Jump to content

SS3.2 takes a long time to write an MD in SP format

Rate this topic


zxon

Recommended Posts

A friend of mine has just got himself a Pioneer MD head unit for his car for £0 (That's right, FREE!). He has never used the MD format before so he came to me because I've got four of them so he knew I could help out. Unfortunately it only plays SP MDs so I set off to make a few for him using my spare 74min MDs.

I can understand having to convert the MP3s over to ATRAC3-SP format first, before copying them onto the MD, but it takes forever to transfer the songs. It seems to send the song at 1x speed (a 3min song will take 3mins to transfer etc). My MZ-N1 never took this long* when I was using that to transfer songs only a year or two ago... with a slower PC and slower USB connection, might I add. Tonight I had to resort to burning the mp3s onto cd and then record the tracks using my sony hifi onto MD instead at 2x speed (which proved much faster!).

I'm using SS3.2 and an RH-10 over a USB2.0 connection. Any reason why the transfer would take so long?

* I'm not referring to the Net.MD's capability (at the time) to tranfer songs at 32x speed, because we all know that only ever applied to LP4 tracks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is no such thing as actual SP encoding from SonicStage, which uses LP2 padded out to fit SP's data rate. Restated: the highest quality NetMD mode encoding you can get from SS is LP2.

Pseudo-SP encoding should occur at faster than realtime speeds, unless your computer is *really* slow. Also, neither HiMD nor NetMD work at greater than USB 1.1 speeds [in fact, only a fraction of 1.1's speed with legacy MDs in NetMD mode], again, unless your computer is *really* slow.

My computer + RH10 transcode MP3 to pseudo-SP and writes to a NetMD-formatted MD80 at about 4x speed [which does seem very slow to me]. LP2 mode, by comparison, takes only a few seconds to transfer a single track. [i did a test listen and the two are definitely identical in terms of playback quality, so it's safe to assume they came from the same LP2-transcoded source.]

My guess is that the recorder does the job of padding out the data for pseudo-SP.

If the car deck supports MDLP modes, using LP2 mode will save you some time [especially considering the fact that the quality is identical either way]. In other words, LP2 from SS is the fastest transfer method available to you if it's usable.

The 2x dub made with your hifi should be of higher quality than either LP2 or pseudo-SP [since they are the same] from SS.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Aye, I know that that SS3.2 doesn't write SP in it's proper encoding. I just figured that it would be faster with a PC rather than through my hifi.

Although my PC isn't the fastest on the market (by quite a bit), it can still pull a little weight: P3 1.2Ghz - 1.12Gb RAM. Still doesn't make any sense how my MZ-N1 could link up with the PC and write in "SP" encoding faster than my RH10 on a slower USB connection and on a slower PC than I have now.

The stereo, I'm afraid, doesn't support LP at all, otherwise I would've considered that. I'd figure that it would take just a long to fill an MD if I put LP2 tracks on it; I'd just be able to fit twice as many on instead. The head unit was made back in 1998 (Pioneer MEH-P5000R) - probably the reason why my mate got it for nothing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Aye, I know that that SS3.2 doesn't write SP in it's proper encoding. I just figured that it would be faster with a PC rather than through my hifi.

Although my PC isn't the fastest on the market (by quite a bit), it can still pull a little weight: P3 1.2Ghz - 1.12Gb RAM. Still doesn't make any sense how my MZ-N1 could link up with the PC and write in "SP" encoding faster than my RH10 on a slower USB connection and on a slower PC than I have now.

The stereo, I'm afraid, doesn't support LP at all, otherwise I would've considered that. I'd figure that it would take just a long to fill an MD if I put LP2 tracks on it; I'd just be able to fit twice as many on instead. The head unit was made back in 1998 (Pioneer MEH-P5000R) - probably the reason why my mate got it for nothing.

Well my PC is an old workhorse (OK, donkey then ...) and in spite of having numerous players of various vintages from SP only to HiMD, most of my transfers are SP from Sonic Stage to one of the MD units.

It always takes ages, but even on a Pentium 2 350MHz machine, including the "converting" time and then the transfer, it probably takes around half an hour to convert and transfer one 50-minute CDs worth to NetMD/pseudo SP.

But at least those MDs are playable on ALL my machines, which is why I do it!

I don't have a car player, I use one of those FM Transmitter jobbies though :blink:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well my PC is an old workhorse (OK, donkey then ...) and in spite of having numerous players of various vintages from SP only to HiMD, most of my transfers are SP from Sonic Stage to one of the MD units.

It always takes ages, but even on a Pentium 2 350MHz machine, including the "converting" time and then the transfer, it probably takes around half an hour to convert and transfer one 50-minute CDs worth to NetMD/pseudo SP.

But at least those MDs are playable on ALL my machines, which is why I do it!

I don't have a car player, I use one of those FM Transmitter jobbies though :blink:

I'm glad someone else is having slow SP transferral issues. I've been thinking of just lending my mate my old MZ-R70(S) so he can record his own CDs onto SP MD himself via his HiFi, because at the moment he has to rely on me to sort out all of this songs *

However we've found how to attach an external device onto the stereo and use that instead (I was thinking my RH10). Less fuss :)

* You're probably asking "why's he gone for MD if he has to rely on you to sort the MDs out?". The reasons are two-fold... (1) His CDs are miraculously getting scratched to hell in his glovebox, even when they're in the leather case holder. He likes the MD format because they're protected all the time. (2) So his ex-girlfriend (who is the mother of his child, so he's stuck with her) can't put her crap music on the stereo without his (and my) explicit permission. Sneaky, eh? :) :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...