Transferred Songs Sound Like Shiz.

[Lornie]

Hello,

I have a Sony MZ-N510. So far it worked great, and there's no reason that it should start going nuts all of a sudden.

The songs I recorded on minidisc way back are still played back correctly. It's with the new stuf I want to transfer that it's all messed up ! It is as if my song is skipped once in a while, you know, like a really bad CD, or if you were to play a vinyl and occasionally pull it back a bit, or push it forward (every 3 seconds).

I don't get it, what is causing this all of a sudden ? I have the latest sonicstage, tried to convert in LP2, LP4, not convert at all etc.. nothing seems to work. The original songs do not do this ! Once put on MD? the MD sounds like garbage, making it absolutely useless at the moment, which I find very hard to accept since the thing is only two years old.. that is not old imo.

I searched the forums, read the FAQs, updated my software, nothing changed toi my PC (AMD, 2400XP) but for some reason, the transfers are always messed up. I do remember one time I converted an mp3 over and over with a 3rd party program, and finally it did get converted to the mp3, and sounded exactly like on my PC. But I can't remember what I did exactly..

ANy help is greatly greatly appreciated !

Sincerely,

Lorn

[A440]

First, don't convert in LP4, the quality is just too low. Use SP or LP2.

Three guesses (and they are only guesses):

1) Are the original songs in either low-bitrate mp3 (48 or 64 kbps) or variable-bitrate mp3? SonicStage can have problems with those (and they sound pretty bad to begin with).

or

2) Is your MD plugged into a multiple-USB port? It should be plugged directly into the computer.

or

3) Are you running other processor-intensive programs simultaneously on your computer? Browser, e-mail, music players? You've got a fast processor, but SonicStage is a resources hog, and maybe it's skipping because other programs are competing for computer power. Look in your taskbar and close anything you don't need that's running in the background: Realplayer, Outlook, Adobe, other stuff that might have loaded on startup (right-click on the icon, Close or Exit). If you want to disconnect from the Internet while you do your transfer, you could also close antivirus or firewall programs. Try shutting down whatever you can that's not SonicStage, and then doing the transfer. SonicStage doesn't play nice with the other children.

Also, try running an antivirus scan from here (via Internet Explorer) and make sure nothing is hijacking your computer.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

[jadeclaw]

4) Does the MD records properly through Line-In?

[atrain]

4) Does the MD records properly through Line-In?

←

that's what my question was going to be. it may well be that the unit is nearing the end of its life. if it does turn out to be an optical block problem, there may be very lttle you can do.