NW-HD5 and New Sonic Stage 4.2

[Sophia Hapgood]

Firsty Hello all and its great to find a forum just dealing with Sony Atrac Stuff. I made the move from a useless I-Pod to Sonys NW-HD5 about two years ago and have never looked back. A fantastic product with great battery life and no irritating pauses in between tracks on mixed albums...Grrrrrr..that made me so mad with the I-Pod...

I have been running my Sony on an earlier version of Sonic Stage for ages with no worries at all happilly ripping all my CD's at 256kbs and transfering them without any problems at all.

Recently i updated my software to the newer 4.2 and have had a few Gremlins, firstly i found you could rip at 320kbs so though great a bit more quality....

BUT....on listening a few days later on the move i noticed that the CD's ripped were saying only 64kbs on the NW-HD5..???

Anyway to cut a long story short, by getting Sonic Stage to prompt when it couldnt send a track in native format to the NW-HD5 i kinda discovered the NW-HD5 doesn't like tracks encoded in higher than 256kbs...? So during the transfer it was sending them at 64kbs (Sonys default Transfer)

Anyone come across this?

I have noticed there is a firmware patch for the unit also and wondering if i should apply this, will it allow the HD5 to support the higher bit rate?

Any thoughts out there, i'm not to worried as quite frankly 256kbs is fantastic quality and i adore my HD5 completely, although the Headphones are rubbish arn't they? I have a pair of Sennheiser MX-500's and they are the bee's.

Sophia

any one any ideas drop me a mail

sophia.hapgood@ntlworld.com

Edited January 11, 2007 by Sophia Hapgood

[Guest Stuge]

So during the transfer it was sending them at 64kbs (Sonys default Transfer)

Anyone come across this?

Welcome to AtracLife !

This is Quite Bizzare .

I have noticed there is a firmware patch for the unit also and wondering if i should apply this, will it allow the HD5 to support the higher bit rate?

A certain number of NW-HD5 Network WALKMAN units may rarely stop responding on startup under certain conditions. In order to resolve this issue, we have provided a firmware update to version 1.2 for the Hard Disk Network WALKMAN NW-HD5.

Also ,Fimware 1.1 will not allow you to transfer any new Bitrates

[kerfuffle]

It's only transferring them at 64kbps because your NW-HD5 can't support 320kbps.

You can change it so that if the bitrate's not compatible, it will transfer at 256kbps. You can do this under Tools>Options>Transfer>Click on ATRAC Audio Device>Transfer Settings>Select specified bit rate transfer mode>Select 256kbps under the drop down box, then click OK.

[Sophia Hapgood]

Sooo..If i upgrade the firmware on the NW5 will its support 320+ bitrates?

One thing i also noticed having a play last night is if you rip at 320 and tell Sonicstage to downrip to 256 for the HD5 it takes ages to transfer, i guess its crunching the numbers, so i deleted the CD's i had ripped at 320 and re-ripped them at 256 and it transfers back to super speed....

Hummmmm I think i will stick to 256 for ripping unless anyone out there thinks there is a noticable difference uppring the bitrate,

Come on folk what do you think?

Also on a slightly different note does anyone know how to stop Artists from Compilation albums appearing in the Artists search list as i have loads of dance and trance albums and my artist list reads like a Sci-Fi novel....sigh...

Sophia

Edited January 12, 2007 by Sophia Hapgood

[kerfuffle]

I don't think so, no (for the firmware).

It takes ages for SonicStage to do a convert-and-transfer, so what you could do is to convert them into 256kbps first, then transfer to the NW-HD5.

As for stopping artists, no idea. I just leave the forty artists who make up a Ministry of Sound compliation as is. xD

Edited January 12, 2007 by kerfuffle

[pata2001]

Hummmmm I think i will stick to 256 for ripping unless anyone out there thinks there is a noticable difference uppring the bitrate,

That's probably the best way to go. At least HiSP (Atrac3+ 256kbps) is supported in all Atrac3+ supporting devices (AtracCD, HiMD, etc). It is one of the first Atrac3+ bitrates to be released, so support for it is better than other bitrates. If you want broader compatibility with other Atrac devices (NetMD, older Network Walkmen), then use Atrac3 132kbps (LP2).

[Sophia Hapgood]

Thanks for all the help and advice guys. I wish I could say thanks to SONY for an easy upgrade to Sonic Stage 4.2 but thats not going to happen, now I am aware of the bitrate issues I can manage my music better. Also thanks to another forum user i have managed to sort out my problem with zillions of obscure artists clogging up my Artist sort list (caused by loads of dance albums). I just changed them to Various Artists and tht works a treat.

cheers guys

Best get listening to more music.

PS alos ordered a new set of headphones a pair of Sennheiser MX400's so hope to get them soon..

www.play.com shipped for £9.99 UK

[janko]

Hi,

I have two nw-hd5 – they are really great indeed, but in fact I still miss “an old good atrac” v1 from mini discs – sounds best to my ears ;-). Both nw-hd5 have been upgraded to v1.2 firmware, sonic stage (ss) is v4.0 and all the cds ripped @ 320 kbps, all of them transferred @ 320 and playable @ 320 on nw-hd5. My first guess is to check transfer settings in ss - be sure to check standard transfer mode -> 320 and conversion set to disabled. The second guess is that ss 4.2 may have new/buggy drivers ?. I remember that earlier ss like 3.0 or so could not transfer @ 320 to nw-hd5 (only 256kbps). 320 kbps support was introduced in ss 3.8 or something (one step before 4.0).

Try to upgrade firmware to 1.2 (but I don't really know if it's an issue), uninstall ss v4.2 and try to install ss v4.0 (off-line installer is available @ download section).

Good luck !