing"? Here's my situation: I'm ripping my large CD collection directly to my laptop drive. (Trying to rip to an external USB hd did NOT work!) My laptop doesn't have room for all of the files I will wind up with. Plus, I want to have a copy of all my Atrac-encoded files on the external drive anyway as abackup. I'd like to continue ripping a group of CDs and transferring them to my HD5, then removing those files from my laptop drive after keeping a copy on the external hd. Can I do this within SS? Or, should I just manually copy all of the album folders over to the external drive, delete them completely from SS, and later merely import specific ones from the external drive into SS when I want to transfer them to my DAP? I'm ripping all of my own CDs directly and none have copy protection added.

OK, Finally had a chance to play with SS a bit. Figured out a couple of my Q's above. Here's some hopefully helpful tips. I'm ripping my CD collection (at 192), starting with the box sets before I hit the CD shelves. I did figure out a few handy things for organizing multi-CD sets and compilations. For single-artist sets, SS handles this pretty easily. After ripping the CDs (which have the title usually followed by "(Disc n)"), I create a playlist with just the set title (or I may add "1-n" after the title if there are n discs total). To do this, I click the "Create/Edit Playlist" box/button near the top right of the My Library listing. Then I select the first album in the set from the left column and click the red right arrow to add it to the playlist. I repeat with all n discs in order. This actually adds all tracks in order, from Track 1 of disc 1 to the last track of the last disc! (Surprised me that it worked as I hoped!) Then click the "Close Edit" button to finish. The same procedure works for multiartist compilations. The only other thing to do is to right-click the playlist title (usually a pink square as opposed to the blue album squares), and put in the proper artist (may be 'Various'), genre, and initial info. This creates a single title for each multi-disc set with all of the tracks in order. I then transfer only the pink playlist for each set to my DAP. The other handy bit is importing compilations (e.g. to bring in an earlier-ripped or accidentally-deleted multi-artist CD). SS unfortunately imports them as individual tracks by artist name, even though they all share a common album name. based on tips in another thread, the easy way to recombine them is to first view My Library by All Tracks (drop-dow on the left side) and then do a search and enter the album title. All tracks in the album will appear in the main window. Either shift-click or click on a title and then press Ctrl-A to select all tracks in the window. Right-click anywhere in the highlighted tracks and heck the 'compilation' box. Exit the dialog and all tracks should be back into a single album. You cna then right-click on the album and select Properties to edit the artist and genre info as desired. Recollecting the tracks into an album this way may rearrange the order of the tracks. I open the original folder containing the files in a window to the side. (it's usually at C:\Documents and Settings \ All Users \ Sonic Stage \ Packages. Then it is easy to simply drag the trascks into proper order in the SS Library window. And, the tracks automatically renumber when dragged into a new order!! Yay!!! Hope these tips help. My only hassle now is to remove the multidisc albums on my HD5 and load up just the playlists. BTW, does anyone know what order albums are sorted in for the Artist view? All of the 'various artist' albums are there, but some are not in alphabetical order... I'm also not sure the best way to store my music files on an external hd and remove them from my laptop drive (where they were originally ripped to). I think I want to avoid"importing" albums thru SS because compilations import as separate tracks by artist. Would it be OK to delete the files/folders from my laptop manually after copying them to the HD without "telling" SS? And then manually copying back album folders to the SS folder on my laptop and then transfer them to my HD5? I think this may work best. Would SS keep a complete list in My Library of all my ripped CDs? And would it recognize them later if I removed the folders and then recopied them back??? (None of my CDs have been encoded with protection.) Or, do I have to backup and import/restore to have SS recognize the files and access them later? TIA!!!

Finally got my SS ripping and HD5 playing! So it actually makes noise now. I have 3 things I'd like to do with SS 3.2 and my HD5. I haven;t had a chance to check out all of the details of using SS and I'm really swamped at work, so a quick tip or even letting me know if these things can be done in SS would be most appreciated. First, I have a few multi-disc compilation CDs. (I exclusively rip my own CDs to Atrac 192 kbps.) I have them saved as separate titles/folders in SS. I would like to Save each multidisc set under a single title on my HD5. I already transferred the files as separate albums though (e.g. Have a Nice Day has 7 menu listings for discs 1-7). What's the easiest way to combine these 7 discs under one title? Do I have to create a playlist in SS with all 7 albums and transfer that to the HD5? If so, can I remove the 7 separate album titles from the HD5 but leave the songs on it? Or do I have to remove all the song files, create a playlist in SS, and retransfer all the songs to the HD5? Any tips or pointing me in the right direction would be great! Second question: I am ripping my CDs at 192 kbps. Is it possible to convert them to 64 kbps when transferring to the HD5? (Many CDs are older music with relatively poor sound quality.) Is there any way to store the master files at 192 but transfer at 64 without needing to create and store 2 copies of each song/album? I'd like to do this thru the transfer as I have a lot of CDs (hundreds) and wdon't want to deal with managing duplicate albums at different bitrates. Final easy question: If I backup my collection, can I do so to an external drive directly? And can I then remove the folders/files from my primary (laptop) drive, rip more CDs, and have them added to the external backup? (I don't want to lose the first set of folders/files inthe backup when doing this.) Some of these may seem like simple questions, but based on my limited SS experience to date, SS has a quirky way of keeping Library database info separate from the physical file/folder info (e.g. renaming things in SS without having the corresponding folder/file renamed on the hard drive). Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!! drmoze is online now Edit/Delete Message

hmmmm... I definitely have the DRM unchecked, and am only interested in ripping my own CDs. Questiuon with this: I want to rip my entire CD collection--about 1000 albums. If I do this and transfer some to the HD5, copying all of thenm to the external HD, can I later copy folders back from the external drive to the laptop and then onto my HD5 with no problem? Could I later copy the folders onto another computer and have SS recognize them and transfer them to my HD5? So far, it appears SS is very picky with what it places in My Library. If I try importing stuff into SS later, will SS "separate" the compilation albums into separate tracks? This already happened to me! Because of the many albums I have, this import glitch is unacceptable. I would have hundreds of songs that I'd have to collect and regroup into their original albums. Not too happy with SS. Not at all. Thanks for the suggestion. I just fear that copying to the external HD may prevent easy transfer and future use of the albums on my HD5. Has anyone done this????

I have the Koss Spark Plugs and Etymotic earpieces on order. (About $15 total cost.) I'll report back on those after I get them and try some tweaks.

Gee, how long has it been since I got my HD5 -- 2 weeks or so? And I have yet to get a file transferred onto it or hear a song played thru it. *sigh* Thank you Sony software developers.... After several earlier problems (SS 3.2 not seeing my HD5, trying to completely remove SS and do a clean reinstall and getting stuck, etc.) I'm now back to the original SS problems. In no particular order: SS 3.2 will rip some CDs, although I have been getting a lot of 'delayed write failed, data lost'-type messages while ripping. I am saving files to an external USB hd which appears to be working fine. And, even after these error messages, the album folders show up with filenames that appear to be of the right lenght inside (a few MB for each song). I cannot seem to rename album titles in the My Library window. Sometimes SS lets me edit (either by pressing F2 or going to 'Properties'-'Rename') and I can change the album name (mainly to shorten a few). Going back to My Library (or quitting and restarting SS) and what I see is the original *unchanged* album name! I even tried changing the album name *and* renaming the album folder on my HD, to no avail. WHY? SS basically freezes up my computer for a long time (30-60 seconds) practically EVERY time I click on something (such as the 'Edit' menu, an album title (to edit), the 'Import' or 'My Library' tabs up top, etc. I can continue to use other programs, and eventually SS unfreezes, until I click on the next thing! It is IMPOSSIBLE to get CDs ripped or manage music files with this constant freezing. SO far I have about 6-7 CDs ripped. I'd like to change the title of a few, but SS is not cooperating. I still can't transfer a single file to my HD5, although SS does see my HD5 when I connect it now. The transfer button either freezes, or I can click it and the Time Remaining screen comes on but goes nowhere. No transfer. Nada. Tried reinitializing my HD5 (hey, there's nothing on it to lose!) and that doesn't help either. And of course, sometimes SS flakes out and freezes totally while ripping a CD. Eventually I will get an error message, sometimes. As for my system, it's an IBM T42 laptop with WinXP Pro and SP2 installed, Norton Antivirus (which I've turned off temporarily to no avail), no codec packages that I could find, checks out clean for spyware. Not sure what else to look for. I've tried reinstalling fresh from the online SS3.2 downloader, and from the SS3.1 CD that came with my HD5. Nothing helps and all of these recurring freezes and errors leaves me with an empty HD5 and a few useless Atrac3+ albums 9at 192 kbps) on my external HD. Oh boy. ANY ideas on what to do???? TIA......

Ah, this explains what happened! Didn't know of the option to denote trcks within a comp. album. Thanks! BTW, is there a manual anywhere for SonicStage? I would really like a pdf file or such that can be printed out. Not too crazy about the onscreen-only help windows.