Avrin

And they should be. The WAV format is a container, which can hold anything, although it usually holds raw PCM audio. Same as AVI is a container, which may hold uncompressed video, DV, MPEG4, DivX. and other stuff. A WAV container file may not hold more than 2 Gb according to its specification. Well, there are ways to make it hold 4 Gb, but these are not quite up to any specifications. So, avoid making any WAVs that may exceed 2 Gb. P.S. Thermocline, I am glad that your problem is solved in the easiest possible way. Audacity doesn't care about any specifications - that's why I'll never use it. CoolEdit, now called Adobe Audition, is the program! I am using version 1.5, which rocks under my Windows 2000. .

It seems like there is no way to avoid the 7 ISO's problem with SB. But you may use SS to import 7 albums in WAV format, convert them to ATRAC3[plus], delete the original WAVs to speed up further operations, use CDDB to get track info, and then transfer the music to a Hi-MD disc. When using CDDB, avoid selecting any tracks - SonicStage seems to be much less stupid this way. PS. My SS library is also always empty, except during transfer periods.

SS and SB are not able to work with DVD discs/images recorded in any mode (except data), including DVD-Audio. This is actually not an SS/SB problem, but a CD-Audio standard limitation (the standard is quite old), since the standard allows raw PCM only, and programs that are designed to rip CDs are not able to work with DVD filesystems (ISO/UDF). But Cirlinca DVD-Audio Solo is actually a very useful program, since it is able to burn several CDs to a single DVD-Audio disc without any changes in quality, and then rip them back as WAVs when you need them on your computer again. You may also play the resulting disc in any DVD-Audio-capable player. Another commercial alternative (although with a less intuitive interface) capable of burning and ripping DVD-Audio is Steinberg WaveLab. There was yet another commercial program for creating DVD-Audio discs, and it even had an MLP plugin for DVD-Audio-compliant lossless compression (allowing you to store up to about 12 hours of CD-quality audio on a single DVD-Audio disc). It was called DigiOnAudio, but its development stopped several years ago, and it only had a Japanese interface. Also, AFAIK, it was unable to rip the music back. A free alternative (Windows/LINUX) is the DVD-Audio Tools (http://dvd-audio.sourceforge.net). But these tools only work from the command line, and don't have a DVD-Audio ripping capability. And they are not intuitive in any way - you have to set them up manually, with additional libraries, and use a command line with lots of parameters for everything. I have created a set of batch files for running them, but it is still a mess. I also have some doubts about full DVD-Audio standard compliance of these tools, since the resulting DVD-Audio file structure is not properly recognized by GEAR PRO Mastering Edition (although a disc image created by the tools can be successfully burnt by any burning software), and the discs cannot be ripped by DVD-Audio Solo. But the most simple way to store your CDs on a DVD disc is using FLAC to compress WAV files and a burning program to burn them as data. Don't forget that the DVD-Audio standard only allows you to store up to 9 groups of tracks, and no more than 384 tracks on a single disc, while in the data mode the only limitation is the disc space.

You don't actually need SS to be fully installed to do this. Only the OpenMG Secure Module, its patch (if any) and drivers are needed for SB to operate properly.

AFAIK, the AM-NX9 uses the NETMD031.sys driver, which is not supposed to cause any problems (it hasn't been rewritten since April 2003, and that version work with Vista). The only problem I can see in your case is that you have a VAIO version of SonicStage without any drivers. In this case you may get a full set of Vista-compatible drivers here: ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/PUB/DNA/VISTA/MD/PA_DRIVER.EXE

Do they show up when your NH900 is connected?

Do any of the drivers mentioned in my first post here appear as non-phantom? In this case remove them all, except "Generic volumes". You'll have to restart the computer after that.

Have you created the variables with exactly the names specified, and enabled the "Show hidden devices" option?

The NH600 and the NH3D do perform correctly with the 052 driver renamed 033. I.e., they do download what they are supposed to download.

No matter what installation order or port I am using, the NH600 always gets the 033 driver only, and the RH1 always gets the 052 driver only. But, as long as the 033 driver is installed on my system, the RH1 works in the "50 minutes per disc" mode. Then, as soon as I remove the 033 driver, even without removing any other drivers or restarting my computer, the RH1 is back to the 10x mode again (I only have to reconnect it). Manually replacing the 033 driver with a properly renamed copy of the 052 one and restarting the computer seems to prevent the "50 minutes per disc" effect from occuring, but I won't recommend this option, since, well, it's a SONY.

The unit had an SP disc inside before I connected it. This is quite possible. Another possibility is that the 4 ports on the back of your machine are physically connected to another controller than the 2 on the front.

Still no luck! I've tried all four USB ports on my notebook. Plugging the NH600 into any of them slows down the RH1 upload. Despite the fact that I also have a set of Intel® 82801EB USB controllers.

Quite possible, since it has to work longer to upload the same amount of information. The disc spins/stops more times, etc. Just tried this (plugging the NH600 into another USB port). No luck. The RH1 SP upload still slows down. I think this may depend on hardware configurations.

Turns out it's not a glitch. Just connected one of my NH600s in NetMD mode. Well, Windows promptly installed its NETMD033.SYS driver. Then I restarted my 'puter. And connected one of my RH1s. The "50 minutes to upload an SP disc" thing was back. Then I followed what is described in my first post here (without restarting). The RH1 works @10x again.

Until it stops working. I always plug in all my HiMD devices (in any mode) to the same USB port. One of the four. To me it looks like the whole problem is not a driver issue, but just a glitch...

The data are in the respective INF files (with same names) under the [ControlFlags] section, in ExcludeFromSelect lines. The data are not complete. And the NE410 does actually require the NETMDUSB.SYS file.

Just updated the initial post. You do need to restart your computer in Step 1.

I sincerely hope so. But then we come to the RH1's firmware. Which was updated 10 (ten) times since the unit was made available to customers. Installing (not renaming, but actually installing through INF file manipulations) the RH1 driver for, say, an RH910 or an NH600, works, but doesn't give you any new features. But may give you some new and powerful glitches.

The new driver (NETMD052.SYS) is for the RH1 only, and is not specifically designed for older units, so renaming may cause other compatibility problems.

Looks like any of the "old" drivers can cause this. All my older devices are first and second generation HiMD units, which are using the NETMD033.SYS driver, which does cause this problem. And fsw actually plugged in the MDS-JE780 deck, which uses an older driver, which also caused this problem. If you don't want to wear out your RH1, you may use older units to download music. Just remove their drivers when you need to upload SP.

Recently, several members of the Russian http://www.player.ru/talk/ forum (including myself) discovered that their RH1s take ages to upload SP. A full SP disc took 50-100 minutes to upload. Yesterday, a member named fsw discovered that this occurs after plugging in an older NetMD unit to the computer you are using for RH1 uploads, and found out that removing all NetMD drivers and plugging the RH1 in again solves the problem. I'll expand on this a bit more. The problem seems to be caused by some conflict between the driver for the "fast" RH1 (NETMD052.sys), and drivers for older "slow" models (NETMDUSB.sys, NETMD031.sys, and NETMD033.sys), which are designed for NetMD downloading only. If you plug in an older unit, it installs its driver, which then doesn't allow the RH1 to upload at full speed. The complete solution is the first five steps of the solution to the "Walkman device detection issue", which I posted before. I'll repeat the five steps here, with an update to Step 1, which is absolutely essential: Disconnect any ATRAC devices from your PC and close SonicStage. Restart your computer.Go to Control Panel->System->Advanced->Environment Variables.Under the "User variables for [your username]" field, press the New... button, and create the variable (exactly as shown, without quotation marks): "devmgr_show_details", set it equal to 1, press OK, press the New... button again, then create the "devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices" variable, and also set it equal to 1 and press OK. Press OK again to save the variables and exit the window.Go to Device Manager, and enable the View->Show hidden devices option.Find and remove all "phantom" (semi-transparent) instances of "Net MD", "Sony USB Device" (in Universal Serial Bus controllers), "SONY Hi-MD WALKMAN USB Device" (in Disk drives), and "Generic volume" (in Storage volumes). Do not remove any Generic volumes which are not semi-transparent - these are your hard drives!!!Then plug in your RH1 with an SP disc inside, it will install its driver, and upload at full speed again. And avoid plugging in older units to the same computer again.

Absolutely right!

This is an InstallShield problem. SonicStage 4.x uses InstallShield 10.1 to install itself, and some of its components are misconfigured. I have no idea about paths in Windows Vista, but under Windows 2000/XP you may go to the "C:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\Professional\RunTime\10" folder, find a folder called "01" there, and rename it to, say, "01.bak". This will cause InstallShield to reinstall its runtime components for this particular version. On the Internet you may find recommendations to delete the entire "C:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\Professional" or "C:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield" folder. NEVER do this! This may cause problems when installing/uninstalling other programs, which are using other versions of the InstallShield engine. UPDATE: Just checked SonicStage 3.4. It also uses this version of InstallShield.

Right! But the main problem with the NetMD mode is that a unit in this mode is not seen as a drive by Windows. It is recognized as an abstract USB device, and the only way to communicate with it is via the respective driver. On the other hand, a unit in Hi-MD mode is seen as a drive, and does not actually require any drivers.

Has anyone of you tried to have fun with the [...] battery of the E10?