Transfering my CD's to MD - help appreciated

[Soundbox]

Over Christmas I realised that I have too many marginal CD's - ones that I am not playing but like the music on them. Like the Morrissey 'singles' box sets with 19 discs that spoil the music because after 3 tracks I am having to reload the CD player. For ease of use on all my machines and decks I have decided on LP2. After puting them onto MD I will be donating the CD's to charity so want to get the sound as good as possible. Please can you tale a look at my setup:

CD into laptop

SonicStage - Import a CD (aquire titles)

Upload using the 132 Kbps ATRAC LP setting and 'high quality' as opposed to normal/fast

Use MZ-N510 and create NetMD 'without conversion'

It is then done at a fast speed

However I see that it still says 'converting' when creating a MD and the sound on some tracks is not as good as I feel it should be.

Is SonicStage the correct tool for this job? Any other comments appreciated.

I'm sure this has been gone over in the past so any links to past information that is known to be good would be appreciated.

I have so many CD's to do and clear out to make room I could not face doing it all again but for some silly mistake on my behalf.

[trotter]

TBH i do it the old fashioned way and just play my cd through a digital output into my MD recorder.

Dont know if its the best way.

[sfbp]

I strongly recommend importing in Atrac Advanced Lossless (256kbps lossy part), high quality setting. This will downcode to your 132 target perfectly nicely as well as giving the option to play in something with a few more bits of reproduction "later".

The converting you see has to do with the fact that SS insists on encrypting everything for the journey to MD. In fact when it gets to the other end it is decrypted again... I guess they didn't want people spiking the USB cable and tapping the "good stuff" from there.

[Soundbox]

Thanks - I have just checked SS and found those options. Trotter, that is optimal I agree and I do it that way normally but you should see the piles of CD's I have accumalated. I keep putting off the real time task due to the nannying needed for the transfers. It depresses me to have so much good music not being listened to...

I did ponder on one of those CD ripper boxes but that is worse - non-portable and non-physical.

[PhilippeC]

I strongly recommend importing in Atrac Advanced Lossless (256kbps lossy part), high quality setting. This will downcode to your 132 target perfectly nicely as well as giving the option to play in something with a few more bits of reproduction "later".

The converting you see has to do with the fact that SS insists on encrypting everything for the journey to MD. In fact when it gets to the other end it is decrypted again... I guess they didn't want people spiking the USB cable and tapping the "good stuff" from there.

Personnaly I would convert first all CDs in Flac on the computer for a backup (on DVD-Rs) and then transfer / convert the MD via Sonic Stage in any Atrac format. You can also backup your CDs as Flac AND Atrac Advanced Lossless files.

MDLP Bookshelves or MD-CD combos could be very usefull in your case.

[sfbp]

The key, Philippe, is surely the ripping. As we learned from our discussions with MDietrich about how 20 bits or so of resolution is dithered into 16-bit CD's, the challenge is getting the 20 bits back from the CD during the rip.

It seems to go quite well with SS to the ATRAC formats. But don't use SS to rip to WAV, followed by compression, as I might be tempted to think that Philippe is implying. That way you get the worst of all worlds.

Other rippers than SS do a great job, properly configured.

[Joanne_Chan]

Usually I copy via the digital output of my NAD CDP and make a coffee ready to read online news sites while it gets on it. To play on my all units I keep it in SP (not keen on MDLP 2 for quality)