Odd gaps/silence in transferred music.

[cwall1108]

I've had this happen on a few recordings with no particular pattern. Apologies if this has been already covered - I did search the forums for anything that matches and nothing seemed to fit.

This usually affects tracks in the first part of the disk, if that makes a difference. Here's my setup:

Encoding/xfer software: SonicStage 4.3 ultimate.

Operating System: Windows 8 64bit

Source format: 256kbps MP3, and Straight rip WAV (1411kbps wav)

Destination format: ATRAC LP2

Transfer decks: MZ-NE410 and MZ-NF610

Transfer method: NetMD

Playback decks (skip present in same loc on all): MZ-NE410, MZ-NF610, MZ-N707, MZ-NH600D

Discs: Sony "Multicolor" MDW80, first record - pulled out of the shrink wrap (2x), and Neige 80's - also new (1x).

Battery: New in all cases - 3 lines or higher (ruling out voltage dip during transfer/write)

So far the only common potential failure point for my tests is Sonic Stage and/or the source machine. Since my understanding is SS transcodes before transferring, my guess is something is going wrong during that stage, but I am surprised to see the problem come up in both transcoding MP3 and straight up WAV rips. A 2ghz quad core should be more than capable of handling a transcode without a buffer overrun, and since it's not happening in real time anyhow (usually much faster) I think that can be ruled out.

I've also watched the meter on the units that have them, and the gaps come up nowhere near a peak, so I'm 90% certain this isn't a clipping issue.

Anyone run into similar? Any guesses on a fix? It's maybe affecting 1% of all my transfers so far.

[sfbp]

IMHO the slow USB on "real" NetMD machines and very fast PC's like present day ones is a bit of a mismatch, like trying to mow the lawn with a modified Ferrari.

Unfortunately there are some timing issues which Sony got around in stuff about 10 years ago, but as USB got faster and faster there may tend to be problems like this.

I'm not saying you can't get around it, but I have seen this, and I'm not surprised.

HOWEVER: I strongly recommend plugging your NF610 to its own power supply. It may well be that the power drain on a rechargeable is too much, especially since the TOC has to be written, and there is extra overhead (on a blank disk) when making transfers, at the start. Second best would be a sidecar AA battery, which should be Alkaline (not NiMH rechargeable). The NE410..... sorry but you're out of luck. Best to try that with a much older PC where the timing loops work and don't cause so much power stress on the setup because the whole thing goes a bit slower.

[cwall1108]

Just for grins I threw in the same disk in the same player... same usb port etc. etc. but threw in a brand spankin' new environmentally hostile Alkaline after blowing away the tracks and the Sonic Stage intermediary (transcoded) files. No glitches. I think this confirms the power theory over USB overrun. It's a shame those things seem kind of spendy on ebay. Both the NF610 and the MZ-N707 take the same adapter, yeah? 3v 500ma if I recall.

Oh and thanks, of course

[sfbp]

Glad it starts to make sense.

Curiously the HiMD units do a better job of transferring to "legacy" disks than you might expect.