SOnicStage woes - HEEEEELP!

[drmoze]

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......

[atrain]

try ripping to the drive sonicstage is installed on. make sure the DRM is not being applied to atrac3 files. you can then store them on the external HDD after transferring them to the player.

[drmoze]

try ripping to the drive sonicstage is installed on. make sure the DRM is not being applied to atrac3 files. you can then store them on the external HDD after transferring them to the player.

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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????