atreyu Posted February 7, 2005 Report Share Posted February 7, 2005 (edited) Overall I've been very pleased with SonicStage 2.3, but I'm running into a major frustration.My need seems super-simple (to me)... I want to be able to control what bitrate I use to send my music to my Hi-MD.First I ripped my entire CD collection to my HD in Hi-SP. Then I went to the first track of the first album, right clicked on it and selected "Convert Format...". I figured I could create a Hi-LP version of every track in my database, so I could choose which format I wanted to send to the player. My thought was that I could use Hi-SP for select albums on 1GB media and keep a number of Hi-LP mixes on standard media for road trips or other times I wouldn't mind the lower bitrate.Well... I immediately discovered that I couldn't convert from one ATRAC3+ bitrate to another (wtf?!?) -- I was forced to choose an ATRAC3 bitrate instead. Annoyed but determined, I selected ATRAC3 132kbps instead.Everything looked great... the "File Info" tab of the song's properties now showed 2 registered files for that track, one ATRAC3, one ATRAC3plus.But here's the rub... I can't figure out how the heck to send the 132kbps file to my Hi-MD! Even if I click on "Transfer Mode," hit the "Details..." button and choose ATRAC3 132kbps in the "Convert Automatically and Transfer..." dropdown the file still gets transferred as Hi-SP.It seems that the only alternative I have is the "Minimum bit rate transfer mode" -- but what if I don't *want* 48kbps? Plus, with this option I have to convert on a per-transfer basis, instead of running one mass conversion in the background for quick transfers later... since I can't convert from 256 to 48.Seemes there are two other pain-in-the-butt options... both involving re-ripping every CD in my collection at Hi-LP. <sigh> Option one: add the ripped tracks to the existing album, which means I can't transfer a whole album in one click any more... I have to open each album, choose the set of tracks in the right bitrate, and transfer those. Oh yeah, and manually create a group for the album. Screw that!Option two is somewhat more palatable but still B.S.: add the tracks to new albums named "Album Name - Hi-LP". So now I have TWO !@#$% listings for every CD in my collection.Am I missing some nuance of the SS interface, or are these really my only options? This is so ridiculous... there needs to be a "force bitrate" option to replace the "Minimum bit rate" option. Edited February 7, 2005 by atreyu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ROMBUSTERS Posted February 8, 2005 Report Share Posted February 8, 2005 yup this is basically my one and only HUGE problem with SonicStage on the whole. it hasnt crashed for me, doesnt do anything it shouldnt and yet something this stupidly simple cant be done. The next version better correct then insane annoyance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sinus6ber Posted February 8, 2005 Report Share Posted February 8, 2005 one more thing ... if I convert albums from mp3 to ARTAC it puts all converted files physically in one big directory "Optimized Files", I just don`t get why it does not create new directory with same name as the input directory like Artist Name - Album Name :S Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syrius Posted February 8, 2005 Report Share Posted February 8, 2005 Since you have the CD's, why not use Simple Burner to transfer to the Hi-MD, and avoid HDD clutter? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atreyu Posted February 9, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 9, 2005 (edited) Since you have the CD's, why not use Simple Burner to transfer to the Hi-MD, and avoid HDD clutter?←Well... because that's slower, and a hassle. For one, I have the CDs at home, but sometimes want to transfer music at work. But even at home I don't want to wade through my CDs to pull out the ones I want, then spend a half hour swapping and re-filing CDs. The whole point (to me) of having them in digital form is not having to do that. I just scroll through a concise list of my albums, select a few, hit transfer and do something else while it takes care of the rest.Another thing: I love that when I'm listening to an MD and hear a song that sucks I can just delete it. Then, before I tranfer an album off my player I compare the album on the player to the album on SS and delete the rejects from SS. So the next time I want a given album I automatically get only the non-sucky songs... leaving more space for good stuff! Edited February 9, 2005 by atreyu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.